Chapter 38

I grunted in frustration as Veronica set her training sword back on her shoulder.

I had maxed out base stats, and pretty much nobody else had that until either Level 10 or the age of 40. As such, I was objectively stronger, faster, and nimbler than Veronica. When combined with the fact that I'd learn faster than her, I thought that these sparring matches would be an exercise in me humoring her.

What was actually happening, however, was that Veronica demonstrated that four years of formal training in the Delver's Guild sword arts was very much enough to beat two months of informal training, even if those two months were done with maxed out Affinity Stats for maximum learning speed.

"You're good," I grudgingly admitted.

"You fight like a madwoman," Veronica replied simply. "Again."

Swords clashed once more, and while I was getting better, I was not getting better fast enough to even catch up with Veronica; not before she had gotten enough exercise out of me to max out her own Body Stats, and obviate my one advantage.

"These training swords are well-made," she said, pulling back after having jabbed me in the kidney. "What is this material?"

"Plastic," I said. "It's a bit stronger and lighter than wood, and it can be melted and cast like bronze. There're some enchantments on it, to make it handle even more like a real sword, get the right weight, and add in some selective edge bite so that they don't slide against each other- real swords don't do that, after all."

"My compliments to the artificer," she said. "One more bout?"

"Let's go," I said, rolling my shoulders.

She still kicked my ass, this time; I was good enough to recognize what could be an opening in her defenses, and to try to attack those, but I was not good enough to do that accurately, and she was very much quite capable of feinting an opening to lure me into the wrong move and opening myself up to a decisive counterattack. The difference between this time and the last seventeen spars was that, this time, I'd managed to recover from overextending, and successfully block her riposte, before getting nailed in our next exchange.

But, thankfully, after only a half hour of sparring, Veronica took pity on me, and called it there for the day. We would probably be doing some more sparring over the weekend, but for Friday evening, she was more willing to pretend she was going to relax and take it easy.

"You did better than you think," Veronica said, setting her practice sword in the sword rack. "I haven't had a spar like that in rather a while, and I'd gotten a touch rusty at dealing with particularly aggressive opponents. Something that wouldn't happen if I'd been properly delving, rather than learning in a classroom, but... alas, I do not control how the Delver's Guild trains its novices."

I grunted, and pulled a towel out of my inventory, wiping away the sweat on my forehead, before producing a second one and tossing it to Veronica.

"Thank you," she said, dabbing away the sweat on her own forehead. At least I could make her sweat...

She then unbuttoned her gambeson, which got my attention; once parted, it revealed a tight-fitting white t-shirt, whose armpits had saturated with sweat, that she dabbed at with the towel and fanned with her free hand. More fascinating to me than the sweaty pits, however, was the fact that her chest had a more noticeable bulge through the t-shirt, now that the padding and possible compression of the gambeson was out of the way. If that bulge was accurate, she was nothing special- a bit bustier than Cass, my old alpha coworker down at the docks, but not the biggest I'd seen on an alpha besides myself.

"...Can I help you?" Veronica asked, looking up and noticing I was staring.

"Sorry, I was staring at your boobs," I said. "This is the first time I've seen them without a gambeson in the way."

Veronica blushed, and went back to dabbing away sweat with her towel.

"Anyhow," I said, "you're probably going to want to properly clean up after all that sweat and exercise, not just towel off."

Veronica looked at me once more, then narrowed her eyes.

"You want to see me naked," she said.

"I also want an excuse to touch your naked body, with the nominal guise of helping you clean up," I said. "Obviously, you can bathe without my help, but..."

"Well, far be it for me to reject help when it is offered," Veronica said, tossing her towel aside. "I assume this will be a typical rag-and-bucket affair?"

"Might as well be," I said with a shrug. I had, in my time living here, actually never really looked that deeply into how people who weren't some flavor of Mage cleaned themselves up; [Magic Trick] could be used to remove sweat and dirt from the caster's clothes and body, and I just cast it all the time, until I could do so with nothing more than a thought even at Level 1. Still, I wasn't unfamiliar with bathing options besides showers, and the sponge bath that Veronica referred to- except from the context of someone who'd probably never encountered a sponge before- wasn't exactly rocket science.

I produced a tin bucket, a white washcloth, and a bar of soap from my inventory. A quick [Conjure Water] filled the bucket with pure water, and I dipped the washcloth into it.

