Ouch!

I was relieved to find Hild already at the castle waiting for us. Assuming that we would teleport back, Hild's plan had simply been to recharge and then return to the castle. But there was a problem.

"Hild has not finished recharging," Hild reported. "The Tartarus became too unstable for this unit to safely remain. Hild had to evacuate with only a quarter charge."

"And there's no place to charge in the castle," I noted unnecessarily. Hild nodded. "And so that means you need me to recharge you?"

"It would be optimal. Master's semen is of high quality. Hild would have to drain all the men in the castle to fully charge, which would leave no sustenance for our monster guests."

"Do you cause critical ecstasy?" I asked.

"Hild does not unless she wishes to. It is not the same as critical ecstasy. It is a direct energy drain that I can add to my sexual techniques."

"And you won't be doing that to me?"

"Not unless you command it."

"Okay, in that case, let's get you charged up before I go make dinner."

Hild led me to a vacant bedroom. I had experienced awkward bedroom situations before, but Hild was in a completely different category. You see, when a monster leads you into a bedroom, assuming she even bothers with that step, you're either getting ordered to lay in the bed, or she's not even asking, picking you up and depositing you on the bed. Hild simply stood there, unmoving, expressionless. Was her processor frozen?

"Hild?"

"Yes, master?"

"I thought we were here to charge you?"

"Master must start my sexual subroutine," Hild stated, as if the situation wasn't awkward enough yet.

"Normally you're pretty autonomous, Hild," I pointed out.

"Use of my sexual skills on an ally can only be initiated by command. I may not take the initiative."

"Oh," I said. "Um…. Run sexual subroutine. Do I get to request how it's d-?"

Hild instantly began acting more like a monster, hoisting me up and tossing me onto the bed, leaping in after me, pinning me in place with arms far stronger than an average monster, and with weight bearing me down greater than a bear girl's. Using Gnome, I could have shaken her off with some difficulty, but supposedly this was a friendly sexual encounter. With a robot. Or cyborg. Or something. What exactly was Hild?

One thing she definitely was not was a woman, as I saw an aperture open up in her crotch area and take in my still mostly soft penis.

"Male organ is not yet ready for charging," Hild said. "Gentle stimulation required to achieve erection."

Machinery whirred inside her and began gently squeezing and massaging my penis. I sighed at the unique sensations. It didn't feel like real flesh, but she was well lubricated and her insides as soft as a pillow. I swiftly grew hard.

"Erection achieved," Hild reported. "Charging can begin."

Those soft insides tightened considerably and firmed up. The grip was so firm in fact, that I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull out if I wanted to. Then her insides began to spin. Very fast. I let out a moan of pleasure at the new sensations. Even with all of Earth's technology, they'd never designed a sex doll like Hild.

My first orgasm arrived three minutes later, her machinery switching to a slow stroking/sucking motion to deliver my semen to her power sources. Being a complex machine, she had several, so as to avoid being disabled by one lucky hit.

"Energy at 30 percent," Hild reported. "Ten more orgasms required."

"Wait, ten?" I asked in alarm. Unlike with a monster, where the total lack of a refractory period means you are ready to go again and again until you are fully drained or lose consciousness, Hild's magical enhancement was imperfect. Promestein herself had long tried to duplicate monster sexual magic for the purposes of efficient draining, but had only ever created something which for her purposes was close enough. "Close enough" meant that you did get a mild refractory period and loss of sensation, which meant her draining machines had to apply ever more intense stimulation, long past the point where it was pleasurable for the victim. And Hild's version of the magic wasn't as good as Promestein's, although thankfully it was free of that feeling of wrongness that Promestein's version had.

My thoughts were cut off by Hild's internal machinery spinning to life again, coaxing another orgasm out five minutes later. I was breathing hard from the effort. Even though I hadn't been doing any real work, just lying there, it had felt a little like work due to the reduced sensation from my previous orgasm. I'd been spoiled by monster sex for too long.

Once the semen from my second orgasm had been sucked into Hild's body, the spinning resumed, this time faster and tighter than before. The head of my penis was beginning to get sensitive in a bad way that I hadn't felt in a very long time. I started thrashing around, trying to move to avoid the unpleasant overstimulation. My third orgasm splashed into her minutes later. My heart was beating a mile a minute and I was hyperventilating.

