Summoned by Monster Girls

I barely managed to finish the thought concerning my, once again, missing-in-action eyebrows when Rieka forcefully dragged my mind back to current issues.

“Liam. I am so sorry.”

“What? Why are you sorry, Rieka?” I turned to look down at the kin woman who was clinging to my side as tightly as Kassandra was and doing a passable limpet impression as well. She refused to look up at me, but I could tell she was stressed from the way her ears laid back against her skull.

“You nearly got killed. Twice.” Rieka’s voice was tiny and it broke my heart to see her so torn up. I had to find a way to bring back the energy that my favorite wolf girl usually displayed. The fox kin forester gave me a nod when I glanced his way and headed over to help his fellows while we sorted ourselves out, one hand rubbing his newly-healed arm.

“So?” I said when I turned my attention back down to the women in my arms.

“So!?” Rieka protested and shifted to look up at me with watery eyes. “You keep getting hurt, Liam! We keep putting you at risk. I thought the new armor would help protect you better.”

“It did,” I protested right back. I would have patted my chest to prove it, but both of my arms were otherwise occupied with the young women clinging to me in the moment. “Seriously, the only reason I got hurt there was because I jammed my arm down one’s throat and the other breathed fire on me. No matter what kind of armor I have, the fire breath would have hurt me regardless. And the bite on my arm was better than to the face at least. I’m still learning how to fight properly, just like you two are.”

“You learned a new trick today, Liam.” Kassandra giggled wetly, tears still marking her face as she prodded my chest over the scorched leather. “What was that with your arm?”

“Instinct mostly. I needed to think outside the box and I remembered what Rieka said the other day about not having to use animals from my world. I based it off of a scorpion’s tail but also combined it with some ideas from a well known science-fiction game about warring nations in space.”

“Scorpion? Space?” Rieka mumbled the words in confusion and I just squeezed her tighter. In response, she buried her face in my chest again and clung a bit tighter.

“It’s a type of venomous insect that lives in deserts and space is the place beyond the sky, up where the stars hang,” Kassandra answered with a surprising amount of confidence.

“How do you know that?” Rieka asked accusingly, her voice muffled by my chest. Kassandra just shrugged before explaining.

“My parents traveled a lot for trade. I traveled with them. We saw scorpions out west in the Emirates territory while we traveled there. I also learned about astrology and space from scholars there too. It’s not a commonly studied field since it’s not really viewed as ‘useful’ for daily survival, but some people believe you can tell the future based on the actions of the stars. There are enough legends about spirits that live on or near the moon that it’s theorized people can go there too. We just haven’t figured out how to climb that high.” Kassandra shrugged again and I had to hide a smirk at the offhand way she brushed off astrology and divination. A mindset that I could wholeheartedly get behind as I had more than enough to worry about in front of me without thinking about how the stars might mess with it. The idea of climbing to the moon was just adorable as well.

“Regardless. Because of Rieka, I had an idea that got me to think outside the box with my shifting and that saved me. So you saved me, Rieka. Thank you.” I turned my attention back to the wolf kin in my arms to find that she was peeking up at me, her icy-blue eyes red from crying and stress, tear tracks marking her cheeks.

“You don’t need to-“ Rieka started to protest only to yelp when Kassandra reached over and pinched her arm.

“Don’t argue, Rieka. Even I can see the point that he’s making. You gave him the means to defend himself. Not with the armor we bought, but with his own skills. I get the feeling that Liam is going to be even more dangerous to anything that threatens us now,” Kassandra said primly before the grin managed to crack her stern expression once more.

“She’s right. Thank you, again. You showed me the flaw in my thinking and now I can grow beyond it. I owe you, Rieka.” I locked eyes with the platinum-blonde princess and she drew back just a bit, resting her chin on my chest while her soft form molded closer to me. We continued to stare at each other for several long moments. A bit of movement behind her was what ended up breaking the staring contest in her favor.

Rieka’s tail was wagging again, rather than hanging limp like a flag on a windless day. The fluffy banner stirred slowly at first before picking up speed and I couldn’t help a smile of my own at the visual confirmation of her improving mood.

A quiet clearing of a throat drew my attention back to Rieka’s face and I shifted my gaze in time to realize she was rising up on the tips of her toes. I had less than half a second to react, not nearly enough time given my pinned state, before her soft lips connected with mine.

The kiss that Rieka and I shared was short and chaste. A barest pressure and a soft connection, but I felt the familiar protective urge in my chest surge higher. The arm I had draped around the wolf woman tightened, pulling her against my chest and getting a squeak of surprise out of her that was lost in the kiss. A moment later, Rieka retreated and nestled her head under my jaw shyly.

