I left Yara’s room and stretched, feeling like a new man. A part of me didn’t even want to learn this meditation stuff if it meant I got weekly massages. Even if it meant a little bit of rough play was thrown in too.

Yara’s muffled voice shouted through the door. “Go do something constructive with Rolada.”

A scampering shadow crossed the hall and went down the new wing the crystal had ended up making. I raised an eyebrow and followed, curiosity taking hold of me. In the corner of my eye I saw the minion work queue appear, an order would be made, get cancelled and a new order would take its place. As I rounded the corridor the chaos made a bit more sense.

All the drones were assembled, running around with clay tiles, pots filled with crushed plant juice for dye or tools for working. In the midst of this, Drone 1 and Drone 2 were shouting at each other and directing the other drones, with some getting fed up and sitting on their rump.

“Hey guys,” I said, looking around the half tiled hall. The left side was the usual orderly style while the other was more mosaic, mixing squares and triangles together. “Interesting hallway I see.”

Drone 2 pointed at me and leered at Drone 1, as if to say I was pointing out the obvious. The two drones hissed at one another and I had to separate them before blood was drawn, that was if the minions even bled.

“Let’s keep this civil, please. You have always gotten along so what is the hold up?” I asked.

Drone 2 held up a small salvaged hammer and proudly displayed his new character sheet.

Dungeon Drone 2, Minion, small size, Level 1 Mason

Drone 2 took me by the hand and pointed out the new wall design. In addition to the more intricate style I saw underneath there were new strips of minion concrete for added strength.

Mosaic Dungeon Wall

+5 Beauty

+3 Wealth

+3 Wall Strength

He then took me to the other side, with the older style we had been using the whole time so far.

Basic Tile wall

+3 Beauty

+1 Wealth

+1 Wall Strength

Drone 2 crossed his arms over his chest and put on a grumpy pout. A very dwarf mood if I’d ever seen one, and if I squinted my eyes just right he almost seemed to be curling the fur under his chin to look like a beard

“Meeerp!” Drone 1 protested. He pointed at each of the walls and a new bit of information appeared. “Seeeeee.”

Mosaic Dungeon Wall additional costs:

+1 unit of dye

+2 units of stone

Ah, so we were dealing with a quantity versus quality situation. I knelt down and waved over Drone 1 and Drone 2.

“I see you chose to become a mason. We certainly need someone like that around here,” I said, and saw Drone 2 perk up. “Now Drone one, when we have people skilled in certain things we should utilize their talents, right?”

Drone 2 snickered and puffed out his chest proudly. He twirled the hammer in his hands to show off but slipped. It tumbled out of his hands and onto a pile of clay tiles shattering them apart on impact.

“But,” I stressed to Drone 2. “We also need to manage our resources carefully. So we need to find some compromise.”

The two of them seemed more confused now and looked at me for guidance. I sighed and pointed out the two walls of the hallway. As I looked hard at the walls I could see a coloured outline around the built walls and it listed their bonuses.

“Why don’t we use the nicer version where we need strength, and where the public areas are, like the mess hall. Let’s have the simple version in the access halls and places people aren't likely to see it,” I said.

At the very least both minions seemed vindicated on their stance on the situation and shared some kind of agreement. I watched for a minute as they took down the mosaic tiles to save for later and complete this hall the way Drone 1 wanted. Drone 1 even got more involved than normal with him and Drone 2 taking equal stock in directing the others.

“One crisis averted…” I mumbled to myself.

Following what Yara had said I went to search for my foxy little friend, and it didn’t take me long to find her. I could hear her soft humming in the main hall of the dungeon’s lower floor and followed the soothing sound. I found her in the library reclining on a soft bed mat next to a fireplace.

It just reaffirmed to me to get those space heaters before we blew through a year's supply of firewood over the winter. Then again I had run the idea of heated floors through my head, and with the minions' new talents perhaps I could hand that project over to them. Either way, I wanted to make sure everyone was comfy here one way or the other.

