Chapter Thirty Eight.

Chapter Thirty Eight: Chains…

Greg was in a daze. Here he was, naked and lying on the most comfortable bed ever, with the healer's naked form pressed up against him. His hand had circled her body, both holding her close and cupping her left tit. With the healer's large rack, her breast was spilling out between his fingers, his one hand not big enough to fully grab hold of it. And as if that wasn't enough, the healer's large round ass was pressed up against his groin. When Greg came to a few minutes ago, he had been soft. Right now, however, his hard dick was snugly nestled between the healer's warm thighs.

Greg almost couldn't believe the memories that were flashing through his mind. Like most people, Greg liked to believe that he was a rational individual capable of controlling his emotions and impulses. Looking back on what he'd dared to do, however, he was quickly revising this conclusion. One is only in control in so far as those emotions are within a certain threshold. Pushed to the extreme and very quickly the roles of master and slave are switched out. It's not like he'd blacked out. Greg had been aware and conscious of himself. He, however, had been unable to get himself to do or think about anything other than sex and getting it.

It may not seem like it, but it had been a close brush with death. Had the healer chosen to attack because of Roka's actions, chances are he would have been dead right now. Instead, it had turned into the most magnificent two hours of both his lives. Now that he had a bit more conscious control of himself, Greg was very tempted to initiate a second round of lovemaking with the healer. She, however, seemed to have such a peaceful expression on her face that Greg couldn't bring himself to bother her. It only now occurred to him that even when the woman smiled, there was always a shadow of the things she kept hidden in her eyes. Her sense of betrayal, hatred for her betrayers, and desire for revenge have always been consuming this woman. For the first time, Greg was seeing the healer without any of those emotions weighing on her heart. Despite his deep desire for the woman, he chose to give her a few more moments of peace instead.

Content to lie there with a beautiful woman in his arms, Greg opened up his system and moved to the COMPLETED MISSIONS tab.

———

Ø BASIC: Interact with the healer for five minutes.

Ø BASIC: Talk to the healer for a minute.

Ø BASIC: Hold the healer's gaze for ten seconds.

Ø INTERMEDIATE: Hold the healer close for ten seconds.

Ø INTERMEDIATE: Kiss the healer.

Ø INTERMEDIATE: Turn the healer on.

Ø ADVANCED: Deep kiss the healer for a minute.

Ø ADVANCED; Grope an intimate part of the healer's body.

Ø ADVANCED: Have an intimate part of your body groped by the healer.

Ø EXPERT: Strip the healer completely naked.

Ø EXPERT: Orally pleasure the healer.

Ø EXPERT: Have sex with the healer.

Ø EXPERT: Bring the healer to orgasm.

Ø EXPERT: Attain an orgasm from having sex with the healer.

Ø ADVENTUROUS: Missionary.

Ø ADVENTUROUS: Doggy style.

Ø ADVENTUROUS: Cowgirl.

Ø ADVENTUROUS: Reverse cowgirl.

Ø ADVENTUROUS: Standing.

Ø DAREDEVIL: Without saying anything, kiss the healer.

Ø DAREDEVIL: Without saying anything, grope an intimate part of the healer.

Ø DAREDEVIL: Without saying anything, attempt to initiate sex with the healer.

Total Lust points: 5,637,060.

SIX FEATS OF LUST ACCOMPLISHED.

Ø Arouse more than a hundred women at a single event.

Ø Bring the Town-head's wife to her first-ever orgasm right under the nose of her husband.

Ø Bring the Town-head's wife to multiple orgasms right under the nose of her husband.

Ø Lost your virginity to the healer.

Ø Took the healer's virginity.

Ø Creampied the healer.

DO YOU WISH TO MERGE THEM?

YES/NO?

———

The list of feats of lust had just grown longer with the feats that involved the healer coming after the previous ones that had already been there. Greg, however, wasn't even considering the question of merging them, instead, his focus was on the fourth feat of lust. A small part of Greg had been feeling slightly displeased that he hadn't kept his resolution. That his first time was motivated purely by lust and wasn't meaningful in any way. That, thought, however, was lost after realizing that he had shared firsts with the healer. The first time that she had known the touch of a man, it had been with him, just as the first time he had known the touch of a woman in this life had been with her.

