Chapter 179 – Unnecessary feelings
Noah listened to the Dryad Queen silently, nodding as if he understood any of what she explained about how Dryads weaved the dreams for these sleeping girls, integrating truths and traumatic experiences into it so that their subconsciousness would slowly adjust to comprehend the reality and accept it. In truth, by the end of her explanation, the words that flowed out of her mouth were more of a pleasant background noise or gentle music in the back of Noah's mind as he lost any sense of what she was telling him somewhere in the very beginning of her long monologue.
"So…what can I help with?" Asked Noah, sensing the Queen's magic science rumble coming to an end.
"Oh, yes! Forgive me! It has been such a long time since I held a conversation with anyone besides my daughters, that I forget myself in my ramble. So what I wanted to tell is that we can hold them as long as we deem them in danger, but we are not able to let the awakened ones stay here permanently. This place….Is not meant for this." Said Dryad Queen.
"I see." Said Noah, nodding. "I'll need to think about what to do with them from now on. I might need to go to the town for a day or two as well to make preparations. But before that, I would need to speak with the girls themselves. Is this possible?"
"They are quite apprehensive toward everything…male... right now, but I think having a talk with their savior is an exception." Said Dryad Queen.
"I see. In that case, I would like to go to the Palace to..." Said Noah but stopped as he heard Dahlia make a small cough as if attracting his attention.
"Khem…Master, you seem to be forgetting the time…" Softly mention Dahlia.
"Oh!" Said Noah glancing up at the treetops remembering the perpetual sunny day of the core forest. "Sorry. I keep forgetting this is not the real world but a separate dimension inside the Labyrinth. Having sky above your head instead of a rock cave kind of throws me off. The sky just looks so real." He said shaking his head in amusement.
"Why, thank you." Said Dryad Queen taking it as a personal compliment to the masterpiece of a space that she created.
"What time is it now?" Asked Noah.
"Middle of the night, Master." Said Dahlia.
"Everyone with an ability to dream…normally…would be asleep right now." Said Dryad Queen smiling, as she made an accent on the word 'normally'.
"Alright. I'll come to the Palace when they are awake. While I also have a chance to speak with you, Your Majesty, I wish to ask you to raise the difficulty of my training barrier."
"Done." Said Dryad Queen. "However, I think you might need to take a bit of a rest from training, Young Noah. Sometimes to achieve better results in training, what you need is to let your mind and body rest from these training sessions. Why don't you two go for a walk? Hunt some monsters in the Labyrinth. Do something that would help you…free your mind." Said Dryad Queen, throwing a glance at Dahlia.
"You might be right, Your Majesty. I do feel exhausted from constant training." Said Noah, nodding.
"Wonderful. Go prepare while I have a bit of chat with my daughter." Said Dryad Queen, smiling gently.
"Your Majesty." Said Noah bowing before walking off back to the tree that he was given as a guest house.
Dryad Queen and Dahlia stood in place following his departing figure with their gazes in silence, until they saw him exit the dome structure.
"What did you get me?" Aske Dryad Queen turning sharply to her daughter with an excited look on her face when Noah was gone
Dahlia rolled her eyes and took out a towel out of her pocket dimension. It was still wet from Noah's sweat when he cleaned himself with it earlier.
Dryad Queen quickly grabbed the towel with an impatient movement and pressed it to her face inhaling deeply.
"Aaaah…this male smell. I can see why all our daughters are so obsessed with it. The more he lives here eating only fruits and vegetables the more delicious his smell is."
"Maybe overly delicious for some of them. Even the fright of being enslaved not doing much to ostracize them these days. I feel that lately even when I call him Master in front of some sisters it makes them more excited instead of wary of him. We may need to change tactics to keep sisters away from him if he stays here any longer."
"Grab him then. Today would be the best opportunity." Said Dryad Queen with her eyes closed as she kept breathing through the towel while squirming with her legs.
"Mother…" Said Dahlia rolling her eyes.
"What?" Asked Dryad Queen, opening her eyes and glancing at her daughter with a raised eyebrow. "Don't spout me bullshit of not wanting him. Tell me how many orgasms you have to bring yourself to, to keep that stoic face in front of him?" She added a smile rising on her lips.
Dahlia kept her mouth shut but turned her eyes away with an uncomfortable expression on her face. "That… doesn't mean we should…." Muttered Dahlia her voice going weak.