I took a moment to lean against the doorway and take a peak around our library. It was a large room, about the same size as our mess hall, with tall bookshelves, desks and chairs. A long table along the back wall had bins and small hand tools against the wall, probably for small projects.

“Nice tune, does it have a name?” I asked.

“Ah!” Rolada cried, tossing her book into the air. It sailed up in a smooth arc and came right back down bonking her on the head. “Ow!”

I crossed the distance between us and crouched beside Rolada, scratching behind her ears as I chuckled. “Are you alright there?”

Rolada huffed and tilted her head into the scratches. A happy purr built up in her chest and she spoke in a bit of a daze. “I can’t believe you snuck up on me. I must have zoned out so hard my perception skill was inactive.”

“That can happen?” I asked. When I saw Rolada give me a deadpanned look I shrugged. “I guess it makes sense.”

Rolada stretched and yawned, nearly hitting me in the shoulder. Afterwards she hopped up and walked to the nearest shelf, sliding the book back in its home. I didn’t take a keen eye to see this was the only shelf with any books on it at the moment.

“Were you looking for something specific, Josh?” Rolada asked. She then twirled around in place, and flung out her arms, sending out sparks. “Or were you looking for me?”

I sighed and sagged my shoulders. “Yara told me to do something constructive with you.”

Rolada tilted her head and smirked. “She does agree with me then.”

“About what?” I asked.

Rolada was giddy with excitement and she ran to a desk with her bushy red tail swishing behind her the whole way, catching my eyes in its enticing, pendulum motion. I heard her toss several items onto the desk, including something heavy and metal that struck the wood surface with a dull thud which broke the charm laid on me.

Rolada’s whispered, her voice barely audible to me. “I’ve always wanted to try one of these.”

I hesitantly approached and saw Rolada had taken out a bundle of writing utensils and paper. Off to the side was a metal cube with little arms attached to it that could swing around and they ended in small claws to grasp something. I helped her take it over to a table by the fire and she began to write on the papers.

“This is an elementalist cube and it can help your spell training by down-scaling your magical powers for practice. If you fire a projectile spell at the cube it will come out of the middle instead, hitting one of these papers.” Rolada said while holding up one of said papers on which she had drawn dots and circles resembling a target and bullseye.

She then clamped the papers onto the claws and pressed a button at the base of the cube which made a metal wire as thin as a hair come out of the top.

“When I use a spell on this I assume it comes out of the wire,” I said.

“Yup, and it only takes one mana point to give you about six or seven uses. Really helps with practice to get the motions and words down,” Rolada said with a huge grin on her face. “I got it at quite the steep discount from Rodney.”

I immediately began to sweat and lose a lot of faith in this plan. Cheap prices and magic did not mix well in my mind, but I didn’t want to say anything to hurt Rolada’s feelings. Besides with her backing me up and walking me through this I figured I should be fine. ‘Should be’ of course being the key words.

“Come on Josh, let's try a warm up with your fire spell,” Rolada said, patting me on the back. “Then we can learn something else I’ve been meaning to show you.”

I sat down in the chair and waited as Rolada slid the cube in front of me to do her final preparations. She placed my hands against the side of the cube and moved the targets in an even line. Once she finished she gave me the go ahead.

“Produce fire!’

The heat from my palms trying to make the spell was quickly wicked away. The metal wire at the top of the cube glowed and a miniaturized version of my fire orb appeared. Sure enough one mana point vanished but a new notification appeared.

Elementalist Cube charges : Produce fire - 5 more uses.

“Cool,” I said with a gleeful grin.

As soon as I lost concentration the fire orb shot out in a random direction and struck my arm making me flinch. Rolada panicked and checked my arm for damage, but thankfully the only casualty was a few singed arm hairs. Once the moment of panic was over I felt Rolada slap me in the back of the head.

