-{Chapter 4: True Blue Hero}-
So Blueberry ended up explaining to us how her 'feeding' worked as we headed off. From what I understand, mana runs through a person's entire body through spirit-veins that overlap the existing cardiovascular system, the only difference being the heart analogue, the Mana Font, can't exist in the same space as the heart lest the condensed energy causes the organ to explode, so it mirrors the heart instead, resting just a little to the right of one's chest… or at least that's what she's been taught is the reason for that placement.
Etheric-Type Monsters like Blueberry have physiology that's magical in nature, and while they are still fully capable of eating and drinking like normal creatures, their unique circumstance means they can metabolise mana as well. As such, her kind has developed adaptations that allow them to extract mana harmlessly from their targets, in a Slime's case, they're able to shift some of their cells into ones that can pull mana through skin contact.
"And that 'skin contact' required you to molest the poor Mandragora?" Alice teased.
"Oh no, Blueberry could suck from anywhere, mana draining is just much easier if you mix it with naughty play," she began. "Two reasons for that. First, mana is all about the mind, so Monsters like Blueberry learn quick that it's also all about the mind-games. If someone's having their mana sucked out from actions that pleasure them, the mind subconsciously thinks 'ooh! mana being sucked out feels good~!' and suddenly the mana reacts and makes it all feel better. Makes it impossible to fight back and that means Blueberry and other Etheric monsters can just drink the person dry of mana."
"And the second?" I inquired.
"Orgasms make you burst with a lot of energy, that means mana too. With boys the burst all gets squirted out in their semen, but with girls it like… erupts out of every pore. It's like you're bathing in strawberry milk, and it tastes just as good."
"So what happened with the Mandragora? You said that mana doesn't do what happened to her," I asked. Alice would've, but she seemed to be drooling, lost in the idea of a bath full of strawberry milk.
"It doesn't, Blueberry's drained people dry of mana before, sometimes by request. It doesn't hurt, you might feel a little sleepy after but otherwise fine, and once you recover you're able to hold more mana than you could before, and it becomes more enriched. It's like… training a muscle, the more you stress your limits, the more your limits grow and the better you get."
Blueberry paused for a moment in thought before continuing. "Blueberry doesn't know what happened with the cute plant lady, but her naughty parts all had something pulsing through them… it was like mana but not. It ran through the spirit-veins with the Mana but it was stronger, primal, and it made Blueberry think lewd thoughts when drinking it."
"That was definitely Dark Energy, but that's interesting," Alice began, having shaken herself out of her thoughts. "Your explanation of how mana works has some similarities, but fundamentally they're too different. It is like apples and oranges, they're both fruit but vastly different."
"I don't follow," I spoke calmly. "The dark energy is what lets you cast magic, and mana is what will let me use those magic sword techniques, isn't that the same?"
The lamia groaned in irritation before focusing on him. "For one, Dark Energy is exclusive to monsters, even if you managed to absorb and use it, it would change you into a monster anyway. Second, it ambiently enhances our ability to pleasure others, and is a fundamental aspect of why monsters can cause Critical Ecstasy. And third—"
"It tastes like Milk Chocolate!" Blueberry spoke up.
Alice's mouth begins to water before she wipes her face. "And third, Monster Magic is nothing like your sword techniques, it requires an understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe, you can't just make ice, you need to understand how ice forms and then picture the process in your mind. Even then, it won't work unless you have an affinity for the element you're trying to conjure."
"What's Allie's affinity?"
"Darkness, it's a rather simple element, all things considered, but the elemental affinity for it is extremely rare, and when someone does have it, it can be extremely dangerous. Darkness Affinity allows me to wield Dark Energy in its rawest state, less manipulating the world and more forcing my authority upon it. It allows me to inflict pain or pleasure on someone from a distance or… obliterate them entirely."
I don't know exactly what happened in the moment, but from what I gathered, the moment Alice's face expression began to fall in sadness, Blueberry had picked me up and tossed me right at her…
This resulted in the rather comedic incident of me instinctively clinging onto the woman… with my face ending up buried in her chest. I only barely registered the slime exclaiming, "Surprise Hug of Comfort-o!" before I was tossed.
There was a moment of silence, I didn't dare move, fearing death if I so much as breathed on the two wonderful orbs before me. Of course my face most assuredly burned at the circumstance I found myself in.
"Luka…" Alice hissed, she didn't even need to finish her threat as I felt like ice was poured down my back.
"S-sorry!" I exclaimed and immediately positioned myself to push away from her…
Realising just a second too late that my instinctive movement would result in me getting a handful of her chest.
In any other circumstance, I imagine Alice would have teased me and tried to tempt me into further lewd scenarios. In this case however, she was a bit too pissed at the slime essentially launching me into her bosom, and my moment of stunning mortification mixed with my almost unconscious squeeze of her breasts left me completely unable to avoid the tail hurtling towards my head.
…soft…
…of course that was the last thought I had to have.
-(/OnO\)-
"ALLIE!" the annoying blue blob yelled out. "You knocked out Luky for touching your boobies?!"
"I knocked him out because the both of you were irritating me. Be thankful he's only unconscious, I tried to kill the last person that fondled my chest without permission, after all."
"...so if Blueberry got permission to—"
"For the sake of my remaining brain cells, do not fucking take that away from what I said."
The Slime Girl had the audacity to pout. "Allie is being no fun again."
