Teresa: Everybody Loves Large Chests (Vol.5) Page 5

  It didn’t take long for Keira to reach the front door of Rowana’s treehouse, which she threw open with her usual greeting.

  “Honey! I’m ho...me?”

  The girl’s words nearly got caught in her throat as she realized her lover was not alone. Inside the small and surprisingly tidy house was a middle-aged elven couple with the same brilliant platinum hair as Rowana. The three of them sat around the plain wooden dining table and were enjoying a spot of afternoon tea when Keira burst in. Presently, they all stared at the ‘intruder’ in disbelief. The catgirl’s flushed and panting face gradually calmed down amidst the awkward silence. Her wide grin disappeared and a more business-like smile replaced it.

  “... Excuse me, I think I have the wrong house,” she stated flatly.

  She tried to slowly close the door, but didn’t manage to get away in time.

  “Oh, no you don’t!”

  The man inside leaped from his chair and tossed a small vial at Keira. The redhead barely ducked under the container, which shattered against the natural wall of Ironbark just beyond it. Looking over her shoulder, she saw a sticky yellow-brown fluid steadily eating through the hylt tree’s notoriously tough exterior while letting out some nauseating fumes. She turned her attention forward in time to see another vial flying at her. She narrowly dodged it, letting out a tiny yelp in the process.

  “Are you trying to kill me?!” she snapped at the male elf.

  “Yes!” he replied while throwing a third one.

  “Waaaah!”

  The catgirl jumped out of the way with a scream as the unknown potion destroyed part of the porch.

  “Dad!” Rowana screamed. “Stop this at once!”

  “Mwahahaha!” the elf laughed, ignoring his daughter. “You fight well, but let’s see if you can handle-”

  *DONNNNN*

  His little speech was cut short when the other woman in the one-room house, presumably his wife, smacked him over the head with a frying pan. She hit him hard enough to plant his face into the floor.

  “Calm down, dear,” she said with an angelic smile. “Surely, that’s no way to treat a guest.”

  Surprisingly, the guy stood up immediately afterward.

  “That’s no guest!” he argued. “She’s a scoundrel – a thief! Who else barges into someone else’s home with that nonchalant attitude?!”

  *DONNNN*

  The wife struck him again, much harder than the first time. She hit him so hard his head crashed through the floorboards while his feet went momentarily airborne. He was completely limp. The wife hid the now-bloodstained cooking utensil behind her back and smiled sweetly at Keira.

  “Please, forgive my husband, my dear girl. He gets a bit excitable around new people.”

  “Um, okay?” she responded warily. “Well, uh, I’ll be going now…”

  Keira dropped down from doorframe and turned to leave the house. Rowana said she wanted to hide their relationship from her parents until she felt confident enough to break it to them. It was no easy task, as her father purportedly didn’t approve of same-sex relationships. Therefore, in order to maintain Keira’s character, Boxxy’s best move was to keep its promise and to do its best to keep the relationship under wraps.

  “You’re Keira, aren’t you?”

  However, it couldn’t bail before the older woman calmly called out to it. At the very least she used words rather than dubious alchemically strengthened acids, so the catgirl turned around with an uneasy expression.

  “Y-yes?”

  “Oh my, how splendid! My name is Doris Slyth, and this rather hot-blooded gentleman is my husband, Samulus. As you may have gathered, we are Rowana’s parents.”

  “Err, good to meet you. Ma’am.”

  “Likewise. But dear me, you are a cutie, aren’t you?! Hohoho, as expected of Rowana’s new roommate!” exclaimed Doris as she winked at Keira.

  Between her tone and the knowing wink she threw at Keira, Doris made it quite clear she already knew the nature of their relationship.

  “H-How did you…?” muttered Rowana wide-eyed.

  “Hmm?” the mother raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t I tell you never to underestimate a housewife’s information network?”

  “... Lia told you, didn’t she?” the daughter sighed.

