NOVEL SIMPLE Vol.3 Ch.1 – The Long Haul
Chapter 1: The Long Haul
I used to find traveling in caravans to be an amazingly tedious experience but now, with three gorgeous women cuddling with me, it was actually rather pleasant.
The storage spaces of the merchants' caravans could be rented out by travelers wanting to speed up their journey, but it wasn't the most comfortable way to travel. You were stuck inside the storage, under a big ol' canvas top, with only whatever wares the cart was currently ferrying about for company. And gods help the poor fool who tried to steal some of the merchant's, well, merchandise while stuck in that storage.
The traveling caravans weren't even all that fast. The five days we were going to be traveling could have been done in about eight days on foot. If we'd left for my mother's birthday party the day after returning from our fight against the Dark Lord of Shub-Niggurath we could have done it on foot but we had all agreed without needing to talk about it that we'd needed a few days to unwind. And while traveling via caravan cart was nothing if not uneventful, it wasn't exactly relaxing.
You were stuck in an extremely small space for long stretches of time, the only way to get out of the storage space was to walk along the railing right outside the canvas-covered storage space and, unlike a carriage ride, there wasn't even much of a view unless you stepped outside. The caravan masters allowed for regular breaks so that the travelers could relieve themselves but the oxen that actually pulled the enormous carts were fine with only a few hours of rest every other day.
That was why traveling via caravan was at all faster than traveling on foot. The huge beasts just did not tire and could keep going all night long, even though they trotted barely any faster than the average adventurer could walk.
Before I met my lovely ladies, traveling via caravans had mostly been annoying because I'd usually have to share the storage space with a bunch of strangers but this time the four of us had rented an entire cart's storage for our own. Honestly, we could have afforded even a really fancy carriage for our trip considering how much we'd made during our last quest. Athena's bush, we'd made a lot of money. Twenty dragon horns, three flawless cyclops eyes, over a ton of hydra meat, an entire treasure trove of enchanted weapons, a small mountain of coins and plenty more besides.
Sadly, I knew we were going to have to use up quite a bit of our newfound wealth to find ourselves a bigger home soon. My perpetually rented room at the Plucked Cockatrice was getting a little too cozy with four people occupying it, especially since I'd rented the room back when I'd been on my own. But even if we hadn't needed the money, splurging on a private carriage when the caravans were going to be traveling the same roads anyway felt frivolous.
I was taken out of my musings when I heard Alisha giggle next to me and I took the moment to admire my women.
Alisha, the elven priestess with wavy light brown hair and eyes like glowing emeralds, was having a telepathic conversation with Syr.
Syr wasn't physically with us. Her body was possessed by a woman calling herself the Holy Maiden, who claimed to be speaking on behalf of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat In The Woods With A Thousand Young, and Syr's mind had taken refuge within mine. At the start only I had been able to interact with her but then Yume, the fox woman from the realm beyond the volcanoes, had used her magic to link up to my mind, which had given her the ability to perceive Syr as well. And two days after we'd returned to the capital Yume had used that same magic to let Alisha and Selene perceive Syr as well. It was tedious since Yume had to keep the connection open for Syr to be able to talk to anyone but me, but it made Syr's illusion of freedom much more genuine than it had been before.
Alisha had started out very suspicious of Syr since the black-haired beauty was sharing my mind, but after a few serious heart-to-heart conversations between them that Syr had made sure to block me out from they now got along splendidly.
The two of them could have just talked out loud since everyone here was able to listen to both sides of the conversation but Alisha had been trying to get used to telepathic conversation and I couldn't judge her. Talking aloud to Syr appeared a lot like talking to an imaginary friend to anyone who couldn't perceive her.
Syr herself was lying sprawled out, her long straight black hair fanned out on the wooden floor and her huge breasts rising and falling as she breathed. Of course, being an astral projection, Syr had no need to breathe but the habit was hard to break and, as she put it, getting used to not needing to breathe would be like admitting defeat, like accepting that she'd never get her body back. Of course I couldn't tell what they were talking about, but from the smiles on their faces and Alisha's giggle they seemed to be having fun.
On my other side Selene was playing a card game against herself and from the frown on her face she seemed to be losing.
Selene was a paladin with blond hair down to her shoulders and piercing blue eyes. She had an amazing figure, shapely hips and fairly generous breasts and tempered with just enough muscle to make her look formidable, but under the long-sleeved tunic and the traveling cloak it was hard to make any of that out. She'd gotten better about hiding her scars and she didn't even seem to notice that one of her sleeves had ridden up and the crisscrossing scars on her arm were visible. I still couldn't believe how I'd managed to bribe her into accepting that we all thought her scars were beautiful. I felt myself grow hard at the memory and had to shake myself out of it. It wouldn't be fair to Yume, my cute little fox, who was resting with her head on my lap.