"Hild," I panted. "I don't think I can do ten. Let's stop now."

"Sexual subroutine cannot be halted by command," Hild said flatly. "Once begun, the program will continue to run until this unit is fully charged or the donor runs out of semen. Resuming."

I screamed as the spinning began again. It was no longer even close to pleasant. "Hild!" I yelled. "Pause!"

To my relief, the spinning stopped. "Subroutine paused," Hild said.

"Hild, is there any way you can avoid stimulating the head? It's just too much. It actually hurts."

"Master would like me to stimulate only the shaft?" Hild asked.

"Yes, please."

"Request denied. Energy absorption would be too inefficient. Hild calculates three hours to achieve seven more orgasms with that method. It is better for master and this unit if master endures. Complete charging should be completed in thirty minutes."

"Thirty more minutes of this?! I can't take thirty more minutes!"

"Request acknowledged and granted," Hild said. I sighed in relief.

"Thank you, Hild," I said. "please let me go, now. You should have more than enough charge for the next few d-"

"Stimulation will be set to maximum to complete process in ten minutes," Hild said.

My penis nearly felt like it was being crushed in a vise grip as Hild's extractor tigthtened even more. The spinning resumed at an even faster rate, vibration, sucking, and stroking added to the already insane levels of stimulation.

The whole castle must have heard my screams.

"Wow, boss, rough time?" Eva asked as I limped into the kitchen, wincing at the pain in my groin with every step.

"I am going to find a way, no matter what it takes, to use my magic to conjure up about five hundred D batteries," I said.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Eva chuckled. "I can imagine what happened to you. Some monster was a bit too rough? Let me guess, Ayisha?"

Ayisha may have been a bear girl, but she was a gentle soul. I told Eva that maybe I'd talk about it later and my kitchen team got to the job of making dinner.

Naturally, Alice called a meeting. There was much to discuss. We had new information, and needed to decide our next steps. So we made it a working dinner, our core group sitting at the same table to discuss our plans.

"Tartarus comprises rifts in spacetime that appeared during the Great Disaster thirty years ago," Alice said, reminding everyone present of what we already knew. "We've established that the rifts are actually tunnels to parallel worlds. These parallel worlds are different from the world we know. They followed different courses of history at different points in time."

"We've known that for awhile," I said. "Promestein, have you had any time to look at La Croix's notes?"

"I'm going to read them thoroughly," Promestein replied. "But just glancing at them, I'm not sure how well I'll understand them given my current level of knowledge. There's just so much in there that I don't understand."

"I wonder what would have caused a paradox bad enough to destroy some of the worlds parallel to this one?" Ilias asked rhetorically, then turned to me. "Luka, you've seen more alternate worlds than just the ones we've seen in the Tartarus rifts. Can you provide any insight?"

"I'm afraid I can't provide much," I replied. "I know that alternate worlds usually have one minor difference that leads to big changes. In one world, Alipheese and Ilias could interact, which changed everything for the better. No wars, almost complete coexistence."

"That's a creation event," Ilias explained. "When the physical laws of that world were established, one thing was different, and that led to everything being different."

"On another world, Black Alice acquired a ring of immortality, so that she was still Monster Lord by the time I got there," I continued.

"An event from five hundred years earlier that changed everything," Ilias said. "Clearly, something happened in some parallel world thirty years ago that caused everything in every world like ours to change. Maybe we can find answers to what happened by exploring the other Tartarus rifts."

"The next one is in Noah," Sonya said. "Over by Esta."

"Esta?" I asked, unfamiliar with the city.

"Another place that disappeared on this world," Alice said. "It's obviously no coincidence that wherever one of these rifts are, places nearby vanish."

"But why only the people in some places?" Sonya asked. No one had an answer. We'd seen nothingness claim all, but obviously nothingness hadn't destroyed Rostrum or this Esta.

"Luka, do you know who that man was who rescued you?" Ilias asked.

"No, I've never seen him before. But he sure looked familiar," I answered.

"That was Marcellus," Ilias said. Everyone gasped. Luka's father!? It made sense, though. He looked a lot like me and he was known to be traveling alternate worlds.

"Somehow he's acquired the ability to travel between worlds at will," Alice said. "I wonder how he does it?"