“Pay attention! I don’t want my new library burned down,” Rolada said.

“You're the one that wants me to practice fire magic underground,” I mumbled.

“Ahem?” Rolada asked with her hands on her hips.

Rolada ended up getting a few slate tablets and chalk, one to keep score, the others to block off any mishaps. Which was honestly a brilliant plan on her part because the next two both went wide and ploughed straight into the slate slabs. The remaining shots I had managed to score a hit on a target each, with the last one hitting a bullseye.

“Whew, that was harder than I thought,” I said. I wiped an arm across my brow and slouched in the chair. “Usually it’s not that hard to toss them out.”

“It’s a new way of casting it, so it might take some practice. But this means we can safely practice new spells you want to learn or even make yourself!” Rolada said.

Rolada ruffled my hair and nuzzled into my neck which made a shiver of excitement run down my spine. The fox girl had been curled up by the fire for the last while which made her pleasantly warm and she had used some kind of soap recently that made her smell like chocolate. Or she had been using the chocolate fountain a lot.

“Rolada,” I said. When I got her attention I looked around the room. “Where did you and Lin put the chocolate fountain?”

“Uh, nowhere,” Rolada laughed.

Insight : Success!

+1 XP gained.

Her smile was a bit too genuine and the way her eyes darted to the side for the briefest of moments made me look in that direction. I mentally mapped out the dungeon and tried to think on where they might have put it. Somewhere only they would normally access.

“You put it in the girls' bathing room didn’t you?” I asked.

“Joshua Hale,” Rolada said sternly. She widened her stance and pouted. “I’m trying to help you learn some magic and here you are accusing me-”

“Rolada.”

“Yeah it is,” Rolada sighed in defeat. “We share it with Yara.”

“It’s not going to affect you too badly will it?” I smirked. I playfully tried to poke at her belly only to snatch my hand back from her slap.

“Why don’t you worry about learning something instead of bullying me?” Rolada pouted. I tried to apologize only to get bonked on the top of my head by a heavy book. “That might knock some manners into you.”

The big book was opened and I saw a sea of ink in front of me. Words, symbols and definitions filled every page to the brim, with a picture or two here or there. It had the dusty smell and menacing aura of a dreaded text book.

“If you want to make your own spells in the future you're going to have to learn the basic spell glyphs. I figure we can start out with a basic curriculum and ramp it up from there,” Rolada said.

“That's… a lot to take in all at once,” I said uneasily.

“We are going to start with the easy ones, relax silly,” Rolada giggled.

She flipped to the front of the book and got one of the slate tablets lacking any scorch marks. She put a piece of chalk in my hand and tapped the page she had stopped on.

“With you liking fire so much I figured we could start with Igni text, a subcategory of magical glyphs made especially for reducing fire magic or protecting from it,” Rolada said. She took my hand in hers and pointed out the symbol we were going to draw. “I’ll guide you for the first few, and then I’ll let you take over.”

I felt pretty tense at first and felt like an idiot when the first few foreign letters I tried to copy came out horribly misshapen. Rolada however just laughed them off and got a chuckle or two out of me before we tried again. I had to tense up my arm to get the odd curved shapes down right, and had to account for someone moving my arm at the same time.

However time began to move quickly as I lost myself in learning this new and strange language for my magic. It was less a language of words and more so a language of abstract symbols that represented ideas that needed to be strung together, with parts added or shaved off to show active or passive abilities to add to magical spells.

I became so focused I wasn’t sure if my teacher was even speaking to me as I lost myself in writing. The slate began to fill with shapes that mostly matched the textbooks formulas and before I knew it the slate was filled to the brim. The strange symbols in front of me began to shift and between the lines I started to make out words in English. Rolada made a happy sound in my ear, shaking me from my trance, and let go of me to fetch another slate.

“I’m feeling a bit spent to be honest. Want to try this again after dinner? I asked.