Yume was a tiny woman, barely five feet even, with gorgeous fiery red hair and cute pointy fox ears on the top of her head. Her delicate features apparently stemmed from her mother having been from the southern kingdom beyond the volcanoes, though she didn't seem to be missing her home much. Back in the country she'd been born in kitsune like her were feared and hated and for her that came on top of her mixed heritage, doubly marking her as an outsider while here, with us, she had people who cared about her and who would protect her. Not that she needed much protection since she was easily the most formidable fighter in our party and the only reason why I could even keep up with my women was because Yume had taught me some of her Qi techniques.
Speaking of, after dinner we were going to start teaching Selene and Alisha these techniques as well. After all, we still had four days on the road left and little else to do. Playing around with my women was made more than slightly awkward by the fact that the canvas coverings did sweet fuck-all to deafen sound and even the slightest moan would ring out across the entire caravan. I had a plan for how to deal with it but it would not work for group activities, so I had decided to wait to use it until one of my girls broke.
**
Dinner that night was a sad affair, as it would be for the days to come. One of the wagons of the caravan was a tiny little kitchen on wheels that supplied all the mortals riding with the caravan with food, but of course they weren't going to be handing out gourmet meals on a budget trip. I almost felt bad for the caravan handlers who apparently ate this slop all the time. The food wasn't even that awful, but living and traveling with Alisha had spoiled me rotten. The woman was an amazing housewife and I hadn't even married her yet.
Technically.
I smiled as I looked at the necklaces Alisha, Selene and Yume wore, all with individual charms I'd picked out for them, and around my own neck I wore matching pieces to all of theirs. Such necklaces were the elven equivalent of wedding rings. Elves, who had a gender ratio of about three or four women for each man, were very used to polygamous relationships and these necklaces were a much more convenient sign to signify marriage than tiny little rings. Though, Alisha had informed me, it was traditional for all women who belonged to the same man to wear the same charm on their necklace, a charm that signified the man they were with. I, meanwhile, had chosen to give them each charms I thought fit them and wore matching signs of our relationships around my own neck. Alisha sometimes jokingly called me a manwhore for it, usually when she wanted me to bend her over my knee and spank her.
Anyway. The food the caravan served wasn't even that bad, just a basic stew with cheap budget cuts of meat and whatever vegetables were about to go bad, but would it really have been too much to ask for them to add a bit more salt to it? Thankfully I had my bag of holding with me and so I pulled out a salt shaker to make the food more palatable. My women gratefully accepted when I offered the shaker to them.
After dinner Yume began lecturing Alisha and Selene about the use of Qi, or life force. I'd heard it all before so I was more interested in how Alisha and Selene were taking it. They were both excited, though Alisha seemed a bit worried by the idea of using her own life force in her attacks. I couldn't blame her, I'd had the exact same worry. As Yume explained it, you couldn't really kill yourself by using too much of your life force. You'd fall unconscious long before that would become an issue. And as life force regenerated on its own it only took a good night's rest and a good meal to regain whatever you'd used up. Selene was more worried about these techniques being too complicated for her, which meant she still hadn't realized just how gifted of a learner she was. I'd been training her for only slightly over a month and I already knew that in a few short years she'd know everything I'd taken nearly ten years to grasp.
In the end we split up into pairs, me teaching Selene and Yume teaching Alisha. It had to be that way. Alisha was not a fighter and would be using Qi techniques to enhance her magical capabilities and unlike Yume I didn't have a single magical bone in my body and therefore had no way to teach Alisha how to combine the two, while Yume did. The Qi techniques I did know, Projection and Burst, were exactly the ones Selene would need to learn first, though, so it made perfect sense for me to train her.
So, same as when Yume had taught me, Selene and I sat down with our legs crossed, facing each other and so close our knees were touching. Then I reached for Selene's hand and placed it on my middle dantian, in the center of my chest, and explained:
“I will let my Qi course around my body to make the flow more obvious. You'll need to recognize the flow in me so you can then find it in yourself.”
“Alright”, Selene said and closed her eyes.
I followed suit and began feeling out for the river of life force inside me. It wasn't quite a river, really. It was more like an ocean, the waves gently lapping at the shore, flowing back and forth, but at the same time it wasn't like an ocean at all because there was a steady and constant flow between the centers of my body, the dantian. There were two wellsprings inside me, one at the place Selene was touching and another one lower, close to my taint, though if she'd rested her hand there I was sure I wouldn't have been able to concentrate on teaching her. There was another dantian on the body, right between and slightly above the eyes, but neither Selene nor I knew magic and therefore that place was worthless to us as it merely granted the ability to amplify mana through life force. For people like us who couldn't touch mana in the first place there was no reason to even think about that.