"I think it's more technological than magical," Promestein theorized. "One of the dangers of relying on Luka to teleport us out of these places is that every world he goes to his magic will be subject to different natural laws. From what I've been told, blocking Luka's power is impossible on this world. Yet on that world, Adramelech was able to prevent him from using it."

"Was that a property of the world he was on, or Adramelech?" Alice asked. "Because that's pretty important. If it was the world, then we have to have other plans for escaping such worlds if we encounter danger. If it was Adramelech, then she poses a unique danger to us."

"We need our full power back," Ilias agreed. "we can't rely solely on Luka to handle big threats."

"And we need to find La Croix, to deliver these notes," Sonya pointed out. "We never seem to lack for something to do."

"I keep on coming back to this correct history nonsense," I said. "Is there some kind of sacred timeline that all worlds should follow? That makes no sense to me. I thought the whole point of a multiverse was to handle paradox, kinda like error handling code. A paradox happens, so another world splits off from the first to avoid the very thing that's happening now."

"Who are you and what have you done with my Luka?" Alice asked sarcastically.

"I know computers," I said, shrugging. "If the multiverse uses a similar logic, then worlds that diverge from this 'true history' shouldn't create a problem."

"Unless the system got overloaded?" Sonya asked. "Sorry, I don't understand any of this, but it seems that no system, no matter how advanced, has unlimted capacity."

"No, no, that's a very good point," Promestein said. "The universe is vast. The multiverse, even moreso because it contains all of the universes. What if such a system has finite capacity and there were too many universes? How would a system handle that?"

"One way would be to delete the excess," I mused. "If a disc fills up, unnecessary files, especially ones that got too big, would be deleted to free up space."

"I am… very lost here," Sara said.

"Your society doesn't have such technology yet," Promestein said. "But the concepts are easy to explain. Infinity exists in theory, but in the real world it might not be possible. Take the number pi. It is commonly believed that pi goes on forever, but many mathematicians believe that pi does in fact end. Myself, I've calculated it out to over one trillion digits. If it does end, I will find it. When I have more time, anyway."

"Anyway, what Promestein is getting at, Sara, is that if the mutliverse is in fact finite, there can only be so many parallel universes before the system either corrects itself or collapses," I explained.

"I am so trying to get my head around this idea of a smart Luka," Alice said in wonder.

"Mabe if your tongue wasn't always wrapped around his-" Ilias started.

"Okay!" I interrupted. "Moving on, what do we do about it? For some reason this world must be particularly important. Otherwise, why was I sent here, and not to a different parallel world? I don't even know what the correct history is! The White rabbit said that what happened to me wasn't actually the correct history, although it was close."

"Maybe close is good enough?" Sonya wondered. "Obviously we're not sticking very closely to history. Everyone seems to think that you getting the spirits is super important because it happened before, but isn't everything else different?"

"A lot of things are, yes," I said. "If we were being strictly correct here, I should be traveling alone with Alice."

"Even if we could follow the correct history somehow, it would only postpone our eventual destruction," Ilias pointed out. "Luka, there was no war on your world between the four great powers, was there?"

"No, definitely not!" I answered. "The human kingdoms never came to blows in all the years of my life."

"My memory may be faulty, but I don't remember anything like that either. So already history has diverged so much."

"Maybe we need to stop the wars?" Sara asked. "Obviously if the wars aren't supposed to be happening, then stopping them would help slow the spread of chaos."

"I wonder how those succubi think they are helping things?" I asked. "It seems to me that if they are trying to slow the spread of chaos, they are doing it wrong."

"They are sowing their own chaos all over the world," Alice agreed. "Their behavior makes no sense. What do they gain from all of this?"

"One thing that I believe to be essential," I said. "Is restoring both Alice and Ilias to their respective positions. Of all the mysteries we're dealing with, the ones that I find most difficult to understand are why anyone would want Ilias and Alice to be diminished."

"The White Rabbit implied that it was to get my attention," Alice said. "But if my mother has retaken the throne, there was obviously more to it. I wonder if the white rabbit was involved in that? The timing is very suspicious."

"One part of that question I can answer," I said. "It was essential to the correct history for you to travel with me, that much I'm sure of. If sealing you was the only way to do that, then it makes some sense. But why do that to Ilias?"

"Every answer just brings more questions," Sara observed. "So which question do we seek answers to first?"

