M. Tress Writes
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Summoned By Monster Girls - Chapter 110
🕑 Added 2025-02-01 09:00:07 +0000 UTCThe girls absolutely loved the sugar cookies to go with their tea. I was glad I’d only brought one of the small packages, because a dozen cookies split between four people was more than enough sugar to get each of them wired, given that processed sugar was not something they were used to.
It was absolutely adorable watching each of them sample the sweets and then dive in a moment later with gusto.
Kassandra took a bite without hesitation, then proceeded to cram the entire frosted cookie into her mouth, leaving a mustache of yellow frosting on her lip. Rieka nibbled and dipped her cookie in the tea delicately, but never slowed down on it. Shayla sampled it hesitantly, then licked the frosting off first, then dipped the cookie herself. Jane’s impression of a mouse was accurate and adorable at the same time, with her furiously munching away in tiny little bites before washing it down with a sip of tea.
Within five minutes, all the cookies were gone and the last of the colorful frosting was removed from the plastic container. Only once the snacks were gone did the girls settle in for some serious planning.
After making sure I’d bring more of the cookies with me next time.
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Since Rieka had a dimensional bag to store all the camping equipment in, it was easy enough for the girls to summon me back the next day for our fourth trip out to the abandoned human facility and just head out early that morning.
I’d spent part of the night with Rieka, my wolf princess claiming my time once we finished with the planning session. She did so in spite of the teasing that came from Kassandra and envious glances from Shayla, but neither did more than tease her lightly, as it had been Rieka who summoned me initially for the planning and made the outlay of mana to actually get me there.
Rieka was content to just snuggle until my summoning elapsed, allowing me to spoil her with lots of gentle head rubs and ear scratches. The fact that she got them while laying in on my chest and completely naked was entirely beside the point.
I was more than happy to dote on her as much as Rieka wanted, not just because the task she set me to earn my SP this time was ‘spoil me,’ though.
It was something I was happy to do, anyway.
Once I went back to Earth, I made sure to stock my Dimensional Pouch with other treats for the girls, and not just more of the frosted sugar cookies.
I’ll admit that I felt a bit like a drug dealer preparing my stash of illicit goods, but rather than harmful drugs, it was processed sugar. Which might as well have been a drug with how the girls reacted when they summoned me back the next day.
I wasn’t worried about the sugar being too much for them though, as we had a long walk out to the campsite in the mountains. With our larger group as well, we had not a single sign of trouble along the way, being passed by a pair of merchant caravans as they headed for the coast.
While we walked, Kassandra and Jane discussed their notes about the complex and what else they would be looking for this time. Shayla stuck close to me, clinging to the back of my shirt, while Rieka was content to walk at my side with an arm tucked into mine.
“I’m just not sure what I should make the subject of my next painting,” Shayla was saying to Rieka as we made our way off the road and into the foothills after ensuring there was no one watching us.
“Liam!” Kassandra interjected into the conversation with a grin. “He’s already volunteered to sit for you. Might as well make use of that. Plus, how often would you expect to have an extinct race able to actually sit for you to paint?”
“Oh, I’ve already…” Shayla started to say before blushing and letting her words trail off.
“Already painted him? Have you been able to paint all of him?” Kassandra accented her question with a rapid wiggle of her eyebrows, which only made Shayla blush harder. “Oh, you have! You definitely have to let us see that when you finish it up! I would love for you to do a painting of Liam for me. Might keep my parents from trying to do something dumb, like trying to arrange a marriage because they don’t believe that I have someone.”
Kassandra’s words surprised me enough that I nearly tripped on the ground, and not just because of her excitement about asking for a painting of me, but specifically to show to her parents.
It is fair, I thought as I turned a questioning look to my grinning dwarf lamia. While things may not work out like a normal relationship, she and I are intimate. And I’ve got no plans to go anywhere anytime soon. So we will figure something out if it comes to that. Both she and Rieka seemed rather enthralled with the idea of getting pregnant, eventually. Though I have to wonder how that might complicate things like inheritance if it doesn’t include a marriage.
Confronted with the idea of marriage brought my already smoking brain to a screaming halt. Not because I was against it, but actually how much the idea of marrying any of my girls—or potentially all of them if I was really lucky—excited the hell out of me.