A part of Greg was tempted to disbelieve it. After all, the healer had revealed that she was just ten years shy of eight hundred years old. She had no reason to lie to him about her age. It wasn't like she needed it to, in any way, increase his regard and esteem of her. Worse still, it would have been easily disprovable as Olivia had been present. If mages didn't actually live that long, his familiar would probably have spoken up and not allowed the healer to lie to him. Whatever her true allegiances were, the familiar had so far genuinely helped him.. Given all this, Greg was inclined to believe that the healer was telling the truth about her age.

Given the promiscuity that was rampant on twenty-first-century Earth, it was hard for Greg to wrap his mind around someone going almost eight hundred years without having sex. But then, there it was, listed among Greg's feats of lust. And it wasn't like the system was a generous entity that would make up stuff just to reward him. If it was there it was because it was true, that was just the simple truth of the situation. Perhaps this world was different. Perhaps chastity was valued more in this world. Greg, however, doubted it. Power was power, and whether it be political or arcane, it tended to corrupt people. The mages of this world weren't ascetic monks dedicated solely to magic. Greg was certain that the more powerful they grew, the more they indulged themselves. That the healer had remained chaste all this time was a quality unique to her. Whatever else happened in the future, Greg would always remember this first time, not as a notch in his belt, but as a uniquely precious gift granted to him by the healer.

Closing the COMPLETED MISSIONS tab Greg turned to the very first page that the system had ever opened once it was up and running.

WELCOME TO THE SIXTH SCHOOL!

NAME: Roka.

RANK: Acolyte Of Lust.

MAGIC POINTS: 2156.

LUST POINTS: 7.14M.

The first time Greg had looked at this page, he'd wondered what the next rank would be after the Rank of "Virgin". He now had the answer. What an Acolyte of lust meant, Greg didn't know. Unlike the previous rank of Virgin, however, this new rank came with some information when Greg clicked on it.

You have taken the first step on the path of lust. A single brick, however, does not a tower make. Your goal as an acolyte, is to deepen your understanding of the concept of lust. The deeper your understanding, the further you can walk on this path. To this end, sleep with a hundred women to rise to the next rank.

This was the small passage that appeared whenever Greg focused on his rank. What it meant by attaining a deeper understanding of lust, Greg didn't know. Just another question that he'd have to ask Olivia about. At the memory of his familiar, Greg couldn't help but turn his head to the other side of the bed seeking her out. It was only at the very last second that Greg turned to look in the direction of the sigil. Given that he'd been frozen when Olivia had passed out, he shouldn't have known about it. If he immediately checked for her on the bed, it would raise suspicions. To Greg's surprise, however, she was neither on the bed, nor anywhere to be found in the cave. Instead, a weak voice reached him from within.

"I'm right here master," The familiar called out in an uncharacteristically weak tone of voice. "Helping the healer with her project took a lot out of me. I think I'll need a day or two to recover," She explained before once again growing quiet. Greg couldn't help but note that, once again she had told a technical truth. While the larger purpose behind it was helping the healer, the actual reason for her weakness, which she conveniently chose to not mention, was because she had summoned her true self! A primordial being above the nine tiers! Greg, however, felt no need to pursue it. It didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. He already knew the truth.

'Before you go, do you know why I acted the way I did?' Greg mentally asked. 'One moment, I was shocked at the healer's age, and in the next, I… I just couldn't stop myself?' He voiced, making sure to add the right amount of guilt and concern in his voice.

'I'm sorry master, this is all my fault,' Came the reply from Olivia, much to Greg's surprise. A part of him wondered whether the familiar was going to tell him the truth about herself. Olivia however, continued. 'In helping your teacher, I had to use up a lot of my power. In the course of things, I was unable to keep it all under control and some of it spilled over to you. Being the creature of lust that I am, the powers that invaded you were of the same nature. They affected you both in mind and body. That's why you don't remember much after your conversation with the healer," She told him.

Greg couldn't help but admire the web of truth and lies that the familiar had put together. Detailed enough to be believable, but simple enough that there was no part that one could pick at. "Take all the time you need," Greg, at last, replied with a genuine tone. Despite her lie, Greg knew that the familiar had overextended herself and did indeed need the rest, so there was nothing false about his sentiment.

