[Vol. 4 pt. 11]

Meadow and I continued along through the starting zone with her getting a chance to learn how to do everything while I made sure that she didn’t get overwhelmed and fucked by monsters without her consent. By the end of a few hours, I realized that they must have seriously boosted the starting experience to be faster than it used to be. She was already out-leveled for the zone’s monsters and quests by the time she was halfway done with the starting quest line. That meant she didn’t really need my help by the halfway point since she was more than capable enough on her own to handle any surprise monsters, but I still felt an urge to protect her just in case.

Leveling up her druid class also gave her the option to transform into a beast which she seemed to have a lot of fun with. Especially when she transformed into a giant cat and rubbed up against my legs while purring.

Though, a spider fit her better. I ended up imagining her transforming into a bat-spider hybrid which was… not exactly a pleasant thought. But at the same time, if it was possible for me to turn into one and fuck a girl using it, then I absolutely would.

Would it have an ovipositor or a barbed dick?

A barbed ovipositor?

I wasn’t sure how pleasant that sounded, but I would use it either way. Besides, as long as they were barbs within the game, they wouldn’t be painful. They would just add some extra texture.

That aside, Meadow eventually decided that she wanted to try playing on her own for a bit since she knew that I wouldn’t always be there to protect her, so I left her on her own to finish up the starting zone and went back to the dungeon.

I wasn’t planning on really doing anything there, though. Maybe I would look over whatever options I had again to see if there was anything interesting to do with the dungeon. Or maybe I would fuck one of the monster girls if I couldn’t find anything else to do.

However, somebody appeared at the perfect time for me to spend my attention on.

Somebody who was large, had eight legs, huge tits, a beautiful face, and an intelligence that somehow managed to be more attractive than all of that other stuff combined.

“BBQ,” I said as soon as she finished loading in.

Thera stared right at me for a few seconds and blinked. “Oh. Right. I told Meadow to tell you that.”

“Yep. Also, I thought you were at some family event?”

“I am. It’s night and everybody else has gone to bed. I brought my headset in case I can’t sleep and get bored.”

“Ah. So coming here is a last resort, huh? I’m your last resort for having some fun? I see how it is.”

“I didn’t even think you would be online. I came to go do some practice arena matches since the new season is starting soon.”

“Which bracket are you going for?”

“Duos this time. Solo has gotten boring and four-versus-four is tedious.”

“Going to team up with Cani? Lupir, rather.”

“I am, actually.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Don’t you think that’ll be boring, though? I mean, you’re two of the best PvPers in the game fighting together. Nobody else stands a chance.”

“Actually, Anna will be participating with another of the top five. Beating them is our primary goal. Nobody else matters, nor will anybody else fail to provide adequate sport for us.”

“It’s really hot when you phrase it like that. Like you’re hunters and they’re your prey. I want to be your prey, too.”

Thera let her lips curl into a rare smirk as she leaned forward, extending one of her arms to tap her fingers against the underside of my chin. “You are already my prey, darling. I hunt you with my every moment, always luring you into my traps to have my way with you.”

“I wish. If anything, I feel like I’m the one who’s hunting you.”

“Are you? If so, then hunt me. I am waiting, darling.”

“I—alright. I don’t know how you do it.” Even though I would normally be able to “hunt” anybody… being put on the spot like that by Thera, and only Thera, caused my mind to freeze up.

Thera then slipped her fingers out from underneath my chin to run them up along the left side of my face instead. “Do I not hunt you on a regular basis? After all, you are the one who is always being lured into my traps to be teased and left without ever acquiring what you so desperately desire while I leave with a satisfied smile.”

“You missed me, haven’t you?”

“Terribly so. How could you tell?”

“From how forward you’re being. I feel like I’m getting a whole week’s worth of fanservice from you right now.”

“What can I say? I did not expect to get to hunt you again so soon. Now that you are here, I want nothing more than to twirl you around my fingers and to sink my fangs into my prey.”

