Chapter 34: Nice Level, Sprinkle

The next day things were more or less back to normal, but the mood in Tater Town was decidedly different. Even looking up at the thatched roof cottages as they sat atop the hill cradling the edge of my farm, things felt strange and new. It was in my head, mostly, I was sure, but the fact that the town’s relationship with Darkmaw had just gone from enemies to 'It’s Complicated' had profound implications for daily life. What was there even left to fear?

And yet we had to continue our patrols. Bonny rapped on my door at dawn to request another round of 'The Game' to no one's surprise.

“I already told you yesterday,” I said through sleepy eyes, “that I would be going into the forest with Sprinkle today. We didn’t even get to go last night, so it’s non-negotiable.”

“Tomorrow, then, Mr. Drake?” she said, her bunny ears folding backwards submissively. “I’ll go easy on you. I just--we need to keep trying.”

“I’ll take you out on patrol tomorrow,” I agreed. “I’m not sure I buy that you intend to go easy on me, though.”

She snickered back at me and turned around. She was wearing the same loin cloth and top from the last time we went out together, and blew upwards as she walked away, letting me see most of her ass as she went. I made sure the outfit found its way back to her once she had calmed down after our last foray. She had other clothes, but that was her favorite, though I couldn’t imagine why. It seemed very constricting for her boobs, with the belt-like strap going across her chest.

Autumn joined us, too. It had been quite a while since I had invited her out, and I’d begun to miss her. I also thought there was a slight chance that Sprinkle might behave a little bit more conservatively with Autumn around so that I could focus on the task of patrolling, but that was of course a misguided notion if ever I’d had one.

“Autumn, would you like to join us in bathing naked in the blood of our enemies?” Rainbow Sprinkle said, her tone practically a song, skipping through the forest in her glimmering chainmail bikini. She clapped her hands together, and as she did, her long metal claws clanged and scraped against one another. The sound wasn’t half as pleasant as her girly voice.

“I’ll leave that up to you two,” she giggled. “But I’d love to watch.”

“Don’t encourage her,” I laughed. “We need to focus on the task at hand. Playtime comes later,” I promised as I swatted Sprinkle lovingly on the butt.

She yipped with delight at my touch and gave me a lascivious look. “I will be very focused!” she insisted. “Then, afterwards we can feast on each other’s flesh.” She put her hands to her face, swooning as she added, “Ohh, it’s so romantic!”

“Is it, though?” I asked, wincing slightly. But then I caught myself being unsupportive and corrected myself. “Let’s just not do any damage that’ll take too much of your saliva to heal.”

“Wow, Bucky,” Autumn said, winking, “I didn’t know you were so freaky.”

A pack of six orcs burst through the bushes at us all of a sudden—though I couldn't honestly say we were caught by surprise. We were beyond that.

Sprinkle didn’t miss a beat, leaping into the fray and slashing their chest cavities open as blood dramatically sprayed all over her face and torso. She left her tongue out to hang with each strike, hoping to catch some of it in her mouth. I just watched with awe as she peeled through the throng of greenskins with the same comfortable ease that one might associate with riding a bike or remembering their own phone number.

Soon the orcs were all down, bleeding out on the ground or already dead. I could have reacted in time to help, but I didn’t really see the need.

“Damn, Sprinky,” Autumn gasped through a clenched jaw. “What level are you, anyway?”

Sprinkle looked up at her in confusion as she licked her claws clean. “What is a level, exactly?”

Autumn and I laughed, assuming she was joking, but her facial expression didn’t change.

“Wait, are you serious?” I asked, aghast by the revelation.

She just cocked her head and continued to let her tongue travel the length of her weapon, blinking at me innocently.

“Holy shit,” Autumn said. “You mean you don’t even know how to check your level?”

“I pose the question again: what is a level?” she said, finally putting the claw down. After Autumn and I exchanged looks, our eyes fixed back on Sprinkle to find her lifting up her breast to try to lick goblin gore directly off of it.

“Clasp your hands together like this,” I said, showing her how. “What do you see?”

My own HUD came up.

“Oh sweet,” I grinned. “Autumn, I leveled up by the way.”

“Spend those skill points soon,” she said dutifully.

Sprinkle did the same thing after finishing licking some blood off of her tit. “Oohh, shiny!” she said.

“What level are you?” I asked, leaning forward, barely hanging on in suspense.

Her pink eyes scanned the screen that must have been displaying it in front of her, looking for the information we referred to. “Oh! Here it is,” she said. “Sixty-nine!”

My jaw dropped. “First of all, nice. Second of all--”

“Holy shit, Sprinkle!” Autumn shouted, her voice shrill as she jumped in shock. “How many skill points do you have?”

She shrugged, looking over the screen again. “Oh! I see it now! Ummm… five hundred forty,” she said. “And I have some Trained Skills, too. Huh! That’s neat!”

“Five hundred and forty skill points,” I repeated, unbelievingly. It was too insane a number to fathom. “I mean, it makes sense. She’s been murdering things in this forest for seven hundred years. Autumn, what’s your level, anyway?”