  “No, silly. That child told her father, who told his brother, who told his son, who told his cousin, who-”

  “Okay! Okay, I get it.”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Slyth?” Keira spoke up, her finger pointed at the unconscious man on the floor. “Will… will he be alright?”

  “Him? Oh, yes, he’ll be fine. His little tantrums always leave him tired out and in need of a nap.”

  Her face was smiling, but the stare directed at her unmoving husband was cold enough to put out a raging inferno.

  “No, you knocked him unconscious, didn’t you?” the beastkin insisted.

  “Nonsense! As if a lady of my standing would ever do something as unsightly as pummeling my dear Samulus into submission!”

  Her knuckles cracked as her grip on the pan tightened.

  “R-right. Of course, sorry for saying something so rude,” Keira apologized.

  “No worries, my dear. We were quite rude as well, so I’d say we’re even. That said…”

  The old woman grabbed her husband by the collar and pulled his bloodied face out of the hole in the floor.

  “I do believe we will be going now. Sorry about the mess, we’ll be sure to pay for the damages. And Rowana? Make sure you bring this adorable child along with you when you visit us. I believe the four of us have a lot to talk about.”

  “Yes, mum,” the daughter responded stiffly.

  “There’s a good girl.”

  Doris gave Rowana a goodbye hug, then happily headed towards the front door while dragging her still-unconscious spouse along like a bag of old cabbages.

  “Thanks for looking after my daughter,” she whispered as she passed by Keira before closing the door on her way out.

  “So, um…” Rowana mumbled after a few moments of awkward silence. “Those were my parents.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And, uh, you’re back.”

  “... Yes. I am. *sniff* I’m back, Rowieee!”

  The catgirl leaped at the elf, wrapping her in a bear hug before she could react. She pushed her down on the table and gave her a long, deep kiss on the lips as tears ran freely from her face. A few seconds later, she lifted her head and stared down at the suddenly flushed Rowana.

  “I’m- *hic hic* I’m home!” she declared with a half-smiling, half-crying face.

  “Yes, yes you are.”

  They embraced again, and the elf let her troubled lover sob on her shoulder to her heart’s content. Eventually the two of them managed to disentangle themselves and get off the table. They sat down on the bed. The still sobbing Keira poured her heart out while Rowana did her best to comfort her. The beastkin told her everything. The supposed abuse she underwent at the hands of the Empire, the imaginary guilt at being solely responsible for the death of thousands of people, the non-existent grief at Faehorn’s passing, and finally her made-up unwillingness to return to active duty a week from now.

  Rowana didn’t say a word. She neither condoned nor praised Keira for anything she went through. Instead, she resolutely took in Keira’s woes and sorrows while doing her best to ease her troubled mind. There was no doubt in her mind that the redhead had witnessed and experienced much suffering during the month they had spent apart. She wasn’t foolish enough to expect anyone could serve on the front lines without suffering heavy scars.

  The most important thing was that Keira had returned to her safe and sound. The elf was even a bit proud of the young catgirl. Both for making it through so much hardship and for willingly laying her heart bare before her. Rowana could not erase what happened, but she could still help her distraught girlfriend come to terms with it.

  Hmm, I guess fifteen more minutes of inconsolable crying should do it before w
e settle down and she starts pampering me.

  As for Keira, her performance was going just as planned. Boxxy was right to rehearse the reunion scene in advance because it would have certainly been thrown off its game by those ludicrous parents otherwise. After spending most of the night ‘pampering’ each other, Keira silently disentangled herself from Rowana’s sleeping embrace and went outside. She then summoned Xera, who took the beastkin’s place. Boxxy ducked behind the house, shook off the catgirl persona, and took on its preferred chesty shape. The shapeshifter quickly and stealthily climbed up the tree and entered Ambrosia’s dungeon for the first time in a long while. The dryad herself popped up the instant it entered the main chamber and greeted Boxxy with a beaming smile.

