5.01 – Welcome Back

With everything they’d learned, a long discussion on future plans was in order. Fortunately, the many-hour trek back to Treyhull afforded them plenty of time to do so.

Zoey, Rosalie, and Delta trailed far behind their guide, who stalwartly forged ahead, in order to buy some privacy for what were obviously rather sensitive discussions. Yelling about the end of the world to some random Fractures guide would hardly result in anything truly bad happening, if Zoey had to guess, simply because they’d be thought insane, but still, by principle it was the sort of thing they ought to keep close to their chests.

“First order of business,” Zoey said. “Are we staying in Treyhull, or heading straight to Mantle?”

They’d initially planned on staying in the treehouse city for a while longer, but with looming threats like the ‘cum vampire’—Delta’s term had unfortunately stuck—they’d picked up in their shadows, and her and her people’s—if there were indeed many, rather than just the one—inscrutable goals in this world, it might be time to accept their vacation had cut off early, and that heading for Mantle straight away was the better plan.

“It’s complicated,” Rosalie sighed. “There’s obvious reasons to do so. This isn’t something that can be treated lightly. Shards decaying? Items unlinking from whatever system they operate on? A fundamental breakdown of how our world works is horrifying. News of that does need to be brought to those who can best handle it.”

“But there’s also selfish reasons not to rush to Mantle,” Zoey finished for her. “There’s Maddy, Sabina, and you—you still want to get to fourth advancement before returning home.”

Delta snorted. “Gotta show off. Return home the hero.”

Rosalie flushed, and Zoey was amused to see that there might have been more truth in that than statement than even Zoey had expected. “It’s not that simple,” Rosalie said. “It’d be a demonstration of Zoey’s usefulness. My family is … difficult. Having proof of significant progress will smooth over any compunctions they have with my choice of teammates.”

“So it’s only a bit about the ego,” Delta grinned. “Well, that’ll help with Zoey, then. What about me?”

“What about you?”

“Yeah, you’re right. Don’t need anything special. I’m great with parents. They’ll love me.”

By Rosalie’s expression, her raised eyebrows and vague amusement, Zoey could tell that probably wasn’t going to be true. Delta had a certain charm to her, but one that would mesh in whatever high society Rosalie came from? That was yet to be seen.

“It comes down to how urgent all this is, I guess,” Delta said. “Can we afford to put it off for another week?”

“No way of knowing,” Zoey said. That was the big problem. “But from the sounds of it, this isn’t something brand new. It’s not a horrendous rush.”

“Hopefully,” Rosalie said, still chewing over the real answer to the question—what their plans would be.

“Wish our friend would come and fill us in,” Delta said loudly into the air, pointedly glaring at random places in the distance. “We’d pay handsomely for the information. Well, Zoey would.” Her fox-tail swished in amusement as she smirked at Zoey.

Unfortunately, their attempts to bait their visitor out had been fruitless. She wasn’t even a hundred percent positive that the vampire was following them at all. Only an itching paranoia that they were being watched suggested Mel’s bait had worked. She’d check using a dream potion later. Still, Delta seemed more than happy to tease the invisible spectator with bribes of Zoey’s cum.

Though the foxgirl actually seemed somewhat miffed she wasn’t taking them up on their offer. Not just because they did need the information on what was going on, but because Delta wanted to, at a guess, have some fun with her. To be fair, so did Zoey—the quick glimpse she’d caught when Mel had baited her out had set a good impression. Plus, a woman who seemed to literally get drunk on cum? That sounded like a good time.

Like usual, though, the bait failed, and so the conversation continued with only a short lull. They’d have to come up with something smarter to draw her out—or maybe they just needed to wait for her to get hungry enough.

“I guess that maybe it’s not treating this with due urgency,” Rosalie said, “but another week to properly convince Maddy, for you to work on your combat readiness, and to charge your experience boost so I can hopefully hit fourth advancement on the last shard before leaving for Mantle.”

“That thing’s really so amazing,” Delta sighed suddenly. “I can’t believe I hit third advancement from a first level shard. Barely did anything down there. You’ve convinced me about the goddess stuff—no way a normal class could be that strong.”

“And we can maybe have Fe look into the broken item?” Zoey asked. “Or is that a bad idea?”

Rosalie frowned. “I think it’s better we have my family’s connections handle that.”

“Fe’s trustworthy,” Delta disagreed. “And it’s a week of wasted time otherwise. Maybe it’ll break entirely if we wait.”