I let my Qi pulse outward from my middle dantian, trying to make the flow as obvious as possible and also trying to consciously keep it out of sync with my heartbeat and my breathing so that Selene wouldn't mistake either for it. I expected to be sitting there for quite a while since Yume had told me that most disciples took weeks to notice the flow in someone else. It had taken me only a few hours to feel the flow inside Yume and then inside myself, but according to Yume that had been exceptional.
Cycling Qi through my body while meditating was a singularly relaxing experience and I could do it all day long and just forget the world around me, but after what I figured had maybe been an hour I heard Selene let out a frustrated growl.
“I have no idea what I'm supposed to feel”, she said.
I kept my eyes closed and kept cycling, but said: “For me it helped to tune everything else out. Ignore everything irrelevant. Ignore the noises outside, ignore whatever you're hearing from Alisha and Yume. Ignore my heartbeat and yours. Ignore my breathing and yours. What you're looking for is something else entirely.”
“Alright”, she said dubiously and then I didn't hear anything from her for a long while.
Finally, after what felt like hours, I just barely heard her whisper:
“I can feel it.” I recognized the quiet reverence in her voice. I'd sounded much the same when I'd first felt it.
“Well done”, I told her and then calmed the raging ocean I'd stirred up inside me before reversing our positions. I placed her hands on her knees and then I placed my own hand on her middle dantian. Her breathing hitched as I placed my hand so close to her breasts but I kept my hand respectfully on her dantian, so I could better feel when she made a breakthrough. “Now you need to find that same well of Qi inside yourself. Fair warning, it's going to take a while, so make sure you're comfortable.”
I'd never seen this process from the other side, so I was curious. When I had meditated to find my own stream of Qi I had lost track of time so completely that half a day had passed me by. It hadn't felt all that long, either. I had gone through several distinct phases until I had finally found what I had been looking for and I was curious if it would be the same for Selene.
I looked over to Yume and Alisha and just as I did I saw Alisha's face light up the same way Selene's had and the two of them reversed positions just like we just had.
**
It ended up taking quite a while. So much so that we actually managed to miss breakfast. We spent the entire night just sitting there, Alisha and Selene meditating to find their own streams of Qi.
Selene had ended up going through the same phases I had, though I was surprised to find out that every single one of them ended up lasting for hours. At first her body grew hot and sweat broke out all over her skin, then her skin grew cold to the touch, to the point where whatever sweat hadn't evaporated yet gathered in large droplets that ran intriguingly across her skin. Then her breathing seemed to grow stronger and she felt almost like she was only staying on the ground by sheer force of will and then her breathing became incredibly shallow and she looked as if she was carrying a heavy burden on her back. When that, too, had abated she meditated for another hour before I finally felt a stirring in her Qi. The river inside her had been strong and steady but it had taken her until right then to consciously touch it.
“I can feel it”, she whispered, her excitement palpable.
I smiled and told her, very quietly so as not to break her concentration: “You're doing great. Now try to will it into your right arm. Bring it all the way to your fingertips and then let it recede.”
Just as it had been for me, it was slow going at first but soon she was able to pull it forth reliably and I wondered what we would do now. Most Qi techniques were rather powerful and we wouldn't really be able to train any of them while inside the wagon.
Either way, the very next thing we needed to do was to wait until Alisha also managed to do it.
And just as I thought that I felt a pulse of Qi from where Yume and Alisha were sitting and then I saw the elated expression on Alisha's face. She'd done it.
**
“The next step”, Yume explained, “is to actually use your newfound control over your Qi by focusing it into a Qi technique.”
I was extremely curious how she would suggest they do that since they couldn't really start punching the cart to pieces for practice. So I just sat there and let her continue.
“Unfortunately this cart is really rather bad for training these techniques. I think we'll need to limit our training to the scheduled breaks. Well”, she paused and looked at Alisha, “I can show you a few tricks right now, but Felix and Selene will feel left out.”
Yume and I both looked at Selene, who shrugged.
“It's fine”, the paladin said. “Now that I know the basics I no longer feel like I'm missing out.”
I smiled at her. “Actually there is something we can practice”, I said and Yume looked at me curiously. “That trick about enhancing one's limbs should work, shouldn't it?”
