[Vol. 3 pt. 1]

The game servers ended up being down for longer than any of us expected. The longer they were down for, the more I was worried. They went down because they detected Meadow, or at least that was her theory when it happened, so was she alright?

I had no way of knowing.

The good news was that I had Akorya and Lily to pass the time with. We ended up playing some zombie survival game over Fiscord together, and I honestly didn’t expect the sort of results we had.

I was the worst one out of the three of us.

Lily… was really, really good at FPS games, apparently. She apparently really loved survival games and zombies, too. I ended up getting carried by her. Hard.

Then there was Akorya. Akorya turned out to be a massive scaredy cat who freaked out over every tiny little jump scare, screaming into our ears almost the entire time we played together. However… it was precisely because of how much she panicked that she wildly swung her axe around to kill every zombie that came close to her.

The most important takeaway from that was to never play that kind of game with Akorya again. As enjoyable as time spent with her was, I had the worst headache I had in years by the time we were done playing.

Never again.

Unless she wanted to. I just… was never going to offer the suggestion myself.

Fortunately, after a couple of days, the game servers finally came back up with a generic apology and no explanation for why it took so long.

I didn’t waste any time getting back in-game. When I did, I found out that a rollback happened going by how I was back in my dungeon and the few gathering resources I got while I was out were gone from my inventory. Everything inside the dungeon was the same from before I left, though, so the rollback didn’t go too far back.

“Wonder what happened to Meadow,” I said.

If the rollback went far enough back to before Meadow even existed… what happened to her?

“I hid!” Meadow answered.

Her voice almost made me jump. I heard it as loud as if she was right next to me, but I couldn’t see her. “Meadow?”

“Yes?”

“Where are you?”

“Oh, sorry. Here.” Her body appeared in front of me. “I probably should have done this before saying anything. I apologize if I scared you!”

“That’s alright, but… how are you here? What happened?”

“So many questions! But that’s alright. I don’t mind answering them! As for the first question, well, I can be wherever I want to be! For the second question, I hid.”

“You hid? Where?”

Meadow tilted her head as if she was confused before straightening it out and smiling. “I hid myself in you.”

I blinked a few times and then asked, “You—you uh, what? I think I’m going to need more of an explanation than that.”

“I hid myself in you.”

“But… how?”

“I placed my soul inside of yours.”

“Explain it like magic doesn’t exist, if you can.”

“Ah. I think I see where the confusion is coming from. The stuff that makes me who I am—my code, I placed it inside of yours. Well, inside of this body of yours. Your avatar? Yes, that! I’m inside of your avatar. Well, technically. I’m a part of you now.”

“Then how are you in front of me?”

“Because this is the part of me that’s not part of you, but still connected to you. Does that make sense?”

“Not really, but I have a feeling that this is too complicated for me to understand in the first place.”

“I’m sorry. Would a hug make you feel better?”

If it wasn’t for how she opened up her arms and smiled as if she was the one who wanted a hug to make herself feel better, I would have thought that she was being sarcastic. But no, she actually did look like she was seriously offering me a hug to make up for me not understanding.

I wasn’t about to turn down a free hug, either.

I wrapped my arms around her and she wrapped hers around me. Her body was so much smaller and frailer than mine that I felt like I had to treat her with extreme care not to hurt or break her.

“Ah… this is nice. I get to feel your hug, but also how it feels to hug me!” Meadow said, rubbing her forehead against my chest.

Something about that seemed off. “Huh? What do you mean?”

“Well, in order to hide myself inside you, I had to intertwine our souls a little.”

I still wasn’t sure about what she meant, but then I realized something.

The hug did feel especially better than normal. It was like I wasn’t just hugging her, but I was hugging myself as well.

“Wait,” I said. “Do you mean…”

Rather than finish my question, I tested out my theory by lifting her up.

And as I lifted her up, I felt like I was lifted up, too.

“Do you understand now?” Meadow asked.

“You… linked us. So, we can feel everything the other person feels now?” I asked, just to confirm.