“That’s actually a good point,” Rieka piped up from beside me, her words drawing my attention to the grinning wolf woman hanging off my arm. I’d spent a bit of time brushing Rieka’s long platinum blonde hair the previous night and it hung in a loose braid at her back while her pointed ears bounced happily behind her head. “I’m sure that my mother would like a painting of him as well. Even if it’s not her priority to get me married off, so I’m not that worried.”
Another lurch came as my heart thumped against the inside of my chest. I must have done something, because Rieka shifted slightly to shoot me a gentle smile, her eyebrows rising up questioningly while her tail danced happily behind her, flicking out to one side before coming back to smack against the back of my thighs.
I patted the hand that was tucked into my elbow lightly and returned her smile with one of my own. Softly, I felt the movement of her tail increase behind me. The gentle thump reassuring and made my heart swell with happiness.
“I’ll do what I can. I was mostly just sketching, but I’m sure that I have enough sketches that I can come up with pieces that you all can have. I want to keep most of them though…”
“Of course! You need to have a few of your own, so that you can show him off to your family too,” Kassandra chirped happily, and I turned just far enough to catch sight of Shayla who was blushing furiously, her fluffy antennae balled in close to her head in shyness.
I leaned over and pressed a kiss to one of those fuzzy appendages, making Shayla squeak in surprise and shoot me a startled look that melted into a smile a moment later.
“You do what you think is best, Shayla. If you need me to pose for you again, I’m happy to do it.” I added a wink to go with the statement and she smiled back, her antennae uncurling to bop me in the face lightly.
“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”
We continued to chat quietly about different things while climbing the hills, making our way along the stream that led up to the waterfall-fed lake and the field that we had been camping in.
This time, there was no sign of the ruumo, the most fantastical of the animals that I’d run into on Cortha.
After dealing with kobolds, fire-breathing snakes, lamia, and animal people, you’d think that I’d be used to it. But it was the honest-to-god flying whale that finally convinced me and got my mind settled that this was a fantasy world.
On the trip up, we’d discussed it and decided that, rather than camping in the field on the far side of the lake from the entrance to the ruins, we’d instead keep pushing into the mountain and camp inside the tunnel.
While it wasn’t ideal, as the creepy tunnel wasn’t going to be the most comfortable location, we had a limited amount of time to get as much done as possible.
So, as the sun continued its downward angle towards the horizon, we hurried around the lake, past the fountain that held the ancient remains of a statue, and up into the strange meadow at the base of the cliff to where the concealed entrance to the facility lay.
“I’m glad that we have Liam around to help us with this part,” Jane said as she watched me carefully open up the earthen plug that I’d set in place to block the entrance to the facility. When we’d first found it, the cave had been a den for a large predator known as a crag hunter, and it had done its absolute best to kill me and my girls.
“I’m sure you all would have figured something else out if you had to,” I replied, shooting Jane a wink and getting a roll of the eyes from the energetic mouse girl.
“Sure, we would have figured something out. But the odds that someone else might have discovered this would have been rather high. And considering what we’ve learned from that copper map, I’m glad that we were able to find this first. Who knows what sort of damage someone else raiding the facility might have done? At least with us, we know that it’s going to be treated with the proper reverence.”
I shared a glance with Rieka and my princess rolled her eyes at me.
“We were reverent,” Rieka said a moment later, when I continued to grin at her.
“We pillaged the hell out of that place,” I shot back.
“It wasn’t that bad!” Rieka huffed, crossing her arms and pouting.
“Okay, maybe it was a conservative pillage. I mean, we weren’t prying up floorboards after all,” I agreed, my grin growing more as I enjoyed the reference. Rieka just huffed again. But I couldn’t really expect her to appreciate the joke, considering that it wasn’t something she’d be familiar with after all.
“So, we got to see the first part of the ruins before. And Kass has been telling us what to expect further in. What can you tell us about it, Liam?” Shayla shot Kassandra a suspicious look as she said that, getting a pout from my troublemaker of a dwarf lamia.
“You say that like you don’t believe what I said!” Kassandra grumbled before holding aloft the light stone, leading the way down the earthen slope into the subterranean cave.
The change from the open air of the plateau and its field into the cool darkness of the cave was abrupt. The air was a bit stifling down underground, but not to where it was actually difficult to breathe, just thick. Below, the space that the earthen ramp led to was wider, made of dark stone with the occasional patch of rust or debris from the ceiling caving in, and the old nest of the crag hunter set to one side.