"Our next step is obvious," Alice said. "We need to go to Noah. There's a Tartarus rift there, as well as Undine. Undine would give Luka three of the four spirits."

"We'll need a ship," Sara said.

"Why would we need a ship to travel to Noah?" I asked.

"You didn't know? The Great Disaster split the Sentora continent. There's a sea separating Noah from the rest of Sentora."

"Let's hope it goes better than our last boat trip," I sighed.

My plan after dinner was to go to bed due to my sheer pain and exhaustion, but I was waylaid by Saki, who wanted some help with something unspecified. She escorted me through the bar, where Barbun and Mary were in their usual places, with Eva joining them, as she often did after dinner. Eva held her liquor better than Mary, but was just as prodigious a drinker.

Saki opened a door at the back of the bar that led into the small club room where Saki had performed for our group earlier. This time the room was empty. Saki squealed with glee as she mounted the stage and grabbed a microphone. With no electrical system in the castle, there was no way to power a sound system, although I supposed that the castle had various magical means to provide power, since it had a working refrigerator in the bar. But Saki needed no sound system. She WAS the sound system. She didn't even really need the microphone. It was just for show.

Saki began to sing, just for me, a song of hope and heroism and friendship, all in one song that she had simply made up herself. I listened, enraptured by her beauty and her voice. The song was all too short, and when she finished, she looked at me expectantly.

"Well?!" Saki asked, when I didn't say anything for a moment. "A girl could get the wrong impression with you just standing there. It's so weird that my power doesn't affect you."

"It's a great song," I said appreciatively. "Did you write that for me?"

"Maybe," she answered playfully. "But that's not what I wanted a minute with you. I actually need some advice."

"Advice?" I asked.

"I need songs. All I do is sing renditions of other people's songs and some lame originals that I wrote."

"There's nothing lame about your originals, Saki."

"You're just saying that because I have a great voice and I can make anything sound good! Oh, don't get me wrong, I have a big ego. You can't be an idol without having high self-esteem. But I know what I'm good at and what I'm not. I can't write for shit. I get by because I can sing anything. But imagine if I had good songs that are my own, that no one's heard before! I'd be the biggest star ever!"

"Well," I mused. "It's true that having original material is key to making it truly big, but I'm not a songwriter nor do I know anyone who has that talent. Just work on your craft, and you'll get better over time."

"Oh, honey, time is not on an idol's side. The people love you for awhile, but they move on. Audiences are fickle. I doubt anyone will come along who can out sing me, but I know someone will come along who can make up for it with better songs. I need good songs right now, not years from now."

"I wish I could help," I shrugged. "As I said, songwriting is not among my talents."

"No, but you've been to other worlds. You've heard songs that no one here has heard. You could teach me those songs and then they'd be Saki songs."

"Passing off other people's work as your own?" I said suspiciously.

"Oh, don't be that way!" Saki pouted. "I wouldn't claim that I wrote them. If asked, I'd be straight about where I got them from. I wouldn't lie to my fans. But entertainment does involve some illusion, and when I'm singing the songs and the fans are hearing them for the first time, they'll think of the songs as Saki songs even if they bother to find out who actually wrote them. People who don't even exist on this world!"

I decided that she had a point, and I wanted to please her, so I agreed to teach her some of my favorite songs. It wasn't easy, however. I can't sing. At all. Saki grimaced at the sounds I was making while trying to teach her "Living on a Prayer".

"Oh, stop! Stop! For the love of Ilias, please stop!" Saki pleaded.

"The love of Ilias?" I laughed. "I've never heard a monster invoke the goddess' name on this world."

"I invoked her precisely because you're so terrible," Saki teased. "Although having actually met her, she's not so bad. She's got an ego bigger than even mine, but I guess when you're a goddess that's to be expected. Anyway, don't sing the songs. Project the music, like I do."

"I have no idea how to do that."

Music began to play in the small room, a little synth riff of one of Saki's most frequently performed songs.

"You do it like that," Saki said. "Your power works similarly to mine, albeit on a vastly bigger scale. Promestein told Juska and I that our power probably responds to our desires and imagination. I imagined myself a pop star, so I became a pop star. Juska imagines herself a superhero, so she's a superhero. At least for a minute, anyway. Fortunately, my voice is actually this good, with or without my magic. What the magic allows me to do is create the instrumental accompaniment."

