Chapter 65

I woke up the next morning leaning against Bella's shoulder. It had taken some time to get used to cuddling at night without constantly knocking our horns into each other but eventually we had both gotten pretty used to it. I haven't poked her with them at all lately! Mimi was currently hugging Bella from behind and also seemed to be asleep still.

I looked over and the twins were already up and chatting quietly on their bed. Morrigan noticed I had woken up and gently waved at me. I smiled and slid out of bed. I looked over at Bella who was still sleeping pretty peacefully. I hadn't felt particularly tired when I went to sleep last night but still managed to pass out pretty easily. My body doesn't really need sleep in the same way but I think it might stave off my arousal. I'm not positive about that though.

I peered down at Bella's sleeping curves. I haven't had a chance to sleep with her since we got the twins out of the slaver's guild, I think the only reason I wasn't craving it more strongly was because I have been a bit less physically active the last couple days. I suppose craving sex every day might be the weirder thing, I kind of got turned into a nymphomaniac. I'm just lucky it hasn't really interfered with much and I ran into Bella so early on. Getting [Sexual Appetite] to level 4 probably helped as well since it increases my total "pool" of sexual sustenance.

Morrigan turned to me. "Soooo, what's the plan today?"

"Well, I figured since I got to spend the day with you yesterday it might be a good idea for me to spend the day together with Torien this time," I said while turning to the catgirl.

This clearly caught Torien off guard. "Oh... uh, that sounds fine," she said while awkwardly looking over at her sister then back at me.

I laugh. "Don't look so confused. You're my party member and my friend, for the foreseeable future you're stuck with me. We should spend some time getting to know each other better. Besides, I think it'll do your sister some good spending some time alone with Bella. Let them get to know each other a bit more too."

Bella groggily sat up at the mention of her name, accidently waking up Mimi as well. Mimi seamlessly woke up and looked around, entirely unfazed about being woken up that way.

"Oh good, you two are awake. I was thinking I would go out with Torien today and the two of you could hang out with Morrigan."

Bella gently rubbed her eyes while waking up. That made me wonder if seemingly never needing to sleep is a me thing or a succubi thing because she usually looked pretty sleepy when she woke up. I shrugged to myself and decided to worry about it later.

Bella finally looked up. She had this cute bedhead look to her, despite looking half awake she still looked pretty. "That sounds good. I haven't had a chance to spend much time with Morrigan so that would be nice."

I looked over to the twins. I didn't want to dictate the terms of what we did every day to them, even though I could, either as party leader or owner so I decided to ask them about it. "Does that sound okay with you two?"

Morrigan rubbed her arm anxiously. "What about that thing we talked about yesterday?"

I smiled. "We can all talk about that tonight as a group." I looked over at Torien. "Unless you two still need to talk more about it, I don't want to rush things."

Torien shook her head. "We talked about that this morning before you woke up. I want my sister to follow her heart on this."

I nodded. "Good. Well either way I think we should talk about that in detail later tonight. For today, I think it's better that we split up and spend the day relaxing again. Once your new equipment is done we were talking about taking a trip to the capital."

Torien tilted her head. "The capital? Was there any particular reason? Since you were able to afford us I didn't think there was any need to go there any more."

Bella spoke up. "There is actually a book we have that we want to get examined there. We still do have some stuff we could sell there too and when we met with the guild master she said she would pay for the trip if Lilith promised to train in cartography there and came back afterwards."

Torien nodded. "I could see that, I thought Lilith's map looked pretty good. I didn't know whether or not she was trained in cartography but I guessed she may have been based on the final result I saw."

It felt a little good for everyone to compliment my map. But it also felt rather disconnected from me since I didn't actually remember learning and practicing art. Discounting the few times I drew in a sketchbook before we entered the dungeon anyway.

"Either way, it's good idea to relax for a few days before going on another trip so soon after exploring the dungeon. We're kind of stuck here till the guild clears and pays us as well."

We spent the next twenty minutes packing up our things and getting dressed. Morrigan lent Torien some clothes she got at the store yesterday but they honestly looked a little weird on her personality wise. She wore a ruffly baby blue blouse and a dark grey skirt. It looked rather out of character for the tomboyish girl. We prepaid for another night at the same inn and split up a few bells before noon, maybe about 10 a.m. by my best estimation.

Torien pretty confidently walked to my right. I was happy she didn't need as much easing into it as Morrigan did. I'm pretty sure she's just doing it for my benefit rather than hers but I still greatly appreciate the effort.

"So Torien, since you don't seem to be in love with your outfit, do you want to start by buying some clothes? I ended the day with Morrigan on that but I can't help but think you might prefer wearing something else," I said with a laugh.

"Gods please. I love my sister but I cannot stand her sense of fashion."

I took another look over her outfit. It actually was flattering on her, it was clearly more an issue of preference rather than fashion but I kept the thought to myself. Instead I led her to the same clothing store I took her sister to.

