Chapter 53

Cecilia

"...Well, hello there," a bunnygirl in a robe that struggled to contain her mommy milkers and a necklace that eagerly drew attention to them said. "Come on inside, darling. What can I get for you?"

"I'm Cecilia Ironborn," Cecilia said, indulging in a touch of boobstaring. "Is this where Roxy Updyke lives?"

"It is, yes," the bunnygirl said, straightening up and stepping back. "I've heard about you, and the help you've given Roxy. Come in, and be welcome in my home. My name is Usagi Sakurai."

Cecilia stepped inside, and drank in the sight of... honestly, a pretty normal apartment. It was exceptional only in that a Mystic Artificer lived here, and had a layer of spatial expansion poured on top. The furniture was plain and worn, but in good repair- likely a Blacksmith lived here, too, or someone who did woodwork with their own hands.

"You're here to visit Roxy, I take it?" Usagi asked.

"Mhm," Cecilia said, nodding. "She should've hit Level 5 by now, but... well, she's probably been busy with a crafting binge now that she can enchant her own gear. I wanted to check up on her, and maybe see what she'd been crafting." It'd been three days since Roxy's last recorded delve, and Cecilia reckoned that was long enough to deal with any truly urgent business that might've been raised in the process.

Roxy had an interesting approach to pretty much everything, but crafting especially. It was something that Cecilia liked; Roxy was a genuine novelty, with a unique perspective that brought out all sorts of unique innovations, like her auto-miners. An enchantment that directly mimicked the Miner class feature of spending magic to mine ore would've been incredibly magic-hungry, and been useful only to a high-level caster. Roxy, though, knew a few things about gears and cranks and levers- which were not typically all that interesting to anyone, when magic could do the work easier- and somehow devised a mechanism that used a turning axle to lift and drop a hammer onto the Resource Node, simulating the physical act of mining, while consuming basically zero magic.

It honestly wasn't that complicated; a child could look at the mechanism and intuit how it worked. And yet, it simply hadn't occurred to anyone to do it this way, and... unfortunately, Cecilia suspected she knew precisely why:

What Roxy had made there was a labor-saving device, a response to being resource-constrained, and the main class of people who could afford to spend time inventing new tools instead of just iteratively improving old ones were people who had long since lost any meaningful resource constraints.

What obvious innovations were out there, what low-hanging fruit were left to be plucked, and had yet to be discovered because it had simply never occurred to anyone that they might exist?

Well.

Roxy probably knew. Roxy, a deeply curious and intelligent woman, probably contained within herself the seeds of countless new fields of inquiry, of such depth and breadth and obvious utility that Cecilia could live as long as an elf and still never get bored.

So, Cecilia would nurture Roxy's talents. She'd do whatever it took to ensure that her muse never met an insurmountable roadblock, and gave to her and the rest of the world every last idea she could possibly give.

The door to Roxy's (well, presumably) bedroom opened. "Come in," Roxy called from inside, and Cecilia complied.

"Well, this is a hell of a workshop," Cecilia said, looking around at what clearly used to be Roxy's bedroom. "Who's this?"

"My new familiar, Lisa," Roxy said, nose-deep in some project or other. "She's a kitsune, it turns out, but keep that one under your hat."

Lisa, a busty foxgirl wearing a collar and what looked like black bodypaint that did nothing to hide how perky her nipples were or how big her dick was, waved at Cecilia from her cozy little nest at Roxy's feet, making it clear she considered herself a pet.

"...You have some insane luck," Cecilia noted. "But... I can understand the desire for privacy. May I ask what you've been working on?"

"Ranching stuff, mainly," Roxy said. "I didn't just get a kitsune out of that last delve; I also got myself a bunnygirl and an elf, both with perfect stats and Traits. So... since I live with a Rancher, I decided I might as well start breeding them. Elves aren't too common outside of their enclaves, so I think a breeding population of unawakened elves might be nice to have."

"I see," Cecilia said. "Any intention to make more kitsune too, or...?"

"I could be persuaded," Lisa said.

"It's a possibility," Roxy said. "No promises on when, though."

"Preferably before I die of old age," Cecilia said. "I'd like a kitsune familiar for myself, if that could be managed."

"Fair enough," Roxy said, lifting her head up, seemingly done with whatever project she'd been working on.

"So what's that?" Cecilia asked, gesturing towards Roxy's latest thingy.

"It's... complicated." Roxy sighed. "Look, there's something I've been keeping from you, and I'd like to stop doing that, but I also need you to keep it from everyone else, and you're a scholar so that might be an unreasonable ask for you-"

"My lips are sealed," Cecilia said, fully meaning it. "You've earned enough of my trust for me to keep things out of the academic journals on your behalf. What's up?"