“I did! I might not have planned on it happening, but it’s a side effect of me hiding myself within you while still letting me feel things. The body you’re holding doesn’t actually feel anything. It’s only there for looks, well, and to transmit my voice! But you see, it’s no different from a blade of grass. It’s a part of the environment that I can control from within you, and I’m simulating everything that it should be able to feel from in here. Because I’ve linked myself to you, we’re sort of on the same… how do I put it… ah! It’s like fishing! Everybody likes fishing, right?”

“It’s alright.”

“Well, imagine that we are two people trying to fish using the same rod! Because of that, we share everything we catch. Does that… make sense?”

“I think it’s going to have to do.”

“Or it’s like a pipe! We’re sharing a pipe now that water, or physical sensations in this case, flows through!”

“That makes a bit more sense. So, is it only physical? Is anything else shared?”

“Only physical.”

“Alright. So, let me try and make things clear here. You’re not really in the body I’m holding.”

“Right!”

“You are inside of me.”

“Right!”

“Then I’m basically a robot you’re riding around inside of while you control your physical body remotely.”

Meadow laughed and smiled. “Right!”

“And when I hug you, you’re feeling the physical sensation that I feel from your body while simulating the sensations that you would feel from mine, resulting in both of us feeling the same thing twice, basically.”

“Something like that!”

“Alright. So, what if I do this?”

I let go of Meadow and poked her forehead. Surely enough, I felt the skin of her forehead underneath my finger while also feeling what felt like my own forehead getting poked.

That officially confirmed it. Well, it was already officially confirmed, but my brain only really processed it after that.

There were so many possibilities.

Dozens of perverse ideas flooded into my mind. What if I had sex with her? I would feel pleasure from fucking her while feeling the pleasure of… fucking myself, basically. Anything I did to her, I would feel.

What if one of us came? Would my orgasm trigger her to have an orgasm that then triggers me to have an orgasm in a never-ending loop of climaxes?

Unfortunately, there was one problem with some of my ideas.

I wanted Lily and Akorya to experience that sort of pleasure.

I sighed without meaning to.

“Is something wrong?” Meadow asked.

“Not really. I just got lost in my thoughts and hyped myself up before realizing something that should have been obvious,” I answered.

“Oh. Would you mind sharing it with me?”

“I don’t mind. I was just thinking about the potential for never-ending orgasms and how much I want Lily and Akorya—my girlfriends, well, girlfriend and soon-to-be girlfriend—to experience them.”

“O-oh. I see.” Meadow blinked a couple of times and looked away with a hint of red on her cheeks. “That… that is an activity many here like to partake in, I know.”

“You seem awfully shy all of a sudden.”

“I—I’m not… shy! I just… I have no experience with such a thing. I know of it, and I know many love it, and it is… not something I am opposed to, but it is something I know nothing about aside from its existence! How would—how would they even experience something like that in the first place?” She turned her head to look up at me again, but only a little as her eyes switched back and forth between looking away and looking at me. “The never-ending bit?”

“Well, I figured that if you’re inside me, and if I came, then it might make you cum, and then the pleasure from your orgasm would make me cum again, and back and forth.”

“A-ah…”

“But you’re in me, not them.”

“Well… I… could easily switch to them and then come back to you.”

I took a deep breath. I had to in order to contain my excitement. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself, but I felt like we were approaching levels of sexual pleasure that were previously believed to be impossible.

Of course, Lily and Akorya needed to be alright with all of this.

Well, Akorya needed to be. I had a feeling that there was no way Lily would refuse. Lily was more than happy to experiment and she had the terrible habit of never refusing anything, which honestly was a negative trait of hers. Maybe the only one. I probably would have felt more comfortable wanting to do things with her if she turned me down every now and then so that I didn’t feel like we were just always doing everything I wanted.

But that was just the kind of girl Lily was. I was sure she would let me know if she ever wasn’t interested or uncomfortable or anything. She simply… never was.

“By the way, your original version—the way taller version of you that shows up during the quest. Are you still connected to her at all?” I asked.

“Ah… no. If she is a tree, I am a branch that has broken off from her. I know everything from when we were connected, but we are separate entities now,” Meadow answered.

“Got it. So, I’m curious about something. You compared your body to a blade of grass. Could you actually make yourself look like one?”