Greg had been blankly looking while communicating with Olivia. As such, he was caught a bit off guard when he turned his gaze back around to find the healer looking up at him. For a second, Greg felt the impulse to quickly withdraw his hand, feeling like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He, however, didn't. Instead, he smiled at the healer. "How are you feeling?" He asked.

The healer seemed to consider the question for a while before she answered. "Better than I have felt for a very long while," She said, the tone of her voice relaying that she wasn't trying to flatter him. She genuinely meant this. "Are you angry with me?" She asked.

A genuine look of confusion crossed Greg's face at the question. "Why would I be angry with you?" He asked.

"You weren't yourself, Roka. You were compromised. You'd fallen victim to someone else's abilities," She replied.

"I know. Olivia told me everything that happened," He replied.

"Oh, and what did she say," the healer calmly asked.

Greg couldn't help but give the healer credit that she didn't panic or reveal anything in word or expression. Instead, she probed him to figure out what he had been told. "She said that she had to go all out in helping you with the sigil and in so doing, some of her power leaked out and that's why I was affected the way I was," He briefly explained.

"As your teacher, I should have helped you, not willingly fallen into the same ditch with you. Instead, I took advantage of you," She said, with some shame in her voice. "I let my own needs cloud my judgment and…"

The healer's words were cut off as Greg pressed his lips into hers and kissed her deeply. A moan escaped the healer as Greg gently fondled her breast. When they finally separated, the healer's cheeks were pink, and a small smile on her face. "You are right, you took advantage of me," Greg said with a serious expression, catching the healer off guard as she looked up at him with some consternation. "And I can only think of one way you can make it up to me," He added, moving his hips so that the healer became aware of the hard pole sandwiched between her thighs. "By letting me take advantage of you," He finished off, unable to maintain a serious expression as a roguish smile crossed his lips.

The healer rolled her eyes, turning away from him with a snort despite the smile on her lips. "For the sake of justice!" Greg continued to state with a feigned righteous air. "Balance must be restored," He added placing a hickey at the crook of her neck. Halfheartedly trying to shrug him off, the healer began to rub her thighs together with his dick still in between. Unable to help himself, Greg started to hump her even as he began to suck and lightly nip on the tip of her earlobe. The hand that had so far been massaging the healer's sensitive nipples slowly started to drift down across her flat belly, past her navel, down to her moist flower. The healer unconsciously opened her legs a bit to grant him easier access. In so doing, however, she released his dick from its warm prison between her thighs. Rubbing slow circles around her clitoris even as he slowly repositioned himself.

Greg looked deep into the healer's eyes even as he drove inch after inch into her velvety depths. In the haze of lust that had previously gripped him, Greg had failed to notice just how tightly her pussy clung to him. Greg couldn't help but groan in pleasure even as she started to make love to the woman. This time, it wasn't the rough fucking that he'd engaged in the first time around. They'd already done that. This time, Greg took his time to fully enjoy the woman in his arms. And from the way she was pushing her hips back at a similar pace to his, she was enjoying the tempo that he'd set just as much as he was. Even without the haze of the lust aura left by Olivia's true self, the two of them were sinking deeper and deeper into an endless bliss of pleasure.

Greg didn't resist when the healer reached around and pulled him into a deep kiss. His hips never stopped thrusting even as their tongues engaged in a duet of their own. Greg could feel the need and desire coming from the woman. After being a seventh-tier mage it must have been quite the blow to be brought back down to tier one. Ever since her betrayal, she had probably always been on guard at all times. Never truly able to trust anyone, never truly able to turn to anyone even in her darkest moments. Greg had somehow managed to break through the walls that she'd raised to protect herself. Walls that, from what Greg could see, had isolated her just as much as they'd protected her. With this new connection between them, she finally has someone to share her burdens with. As he was, Greg couldn't fight her enemies or protect her in any meaningful way, any more than an ant could protect an elephant. That, however, wasn't what she needed, what she had been craving all this time was a connection. And Greg was more than willing to grant her just that.