I tilted my head to the right and pointed at my neck. “Alright. Feel free to sink them in. Right here, preferably.”

“Gladly.”

Thera moved her hand to the back of my head and brought her lips right over my neck, her every movement slow and calculated as opened her lips and pressed the very tips of her fangs against my skin.

And then…

She pulled away.

“Consider yourself hunted,” Thera teased, now slipping her hand up to the top of my head where she would pet me.

“You’re too good at teasing me,” I replied.

“Because I know you. I know your weaknesses, your desires, your favorites—I know everything about my prey. That is what it takes to be a good hunter.”

“You are unbelievably attractive.”

“Am I? For putting on the act of a hunter for my prey? I’m glad, considering I get no practice doing this on anybody else. You are my one and only prey. The only one who has ever been worthy of my hunting, and likely the only one who ever will be worthy of it.”

“I—I don’t even know what to say. You manage to completely turn my brain into mush whenever you’re like this.”

“Is that so? How sad. You will never be able to do what you want with me if you are not ever able to turn the tables on the hunter. What is the saying? ‘The hunter has become the prey? The hunted?’ Regardless, that is what you must do. You must put me into such a situation where I have no idea how to respond—where I have no idea what to do aside from stand here looking like a small, captured animal incapable of resisting its predator’s allure.”

I wasn’t sure that I would ever be able to turn things around on her like that. Anybody else would be easy to dominate, but Thera? Thera felt like she was always one step ahead.

Then again, wasn’t that the whole point?

She wanted me to conquer her. She wanted me to overcome her. It wouldn’t have been fun nor notable if overcoming her was easy.

Thera wanted me to earn her.

And I wanted to earn her.

I didn’t exactly have to fight for Lily nor Akorya, but Thera had every intention of making sure that she needed to be fought for.

Realistically, if I had a heart-to-heart with her about how I just wanted to be with her instead of playing these games to win her, she would be most likely be fine with that. I doubted the “game” was really all that important to her.

Or maybe it was. Maybe she wanted to see me, who already had two girlfriends, put in all of the extra effort to win her over that I didn’t need to do to get Lily and Akorya.

Regardless, I was happy to play along with her game. Besides, it was fun. Trying to outdo her was a genuine challenge that I wanted to overcome.

“I’ll do my best,” I said. “I’ll hunt the hunter and put her in her place.”

Thera’s hand slid back down to my chin where she grabbed me and tilted my head back, forcing me to look into her eyes. “I’ll look forward to that with all of my heart, darling.”

She won every single match against me.

That made me all the more inspired to get better to truly put her in her place.

“Until then,” Thera continued, “care to join me for some practice duos?”

“As long as you don’t think I’ll hold you back,” I answered.

“It should be fine. There are no rankings for practice matches, so the chances of us going up against a duo beyond your skill level isn’t too high.”

“Then I’d enjoy that. Gives me a chance to get better at PvP in case anybody tries attacking us again.”

Thera gave the top of my head a couple of pats before a party invite from her popped up within my vision. A moment after accepting it and we were queued up for a duos practice match in the arena. A few moments after that and the queue popped and a countdown began waiting for everybody to confirm that they were ready.

“That was fast,” I said.

“Like I said, it is right before a new season. Everybody is getting in practice,” Thera answered.

The queue gave us sixty seconds to confirm we were ready. Only ten seconds passed before all four of us confirmed and were teleported to the arena.

As for the arena, it was like the arena in any MMO. A large, circle room in the center with opposing, gated rooms connected to it that each team would wait in. A new timer popped up within our vision to count down from thirty, giving us the chance to buff one another up which I took advantage of.

I gave both Thera and myself a shield buff that would protect us from damage equal to five percent of our total health before being destroyed, a prayer buff that would absorb the first debuff applied to either of us to instantly remove it, and a minor heal-over-time buff that would last for the next thirty seconds. It would only restore one percent of our health every five seconds, but even the tiniest little sliver of health could mean victory in MMOs for both PvE and PvP. There were countless videos online of raiding groups wiping when a boss only had .01% health remaining, and literally all that was needed to kill the boss was a single, final attack. In a time like that, a measly percent of health every five seconds could save the day as long as it keeps somebody alive just barely long enough to get in that final attack.