“After dinner?” Rolada giggled. “Josh, it’s still half the day away until dinner.”

Being underground and submerged in writing must have truly messed up my feeling for time.

“How about this? Instead of writing down another glyph I will instead teach you a very simple charm,” she said with a dubious smirk on her lips. She quickly disappeared behind the shelves, just to return with her flute.

“Watch very closely.” Rolada said before bowing in front of me like an entertainer about to perform before a great crowd, and started to play a mesmerizing tune. She then began to slowly spin around herself, her tail lagging behind, seemingly standing still in places making it seem as if it was completely disconnected from her.

After a while the melody started to stack creating a sort of delay. Then the dancing Rolada before me split in two, and now there were two Roladas dancing and playing independently in front of me. One moving to my left, and the other moving to my right. A sudden cold shiver followed as if someone had just opened a door for cold air to enter.

As they spun around me my head could not decide who to look at anymore, and just followed the flowing motion of the left Rolada’s tail moving up and down. With every movement her skirt fluttered just low enough to hide her panties but high enough to make it seem like she wore none. The idea of it awoke something in me, something enticing.

Just as they were about to spin behind me and I was about to turn in my chair, the music abruptly stopped, and both Roladas disappeared into thin air. I then felt a sudden jolt of pleasure run down my spine and my entire lower body relaxed. I also felt something warm and moist between my legs followed by the sound of slurping and another jolt of pleasure.

“Roalda?” I barely managed to utter between a silenced moan as I looked down, finding her head squarely nestled between my legs. Also my pants were missing, no wonder I felt the shivers.

I gasped and rolled my head back in the chair as I felt my cock touch the back of Rolada’s throat. I felt a pleasurable pressure as she sucked and bobbed her head up and down. She began slowly, and moved quicker as the seconds passed, ramping up the rate at which my blood pressure built.

I huffed and dug my hands into the arms of the chair. The light slapping sound bounced off the walls of the library as Rolada was ceaseless in her quest to end me. I bit at my lip but I could do little to recover as the battle was already won. I reached a hand forward to grasp at the back of her head and thrust my hips forward to force her to take the entire length, something she was all too happy to do.

I held the pose for a brief moment, the sudden release making my knees wobble and I fell back into the chair completely spent. Even my vision was dazed for a few seconds until my brain rebooted and kicked me back into gear.

“That might be a new record for me,” Rolada giggled. She took out a strip of cloth from her bag and wiped away the sticky white fluid around the edge of her mouth. “Happy?”

I breathlessly nodded and eased back into the chair. After hiking my pants back up I offered her my hand and helped her back to her feet, feeling a touch ashamed.

“Very happy,” I said. I wrapped a hand around her waist, and gave her a playful squeeze on the rump. “Sorry I-”

“It was a joke Josh,” Rolada said. She nuzzled into me and suppressed another giggle. “You are perfectly fine. Now do you think you can pull a charm off like that?.”

I cackled as a fit of laughter took over me at the thought. “What, split into two and jack off my enemy?”

Rolada playfully shrugged and looked towards the bookshelf. “I have a story or two of a bard defeating a foe in such a way.

“I guess that’s all part of you being a religious courtesan, able to tell stuff like that and um,” I coughed, “use it so effectively in combat.”

“Yeah you find out a thing or two-” Rolada froze and leaned away from me. She frowned and knit her brows together. “I never told you anything like that.”

“With your mom being a priestess already and trying to get you great teachers I just assumed-”

“Josh,” Rolada’s tone was firm and she narrowed her eyes. “That’s a mighty fine assumption, care to explain more?”

“S-sure. You talked to Yara about your religious books too,” I stammered, desperate to claw for some kind of explanation. “I just put two and two-”

“Hmm, that’s true. Someone has been paying attention.” Rolada wagged her finger at me and teased. “But the way your blushing makes me think you might have been eavesdropping, no?”

I slapped my forehead and groaned. “Ah, fuck me.”