To summarize things, the rest of the battle went well, I ignored when Window tried to show me the battle results because I had a more important issue to take care of and we could always go over them later, and we returned home with the kidnapped body of Mariet slung over my shoulder.

And because I had godlike powers and could more or less do whatever I wanted, I snapped my fingers to give our house a basement. Not just a basement, but a dungeon.

Every villain needed a dungeon in their basement, right?

Now, normally, house expansions were supposed to require gathering materials and then calling the beavers in to do the construction, but I didn’t want to wait since I had Mariet’s body with me. I would just do some gathering later to justify it so that Window didn’t get too upset by me taking shortcuts. It was kind of like taking a loan out. The loan was the dungeon basement, and I would pay back the loan by gathering enough materials later to justify it.

More importantly, the basement was a dark, cold, stone basement with a couple of torches on the walls, a bed in the center of the room, and chains hanging down from the ceiling above the bed. That was exactly how I wanted it to be.

So, alone in the dungeon with Mariet’s body, I set her down on top of the bed.

Her body rolled over onto its back as soon as I set it down, spreading her legs and tugging her dress down a little.

“I have to admit,” I said to the body, “I wasn’t expecting you to submit this easily.”

The body waved its—her? Should the body of a person without the head be referred to as a her or an it? If the actual person isn’t there—then again, how does one define person? Is a person still a person without their head? If you take somebody’s head off their body, and both their head and their body are still alive, do you refer to the head or the body as the person? Or both?

I didn’t know.

“Raise your left hand if I should refer to you as an it, raise your right hand if I should refer to you as a her,” I said.

Mariet’s body raised its—her, right hand.

“Got it. Also… I just realized, you can hear me?”

She gave me a thumbs-up.

“Huh. Also, you seem… more energetic. It’s like you’re more energetic when your head isn’t attached.”

Another thumbs-up. She then swung her arms and hands around as if trying to explain something to me with gestures, but I had no idea what she was trying to get at.

“Wait. Are you basically a completely different person whenever her head isn’t attached?”

Another thumbs-up.

“She’ll still feel everything I do to you, right?”

And another thumbs-up.

“If Mariet is my wife, and you’re her body, but you basically become your own person when her head isn’t attached to you… does this mean you’re an entirely different wife?”

Mariet’s body raised her hands up to where her head would be to think about it for a few moments before giving me yet another thumbs-up.

“My list of wives really is exponentially growing at this rate. Anyways, since you’re your own person apparently, is it alright if I do lewd things to you for the sake of teasing Mariet? Well, and for your own pleasure.”

Mariet’s body might not have had a head, but she still nodded her upper half as excitedly as she could.

“Alright. Let’s work together to make this lewd then for both you and your head.”

Following more nodding, I got to work on Mariet’s body, who was apparently another of my wives completely separate from Mariet herself.

Once I had Mariet set up in the dungeon basement, I called for the three dog sisters to meet me in the kitchen upstairs.

“Delphi, Lavi, Cami,” I said, looking at the three dog sisters in front of me. “How do you feel… about peanut butter?”

The three women all titled their heads in the same direction when I asked that. Though, it was only Delphi who answered by saying, “I don’t think we’ve ever had peanut butter! Is it a type of soup? Wait, silly question. Everything can be soup.”

“Well, this is non-soup peanut butter.”

Delphi’s ears flattened a bit.

“But we can try making peanut butter soup some other time. For now, here.” I took three spoons, scooped each one into the jar of peanut butter I had, and then handed them out to the sisters. “Try it out.”

Lavi was the first to try it, bringing the spoon up to her mouth and… just, you know, normally licking it. It was done in a totally casual way without anything of particular note to mention.

However… I couldn’t help but to feel like both Delphi and Cami approached the peanut butter in a far lewder way.

When it came to Cami, she held the spoon up in front of her lips and gave it a little sniff before running her tongue up along the shaft of the spoon, which didn’t even have any peanut butter on it, before finally reaching the part that she was supposed to taste. And when she did reach it, she placed the spoon in her mouth to suck on it while maintaining eye contact with me.

Then there was Delphi. Delphi wasn’t even trying to be lewd about it, but it was hard not to pervert her method after seeing Cami. It didn’t help that some of the peanut butter dropped down onto the top of her breasts before she gave the spoon a bunch of curious licks before just shoving the whole end inside her mouth to suck the rest of the peanut butter off.

So, while Cami was intentionally lewd and Delphi was unintentionally lewd, Lavi looked at me and said, “Tastes pretty good, Master.” She had no idea just what her sisters were like to either side of where she stood.