As for Thera, she had a buff to herself that gave her the ability to poison anybody she attacked, and then she also had her stealth mode she could enter. That made her invisible to our enemies, but I could still see a barely visible, transparent version of her where she stood.

“Any plan?” I asked.

“Wait until I engage to rush them,” Thera answered. “I will pick a target and stun them. You rush and stun whoever I haven’t picked. Once you’ve stunned them, help me focus down my target and watch the other to stun them again if need be.”

“Got it.”

Our strategy sounded disgusting. That was how I figured it must have been a good one. The worse it sounded to be on the receiving end of the strategy, the better I figured it was.

And as soon as the timer was done counting down, the gates opened and Thera moved out as quickly as she could… which wasn’t too quickly seeing as how she was stealthed and that made her move at only half of her maximum speed. Even so, she took the long way around the arena to circle her way toward our enemy while staying close to the wall.

As for me, I ran up and got behind one of the four pillars in the arena. I peeked around to see if there was anybody I could see, and I did see one player. A druid. A pretty good one going by the equipment they had on that I recognized as only being acquirable from one of the harder endgame raids.

The other player must have been behind one of the pillars or stealthed in the same way that Thera was. Because I didn’t want to end up getting stabbed in the back myself, I placed a holy aura on the ground where I stood so that anybody who walked into it would immediately take damage and lose any potential stealth buff they had.

That turned out to be the right move as I heard the sound effect from stealth being lost directly behind me. Standing there was a dwarf player in all-black gear. Even though his equipment might have made him look rogue-y, I would never be able to take a short, thick dwarf seriously as a rogue.

Also, I bashed him in the head with my shield to stun him for a few seconds. At the same time, I noticed Thera leave stealth to stun the druid across the arena, so I left the rogue behind and rushed as quickly as I could to join Thera at the druid. As soon as I was close, Thera began her assault by stabbing her daggers into the druid’s back which removed the stun. Unfortunately for the druid, though, I arrived just in time to bash my shield into her to stop her in place just as she tried to run away.

The latest stun might have only lasted for a fraction of a second due to incoming damage from Thera, but that was enough. It meant she would need to start fleeing from scratch again and gave both of us the opportunity to burst all of our cooldowns on her.

The druid’s health went from a hundred percent to eighty percent in the blink of an eye. Then from eighty percent to fifty. At that point, the druid cast an instant heal on herself and shapeshifted into a giant cat to try and run away, but Thera had an ability that slowed her down and prevented her from escaping before we could kill her.

As for the rogue, he reached us just a second too late to save his friend.

And then he surrendered.

With me and Thera at full health still, it didn’t matter if we spent all of our cooldowns on the druid. There was no way that a rogue would be able to deal with both a fellow rogue and a paladin, especially when that rogue was Thera.

“That was… easy,” I said to Thera while the rogue looked away rather shamefully. “I expected more of a fight considering their gear.”

“Wow, darling,” Thera replied. “I did not expect you to be so toxic that you would brag about victory over the corpse of the losers.”

“I—wait, is this being toxic?”

“Most would say so, yes. No matter how trivially easy a fight may be, it is considered good manners to wait until afterward to talk about it.”

“Oh. Whoops.”

“Worry not, darling. I will find you attractive no matter how toxic you may be.”

“I don’t know how to feel about that, but I appreciate it.”

Another timer popped up to show when we were going to be teleported back to where we were before the arena. And just as it reached one second remaining, I felt a kiss against the side of my head.

Only, once we were back in the dungeon and I looked to my side, Thera was acting perfectly normal as if she totally didn’t just kiss my head.

I really needed to find out how to overwhelm her when even something like a single kiss from her got me flustered.