"I have a forgotten, legendary class called Incubus," Roxy admitted. "It has unlocked a lot of interesting synergies, most notably with Alchemist. I can take the milk and cum of monstergirls and refine those into a potion that permanently grants one of the traits of those monstergirls. I've brewed potions of Long Life 3, Extra Class Slot 3, and Inherent Class: Trickster, among other, somewhat less interesting Traits. I've got the Trickster class, and so will any children I have, and I've also got the lifespan and Class Slots of a Carmine Elf. So... Yeah. I took Rancher, and Blacksmith, and what I'm working on here is a machine that turns leather into enchanted collars that will automagically milk the monstergirl wearing it, feeding some of the milk back into the monstergirl's mouth so I don't have to feed 'em real food and piping the leftovers to a central storage unit. I'm doing this because I want to automate being a Rancher as much as possible, and this is how I've decided to do it. Unfortunately, it drinks magic like water, and I can't figure out how to make it use less magic and still work."

"...I see," Cecilia said, her brain having fully short-circuited. "Well, I can help with the efficiency problem or just dump all my magic into that thing if you'd like. Can I get some of those potions myself, please?"

"Of course," Roxy said, nodding. "I'll admit, I'm not totally sure what gaining the Long Life 3 Trait at the age of 55 would do for your lifespan, but... I mean, it's hardly like it can kill you, right?"

"That's a good point," Cecilia noted. "I'm no spring hen, after all."

"Best case scenario, the System is naively programmed, and your lifespan number just goes from seventy to five hundred," Roxy said. "Worst case, it does that, recalculates how old you should look, and then turns you back into a teenager."

"Really? That's worse than me only getting a fifth of what I could've had if you'd gotten here a few decades earlier?"

"Well, no, but I do like older women, and I do aspire to one day have sex with you."

Cecilia considered this carefully, and then, after a few seconds of particularly lusty flashbacks to Roxy going up her shirt in the warehouse, Cecilia grabbed the hem of her top and pulled it up and over her head, before tossing it aside.

"Well, what're we waiting for?" Cecilia asked, as she took off her shorts. "You don't look busy."

"My girlfriend, Akane-"

"I thought you two weren't dating."

"We started after I kissed you, and I didn't think to mention it to you. Anyway, she wants to have a threesome with you, and if we get started without her, she'd be sad. She'd get over it, especially if she still got to fuck you, but still."

"Well, fair enough," Cecilia said. "How quick can she get here?"

"It'll be five minutes," Roxy said, her phone already out and a text already sent to Akane- the way Roxy wrote text messages was deeply strange to Cecilia, but presumably she'd explain herself at some point. "In the meantime... Can I interest you in some more exposition?"

"Hit me," Cecilia said, grabbing a nearby chair and sitting down, rather than putting her clothes back on. The way Roxy struggled to keep her eyes off Cecilia's tits was deeply enjoyable, and the way her pet was eyeing Cecilia's cock with hunger and lust wasn't half bad, either.

"So, Incubus is only half of it," Roxy said. "There's a similar class called Succubus, which I can give to people by cumming inside them. And, well-"

"I'd like to have that class, yes," Cecilia said primly. "I would love to have more avenues of research, even if you're not ready to make them known yet."

"Fair enough," Roxy said. "It also comes with sex magic, and if you decide to join my ever-expanding harem, you're going to have ample practice with the bedspread of pillow princesses I've gathered around me. Somehow."

"It's because you're an interesting person and I'm glad I know you," Cecilia said. "I can't say why it is for the others, though. Maybe they just think you're hot and good in bed."

"She fucking railed my brains out in the first ten minutes we knew each other," Lisa said. "She is very good at what she does."

"That's the Incubus sex magic," Roxy said dismissively.

"And? You're a Wizard- are you gonna tell me it doesn't count whenever you cast a spell?"

"The point is that your partner cums so hard they forget how to talk," Cecilia said. "How you accomplish that is strictly secondary."

"Alright, alright," Roxy said, rolling her eyes.

The door burst open, and then slammed close a moment later. Between those two instants, Akane Sakurai had rushed into the room, saw Cecilia naked, and disappeared her own clothing into her inventory. (Not exactly, admittedly; Akane had shut the door before stripping naked.)

"Oh hey, Akane," Roxy said dryly. "You seem excited."

"Threesome?" Akane asked, looking between Roxy and Cecilia.

"Threesome," Cecilia said, standing up. "Maybe more- is your pet gonna join us?"

"Nah, I'd make the logistics tricky for no good reason," Lisa said. "Plus, I don't know you, and Roxy put me in a jumpsuit that automatically fucks me whenever she wants, s- aaaahn!"

"She's occupied," Roxy said, standing up. "So, Cecilia. You ready?"

"Let's go."