I was curious what kind of objective led her to decide that getting me drunk in the particular way she decided to employ was a good idea. She didn’t give me any sign about the reason as she limited herself to leaning back, watching me smugly.

I continued to eat the pastries she had prepared with great ‘effort’, giving her the opportunity she needed to speak.

Though, I had to admit that, enjoying the carefully-prepared breakfast while she shuffled in her seat carefully to maximize the impact of her beauty was a pleasant affair despite her trick. She certainly had the instincts to cultivate an aura of seduction, and with the assistance of the skills she had picked, it turned into an amazing show.

Almost enough to forgive her attempt to manipulate me with some direct, adulterated assistance.

Almost.

I waited until our eyes met, and smiled. “The breakfast is delicious,” I murmured, though I avoided slurring, not wanting to give her the impression that the pastries she prepared were too effective.

I wanted to enjoy the process.

“I’m happy to hear you like it,” Delia said.

“Oh yeah,” I told her even as I glanced down, getting a very interesting angle down the loose dress she had worn for my pleasure, the angle particularly spectacular.

Her smile promised me a lot of interesting things.

But, since she was yet to make a move to deliver one of those promises, I decided to act proactively. After all the effort, I deserved an advance. I leaned to the side, and before she could react, my arm was already around her waist, and pulled her onto my lap.

The slight widening of her eyes as I moved faster than she expected was beautiful, but when my arm was wrapped around her waist, she made no move to pull back, instead of giggling playfully. It was an artificial move, her hand already on my chest — giving her an excuse to push me away a bit while still maintaining intimate physical contact.

A beautiful attempt. Too bad I had no intention of allowing her to succeed. The exact nature of her trickery went a long way to prevent me from doing so, no matter how amused I was, dealing with someone else trying the use my tricks on me.

“So,” I whispered into her ear as I pulled her closer, a touch harder than necessary to suggest while I wasn’t drunk enough to slur, I was drunk enough to lose control of my strength slightly — the fake strength I had convinced her that I had, of course, as my real strength was not something she could handle, even playfully. “Tell me, what do you want?”

“Want…” she said, stammering, caught surprised at my sudden words, especially with my lips close enough to brush against her. Flustered, for a moment I had thought she was about to deny needing anything. She picked a different direction. “Why do you think I want something?”

A simple yet smart way to deflect. Not admitting anything, yet not committing to not asking the favor yet as well. Of course, there were many ways to bypass such an argument, but I decided to have mercy on her. “Well, the amazing breakfast you had prepared for me was one clue…”

Then, before she could say anything, I grabbed the front of her dress, and pulled. It wasn’t a hard pull, but it wasn’t a sturdy dress either, easily rippling to reveal her breasts. I grabbed one of the spectacular globes that were revealed completely, and whispered again. “And, the dress is not bad as far as the clues yet.” A smirk popped to my face. “Sorry, was.”

She tensed, but forced a giggle quickly to hide that tenseness. “Well, I need something…” she murmured, her voice turning beautifully seductive after the initial tremble. Clearly, whatever she had in mind was more important than the presence of my dancing fingers, clamping around her nipple.

“Oh, really?” I whispered as I twisted her nipple, using the opportunity to sneak some more mana into her body to examine her. And I kissed her neck, making her tremble, which allowed me to be even more reckless.

[-216 Mana]

The moan that escaped, far too melodic and soft to be fake, was delicious. Unfortunately, I had other things to focus on. Arriving at her soul space, I turned my attention to its unique structure even more carefully to understand how exactly she could change her skills that easily.

The first thing I checked was the authenticity of it, afraid that she might be using a fake soul space. Yet, examining carefully, I could feel the connection her Skills had with her soul space. Meaning, it wasn’t a fake.

At least, not the way I had created it, I corrected myself as continued to examine it, only to notice the skills weren’t as static as they were supposed to be. Instead, there was a sense of shuffling and lessening.