Yume's lips formed into a tiny 'o' of surprise. “Yes, that should work”, she said. “It's not really a proper technique but it should be good practice until we can teach her more.”
“What are you talking about?”, Selene asked and I smiled.
“Let's try some arm wrestling.”
**
I whooped her ass a couple times before I explained the trick to her. By pulling Qi into a limb and keeping it there you could enhance the limb to... well, I'm not sure if the end result was beyond mortal limits or just scratching the upper limits but it was incredibly strong. It was also horribly inefficient, using far more Qi than a proper Qi Burst, which was generally much more powerful, but as you could increase your Qi pool by continuously exhausting it to flex it like a muscle this was just about the best way for Selene to train her Qi for now.
So while Yume explained to Alisha the intricacies of enhancing her magic by pumping it full of life force, Selene and I kept arm wrestling, eventually graduating to real wrestling, though we swiftly had to put a stop to that when the grinding became less competitive and more erotic in nature. Again, thin walls.
**
The second night Alisha and I were sitting outside the canvas cover, gazing out at the stars. She'd been eager to show me something and I was honestly curious to see what Yume had taught her. Yume could use her Qi to turn her basic fireballs into fire snakes that burned far hotter and moved as if they had a mind of their own, so I was curious to see what Alisha's air magic could be turned into.
“Watch”, she said and then pulled out the rapier she wore on her belt. Most mages, both clerics and wizards, used staffs to focus their magic, but that wasn't universal. Alisha used a rapier that was specially enchanted to work as a casting tool. She also had training for using the rapier as a melee weapon but she didn't really have the muscle for that to be anything more than a last resort. She wasn't helpless in close quarters but that was all.
She used her gray-green air magic to create a single air lance and then fired it at a tree the cart was passing by. The projectile of hardened air sped up and struck the tree hard enough that it bored what I guessed to be a three inch hole into the wood. That was what I'd seen her do before. In fact, I'd seen her summon dozens of these lances at a time.
“That was a normal spell”, she said and I nodded. “Now watch what Yume showed me to do with it.”
Then she summoned another air lance but didn't let it fly quite yet. Instead I saw white tendrils flowing from her middle dantian to her upper dantian. From there they flowed out and curled along her arm and into the air lance. The air inside the projectile kept swirling faster and faster until it looked as though she'd trapped a tiny tornado inside the air lance. She let this enhanced air lance fly and as it struck a tree it didn't just sink in. On impact the air lance exploded into a torrent of tearing winds that split the entire freaking tree right down the middle, creating a deafening cacophony of tearing wood that made half the caravan's travelers look over. Alisha had to apologize profusely for her display before they went back inside.
“Pretty amazing, isn't it?”, she asked me, looking smug, her embarrassment forgotten so fast I had to wonder if it had been an act.
“That was great”, I agreed. “With this there should no longer be enemies your magic can't hurt.”
“Exactly”, she said. “I'm just worried about how long it takes.”
“Don't be”, I said. “My Qi Burst started out taking me four seconds to use. Now they take me less than half a second. With practice you'll get much faster.”
She relaxed at that. “That's good”, she said, then added: “Yume is amazing, isn't she?”
I smiled. “She is”, I said, then grinned and teased: “Now if only you could control yourself around her.”
“I can control myself around her”, Alisha said in a huff. “I haven't jumped her once on this trip.” Alisha was obsessed with fruit and Yume's pussy tasted strongly of sweet plums and cinnamon, so it was a struggle to get Alisha's face out from between Yume's thighs once she got going.
“Come on, we both know that's just because of the thin walls”, I said. “Also, I am really glad they didn't put us in the wagon with the fruit. They would have banned us for life if you had eaten their entire delivery.”
“I wouldn't have”, she huffed. “And I'm not obsessed with fruit!”
I smirked and pulled out a huge ripe strawberry from my bag of holding and held it just out of reach but clearly in sight of her. She grumbled at me and tried to make a grab for it but I held her back, then grabbed her by the throat and held the strawberry out for her. She whined and I held it a bit closer until her tongue could reach it. She immediately began licking over the fruit's surface and I held it a bit closer still until she could suckle on it, which she did immediately. Her thighs were rubbing together and she started blushing and I could feel myself growing hard at the display. I knew how good that suckling could feel. Finally I gave in and held the strawberry close enough for her to bite into. It was beyond juicy and the juices ran down her chin and she paused only just long enough to lick up everything she could before taking another bite.
When she was done I licked up everything that had run down to her chin and then kissed her to let her get everything to the last drop.
“Are you still denying that you're obsessed with fruit?”, I asked teasingly.
“Bastard”, she muttered, then asked after a pause: “Do you have another one?”