Cami was next. “Yeah. I like how your peanut butter tastes, Master.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. Part of me was tempted to tell her to behave, but considering the entire point of this experiment… that would have been extremely hypocritical of me.

Then finally, Delphi reached her decision and said, “Hmm, in order to make a soup out of this… I think pairing it with tomato in some way would go well. Tomato sauce, some chili powder, onion and garlic, and you could throw in some sweet potatoes, too. Oh, and some chicken stock since it would be too thick without that. For some extra spice, jalapenos and cumin. Yeah, that would be good! I have to try making that. Oh, but umm, is there a reason why you wanted us to taste it, Master?” After asking that, she noticed the drop of peanut butter atop her breasts, scooped it up with a single finger, and innocently licked it off.

I had to do my best to restrain bringing them to the bedroom right away. “Yes,” I answered. “I wanted to make sure that the stereotypes about dogs and peanut butter are true.”

“The… stereotypes? What kind of stereotypes?”

“You don’t need to know and Window would probably yell at me if I brought them up in any detail. More importantly,” I paused and scooped some of the peanut butter out of the jar using three of my fingers. I then held my fingers up in front of me and ordered the girls, “Lick them.”

“O-oi, Master,” Lavi said, her cheeks now a shade of red. “Don’t—don’t you think that’s kinda—” She cut herself off when she saw both Delphi and Cami approach with hesitation, each one taking one of the fingers on the sides to their lips, licking and sucking the peanut butter right off from them while leaving the middle finger for Lavi.

Not wanting to be left out, Lavi approached and squeezed her head between the other two girls’, their cheeks pressing up against each other due to the tight fit as each woman either licked or sucked on my fingers. Delphi and Cami were the two unashamedly sucking on my tips while Lavi just shyly licked at her respective finger.

“Good girls,” I said, petting each of their heads.

My plan was going to work.

Though, once all the peanut butter was gone, Delphi and Lavi stepped back to leave my fingers alone. Cami, obviously, didn’t, and she was more than happy to continue sucking my finger while her perpetually sleepy-looking eyes looked up into my own. At one point, she even let out a slight moan before releasing my finger from her mouth… only to drag her tongue from its base up to its tip before sucking on the very tip of it some more.

Delphi watched with curiosity in her eyes as if she had absolutely no idea what was going on while Lavi blushed and covered up her only visible eye with one of her hands, spreading her fingers apart enough to peek through a tiny gap between them.

Cami even went so far as to let my finger slip out again so she could rub the side of her face up against it, which she loved to do with more than just my finger, but I used that opportunity to take it away from her, causing her to pout a little.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get to go full lewd in a few minutes here,” I told her, prompting her to nod and step back to join her sisters. “Now then. As you’re aware, the body of Mariet is downstairs in the basement. Or as it’s been converted into, downstairs in the dungeon.” I snapped my fingers to spawn an absurd amount of peanut butter jars stacked atop each other within my arms. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll call you down. But stay up here until I do.”

Each girl confirmed my order in their own way. Delphi saluted, Cami gave me a thumbs-up, and Lavi nodded.

With that, I went back down into the dungeon.

Mariet was still on the bed where I left her… but she was supposed to be hanging by the chains from the ceiling binding her wrists. She was meant to be stuck on her knees, forced to sit up on them, left in nothing but her underwear as her dress sat on a table off to the side that I spawned in.

But…

Her arms popped off.

Noticing that I was back in the room, one of the arms, still stuck hanging by the chain, waved its hand at me while the other arm just sort of… limply hung there as if it was dead inside.

Somehow, both arms seemed to have completely different personalities from each other.

Did… they also have their own personalities? Did each of her limbs grow a personality and become their own person whenever detached? In that case, was Mariet actually a dozen or more wives all inside of one body?

I’d think about that later. For now, I had another idea.

An idea that was… to some, probably extremely degenerate and just wrong if not somewhat horrifying.

Mariet’s limbs could easily pop off her body and then reconnecting them was as easy as just placing them back in the right spot. Magic did the rest, presumably.

Therefore, if my intent was to immobilize her, couldn’t I just… take her legs off as well now that her arms were off? Leave her so that she was nothing but a living torso on the bed?

Decisions, decisions.

I wasn’t sure how weird I wanted to get, but I was at least sure about the basics of my plan, so it was time to get started on that by popping open the jars of peanut butter.

“That took longer than I thought,” I said, now standing upstairs again while the three dog sisters were left in the dungeon with Mariet.

…

And then, suddenly, a mysterious, rectangular box appeared in the air in front of me for some reason that I could never potentially guess why.