Greg could feel the shudder that went through the healer's body as another orgasm hit her. Feeling her already tight pussy squeeze down on his cock was the last straw. By now, Greg had been at the peak of pleasure for a while, he'd only been barely holding on through sheer willpower. Her orgasm, however, pushed him over the edge, unable to hold back any longer. Greg buried himself all the way to the hilt inside her even as the first torrent of cum shot out of him like a rocket. A small part of him wondered whether he would end up impregnating the healer. Another, more primal part of him, however, would have loved nothing more. In the end, however, Greg was certain that if a seventh-tier mage didn't want to get pregnant, especially one that was a healer, then they wouldn't get pregnant. As such, there was no hesitation in him as he shot stream after stream of white hot goo into the healer's womb.

"That's one down," Greg finally spoke up after they'd both caught their breath.

A brow arched on the healer's face as she turned to him. "What do you mean?" she asked.

With a sly gleam in his eyes, Greg replied. "During the two hours that you were taking advantage of me, you climaxed fifteen times" Greg could say this with confidence as making the healer orgasm is one of the missions in the EXPERT tab, and it had counted how many times he'd achieved it.. "To restore balance, I will have to also climax fifteen times while taking advantage of you," He declared with the feigned air of one who was out for justice. "Worry not, however, my beautiful lady, I don't expect to get all restitution in one go," He added, an impish smile playing on his lips. "Slowly," he said then kissed her on the lips. "One… by… one," he spoke, each word followed by a kiss. "I will remedy the imbalance," He said, eliciting a moan from the healer as his hand had once again risen to tease her sensitive nipples.

"If you could have me fifteen different times when I only had you once, wouldn't you be taking advantage of me?" The healer challenged.

"Don't worry. If you feel that I've gone overboard in taking advantage of you, you can always take advantage of me to restore balance," He countered with a smile.

An amused chuckle left the healer even as she got up from the bed. "I'll see that I do," She replied before she started sashaying toward the small pool of steaming water. Like a man hypnotized, Greg couldn't take his eyes off the woman's bubble butt. He'd just emptied himself inside her and yet, he could already feel his dick stirring. Unable to help himself, Greg rose and followed after her.

As soon as his foot touched the water, Greg knew that it was magically enchanted. Any fatigue that his muscles may have accumulated seemed to melt away leaving him feeling more relaxed than he'd ever felt before. More than a place to get clean, this pool was a place to get rid of one's accumulated stress and fatigue. With the pool designed in a stair-like fashion, Greg took a seat close to the healer and like her, only allowed his head to rise above the water. Greg had been having lewd thoughts when he followed the healer into the pool. As soon as he was settled into the water, however, those thoughts took a back seat as the fatigue he'd thus far accrued was wrung out of his muscles.

"Don't make vengeance your end goal," The healer spoke up after they'd been relaxing for a while in silence. The statement was so out of the blue that Greg was, for a second or two, unsure what to make of it. The weight in the healer's voice, however, made it quite clear that she was completely serious. Turning to her, Greg found that she still had her eyes closed and her face still turned towards the roof of the cave. Still, her expression betrayed the fact that she considered this to be important.

"I can feel it every single day you know. The rage, the hatred… it consumes me!" She revealed, at last opening her eyes. Despite his brain knowing that he was in a pool full of steaming hot water, Greg felt like he'd been dropped in an ice-cold pit the moment he caught sight of the look in the healer's eyes. In them, there wasn't even a hint of warmth or the shadow of anything that might even be called a positive emotion. Instead, there was an almost palpable bloodlust. For a second, while looking into the healer's eyes, Greg could almost swear he saw rivers of blood flowing from mountains of dismembered bodies. This was someone on a war path, someone who wouldn't show any mercy or pity. She would give no quarter to her enemies. She wouldn't stop until either her enemies were dead or she was. Given how amiable the relationship between them seemed to be, it was easy to forget that this was a seventh-tier mage he was dealing with. Even injured as she was, she could still wreak a lot of havoc if she put her mind to it. That the system rated her as a suicidal grade danger was not empty bluster. Greg was certain that, if he ever grew arrogant enough to cross her, he probably wouldn't even know how it was he died.

"Every time I remember what they took from me, Every time I cast my magic and my mana pathways ache like a corrosive substance has been poured through them. Every time I…" There was a long silence as the healer seemed to be trying to rein herself back in. The hatred and vitriol in her expression, however, was all too easy to see. "They motivate me, they keep me moving forward even through the worst of it. And right up until you came along, I thought that that's all they were," She said turning to look down at her reflection in the water.