“Thank you, Liam. I am still sorry that you got hurt following my orders,” Rieka murmured after a moment passed in relative silence.

“I chose to do it. Remember, Rieka. I came willingly when you called me. I accept your apology but still hold to the fact that you have nothing to apologize for,” I replied.

“How about we stop trying to claim the blame of the issue and deal with what is in front of us? Namely this great, musty wolf that I bet also has an elemental core in it, given it was breathing fire! I think we just picked up the extra coin to make sure we get a really nice dimensional bag, or some extra comforts!” Kassandra injected some levity in the moment and both girls stirred enough that I knew they wanted to step away so I released my hold.

Rieka scrubbed at her eyes a few times before pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve and wet it with her water-skin to wipe at her face. Kassandra swiped the cloth when she was done and used it on herself. I was about to ask for it, when Kassandra shook her head.

“Nuh, uh. No reason to get cleaned up, Liam. You are gonna have to skin this thing. Elemental wolf hide is actually worth something,” she teased. I could still see the worried look in her eyes, hanging just behind the amusement and energy.

She’s still just as freaked out as Rieka with how close that was. I thought to myself. She’s just hiding it better behind the humor and teasing, silly noodle.

“Okay, fine. I’ll deal with the harvest on this thing. I guess it’s the same as the lynx? The meat isn’t worth hauling back.” I rolled both my shoulders in their sockets, getting a quiet pop from the one that had been dislocated, and brushed the charred remains of my hair off my, now bald, head. “I have got to remember to use Shape-Shifting to give myself eyebrows for work tomorrow,” I muttered the last bit under my breath as a reminder.

“Agreed. We don’t have the means to transport the meat back. That might change in the future depending on the dimensional sack we get. Something for Kassandra and I to deal with during the week. Come on, Liam. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can head out. I’ll help.” Rieka began to roll her sleeves up resolutely. “Guess this is going to eat up that extra time we were going to train with.”

“I think Liam can still train,” Kassandra interjected as she wound in a wide circle around us in the grass, seeming to be full of nervous energy still.

“Oh, how so?” Rieka inquired while drawing her skinning knife from its spot on her pack.

“Well you have your knife. Liam, see if you can come up with some creative way to give yourself something similar. Like you did with the scorpion tail,” Kassandra demanded and I paused to think it over.

<><><>

Skinning with a knife was messy, skinning using a modified claw was even messier. Partially due to the fact that I was literally using a shifted bit of my hand to do it so the blood and bits ended up directly on me regardless.

I’d done some research back with the claws I used before. The average human hand weighs less than a pound. I have big mitts, given my size, but that doesn’t change the fact that the weight of my hands was well within even the minor rank of Shape-Shifting to convert entirely. However, most claws are more about ripping and tearing with hooked tips than evenly cutting, so I had to get creative and crib some more ideas from science fiction. What I ended up with turned my hand into a curved blade of hardened keratin that was more like the back of a knife than anything; blunt but functional. At least it was enough to follow along behind Rieka and separate the hide from the meat once she had started the cuts.

While the two of us worked, the foresters brought their worst injured over and asked Kassandra to heal them. Those with simple bites or claw marks bandaged and cleaned their own wounds, but the grievously injured needed magical assistance to survive. Thankfully, the foreman of the work-crew had his cash-box on hand and Kassandra only requested to be reimbursed for the mana spent, which he did happily. The foreman was even happier when he realized we only wanted the core and the pelt of the one wolf and they could have the rest of the pack. While we didn’t have a way to transport the meat back to town, he was happy to take the carcasses and sell them to a butcher to recoup some of the losses of the day. The lumber wagons would transport the meat well enough and they needed to make a report of the situation in town as well as get to regular healers for treatment.

By the time the foresters were done dealing with the injured, we’d managed to remove the hide and extract the core from the creature. Rieka found it tucked behind the wolf's breastbone, a fist-sized crystal of a murky red-brown the color of drying blood. Bundling it all together, I traded the mountain lynx pelt to Rieka and hefted the folded wolf hide on my shoulder. It felt like it weighed as much as a rolled-up area rug, but I was used to balancing awkward loads from work and would make do.

We struck out ahead of the foresters to get word back to town. The foreman promised to confirm our contribution to get a share of the reward for dealing with the wolves, which confirmed Rieka and my suspicion that this had been the pack that she had mentioned. I carefully did not bring up that she’d jinxed us by mentioning it still, not wanting to give the blonde woman a reason to beat herself up more. Though I did add a mental tally mark to the idea that Fate was listening and had a bone to pick with me. Or just to pick on me.