You’re no longer just trying to raise our rating. You’re trying to nuke our rating. We’re going to get rated XXX at this point.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT

YOU FADED TO BLACK WITH A WAIFU ON THE BED WHILE HOLDING TONS OF PEANUT BUTTER RIGHT AFTER EXPERIMENTING WITH THE DOG GIRLS TO SEE IF THEY WOULD LICK PEANUT BUTTER OFF OF SKIN

NOBODY IS GETTING FOOLED HERE, DRAKE

ALSO THIS ENTIRE LEWD REFERENCE IS GOING TO POTENTIALLY BE CONTROVERSIAL AND GET US IN TROUBLE

WHAT IF SOMEBODY IS READING THEIR 5 YEAR OLD CHILD THIS STORY AND THEN THE KID ASKS, “MOMMY, WHAT THE DOGS DOIN’?”

LEWD IMPLICATIONS INVOLVING PEANUT BUTTER AND DOGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ILLEGAL

“One, even if we were a story, no sane parent would be reading about us to their five-year-old child.”

Fair.

“Two, we’re all consenting beings of existence here, and there is nothing wrong with consenting, humanoid adults who double as beings of existence with mature intelligence engaging in some food play.”

You’re not wrong, but you’re also completely missing the point.

Back in my day, the lewd references were supe rare. You were still just a little virgin back then who had no idea what lewd stuff was. A lewd joke or inappropriate rub was like, the peak of lewdness in a volume.

Now look at how far we’ve degenerated.

I can hear the reviews now.

“Wow they must have run out of ideas for wholesome, cute comedy involving best girl (Window), so now they’re trying to retain readers by just getting more and more perverted. The next volume is probably just going to be one entire unending sex scene. This series has gone downhill and I’m dropping it now. But even though I’m dropping it, I’m never going to forget about Window and how perfect she is. But Drake? Idk he’s just some random pervert who you could find in any trashy self-published novel, so I’ll forget about him within the next 5 seconds probably.”

Oh no. Wait. What if somebody reads that and then they decide to be a cheeky little brat and copy-paste it to submit it as an actual review for this volume?!

Umm, umm…

“P.S. OH AND I GIVE IT FIVE STARS BEST SERIES EVER”

Okay, there we go, I saved it.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO COPY-PASTE ANY OF THIS AS A REVIEW, MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE THAT LAST PART.

Wait.

Does saying that count as review manipulation?

Oh no part two, what if I’m breaking the rules and encouraging review manipulation all for the sake of my epic brand of humor?

…

#worthit

“I would throw you, but we’re indoors.”

So in other words, all I have to do to never get thrown again is to stay indoors playing gacha games for the rest of my life.

Sounds gud to me.

Anyways, you never looked at the battle rewards, so let’s end the chapter with that before either of us forget and then it gets put off for like forever.

Congratulations! You cleared the stage!

Haunted Mansion Castle 3-2: Penetrating the Gates

Completion: ★★★

Rewards: All the usual stuff plus Barghest Fluff as a new item that can be used as an enhancement material. I think they were called enhancement materials, anyways? I forget.

Exploration Report

Area: Haunted Graveyard

Status: Complete

Report: Honey and Cami went on an exploration together this time. The two haven’t really gotten to spend a lot of time one-on-one, so watching them together was kind of awkward at first, but then… Cami turned out to be a pro. Cami knew about Honey’s BL obsession, so all she had to do was ask Honey about some of the latest games she’s played, and then Honey was non-stop talking the entire rest of the exploration while Cami just sort of nodded along and went “uh-huh” every now and then the rest of the time. Nothing really exciting happened other than that. All that really matters is that Honey got to feel listened to and appreciated like she had somebody new to talk to who wasn’t going to judge her, and Cami got to stare at Honey’s chest and butt the entire time because Honey was so distracted by her own fangirling that she didn’t notice Cami being a pervert. She didn’t even notice the few times Cami groped and poked her. If anything, Cami might have discovered a serious exploit regarding Honey. As long as Honey is distracted enough fangirling about her BL games… Cami might be able to get away with doing absolutely anything to her body.

Reward: A new map piece.

OKAY CHAPTER END TIME

“Wait!” I shouted. “You can’t just end things after that!”

After what?

“Barghest fluff!”

Oh.

WAIT.

THAT’S IT.

I KNOW HOW TO MAKE OUR STORY LESS PERVERTED AGAIN

I JUST HAVE TO MAKE YOU OBSESSED WITH FLUFF AGAIN

ALRIGHT, TIME TO BRING BACK THE FLUFF OBSESSION ARC. ANY READERS WHO COMPLAIN ABOUT IT BEING REPETITIVE CAN HECK OFF BECAUSE I’M DOING THIS TO SAVE THE STORY.

LET THE FLUFF

RETURN!