"It wasn't until you gave me a brief moment of joy, a brief moment in which those emotions weren't consuming me that I realized that they were also chains. Chains that have robbed me of any semblance of joy. I survived an event that should have killed me. I should have been crippled and been forced to live as a mundane human for the rest of my short existence, but I didn't. Since my betrayal, I have made countless discoveries about mana and its effects and usages on weaker bodies. Discoveries that could upend the current magical paradigm and redefine the principles of magic as we know it. My research has even culminated in a sigil that could break the current order and usher in a new age of magic. Do you want to know what I feel after all that?" She asked, her gaze turning to him. "Nothing! I am just as angry and bitter as I was on the very day I was betrayed. I am consumed by nothing but thoughts of vengeance and how much suffering I want to bring to those who harmed me. Even something I so deeply enjoyed and loved like research into magic, is now tainted with this desire. Any research I do is to further my vengeance. I can no longer look at magic with the pure curiosity of one who simply wishes to learn more about it. At the back of my mind is always the malignant question of, how can I use this to hurt my enemies," she confessed.

"I don't want that for you. I'm happy that you are willing to help me in this fight, but, I don't want to warp your pursuit of magic with my quest of revenge, Roka," She said, allowing all the rage and hatred she had just revealed to once again sink below the surface as her expression once again became calm.

"You said that the ones who betrayed you had been your friends, right?" Greg asked. The healer quietly nodded in response. "What changed? Why did they turn on you?" Greg asked.

A self-deprecating chuckle left the healer's lips, though there was no joy in her eyes. "A better way to put it would be I considered them friends. They had long since stopped considering me as a friend. I was just too stupid and blind to see it. Thane, and Senna, those are their names. Thane, a bloodline mage, Senna, a summoner, and myself, a healer. The three of us had known each other since we were about your age. We went through thick and thin together, saving each other's lives more times than you can imagine. Unfortunately for our pristine friendship, love came in and ruined everything. Two out of the three fell in love and everything went downhill from there," She laid out.

"Senna, my best friend and someone I considered no different from my sister fell in love with Thane. When she told me, I was at first surprised but even more, I was happy for her. Like two giddy little girls, we planned for the perfect time and setting for Senna to reveal how she felt. It was supposed to be magical. Except that, a day before Senna could voice her feelings for the man, Thane confessed that he was in love with me," She revealed.

"During the time I was taking care of you, you may have noticed that I have a straightforward, some may even say standoffish personality. Pair that with my sharp mind and my knack for making unique discoveries, and people always thought me to be a conceited individual. The reality, however, is much less flattering. You see, I've never thought of myself as better than anyone else or looked down on anyone else for not achieving the same things that I have, it's simply a matter of connection. For reasons I'm yet to puzzle out, I've just never been able to connect with people the same way I do with magic. Inside my mage tower, when I was lost in research of one topic or the other, I felt like I was at home. Everything just clicked and I was right where I wanted to be. When it comes to people, however, I'm a fish out of water. I just can't connect with people the same way I saw others do. So, on top of the painfully awkward fact that the man that my best friend was in love with had just confessed his feelings for me, there was the possibly worse fact that I didn't feel the same way about him. I loved the man like a brother, and if push came to shove, I may even have been willing to die for him. But I just didn't love Thane the way he wanted me to," the healer said with a sigh.

"Needless to say, things got extremely awkward after that. None of us knew how to face each other. Both my friends loved someone who didn't love them back the way they wanted to be loved, and there I was, caught in the middle, not sure what to do with myself. For close to thirty years, we were in this awkward funk where we remained amiable with one another, but just couldn't make things go back to the way they were before. In the end, because I didn't want to lose my friends, I chose to try and rectify the situation. I chose to try and turn Thane's affection away from me and towards Senna. I told him that while he is a close friend to me, I would probably never love him the way he deserves to be loved and that he should consider giving Senna a chance especially because I believed she would be a much better partner to him in every way possible compared to me. I put every bit of effort that I could into getting them to be a couple," She said.