  “Milord! ‘Tis good to see thee again!”

  “Likewise.”

  “I had no idea thou had already returned!”

  “Ah, sorry about that. It happened a bit suddenly so I couldn’t tell you.”

  “I beg thy mercy, milord! Thou need not apologize for it is this one who failed to anticipate milord’s visit!”

  “Yes, yes, but enough of that,” it cut her off. “How goes the cooking training?”

  “‘Twas hardly a bother, milord. I believe I have made substantial progress, although it would appear thy ingredients are beginning to expire.”

  “Oh? How come?”

  “I do not know, milord. Humans are especially foreign to me, so I am at a loss. I harvest their limbs according to thy instruction, but it would seem they hath grown frail and stringy over the past month. I do not believe they would make a satisfying meal in their current state.”

  “Hmm. I’ll go check on them. Stay here.”

  “Yes, milord.”

  Boxxy activated the dungeon’s Nexus Access and transported itself into the area controlled by the core’s Prison Management function. It was a large chamber that had no entrance or exit, making it impossible to get in or out without using the use of magic. Inside were four human specimens it had captured before it left for the frontlines, all of them chained and submerged in pools of green-tinted Waters of Life. The potent liquid could instantly regenerate their lost limbs, allowing the monster to endlessly feast on their flesh and bones without running out of body parts.

  Or at least that was the theory. Unfortunately, as Ambrosia described, they had grown frail and weak. Three of them were unconscious and the fourth one had expired altogether. How did it come to this? The monster double-checked that Prison Management was operating as intended and confirmed that their need for sustenance was satisfied through magic, so starvation wasn’t the problem. Examining its ‘dinner donors’ more closely, it noticed several unnatural symptoms. Their once supple and well-muscled bodies were withered down to tatters, nearly skin and bones. They were admittedly chained up for a long time, but this degeneration went deeper than simple muscle atrophy. Their hair was white, their backs were hunched over, their faces were wrinkled, and their loose skin had become covered in various spots and lesions.

  In short, they appeared to have aged rapidly over the course of the last month.

  Boxxy had heard of a similar phenomenon before. Rejuvenation Potions were said to shorten one’s natural lifespan by about three years per dose. Most soldiers and adventurers considered it a worthwhile trade since the potion’s unrivaled regenerative abilities were sometimes needed for them to reach old age at all. An integral component of the potent elixir was refined hylt sap, and it functioned in a remarkably similar way to those Waters of Life. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that the two substances had some common roots. It therefore stood to reason that the dryad’s healing solution would have a similar side effect to its alchemical alternative.

  But still, just how many times did Ambrosia cut these four apart to turn them from youngsters overflowing with vigor into crippled elders? Did she have a grudge against them or something? Actually yes, she probably did. The dungeon core had rendered the dryad quite zealous whenever it came to fulfilling Boxxy’s requests. After careful consideration, the shapeshifter concluded that she must have shown relative restraint if three of the prisoners were still alive.

  Having concluded its investigation, Boxxy teleported itself back to Ambrosia’s side.

  “Seems they are suffering from the side effects of those Waters of Life,” it stated matter-of-factly. “Can’t be helped. Dispose of those things, and I’ll get some replacements soon.”

  “Understood, milord,” the dryad bowed. “I shall endeavor to prepare a meal worthy of thy tastes at that time.”

  “I look forward to it. I have some business to attend to, so don’t bother me unless it’s important.”

  Ambrosia looked at it quizzically then narrowed her eyes and briefly scowled her lips.

  “... Of course,” she said through a forced smile.

  Boxxy didn’t know what brought this on. It always made sure to treat the dryad amicably as it was uncertain how strong the dungeon core’s hold on her psyche actually was. It actively avoided antagonizing or displeasing her, yet she was clearly pissed off about something.

  “Ambrosia? Is something the matter?” it asked with concern.