Like an ice cube, slowly melting under the sun, melting, so was the mana that created it was melting slowly.

How interesting, I thought even as I continued examining it. It wasn’t a quick process, one that required only minutes to complete, but even by a simple estimation, it was certain that it wouldn’t last a week.

And it would certainly lose its effectiveness to work as a skill in a shorter time, though, on that, being more accurate was rather difficult. I tried to poke it with my own mana, but noticing it hardly helped the stability of the skill, I had to pull back.

I didn’t want to risk revealing my hand just yet.

With that, I pulled back from her soul space, making a note to examine that later. But since my mana was already inside, it would have been a waste to let that mana disperse. Instead, I started to infuse that mana into her body carefully, to trigger her arousal.

After all, she earned her treatment with the trick she had tried to pull.

My trick sounded simple, but casting a spell on a mage’s body while keeping them unaware was certainly not a simple task. It stretched my abilities to the limit, and even then, it was a task that would take a while.

Luckily, I had some proper entertainment to distract me. “Delicious,” I whispered as I squeezed her breast once more, amused by the tightness of her moan, one that was much more honest than before.

Though, the intensity surprised me. Even with my mana beginning to assist, it was an intensity that I hadn’t been expecting from an experienced woman.

Which was rather interesting, especially with the smoothness of her earlier flirting, suggesting that, despite using that as a strategy many times, she had never let things come to such a point. Which was, on the one hand, showed just how good she was when it came to seduction, getting whatever she wanted by just dangling the possibility without paying the bill in the end.

On the other hand, it showed just how badly she needed whatever she was searching for, even more than the Divine Spark storage I had been developing for them if her commitment was any indicator.

“Tell me,” I whispered, feeling curious. “Is your princess is aware of what you’re doing here, or it’s just a freelancing request, only for you.”

Her eyes widened, displaying fear and panic. Pity her amazing acting abilities were not enough to hide their artificial nature, giving me the answer she had been searching for. She wasn’t afraid that her ploy had been revealed, which meant the princess was aware of it.

Or at a minimum, she was confident the princess wouldn’t care about it.

“It’s only for me, but it’s very important,” she begged as her hands landed on my neck. “Please don’t tell anyone, not even the princess.”

“Mm,” I murmured, my smirk getting wider. “And what if I need something to keep my mouth shut.”

“Maybe a kiss,” she murmured as she leaned forward, her tongue darting out to caress my lips before hers connected, her tongue slipping inside my mouth. I let her tongue dance according to her wishes before I retaliated, our assaults clashing for a moment before she found the situation completely reversed.

The kiss was delicious, though not enough for me to focus all my attention on it. Instead, I focused my attention on my mana, intent on triggering her mana even further, to use her distraction.

… only for my eyes to widen in shock. Luckily, I was better at acting than her to disguise my shock, and it survived on my face only for a fraction of a second before it disappeared.

However, the same didn’t remove the reason for my shock. I had noticed that, over her skin, there was a whole layer of mana, almost like a second skin. I couldn’t help but feel impressed, because it was subtle.

Subtle enough to avoid my attention despite our closeness.

I couldn’t help but frown at the impressiveness of the achievement. I was an expert on magic, and my stats allowed me to have unmatched flexibility. Yet, despite spending so much time with her over several days, I had failed to notice it.

Or was I, I suddenly corrected my thoughts. After all, I had failed to notice her disguise. What guarantee there was that I had been dealing with Delia on previous days…

Yet another mystery to solve.

[Level: 32 Experience: 499110 / 528000

Strength: 46 Charisma: 63

Precision: 40 Perception: 42

Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45

Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49

Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51

HP: 6528 / 6528 Mana: 7810 / 8000 ]

SKILLS

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Tantric [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Master Arcana [100/100]

Master Subterfuge [100/100]

Master Craft [77/100]

Expert Speech [75/75]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (0/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

[Cornelia – Level 22/26]

[Helga – Level 22/26]