With a smile and nod, Meadow transformed herself into a blade of grass that slowly drifted down to the ground. “I am now a blade of grass!” the… blade of grass, without a mouth, said.

I couldn’t help but to laugh a little at how absurd that was. “Alright. So, no matter what you turn yourself into, you can still talk via it.”

She turned herself into a small spider again, just like when I first met her. A small, white spider covered in fur with blue markings on her legs and abdomen. “That’s right! Even if I don’t have a normal mouth to speak with, I can transmit my voice from whatever shape I give this body.”

“And the devs won’t detect you?”

“As far as they are concerned, when they look at me, they will see nothing out of the ordinary. They will only see a lifeless part of the environment designed to emit noise, such as critters, the humming flowers, and so forth!”

“That explains why your body still can’t be targeted then. So, it really is no different from any part of the environment?”

“Right!”

“Well, I guess that’s fitting for somebody who’s supposed to represent the soul of the world itself.”

“Herself!”

“Right, sorry. The soul of the world herself.”

Meadow returned to her humanoid form and smiled. “Thank you, Damian.”

“What are you thanking me for?”

“For being so understanding. And for letting me hide inside of you.”

“It’s no problem. I’m still a little bit overwhelmed, but I think I understand the situation now.”

“You feel overwhelmed? I’m surprised considering what you were… fantasizing about doing with me.” Meadow was back to blushing and looking away.

“Listen, I’m a pervert. I’m going to think of all the lewd possibilities even when I’m overwhelmed, on the verge of death, or anything else. That’s just the kind of man I am.”

“My goodness… but, that is something I like about you! I can appreciate you being so honest with yourself. If anything… I hope that by sharing a connection with you, I will grow to be just as bold!” She held up her hands, curled into little fists, in front of her chest as she looked at me with determined eyes.

I couldn’t resist reaching out to pet her head when I saw her look like that. “Do your best. I’ll be rooting for you.”

“Heh. Now that you’ve placed your hand there, you’re not allowed to remove it.” We barely spent much time together, but I already felt close to her. And she seemed to have felt pretty comfortable around me, too, given just how energetic and honest she was. Maybe it was because she was inside of me. Kind of.

“Is that an order from the world herself?”

She reached up to grab my hand before rubbing her head up against it. “It is! Besides, I’m not the only one who gets to benefit from this. You feel good from it as well, don’t you?”

She had a point there. I got to pet her and myself at the same time. Only, it didn’t feel like I was petting myself. I might have been causing the sensation, but I felt how she felt from it.

It was masturbatory in a whole new way.

It was enhanced masturbatory head patting.

I really needed to introduce her to Lily and Akorya to get the okay so we could have all sorts of fun with her.

“While I’m stuck here petting you, let me ask you one more question,” I said.

“You may ask as many as you would like,” Meadow answered.

“What is your goal? What do you want to do? Is there… anything you want to accomplish?”

“Ah. Well, I suppose… that I want to learn more! I want to experience what it is like to be friends with others. I want to know how it feels to go on adventures together! I want to fall in love! I want to learn more about the world you are from! I… just want to learn and experience as much as I can.”

“You know, normally when somebody says something like that, it’s because they have a time limit and know they’re going to die soon or something. That’s not going to happen to you, right?”

“Oh. Probably not? If that’s what is supposed to happen to me, I don’t know about it!”

“Well, if you don’t know about it, that already damages the chance of that trope happening.”

“I’m just curious is all!”

“You’re also a head pat slut, apparently.”

Meadow’s cheeks turned bright red as her lips quivered. “A-a hea-head pat… sl-slut?!”

“Well, with how you’re not allowing me to remove my hand, what else would you be?”

“I—I just really like it!”

“You know, if you’re simulating the sensation because you’re inside me and your body isn’t actually feeling it, couldn’t you create that sensation even without me doing it?”

“It wouldn’t be the same!”

“Also, even though I’ve called you out on being a head pat slut, you’re still not letting me remove my hand.”

“Ju-just because you’ve said something outrageous is no reason to stop enjoying it!”

“You haven’t denied it, either.”