After the quick kiss that Rieka had given me she’d been a bit more withdrawn, but I noticed her tail began to kick up a storm whenever she looked at me. It reminded me of Kassandra’s repeated urging and mentions of Rieka’s interest but uncertainty, and her own lack of jealousy. Something to talk to my Nugget about. I resolved as we left ahead of the wagons, since we’d make better time on foot than with the heavy draft wagons that were still being loaded with the dead wolves. I am not going to risk my relationship with Kass to have a fling with Rieka. But if both of them are okay with it, who am I to argue? I’m the visitor here after all.

Thinking about visiting and my assignments to help the girls reminded me of the message I’d received earlier. While we walked, I alternately closed my eyes to inspect my System interface to see what had changed and opened them to scan and keep watch.

My current SP total was sitting at 1,220 SP, since the quick assignment to defend the lumber camp was complete. From past experience, my other mission to escort the girls and deliver them home safely would automatically complete when we reached Juneau’s campus again, which would bring me up to 1,870 SP total.

Armed with that knowledge, I prepared to delve into the ‘Powers’ tab when my eyes caught the ‘Contracts’ tab once more. It was something I hadn’t really checked much since the initial introduction from Cariad regarding the System and the interface. I set aside my curiosity regarding new powers and opened it to have a look to see if anything changed.

Listed under the tab was a full history of all the missions and contracts I’d undertaken with the girls. I noted that if both were indicated in the contract assignment, it would appear under both of their names in a drop-down style menu. The small handful of times that I was summoned by only one of the two girls, the mission appeared under just their name. I was surprised at the sheer number of them, given that it felt like I hadn’t been doing this for long. Beyond the appearance of the past contracts, with a ‘COMPLETE’ stamp at the bottom if they were done and the text shifting from silver to gold in the record, there had been a major change to two entries.

The ranks of the ‘guardian contracts’.

When I’d checked them the first time at Cariad’s insistence, they had both read as ‘Guardian Contract level 1’. But now it had changed.

Kassandra Silverscale (Guardian Contract level 3)

Rieka Coldeye (Guardian Contract level 2)

“Huh, wonder how that happened,” I muttered to myself and blinked my eyes open to check my surroundings.

The girls were slightly ahead of me, talking to each other while keeping an eye on our surroundings. Rieka was blushing and protesting something quietly, but her wolf-ears were erect and focused on Kassandra while her tail wagged slowly, so I knew she wasn’t actually upset. Kassandra was grinning like she’d just gotten a week's supply of sweets and I could see mischief dancing in her brown eyes from where they glimmered behind her silver spectacles.

Something else to ask Cariad about. I thought and quickly input a message for my daemon caseworker and sent it off via the ‘Messages’ tab.

Liam

Hey Cari, question for you. Just checked on my guardian contracts with the girls and they have apparently leveled up? Also, one is slightly ahead of the other. Just curious if you can give me context on this and what it might mean? No rush, just wanted to ask while I was thinking about it.

With that done, I turned my attention back to the item I’d most wanted to check out. My ‘Powers’ tab.

Opening it up, the Body entry appeared first. I immediately spotted the new entries and couldn’t help the grin that grew on my lips as I read over the two new powers.

Shape-Shifting (Moderate) - Cost: 1600 SP - User is able to draft large changes from an animal. Half forms are available as well, similar in appearance to a werewolf as an example. Unable to mix more than three animal's features at a time, one must predominate. Maximum of up to half the casters original body weight in additional mass can be added, removed, or modified.

Shape-Shifting (Mass Control) - Cost: 800 SP - (requires Shape-Shifting (Moderate)) Allows for the shift to affect mass of user by up to three times the stated limit in the highest tier available.

Skimming over them, I chuckled in amusement. The game had shifted a great deal now. While before I’d been constrained to shifting twenty pounds of additional mass, now it was a multiplier based on my actual body weight. Since I was a solid guy, that was going to give me over a hundred pounds of shifting mass to work with.

And that’s before I take the other one. I thought with glee. Shape-Shifting (Mass Control) would bring that total up to three hundred plus pounds of shifted body mass, which would allow me to either vastly increase in size or start looking into full body shifts. I mentally played with the image of ‘hulking out’ of my armor and into a full on werewolf shift, before brushing that off. Too simple. I mean, it can work but I also have all that flexibility I just discovered to remember. I need to focus on that. I’m going to have five times the additional mass with just improving to the moderate tier of Shape-Shifting. I need to keep that in mind. It may be time to burn some points in Enhance Self to boost my mind some more to come up with ideas again. I know I’ll be able to afford Shape-Shifting (Moderate) when we finish this run, and I’d put good odds on being able to get Shape-Shifting (Mass Control) when we finish the next week’s run. A full week of work with the girls will easily get me enough to snag that one and boost stats.