We spent a few hours there and only left once Torien realized that it was after noon once the bell rung. She clearly looked a bit guilty when I paid for her clothes but I honestly didn't even hesitate, we still have plenty of money and I wasn't going to worry about 10 silver here and there. Besides, I figured I would take her to the same fancy café from yesterday, that was a much bigger expense than buying these secondhand clothes. It was honestly some of the best food I have had in a while so I didn't mind the idea of having it again.

We were seated pretty quickly this time but it was still quite busy. I didn't really mind, I liked the ambience of this place. I looked over Torien's clothes. After we had bought her stuff she had changed to a pair of dark brown pants with something kind of like a tanktop, the cut was a bit different but it looked similar. While it gave her a pretty relaxed masculine look, it did show off how large her breasts were which honestly caught me a little off guard.

After we ordered I decided to break the ice. "So Torien, do you have any hobbies? Anything you like to do outside of adventuring?"

She leaned back in her chair. "Well... It's hard to say. I like practicing my archery and exercising but maybe that's too similar to adventuring work. Other than that not much really, just talking to my sister I guess.

"You enjoy being active then?"

"Hmm, I suppose you could say that. I don't really like sitting around and being bored, I like running, shooting, sneaking. I just like feeling my body move. Does that make sense?"

I nodded. "Perfect sense. Though wouldn't that make being a scout kind of boring? A lot of it is just sitting in trees and watching things right?"

"Well, you might think so. It probably looks like we're just sitting there but at least for me it's not boring. I'm focused on my surroundings, or my target, or being stealthy. It takes a lot of focus and concentration, there isn't any time to feel bored."

"Mmm okay. I get that I think. Do you enjoy exercising in general?"

"Well... it depends really. I like jogging and climbing a lot. Things like weight training and repetitive calisthenics are pretty boring," she said.

"Mmm, maybe you need more stimulation than that. Do you want to go for a jog outside the city after lunch then?"

She smiled. "That sounds like fun. Are we racing or just jogging?"

"I... was thinking we would just be jogging. Did you want to race?"

Her smile deepened into a grin. "Morrigan never likes to race me so I rarely get a chance to do stuff like that. It sounds like fun."

So it seems like Torien has a bit of a competitive streak. This isn't really my thing to be honest but it wouldn't hurt to indulge her on this. Even if I don't really care about the result it still sounds like it could be fun.

Hold on though... "What about stats? Wouldn't one of us having higher stats just invalidate the competition?"

"Wellllllll... maybe. We don't know each other's stats though so if one of us won through stats alone there wouldn't be any way of knowing unless we directly compared them. And while stats can directly change your body to process mana more effectively, there are a lot of differences in individuals. It can sometimes be hard to tell how much of something is stat influence and how much is just genuine skill. Something like mock battles would probably be better if we were trying to exercise on a more open playing field but this would just be for fun."

I shrugged. "Well if you would enjoy it, I don't mind racing you."

Torien smiled and we hurried to finish our food. Rather than go straight out of town we stopped back by the inn to drop off her new clothes. Mimi was still out with the other two girls so we just left them in the room for now. It was fine, it's not like all of her clothes were really that expensive or anything.

The area outside of town was still a bit dangerous so I had to go jogging with my two-handed sword on my back. I left my sword belt and empty sheath in the room since I wasn't carrying Mimi around today anyway. Mimi hitched a ride with Bella as a necklace this time I think. It might have seemed like an unfair disadvantage but I didn't really feel the weight much anyway. The sword was large and somewhat unwieldly sure, but with 50 strength it didn't really faze me much and Torien would be bringing her bow and arrow quiver too.

There was a fairly common trail near the city that tended not to have many monsters nearby. It was so often patrolled by adventures that local monsters had learned to avoid the area. Since we weren't really doing any hardcore training we decided to have our little competition here.

I was stretching when I looked over to Torien. "So, are we going to wager anything or is this just going to be for fun?" I asked.

"A wager huh? I'm not sure, did you have anything in mind?"

I could kind of read between the lines from her response that she didn't really know what she would be allowed to ask for. Even if she wasn't trying to be deferential like a slave would, she didn't really know how far her standing went in my mind. We were still working things out so that is kind of expected.

"How about a favor? Winner can ask the other for anything they want within reason. Something you want or want to do that the other tries to make happen. Favors can be refused if it's something they aren't comfortable with of course but no refusing favors if you just don't feel like doing something, that would defeat the purpose. No sexual favors though, I'm not comfortable betting for something like that and I doubt you would be either."

She nodded. "Sounds fine to me. If I win I'd have to think about what I want anyway so this makes it easier."

"Perfect, so this trail basically goes right around the city, the first one to make it completely around the city and back to this spot first wins. Sound fair?"

"Yeah, lets go." I could tell Torien was brimming with energy. Competition wasn't really my thing but I couldn't deny that it made Torien happy, adding a wager only seemed to enhance it further. I better be careful if we ever encounter gambling, I'm not sure how she would react to that yet, haha.

"Okay, we'll start at this line. On go, ready, set, GO!"