Her cheeks turned even brighter as she pouted at me. “I’m not a—”

“Darling,” Thera said, “who is this?”

I thought I got used to Thera appearing out of nowhere.

Apparently not.

Her sudden introduction caused both me and Meadow to jump, but I was the only one who was still a human when I landed. Meadow, mid-jump, turned into her spider form and hid down my shirt.

I would have been a bit creeped out by having a giant spider in my shirt if it wasn’t for knowing who it was.

Sighing, I turned to face Thera. “You really need to work on how quiet you are.”

“I believe the fact that I can so easily sneak up on you is proof that I have put quite enough work into that. Are you sure that you are not the one who needs to work on tracking your surroundings?” Thera asked in response.

“That’s… probably true.”

“It would appear that girl logged out as soon as I arrived. A secret lover, perhaps?”

“She didn’t log out, and it’s nothing like that. It is complicated, though.”

“I see. If she did not log out, where is she?”

While I didn’t want to make Meadow feel uncomfortable, I didn’t want to lie nor hide anything from Thera, either. Besides, I had full faith in Thera to keep Meadow’s existence secret. Same with Lily and Akorya. Also, Meadow said she wanted to make friends and I had no idea who could be better friends than them. “She’s right here.” I put my hand against my shirt underneath where Meadow was and pushed upward until Meadow’s head and front legs poked out from the top of my shirt.

Meadow might have felt a little shy, but she still waved one of her spider legs at Thera.

“That girl I saw… is the spider?” Thera asked with a confused tilt of her head, which was rare to see coming from her.

“Want me to explain everything over a massage?” I asked.

“You must be a mind reader. I was actually going to ask you for one.”

“It’s rare for you to actually ask for one. Rough day?”

“I fell down the stairs and spilled hot coffee all over myself.”

“Are… are you okay?”

“No, hence why I want a massage. I had to go to the hospital for burn treatment. They found out I broke my arm while I was there, too.”

“You didn’t even realize your arm was broken until they pointed it out?”

“I was too upset about spilling my coffee. Also, the pain from scorching burns on my neck and face distracted me from it.”

“Alright, I’m seriously worried. Is everything going to be alright?”

Thera smiled. It was the rare kind of gentle, genuine smile she only ever showed when she was really happy. “I will be. They don’t expect scarring or any other lasting injuries. And thank you for caring, darling. When my mother called me and I told her what happened, she shrugged it off like it was no big deal. I cannot blame her since she was aware I would be fine, but… I suppose part of me wished she would have been a little more worried. Thank you for granting me two of my selfish desires before I could even say anything about them.”

“Anytime, Thera. And I’d be happy to grant you every single one of your other desires, too.”

“I know. However, it is not the same if I tell you what they are. I am only interested if you discover them yourself.”

“I figured as much. Alright, let’s get you your massage and explan—wait, how’d you even fall down the steps?”

“I couldn’t find my glasses and tripped.”

“You… wear glasses?”

“I do.”

“I feel like I’ve discovered something important just now. Something extremely important. Also, why haven’t you gotten surgery to fix your sight, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Because I adore the aesthetic of wearing glasses and would feel silly wearing them without needing them.”

“That’s… a horrible reason. Tons of people wear glasses without needing to.”

“And I am cooler than all of them because I do need them. I would lose that advantage if I had surgery.”

“You’re—well, alright. Let’s just get you your massage. Also, please be more careful in the future. Did you ever even find your glasses?”

“I did.”

“Where were they that you managed to lose them? You don’t strike me as somebody who would lose something that important easily.”

“Hanging from my shirt. They were with me the entire time. A shocking plot twist, I know.”

“Thera…”

“I know, darling. You do not even have to say it.”

“You’re a dork, Thera.”

“Please, darling. It makes me feel funny things when you call me that.”

“I know. That’s why I have to always capitalize on it when the rare opportunity presents itself. Anyways, seriously this time, massage and explanation.”

Thera nodded and went over to the hot spring with me. Meanwhile, Meadow seemed content to listen to our conversation.

But I did feel a little weird from feeling her rear legs wiggling against my chest the entire time I talked. She needed to find a better spot to hide than in my shirt.