The rest of the trip back to town I split between daydreaming of ideas to use with Shape-Shifting and keeping watch on our surroundings.

<><><>

The girls turned in the pelts and got their pay for the mission. They also secured an agreement from the clerk at the Hunt and Trade Hall to confirm with the lumber foreman that would be coming in later, so that they could pick up the bonus from that too when they had a chance to return.

Rieka and Kassandra both promised to do what they could to prepare for the next week's mission and get the dimensional sack arranged to carry our gear.

“We’ll summon you back on the first day of the trip, at the latest. I believe you called it Saturday,” Rieka reassured me, sounding out the odd word with a bit of care. “Since we have a long trip ahead, we will pick up fresh food supplies that day and make our way out to the camp site in the mountains. If we have any problems or things to discuss before then, we will summon you during the week in the evening. And if you are unable to free yourself from your work, just let us know when you see us next. From there we can figure something out. Sounds good?”

“Sounds like a plan, Rieka,” I replied with a smile for the wolf-eared woman. Rieka had continued to perk up during the walk back and was nearly skipping by the time we arrived in town.

“Liam! I demand kisses before you go home!” Kassandra said imperiously and I turned about to smile down at my serpentine lover.

“Well, get up here then, Nugget,” I said while opening my arms towards her. Kassandra launched herself forward like a spring while giggling, still clearly in love with her pet name. Bracing myself, I caught her and turned to bleed off the momentum from her sheer size. I was reminded again that, despite Kassandra’s shorter stature, she was still many times heavier than I was based on the mass of that tail she had. I hadn’t measured it yet, but she had to easily be twice as long as I was tall if not more.

There clearly has to be magical fuckery going on that I can do this. I thought with a grin as Kassandra wrapped her tail around me before snuggling into my chest with hers and pressing her lips to mine in a searing kiss.

The kiss continued for several minutes, long enough that Rieka began to make quiet throat-clearing noises and humming to herself, getting several muffled giggles from my redheaded troublemaker.

“Seriously, Kass!?” Rieka demanded after we entered the fifth minute of lip locking.

“Fiine,” Kassandra sighed, separating her lips from mine finally and laying one last peck on the tip of my nose. “Be safe, Liam. Love you,” Kassandra whispered in my ear before wriggling free of my arms and dropping back to the ground. “Your turn, Rieka!”

“What? Hey!” Rieka protested as Kassandra slithered rapidly around behind her and shoved the wolf kin woman into my arms. Rieka stumbled and caught herself against my chest, turning wide eyes up at me. I smiled down at her reassuringly, squeezing gently with the arms that wrapped around her automatically and getting an ‘eep’ of surprise from the woman.

“Be safe, Rieka. I’d ask you to keep Kass out of trouble, but I doubt you could really. She’s obstinate like that,” I whispered and Rieka flushed but smiled up at me in agreement.

“Very true. Be safe as well, Liam,” Rieka murmured. A coughing from Kassandra made Rieka flush again. She took a deep breath and seemed to steel herself before rising up to press a kiss of her own on my lips.

Unlike before, this one lingered for some time. Rieka’s fists balled in my shirt, I had already removed the armor as the girls promised they’d have it maintained and repaired before the coming weekend, and she pressed tighter to me. I responded by squeezing her more firmly to my chest. I could hear her tail wagging furiously as well which brought a smile to my lips mid-kiss.

We separated a minute later, Rieka blushing heavily but grinning up at me.

“Thank you for escorting us to safety, Liam. We will see you later on next week,” Rieka murmured, her voice trembling between happiness and desire.

The edges of my vision flashed and the message appeared that I’d been waiting for.

Assist your contracted companions, Rieka Coldeye and Kassandra Silverscale, with their overnight hunt for the mountain lynx and escort them back to town.

Reward - 650 SP

COMPLETED

I gave the girls a nod and a smile when I had shaken the message away, confirming the completion of the mission. Both girls’ smiles grew wider and Kassandra lifted her spell rod then made the gestures to send me home.

Landing in my living room once more, I glanced around at my dingy apartment and sighed. The excitement of the adventures with the girls had been helping me hang on to my sanity. But now, faced with yet another work week on the horizon, I was again questioning why I stayed at that damn job.