She shook off her own shock to try and answer my question. “Oh, I haven’t checked since arriving back in Lusteria,” she said. “I’m level ten, though I may be close to hitting eleven soon—” she clasped her hands together to display her own HUD and gasped.

“What is it?!” I asked.

“Bucky!” she squealed. “I’m so fucking stupid!”

“Don’t say that,” I scolded her.

“I’m level thirteen!”

“What?!” I exclaimed my surprise. “You gained five levels? From what?”

“From you!” she announced. “May Belle mentioned to me that she was getting experience from sleeping with you, and I didn’t think anything of it after a couple days, totally letting it slip under my radar. But this is a game changer!”

I narrowed my eyes at her sternly. She had told me, too, and thought I'd been excited about it before, I felt differently with the big mission on the horizon. “It changes nothing. I’m not having you charging into battle more than I have to,” I said quietly.

“But we can defend Tater Town while you’re gone, at least. The enemy won’t know what hit them!”

I considered that. That was a slight comfort, knowing that they were better off than I’d thought without me. “I wonder what level May Belle and Daisy are,” I said, scratching my hair thoughtfully.

“I’m booooored,” Sprinkle whined as she waggled her claws in the air. “Can we kill something?”

I couldn't fight back a weary sound from escaping my lips. “We really need to level Sprinkle up when we get back. It’s going to take hours.”

“Agreed,” Autumn said solemnly, looking at the unicorn with a tinge of visible fear. “Though imagine what a menace she’ll be when she’s fully statted out.”

I laughed. “At least she’s on our side.”

We trekked deeper into the forest, deeper than we usually did, slaying monsters frequently as we moved along. With Sprinkle there wielding her new claws, it was incredibly easy, and I actually started to feel relaxed, like I was on a pleasant hike, as she ended up doing most of the work.

After several hours, we came to an exit of the forest. “Should we go out and see where we end up?” I asked curiously. I’d already made up my mind. I hadn’t ventured this far before, certainly not outside the forest, not on foot. It was too enticing to let it go unexplored.

“Alright,” Autumn nodded, “But just a peek, then we head back into the woods. There’ll be more monsters for you to kill in here.”

I grunted my agreement and my unicorn girl clung to my arm as we exited into a clearing that gave way to a prairie. I could make out centaurs in the distance, or creatures that very much gave off the appearance of centaurs from far away.

“Do you see them?” I asked, pointing at the figures.

“Yes,” Autumn nodded. “Centaur girls are very important for keeping Keenfury’s orcs at bay. They have better vision and can fire arrows from longbows at almost twice the distance of an orc. Because of them, greenskins stay far from the grasslands and villages in our corner of the world. Usually. So they're limited to the forests, where they get picked off by wood elves, but do some damage, too.”

“We should go thank the centaurs for their service,” I said, laughing a bit, but I kind of meant it. I was really curious to meet one.

Autumn was not half as eager. “That’s a bad idea. They are friendly, but they don’t like human men,” Autumn said.

I looked back at her in wonder. “Why’s that?” I asked.

“They’re long-lived, but because of their, ahem, lower body, very few breeders would ever… you know. It’s a source of bitterness for them. They’ve had to resort to magic to multiply.”

I nodded. “That makes sense,” I said. “I can understand both sides of the debate on this one. I, also, wouldn’t be up to breeding with a horse’s backside, but I can see why it’d create some tension for them.”

There was a long pause. I looked over at Sprinkle, who seemed to be staring out at the centaur girls in reverence and awe. I smiled at her cute open-mouthed expression until she spoke. “I wonder what they taste like.”

Autumn cringed, which Sprinkle noticed.

“I meant raw, of course!” she added quickly, waving her hands as though that cleared things right up. “Not cooked!”

“How the fuck does that make it any better?!” I grunted, laughing at the absurdity of it and kissing her on the horn. She shivered a bit at that, and soon after that we decided it best that we retreat back into the forest.

We had a bit of trouble at first in retracing our steps, but soon we found our way thanks to Sprinkle’s intimacy with the woods and located some landmarks that made our trail home open up to us.

But about halfway home we noticed a rustling in the trees above. On guard, we gripped our weapons and were poised to defend ourselves against whatever threat it turned out to be when, to our surprise, Ivy, our green wood elf friend, leaped down from the branches and landed gracefully in front of me, an image of sylvan beauty.

“Ivy!” I said, lowering my lance. “Good to see you. Why are you here?”

Her eyes were wide in a look of panic. “It’s Gumi!” she shouted. “She’s taking her feminine form, and you’re not with her!”

“Do I have to be?” I asked, scratching my neck.

Autumn was the one to answer. “In order for a feminine form to become permanent, a slime girl needs to absorb the seed of the man she considers her lover within a few hours—”

“—Or she’ll die!” Ivy shouted in terror. “Come on!”

With those final words, I was fully invested. We ran back most of the way, using Endure 6 in my case to easily keep pace with my supernaturally gifted companions and still have enough energy for whatever I was about to find on the farm.

When we finally arrived at the sanctuary, I didn’t have to look long to locate Gumi, as she was visible to me as soon as I threw open the cabin door. She had taken a feminine form, alright, and I certainly was a fan of the form she chose.