"Help me undress?" Veronica asked, a deeply unsubtle smile on her face to make it clear she knew exactly what she was doing.

"Well, if you insist," I said, leaving the rag to soak as I stood up and approached her.

I slipped my hands under her gambeson's lapels and onto her shoulders- noting briefly that her gambeson was double-breasted, putting two layers of thickly-padded quilted fabric over her front- before sliding them down, working the sleeves down her arms until the padded jacket finally came free and fell to the floor. With her arms (mostly) bare, I could see quite clearly that, yep, Veronica was fucking jacked, her muscles thick and well-defined, almost more like a bodybuilder than anything.

But, while I wasn't afraid of muscles on a woman, they weren't what got me going, so I didn't pause to appreciate them. As I pulled up the hem of her clingy white t-shirt- brushing my hand against pale skin glistening with sweat as I did so- I did get a good view of her well-defined abs, but the real prize, as far as I was concerned, was a bit higher up, as her shirt came up and over a black sports bra, much like Akane's. In fact, almost exactly like Akane's- it occurred to me that the Delver's Guild probably had the crafters on-hand to standard-issue sports bras to its initiates.

As I pulled her shirt up and over her head- Veronica lifting her arms in the process- I didn't bother taking my eyes away from those tits, which- though it may have been a trick of the eye- certainly looked a bit bigger now that the tight, clingy shirt was out of the way.

Well. One last garment, before we see how big she really is.

I tossed Veronica's t-shirt onto the pile with her gambeson, and put my hands on her sides, just below the hem of her sports bra.

"Ready?" I asked.

She nodded, and I pressed onward, lifting the fabric from the bottom up. And up... and up.

After a few more seconds than I thought it would take, her tits finally popped free from their fabric confines, and my jaw dropped along with them.

Akane was my usual benchmark for comparison, when I wanted to think about how big someone's boobs were. After all, I lived with Akane and saw those boobs rather a lot, but more than that, Akane's head-sized rack was the most magnificently fat pair I'd yet laid eyes on in this world.

Until now.

Veronica Vega was fucking stacked. They were undeniably the size of her head, possibly even bigger, and they bounced with a weighty softness to them that fried my horny brain like a fork in a toaster.

And here I was, about to help wash them.

"Do you like them?" Veronica asked, quietly.

"I love them," I whispered.

"Good, I was hoping-" Veronica began, before her breath hitched, and she tried, a little unsuccessfully, to bite back a moan.

"So, I don't mean to be pushy," I said, jiggling and squeezing her tits in my hands, "but how feasible is it for you to, say, move in with me, so I can play with these things every day?"

"I- it's-" She inhaled sharply, and I paused, letting her calm down and gather her thoughts. "...My mother does expect me to move out, once I have found a delving party, and provided you are in that delving party..."

"Gotcha, gotcha," I said, before resuming my fondling. "God, that sports bra must be really enchanted, if it can keep these things from sweating up a storm."

"It- ahh, it's... nice..." Veronica said, before biting her lower lip. "Nnnh. The... the bath?"

"Right, right, forgot I had a reason for feeling you up," I said, letting go of her tits. "First thing's first, though..." I grabbed the waistband of her tights, and pulled down.

It turned out that, much like the rest of her clothing, her tights were also hiding a cornucopia of curves from me; those hips of hers went from 'kinda wide for an alpha' to 'child-bearing' with eight inches of moved fabric, and her ass grew to match, though it retained its tautly round shape. Her thighs, too, were thick, with an intoxicating mixture of muscle and fat, unlike the bodybuilder's biceps up above.

And finally, what some would argue was the most important piece of an alpha: her dick.

She was, to put it bluntly, hung. She was also, to my amusement but not my surprise, hard as a rock, her cock standing fully erect and twitching with need.

"...You know what?" I muttered, standing up after I'd gotten those tights over Veronica's ankles and off her legs. "Let's see who is bigger."

"Oh my god," Veronica murmured, watching me fish out my own boner. "...Oh my god," she repeated, her tone less 'mildly exasperated' and more 'genuinely reverent.'

"Let's see here," I said, pressing the side of my shaft against hers, before slowly sliding forward, to see whose tip ran out of space first. With barely a half inch between her cock and my pelvis left, my own dick finally bumped against Veronica's hip, and I looked up to grin at her. "Yep. Mine is bigger."

"...May I please have that inside me?" Nicky asked, quietly.

I chuckled. "Y'know what? Sure thing."