Chapter 63

I walked over to Mimi. "So any luck learning to concentrate mana like Morrigan does?"

"It's difficult but I think I'm getting the hang of it! I don't think I'll be able to do much with it yet though."

"How about you Lilith? Our conversation did kind of lead away from your new spell."

"Yeah, I should probably get back to practicing really."

I walked a bit away from them and cast the fire ritual again using my new skill. Rather than drawing it out like I had with [Light Signal] writing out the pieces of the ritual using the 'animated' style started to come naturally, though now it seemed to require just some prior visualization instead of repeated practice. I used [Light Scribing] to cast a wind breeze ritual a few times. The first time took something like 10 seconds to cast but after only a few usages, they quickly became a lot faster, down to like 5 or 6 seconds. I was still able to do the fire ritual even faster than the other ones but I had practiced that one in particular quite a lot. Seeing as I hadn't ever cast the wind breeze ritual before getting my new spell, it was clearly a lot better than using [Light Signal] for the same purpose like I had been.

I tried out a few other rituals but other than just being able to cast the rituals I knew faster, not much changed. I just didn't have enough knowledge about rituals yet. I had a slice of useful beginner rituals but other than a few commonalities between them, I didn't know how they worked or why. Why did some of the rituals use pictograph-like hieroglyphics and others had random geometric symbols? Why does magic 'respond' to the symbols at all? Are rituals that require candles and blood a different thing? or do they work on the same unknown principals? Are the common symbols across multiple rituals some kind of formula I can separate and build from or are they arbitrary and specific to each?

I walked back over to Morrigan. "Do you know much about rituals?"

"Not really, no. Other than a few rituals most people would know I never really studied them much. I use wild magic, its biggest advantage is its versatility. Ritual magic is like the opposite of what I can do so I never really bothered with it."

"What led you to learn wild magic rather than a more traditional kind? From the way you've talked about it, it doesn't sound like it's super common."

Morrigan hesitated. "I... Well, I have some kind of issue that greatly limits my mana capacity. I am just not able to cast most magic from the limited pool of mana I have." She looks at the ground. "Since I was really young, magic always interested me, I found it interesting, fascinating. When we first started our training they taught me even more about magic, they thought I would be intelligent and passionate enough to become a valuable mage. By the time they realized I had a basically non-existent mana capacity, they had already invested a ton of money in my education. They had me seen by a bunch of different people to see if there was any specific cause they could fix. But for whatever reason I just have an abnormally small pool of mana to draw from. None of the people that examined me could find any particular reason for it.

She looked over to Mimi who had sat down in the grass, listening to her story. "Wild casting is a relatively advanced technique. It's difficult because it basically requires mana sight or a similar skill and a lot of practice learning to condense mana to use properly. I think ultimately my trainers were relieved that I became so focused on learning this technique. They were on the knife's edge of wasting a lot of money and resources teaching me, if I had been even half as interested in magic it might have been impossible to make me focus enough to actually learn these techniques... It was a rather difficult time."

She turned back to me, a smile on her face. "In some ways there are things I can't do well but on the whole I'm definitely better off. I don't always have the best tool for the job but in exchange I have access to a huge variety of magic, my casting is generally a lot faster than other mages, and I typically understand mana and spell-forming better than most people. Especially ones around my level of power and control." She suddenly looked extremely determined. "I promise I will not let you down and prove how valuable of an investment I was." She finished with a bow.

I felt my gut squirm. I laid my hand on Morrigan's shoulder and gently pulled her back up, I leaned forward and looked her in the eyes. "Morrigan, I didn't buy you because you were an investment, I brought you with me because I want to be your friend. I care about you and I want you to be happy."

Morrigan flushed red and before I knew what was happening she pulled me into a kiss. My eyes opened wide with surprise. I knew she was interested in me, I'd have to be dumb to have missed it at his point, but I didn't expect for her to just kiss me like this.

I gently pushed her away from me. I didn't feel comfortable escalating this right after she told me she'd make sure to make my investment worthwhile. If felt dehumanizing and I didn't like it. When I looked at her face, her eyes were wide and her mouth hung open like she'd been slapped. I felt really bad seeing her like this, like I had rejected her.

"Lil- Lilith! I'm sorry! Bella and... I-I didn't mean to, I thought... I'm sorry!"

I quickly pulled her back into a hug and put my hand on her back, I could feel her heart racing. "Relax, I'm not mad. Don't worry, just relax." I gave her a moment to catch her breath and slow her heart rate but unfortunately she went from hot embarrassment to quiet crying.

When she had calmed down a bit I pulled her away from me and pulled her to sit next to me on the ground.