"Ugh. You and your sisters are irritating! If it was me I would have birthed a few saplings for him already. What is wrong with the three of you? I thought that at least Zinnia or Aster would have been more proactive for sure. I get it that I misjudged his personality greatly. He is indeed a good man, and different from the usual simpletons. I sent you three to serve him thinking he would still hold a grudge and start abusing his power over you and force you three to lay with him. This was my failure to think of him as idiotic as any other man. But still, he is a man nonetheless. I don't believe he would just pass by the three of you if he had a chance. So what the fuck have you been three doing there if none of you still had her flower pollinated up till now? Do you want me to exchange you? Any of your sisters in this forest would grab at a chance, yet the three of you hesitate."
"We…we try, mother." Answered Dahlia bowing guiltily.
"Feelings. Is that what it is? I don't get it. If you like him it is only more reason to be proactive." Said Dryad Queen spreading her hands with a questioning expression. And saw her daughter silently gaze into the ground without answering.
"Dahlia, I get it. You don't want to ruin it. But understand it, please. Promises and words of humans mean nothing without any backup to hold them on. I need more than his word of promise if we ever need his help. We need insurance. You can make peace with him after you get what you need. Luckily you will have centuries to seek his forgiveness for this, but our fragile piece with humans may crumble any moment."
"You have other backup plans…" Muttered Dahlia.
"So did pixies. And where are they now?" Said Dryad Queen
"If we don't want to follow damn pixies into oblivion we need to make as many backup plans as we can get and this boy with his abilities has good potential. We can't let him slip away. Now go there and bear him some children or I'll do it myself!" Said Dryad Queen raising her voice in a command.
Dahlia silently nodded without lifting her gaze from the ground and walked away.
"I can't believe this." Said Dryad Queen sighing and shaking her head when Dahlia walked out of the dome. "Dryads that put feeling into the fucking. Should have sent someone else." She muttered with annoyance in her voice taking another sniff from the towel.
*****
Noah felt strangeness from Dryad Queen's behavior and peeking at her conversation with Dahlia might have given him some answers to his suspicions. However, as he kept reminding himself the Core Forest of The Great Tree Labyrinth where Dryads resided was not a real world. It had dream properties even though he and everyone within it were here with their real bodies.
In this regard, this place was very similar to his own mind realm. The problem was that his 'lock on view' skill could be used on real targets and inside this space it was countered by the properties of dream-like unnaturalness that were added to everyone inside this space as Ugy explained to Noah. In simple words, his greatest peeking skill did not work here.
He walked through the town reaching his small residence and pushed the door open entering into a wide trunk of a living tree as if it was a normal house. What met his view was an unnaturally big space The tree trunk may have been five to six people holding hands in circumference from the outside, but inside it could fit several rooms, bathrooms, furniture, and everything that could be found in any normal human house.
Dahlia once explained that every residence was a small space adjusted to the needs of the person living there. Meaning it was made to look this way for Noah's convenience and that Dryad's houses looked a lot different inside. She did not mention what they looked like, only adding that it would be inconvenient for a human to reside there. So while living with him under the same roof, she adjusted to his needs and resided in a human-like way, taking only one room as her private area and asking not to go there.
Dryads did not sleep, eat, or bathe, they used their private time to replenish their strength and body cells by taking sustenance from the soil when they connected with nature inside their residence. They had full control of their body which also implied that they had to take care of its growth and every natural process by themselves. This required some time without disturbances, thus the private residences. Noah suspected that there was more to the story, but did not press Dahlia for answers as he felt delving into the matter of their race's privacy.
However, Noah had a feeling that it had also something to do with their spiritual side of being. Dryads were not just sentient plants after all. If that was so they would be no different from monsters. Spiritual Beasts and beings were far from that. In some books he read it was said that they existed in both mortal and spiritual worlds at the same time and their physical forms were more of a representation of their spiritual being in the mortal world.
Anyway, this was a kind of a secret that only a handful besides Noah were able to get to as close as entering the Spiritual Beings core dimension.
Noah felt that allowing him to get here required a lot of trust on Dahlia's, and by default, all of Dryad's, side, and he did not wish to abuse it so he held his curiosity in check. That included making Ugy shut up every time he even just opened his mouth to list the pros and opportunities of sneaking a peek at Dahlia in her private time. Ugy found his feelings of righteousness unnecessary in this situation, but as Noah said, he could shut up with his opinion in this situation
Noah walked to the bathroom where a huge wooden pool filled with steamy water waited for him and started to undress.
"Let me help you with this, Master." Said Dahlia from behind him as she placed her hands on his, stopping him from removing his clothes.
"Dahlia!?" Exclaimed Noah with a startle swirling around but quickly turned back away as he saw the Dryad was standing completely naked.
"Wha…wha…whaaaat are." Started to stutter Noah.
"Shhh. Don't worry, Master. Just let me do my job." She whispered gently into his ear from behind as she slid her hand on his body, starting to slowly remove his clothes.