  The dryad’s face twisted into a disdainful look that made it seem as though she was looking at the monster as a disgusting piece of trash.

  “Milord, thou have been fooling about with mine daughters, have you not?”

  “I asked for their help and kept them company, but I didn’t do anything to them.”

  Other than making them murder a ton of people and possibly causing a mutation…

  “Then why does though reek of some other dryad’s nectar?!”

  “Oh, that?”

  “Verily, that!” she exclaimed.

  “Well, one of the dryads I met offered and I thought I’d give it a try.”

  Prior to its departure from Fort Yimin, Boxxy had dropped by Cyrilla’s place to pick up a few things it had left behind. Once the dryad understood the ‘Sandman’ was about to leave, she eagerly offered it a drink of what she called ‘nectar.’ Unwilling to ignore the chance to sample such a tasty-sounding thing, it readily accepted the offer, prompting her to pull down her leafy bra and present her nipples.

  Boxxy was quite surprised to find out the dryads’ anatomy underneath their leaves. How come a plant had teats? Or, rather, why did they have breasts in the first place? The more it thought about it, the less sense a dryad’s nubile body made. Then again, they were supposedly blessed by Nyrie herself, so this was probably just how the power of the Goddess of Fertility manifested itself. Or not. It didn’t feel like dwelling on the matter too much as it was far more interested in the nectar those mysterious mammaries produced.

  The liquid in question turned out to be watery and vaguely sweet. The flavor wasn’t exactly to Boxxy’s liking, but the Perk it got from drinking it was quite tasty all the same.

  [Nature’s Bounty]

  Becoming one with nature is a privilege, not a right.

  Requirements: Drink at least 200 ml of Hylt Nectar.

  [Effects]

  Increases maximum HP by 3 per AFF.

  Provides a permanent boost of +25 AFF.

  However, the exact reason why Ambrosia had an issue with this was beyond Boxxy’s comprehension. It had no way of knowing that its seemingly harmless answer would only make her angrier.

  “If milord wanted nectar,” the dryad protested, “then I would have gladly given thou all I had! I was at thine disposal, and yet thou went after some immature harlot instead? Milord is truly despicable.”

  She ended her indignant tantrum and rapidly sunk into the ground, disappearing from sight. The little display taught Boxxy two especially important lessons. First, as it suspected, the dungeon core didn’t have complete control over a being as powerful as Ambrosia.

  The other, more troublesome realization? Dryads were apparently capable of jealousy.

  Part Four

  Ambrosia laid back in an armchair made out of vines and leaves. Her fac
e held an utterly content smile, while a child-like, black-skinned, yellow-eyed humanoid was sitting in her lap and suckling from her breast. Boxxy somehow lied, excused, and apologized its way back into her good graces, but only under the condition it drank all of Ambrosia’s nectar. The dryad had, for whatever reason, also demanded it did so in its base form, which was why it had to momentarily abandon its preferred chesty visage. It had started to wonder if it was really worth spending so much time and effort being nice to a damn vegetable.

  However, all its misgiving with the arrangement disappeared the moment its vertical mouth latched onto the dryad’s left nipple. The nectar that flowed from Ambrosia’s impractically large bosom was completely different from the unripe stuff it got out of Cyrilla. The flavor not only intoxicatingly sweet but also thick and rich to the point Boxxy subconsciously tried to chew on it. Simply calling it ‘tasty’ would be an understatement. Though this flavor couldn’t replace fresh human hearts as Boxxy’s favorite, it instantly became a close second.

  Another strong point of the nectar was that, unlike Snack’s conjured flesh, it aggressively satiated both hunger and thirst. This would drastically reduce the staggering frequency at which Boxxy had to feed. One of the downsides of powering up through Attribute gains was that the body burned a lot of energy, thus requiring more sustenance. That was one of the main reasons why adventurers and soldiers always seemed to be in great shape, and also why they enjoyed feasts so much.