“It’s going to be dark, dank, and pretty oppressive. But I am sure it’s going to be a lot more comfortable this time through with the four of us together. Add in your outstanding light magic, and we have nothing to worry about,” I said in answer to Shayla’s question, turning to grin at the moth woman who still clung to the back of my left arm.
Since I was wearing a shirt this time, Shayla just had hold of the back of my sleeve, but she walked close enough that I could feel the warmth emanating from her body even through our clothes.
Not hesitating at all, Shayla gave me a shy smile and nodded, her antennae stretching out slightly before relaxing once more to waft in front of her head, the nearest one to me flexing at the end like it was making tiny grabby-hand motions in my direction.
“Yep! Shayla is going to make this much safer for us,” chirped Kassandra happily. My mischief macaroni twisted to grin over her shoulder at Shayla, though Kass did shoot me a wink as well. “I don’t think we are going to make it the whole way through the tunnel, but if we can get most of the way there, then we can spend the majority of the weekend searching through the facility and then head back on the first day of the week.”
If it wasn’t for the fact that the girls had already set up my assignment for the weekend, I was sure her words would have tripped the System to assign me one. As it was, I didn’t see my current mission as any real imposition on my time.
Assist your contracted companions, Kassandra Silverscale, Rieka Coldeye, Shayla Valo, and Jane Carsan, with their inspection of the ancient human research site and ensure they are returned to Juneau Academy safely.
Reward - 2400 SP
It was not only simple enough to do, it was something I had already planned to ensure happened. If it wasn’t for the extended timeline of the mission—since we had headed out on Friday with the intent of returning on Monday—I’d have been worried at the potential difficulty presented by the reward amount. But knowing that it was taking that into account, I wasn’t too worried.
“As long as you girls pace yourselves,” I said as we strode across the open area that I was almost positive was an ancient parking garage. “I don’t want any of you hurting yourselves because you are pushing too hard.”
“If we do, does that mean you’ll carry us back?” Jane teased, but from the way that Kassandra’s eyes gleamed behind her spectacles, I knew that my lamia was plotting something.
“Only if you are actually hurt. And I know that none of you would pretend to be hurt just to be doted on. You all already know that you don’t have to intentionally get hurt or fake it just to get attention,” I replied, saying it while looking pointedly at Kassandra, who returned my stare with a faux pout.
She opened her mouth to protest again, and I just raised an eyebrow. Kassandra rolled her eyes again, but her look of pretended offense melted into a more general smirk and she just nodded instead.
I didn’t actually think that my lamia would do something as irresponsible as pretending to be hurt, at least not for long. Kassandra might be a bit flighty and willing to do just about anything in order to get some attention from me, but when push came to shove, she never hesitated to pull her weight.
All my girls do, I thought with a proud smile as Kassandra and Jane hurried forward to disable the runic locks on the enormous set of doors that lay on the far side of the cave.
At this point, Kassandra had it down to a science. She’d left most of the formulas in place before, and had the completed diagrams recorded in a small, leather-bound journal that she kept with her. So it took only a handful of minutes with some of the enchanted chalk she had before it was ready to go, and the glowing runes on the doors faded away.
While the two of them handled that, I reached out my senses through Manipulate Element in order to feel the surroundings. I was trying to find any changes that might have occurred since the last time we came through here. Everything from a burrowing animal that might have found its way into the cave, on to the shadow monsters that lurked deeper in the cave system, possibly getting up from down deep to cause problems.
Nothing came back as suspicious to my senses, though I was able to detect that there was a faint aura of mana running through the doors as well as the floor and walls. As Kassandra and Jane finished disabling it, the sense of energy faded away.
Grouping up, we headed into the downward sloping tunnel.
“Lights,” I called ahead of us into the darkness.
A moment later, following a distant clunk of something engaging, the hallway glowed with dim illumination. When nothing squealed or screamed in pain and anger at the increase in light, I led the way down.
While I’d been more than happy to let the girls cling to me on the walk up, now that we were actually inside this complex, I was on guard.
The floor underfoot was the same smooth stone as before in the garage, but the dusty tunnel was far better illuminated, enough so that Kassandra tucked away the orange-sized glowing stone for now.