The spare synth arrangement turned into a symphony orchestra. Saki's talent with her imaginary instruments was as impressive as her vocal talents.

"I'm sure you can do it," Saki said. "Tell me, what song is stuck in your head right now? Everyone's got a song that's stuck in their head."

"Right now? Yeah, I've got one in my head," I replied. "but how-?"

"Just play it!" Saki laughed. "Play it in your head, but will it to be out loud so that I can hear. That's all I do."

I closed m eyes and tried it. I played in my head the opening bars to Holding Out for a Hero, a song that had sprung into my head as soon as Saki had finished singing her original song about heroism.

"I don't think I can do it," I said.

"You're already doing it! You just can't tell because it's in your head as well as in your ears! I didn't know I was doing it until my neighbors told me to keep it down! Rockin' song, by the way! Keep it going!"

Feeling slightly more confident, I played the entire song, at least as well as I remembered it. Saki was overjoyed and was singing along by the end of the second verse. When the song was over, I went into Living on a Prayer.

"Oh wow, that's a unique sound," Saki said. "What is that?"

"Electric guitar. With a voicebox of some sort."

"I've never heard that before. I like it. I'm going to add it to my other songs. That song's pretty killer too. Were Tommy and Gina real people?"

"I have no idea," I chuckled.

"Teach me more!" she said eagerly.

For the next hour, I played many of my favorite songs in my head for her to listen to, from heavy metal to 80s pop, to modern pop, to country, even some Nicki Minaj since Saki seemed to have the swagger and rhythm to pull it off. Her memory for lyrics was like a steel trap, and where I couldn't remember lyrics she quickly improvised her own. When it was over, she had a complete setlist of new songs she wanted to perform, all Earth hits.

"Saki-chan!" I yelled happily, clapping as she finished Nicki Minaj's Superbass, doing it as good as the original despite never having rapped before.

"Thank you so much, Luka!" Saki said happily, giving me a big hug. "Wow, you're not great for my ego."

"I'm NOT great for your ego?" I asked, confused. "I thought I made it pretty clear how much I loved your performance, even if I wasn't dancing like crazy."

"No, I mean the fact that I didn't get poked when I hugged you. I'm a succubus. Hugging men almost always means getting a little poke from his little friend. Your little guy didn't even react to me. Did you not like my singing to it a few days ago?"

"No, it was awesome!" I insisted. "It's not you, I just had an… er… encounter with Hild. She needed me to charge her and it was…. Difficult. I'm afraid she may have injured the little guy. At least for a day or two."

"Oh, is that all?" Saki asked. "Let me see it. I'll fix it for you."

"You can heal?"

"Not in the way you're thinking, no," she chuckled. "C'mon, take it out. I've seen it before."

She had a point, so I did as she instructed and dropped my pants. Saki kneeled in front of me, taking hold of my penis and inspecting it. It was still soft, despite her touch, which normally would have caused an instant erection. She was a succubus, after all. Most men got hard in her general vicinity. I doubt that she'd even seen a flaccid penis before.

"Wow, she did a number on you," Saki said gravely. "Doesn't look like she really injured it. I see no cuts or bruising, not even chafing. You should be good to go after you've slept. Does it still hurt?"

"A little, yes."

"Well, I normally don't do this without wiping my prey's mind first, but…."

Saki placed my soft penis in her mouth and began lightly running her tongue along the underside, her lips kissing it gently. The feeling of pain evaporated as her magic took over, restoring me. With just a few seconds of her lightly sucking me, she had undone my refractory period, so that I was ready to perform again. I grew rock hard in her mouth. Her tongue was as talented as her voice.

To my disappointment, she took it out and stood back up. "There, all better now!" she pronounced. "Really, any monster can do that for you. It's how our magic works. If you get roped into charging Hild again, any monster will be glad to take your pain away."

"Guh," was all I could say, being left hanging like that. I'd gone from 'I never want to have sex ever again' to 'I desperately want Saki right now!'

"Oh, I know that sound," Saki chuckled. "I'm afraid we're not at that point in our relationship yet. Last time was for science, this time was for healing. If you want more, play your cards right, and you'll get more."

I'd never had a succubus play hard to get before, but I actually found it charming. Saki had a big appetite, as all succubi did, but she had pride as well, and refused to be a slave to her cravings. I watched her tail swish as she cast me one last smile and walked away.