Rosalie pursed her lips, but clearly couldn’t disagree with the second half—though Zoey sensed she disagreed at least partially with the first. “We’ll let her look at it,” Rosalie conceded, “but spare her the full details.”

“That the world’s ending? Yeah, didn’t plan on it.”

“So we’ll spend one more week sorting our business out,” Zoey said. “Not rush to Mantle.”

“I think it’s better if we draw the vampire out, anyway,” Rosalie said. “If a week passes and she’s still staying hidden, then we’ll have no choice. But dealing with that mess here, rather than at Mantle, is vastly preferable.”

“That’s the plan, then.”

Check out the item, deal with the vampire, and handle other mundane business—Maddy, Sabina, and continuing to train.

***

They arrived early the next morning to Treyhull. After getting rooms at the Guild, they went straight to Fe. Beyond the broken item being one of their only clues into what might be happening to this world, and thus the most urgent, it was also time-restricted—even a brilliant woman like Fe would need some days to carefully experiment with such a bizarre piece of equipment.

The sheepgirl was, naturally, aghast. The mangled insertion of information that came with [Inspect] was effectively an eldritch horror to locals of this world, Zoey could infer from Rosalie and Delta’s reactions, and the effect seemed twice as pronounced on Fe, who studied artifacts for a living.

Fortunately, it wasn’t just horror, but an equal amount of fascination. Fe practically begged to study it, all fees waived. Zoey made sure to emphasize that it was dangerous, and that they really didn’t know what was going on with it, but it was a pointless warning—Fe seemed practically offended to be told that, with how glaringly obvious the item’s instability was.

In terms of filling Fe in, they only told her they suspected something strange was going on with the item’s energy—that it might have been drained or distorted by some powerful force. Fe questioned them on that, but after some deflection, could tell they were hiding things, and while curious, didn’t press. She promised to keep the item a secret and to study it carefully.

She inquired over any regular items they might have found, but unfortunately, this hadn’t been that kind of trip. They hadn’t wanted to spend more time in the broken shard than necessary—it was clearly unstable, and any items that came from there would be suspect.

Zoey hadn’t even followed through on gathering alchemy ingredients, like the vines’ aphrodisiac, because of her worry. Though maybe further research specimens for Fe and Sabina to pour over would have been useful. Regardless, they’d been eager to get out of there. Mel needed to start repairing herself, and they’d had a vampire they’d wanted to bait out of the shard as soon as possible.

After handling the item, the squad of three broke up to handle their own respective businesses. Despite the craziness of the past day, it seemed they would be reverting to their previous schedule. Zoey was admittedly concerned about the lack of urgency, but they were certainly planning on handling the issues that had cropped up, and weren’t just ignoring it.

On Zoey’s docket, Sabina was up next. She found the alchemist in her workshop, unsurprisingly toiling over a work bench with her usual intense focus. The woman had completely forgone the pretense of running an outward facing shop by this point; the sign was turned closed and the curtains drawn, seeming nearly abandoned. The door was unlocked, at least, and Sabina clearly heard her coming, because she was looking Zoey’s way when she swung around the corner into her laboratory proper. She’d also, of course, announced herself with a tentative call.

“Good,” the stern gray-eyed woman said on seeing her, not sounding surprised in the slightest. “I was wondering when you’d be back.” Rummaging into a lab pocket, she pulled out a vial and tossed it to Zoey. “Drink this.”

“Good to see you too,” Zoey said with some amusement. Sabina’s no-frills behavior was as endearing as always, and the way she paused, then inclined her head in proper greeting after a second, realizing she’d skipped a step of social nicety, was agonizingly cute.

She inspected the potion.

[Potion of Duality]: Two weapons are better than one.

Zoey paused. “Wait. Does this mean what I think it does?”

“Catalyzed from the twinrose reagent you brought me earlier,” Sabina said. “And yes. It grows a second cock.”

Wow.

That was, uh, a lot to take in.

Then, Sabina’s words hit her. “Wait, you want me to drink it? Now?”

“I need to gather further ingredients,” Sabina said. “You’ve been gone. I’m running low. Constant experimentation burns through supplies.” The older woman glanced at her, something approaching a smirk on her lips. “It’s my understanding most people would be delighted at such a welcome-back.”

Zoey paused, then grinned. She vanished her pants and her portal-panties—of which Rosalie was the current owner of the linking plate—to reveal her bare lower half. Sabina glanced at her exposed member with vague interest, though she kept her usual passivity. Zoey downed the potion and threw the vial into her inventory.

“Delighted,” Zoey said. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”