“Did you all have a chance to study that map from before?” I asked, referring to a metallic map we’d discovered the last time we came through that was copper heavily coated in verdigris. To the point that the girls had taken it down off the wall and we’d transported it back to the Juneau campus for them to clean and study.
“Yep!” Jane was the one to answer, bouncing up to walk just a step behind me and right next to Kassandra. “We found signs that indicate three more facilities in the country, as well as indications that there might be more outside the Coldeye Queendom. Kass and I are working to figure out where we could look to potentially find entrances.”
“While some of them are like this, just somewhere in an undeveloped region, there is one that is problematic. It appears to be at the bottom of a lake. Given the reaction of your… ‘friends’ to what we found here, I have to wonder if that facility survived or not, as there are some legends about that lake, added with the fact it isn’t recorded on the map as a lake,” Kassandra jumped in to add.
“Fair. Any close by that you think might be worth checking out? We also have the other tunnels for that tram leading off the facility,” I asked as we reached the bottom of the ramp.
Gesturing for the girls to stop and wait, I eased the door open and scanned the ancient station that sat on the other side.
It was much the same as it had been the last time we were there. A myriad of footprints marked the dust and dirt, all of them matching my girls in one way or another. The only trail that threw me for a moment was the long and wiggly one like someone had dragged something through the dust, until I reminded myself that, since Kassandra didn’t have feet, she didn’t leave normal footsteps.
“Looks good, ladies. Come on through,” I called and the girls poured out of the door to join me.
The station honestly reminded me somewhat of a steampunk take on a subway station. There were benches, ancient stone and metallic planters full of dry earth, and various art decorations on the walls and stationed around the platform. Overhead, hanging light globes illuminated the space and allowed us to navigate easily enough, though the ceiling of the room soared away into the blackness above.
Along one side of the platform, the ground abruptly dropped away. I knew that along there was a section that was instead covered in gravel and bore the long metallic rails that the trams would have ridden on in centuries past to transport the humans here. I didn’t know exactly how far along the technological curve the humans of Cortha had gotten, as the machines seemed to run on the same mana-infused metal that all the spell-casting of the girls used.
Beyond the edge of the platform was a dark tunnel that yawned open like a great mouth. I knew that a few dozen yards into the darkness, the ceiling had collapsed and buried this end of the tunnel, along with one of the trams that had transported people before. I’d used my Manipulate Element ability to carve us out a tunnel to get through, and then sealed it with a stone plug. So a quick pass with my senses was enough to confirm that nothing had burrowed through the blockage.
“I still need to look at that door over there,” Kassandra grumbled, interrupting my introspection and directing my attention to one wall of the platform.
A door sat against the wall, unassuming and unremarkable, save for the fact it was sealed tight and Kassandra had done what she could to remove the magical locks from it and been stymied during her last attempt.
“Looks like your guess was correct. Whatever is locking it has shifted again. Some kind of pattern that we would need to study to learn enough to open it up,” Jane sighed, squinting at the faintly glowing runes on the door, an effect left behind from their last attempt to get through it.
“Something we can hit up on the way out if we have time. Let’s keep moving to get as much ground covered as possible.” I urged, leading the way across the platform and down into the gravel area.
By this point, I was very familiar with the path to take around the rusty iron rails into the tunnel. The overhead lights didn’t extend into the tunnel, but as soon as we got to an area where it began to dim, Shayla pulled her spell rod from her belt and made a few gestures.
A moment later, the tip of her spell rod glowed with a steady white light, like an unshielded flashlight. As soon as she’d started, I had immediately turned away to avoid being blinded, as she’d shown us before.
Shayla was a light mage. Meaning that all of her spells operated in relation to light in one fashion or another. It was considered a primal school of magic, much like the little bit of entropy magic I was able to use, and rather powerful when used properly.
The trip through the low tunnel was easy enough, and I used Manipulate Element to widen our tunnel out to make passage easier.
“Well then, into the darkness we go,” I muttered once I was sure that the girls had gotten clear, and I had sealed up the tunnel once more to ensure that we had our route back properly protected.
“Don’t worry, Liam. I’ll protect you,” Shayla teased, the moth woman leaning over to plant a kiss on my cheek while she brandished her spell rod overhead. I grinned at her, hooking the large woman with an arm around the waist to pull her into a light hug, being treated to a few bonks on the head by her fluffy antennae, before releasing her once more to turn and lead our group into the darkness.