"Listen Morrigan. I'm not mad at you, I didn't reject you because I already have Bella. In fact, she kinda gave me the go ahead, but we can talk about that later. It just made me really uncomfortable for you to throw yourself at me after hearing you objectify yourself. I don't want you to fall in love with me because I treat you like a person. That's like borderline Stockholm syndrome shit."

"Stockholm syndrome?" she asked in a quiet voice.

I sighed. "Not important. Look." I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts. "I like you, you're great. I do want to have a relationship with you and Bella. Torien too if she's interested."

"What about me?" Mimi piped in.

I smiled at the Mimic. "You too of course," I said before turning back to Morrigan.

"But I want to do it under the pretense that we're equals. I know that because of how things work here that's not actually possible but I don't want this kind of relationship with you unless you're confident enough to say no to me. To tell me if you don't like something. To not fear that if you do say no to me, I wouldn't sell you away or worse. Do you understand?"

"Do... do you mean it?"

"Mean what?" I asked.

"You would... you would accept me if I treat you like an equal?"

I sighed again. I could kind of see where this was going but I don't think I can keep her off this track for much longer.

"Yes, I would accept you. BUT! There are a few stipulations, conditions. These are kind of non-negotiable, especially the first part. If we were to do this, you wouldn't just be dating me, you would be dating me and Bella. The two of us already talked about this and she is interested too. Since you know her circumstances, it makes things easier. Oh, but dating her too doesn't mean you have to do anything you don't want to, if you don't want her to use her penis on you, that's okay. For the second part—"

"She still has it?" Morrigan quickly asked.

"Oh, um. Yeah. She used magic so she wouldn't have it in the bath but normally she still has it."

Fuck, I didn't realize Bella hadn't said that part. ...Maybe it's fine in this case though. I'll have to talk to her about that later.

I cleared my throat. "Anyway, the second part. I told you a little bit about [Sexual Appetite] but one of its features is that it gets more powerful the more... unique partners we have. That means you would have to be mostly okay with us having sex outside of the relationship. We can talk about it on a case by case basis and we'll agree to let you veto specific people, but ultimately Bella and I have agreed that it's for the best that we sleep around at least a little bit. You'd have to be okay with that too or it will make things a lot more complicated."

"Will I, um, have to do that as well?"

"No," I replied instantly. "You wouldn't have to participate with others or do anything you're not comfortable with."

"What if I... would I be allowed to do that too?" Morrigan looked away with a blush.

I was honestly a little surprised by the question. I hadn't thought she would be interested. "Of course. If there's someone any of the three of us want to have sex with we'd talk about it. If any of us want to veto anyone we would have a conversation about that too. But the idea would be for all of us to have our core relationship together and have sex with others on a case by case basis."

"...I think I'd be okay with that."

"Alright. But first, I want for you to wait till at least tomorrow to make a decision. Think about all of this and we can all talk about this together tomorrow. If you still want to do this and you've made up your mind then we'll go from there. Sound good?"

Morrigan sniffed and wiped the tears from her eyes before giving me a cute smile. "Yeah, okay. We'll talk again tomorrow." She looked at the ground but the smile hadn't left her face. "Thanks Lilith."

I pulled her into a hug. "No problem cutie." I looked over to Mimi and held an arm out. "You too, come give us a hug."

Mimi smiled a bright smile and joined the hug, wrapping around the two of us.

I leaned into the hug and relaxed, happy that I got past that drama without any major issues.

"Lilith?" Morrigan murmured.

"Yes?"

"Does that include Mimi too? As in, three girlfriends for the price of one?"

I laughed before pulling back and looking over at Mimi. "I'm not sure. I don't think we've said anything official about it but Mimi's joined us once."

Morrigan gasped before she looked over at Mimi with a smile, "You mean you, the three of you did it already? How did it work?" Morrigan was now blushing despite her excitement and I saw her shoot a quick glance at Mimi's naked black shaft between her legs.

"It was really fun! Exhausting though! Bella just kept pushing into me over and over and then when Lilith got behind her it kept throbbing so much I couldn't even think straight! I kept climaxing over and over and then—"

My face was burning with embarrassment, I quickly grabbed Mimi's muzzle and cut her off. "Okay okay, enough of that Mimi. Here's a social lesson, that kinda talk is really embarrassing."

Mimi just cutely tilted her head but didn't resist me holding her muzzle. I looked over to Morrigan who was playing with her tail, trying not to look as embarrassed as I felt. It wasn't working, her face was nearly as red as a tomato.

I stood up and coughed. "Already guys, lets go back to town. I think it's time for lunch."