"You see, in my mind, the solution to the problem we were in was simple. Given that Senna was already in love with Thane, all that needed to happen was for Thane to love her back and the whole issue would be resolved. I would have my friends back. So you can imagine my happiness when the two of them got married. In my naïveté, I thought the problem was behind us. Only it wasn't. You see, Thane never truly fell in love with Senna. He only agreed to court and eventually married my friend Senna out of a mix of humiliation at my rejection and hope that seeing me with her would arouse some jealousy in me. Senna, on the other hand, found herself loving a man who never loved her back simply because he only had eyes for her best friend. I look back on those years and wonder to myself was I blind to the situation, or did I not just let myself see what was going on out of a selfish desire to hold on to the friendship we once had?" She posed. Greg could tell that even now, this was a legitimate question that she was asking herself, not just empty words.

"It probably started out as resentment, but somewhere along the way, it turned into a bone-deep hatred for me. For Thane, it was because I never grew to love him the way he wanted me to, and for Senna, it was because no matter what she did, she couldn't dislodge me from the heart of the man she loved. I don't know how long that hatred festered. Whether out of sheer stupidity, or a naïve hope that everything was okay, I was never on guard against them," She said. There was a bit of silence for a while and by the faraway look in her eyes, Greg could tell that she was going over memories of her past. A mirthless chuckle escaped the healer, her lips twisting into a self-deprecating sneer. "Do you know, for the first ten minutes after they first attacked me, I didn't counterattack! Instead, I just defended myself and kept asking them what was going on. I even cast a cleanse mind spell on both of them thinking that some outside influence had taken them over without my notice! It wasn't until they both pincered me and almost took my life that it sunk in that the two people I considered my closest friends were actually trying to kill me," she said.

"I erupted with fury like I never had before. Of the three of us, I'd always been the most powerful, as far as magic was concerned. Even when both of them came at me during our training duels, I usually fought them to a standstill, both unable to overcome me even when they combined their power," She relayed.

A look of confusion crossed Greg's features. "Wait, I thought you were a healer? Are healers not only focused on healing? Is there a combat aspect to healing?" he asked.

A small but dangerous smile crossed the healer's lips. "That most healers only focus on healing and can't fight as well as those from other schools of magic, is simply a failure of creativity, as far as I am concerned," she replied. "I've always considered healers along with mind mages to be the two most dangerous types of mages out of all of them. The most dangerous kind of enemy you can make is the kind that knows how everything within you is supposed to work. One who knows what to do to cause it all to break down. That I know how to heal means that I know exactly what to do to cause the worst kind of damage. I know how to leave hidden injuries that will not act up for long enough that you would never even think to associate them with me. I can make it so that the next time you go all out in battle, they all erupt at once and essentially cripple you! And all that is to say nothing of what I can do to you in direct combat! Poisons and diseases, the very things I often fight as a healer, can also be very effectively handled as weapons in my hands. If I wanted to, I could make your very own body turn against you!" She voiced. Greg could feel a chill creeping up his spine as he realized anew just how dangerous the woman seated before him was.

"I went all out in my fight and made use of every possible tool at my disposal that I could. I'm certain that they'll be cursing my name for the next thousand cycles given all the time bombs and hidden issues I left in their bodies. Unfortunately for me, their first treacherous strike and the ten minutes I gave them to build on that advantage, made it so that I was fighting a losing battle. In the end, when it became clear that I was going to drag them down with me, they were forced to flee. They'd already done enough damage to me that they were reasonably certain that I would never make it. To hang around and possibly die with me wasn't worth it. I, on the other hand, wasn't willing to let them go. I was more than willing to die if I could bring them down with me. I chased them across several different kingdoms over three season. In the end, however, they managed to get away and I was forced to abandon my chase and find somewhere to hide and lick my wounds," She relayed.

"And so, here I am, ten years later, still hiding, still licking my wounds, still biding my time waiting for the day I can finally unleash all the pent-up hatred and fury that I've kept inside all this time," she said. "Only problem is, I've lost everything else. From the moment I wake to the moment I close my eyes to sleep, all I can think of is vengeance… They are my chains now!" She said, looking at her reflection in the water. There was a stretch of silence before she turned to look in his direction, her eyes piercing deep into his. "Which is why I don't want this for you. The world out there is already cold, ugly, and treacherous enough without you polluting your soul with the poison of vengeance," She quietly stated…