"My name is Alice." I proceeded to glare at the blue… I hesitate to call her demon because so far she's made Alma seem tolerable.
"Yeah, but you react to Blueberry calling you Allie!" she said with a smug grin. "Now, Blueberry's gonna go pick up your boyfriend and then we're gonna get to town so hopefully he can wake up in a soft bed."
She didn't even leave me time to argue as she proceeded to pick the boy up and cradle him like a mother, strangely causing him to relax into her touch, a silent longing.
The display shook off what little frustration I had only to replace it with the nagging sensation of guilt. I kept quiet after that and we continued on, with no real topic with which to break the silence.
"...so when are you gonna tell Luky you're the monster lord?"
Suddenly the silence seems far more appealing. "How'd you figure it out before him? Aren't you the stranger to this world, not him?"
"You seriously asking Blueberry that when you introduced yourself with such an ostentatious title of Alipheese Fateburn the Sixteenth? Doesn't take much from that to understand Allie is at least a noble."
"Hmmph… you're smarter than I've first assumed, given how you talk."
"Hey! Blueberry's way of speaking is fucking adorable!"
My eyes widen as I snap to her, sputtering a bit in surprise. "Wh-what the hell?!"
"Ha! Blueberry got you! You assumed Blueberry doesn't swear~!" she said in a sing-song tone, pointing at me in victory.
I just groaned and kept moving, already seeing that we had arrived close to the town.
"So… if you wanna do the coexistence… why do you let monsters keep attacking humans? Doesn't that… send the opposite message?"
I hissed in exasperation. "I'm not letting them attack humans, I've told them to only attack in self defense. Clearly they're using loopholes by provoking humans to attack first, or don't consider raping humans as attacking them."
"...Uh-huh, so what's that then?" she said, pointing towards Iliasburg itself.
"What's wha—" was all I got out as I took notice of a clear battle in progress, with my enhanced senses it was trivial to see down the streets to what could be easily called a one-sided massacre in the main square… with a Dragonkin Heavenly Knight in the centre of it all. "...First Damn it Granberia."
I sighed to myself before heading off into—
"Oi!" Blueberry suddenly called out before tugging me back with an impressively strong slime lasso. "The Pit do you think you're doing?"
"I'm going to order her to leave, if Granberia's here terrorising the people, I…" I took note of her glare. "We can't get our Ama-ama Dango."
…and the glare didn't disappear, so clearly that wasn't her problem, or at least not the only one.
"And you think the humans are gonna be okay of being in the midst of a Dragonewt—"
"Dragonkin."
"—Dragonkin attack and then having a Slime and a Lamia—"
"Echidna."
Blueberry paused and looked at me for a moment. "Like the ant-eater?"
"The What?"
"You know what? Not the point. We show up there and people are gonna panic more, and get worried about us giving them Death By Snu-Snu."
"...the fuck is Snu-Snu?" I was very quickly finding myself becoming more and more lost.
The slime girl casually shrugged. "A bunch of the Summoned Heroes the human kingdom sends out in Blueberry's world coined the phrase, apparently Snu-Snu means sex… specifically dominating sex inflicted on them by a much larger and stronger woman."
"...where does the 'death' come in? It's obvious with monsters here, but this feels like it'd apply to human women too."
"Crushed pelvises."
"...I regret asking." I mutter aloud before refocusing. "So what you're saying is, if we go in as we are, we'll cause more of a panic."
"And probably get chased out, meaning no Sutherland Inn."
"Then we won't go as we are." I say calmly, making use of a simple magic that I had not intended to ever need to use, my human form.
"Woah! You have transformation magic! That's so cool! Blueberry doesn't know that magic."
Heh, looks like I'll be enjoying the Dango all by my—
"Hold this please." she says abruptly, tossing Luka into my arms.
Wait what?
I found myself bewildered, almost forgetting to stop staring at the human in my arms so I could see what the hell the slime was doing.
And it was quite shocking to see her first step, which was to start eating a tree. And I do not mean she had wrapped around and began to dissolve it. No, she engulfed the base, compressed like a muscle and suddenly a good chunk of the tree went crunch.
And she did it again, and again, pulling more and more of the giant plant into her as what was inside began to be mulched by powerful internal undulations.
I didn't move… I couldn't move, it was all I could do to not drop the boy and flee back to the castle. My only motivation not to lose my calm outer appearance and high-tail it was because like hell was I going to leave this very powerful unknown on her own.
Her motives became obvious as her insides began to sort the mush into three colours, the dark brown bark, the lighter shaded insides, and the leafy green chlorophyll. Soon it then began to move into places along her body, her arms and face being filled in with the lighter brown colour. The more it settled against the hardening slime, the more it began to look like skin. Then the bark brown moved, then the leaf green.
By the end what stood before me impressively looked like a human woman in brown leather armor with soft tanned skin and shimmering blue hair. The only things wrong were her eyes, which had forest green irises, they had no pupils or eye-whites, and her mouth, which was completely blue. That was briefly resolved when she grabbed some nearby white and pink flowers and two random black berries and swallowed them.
"...how long will that last?" I found myself eventually asking the now fully disguised slime.
"About…" she shifts into a thinking posture for a moment, somehow managing to be inhumanly expressive while keeping to human facial limits. "As long as it needs to for Iliasburg, and then you can teach Blueberry how to do it magic style later!"
I stare for a moment, and I had a decision in front of me; I could either flat out deny the slime her wish to learn disguise magic, leading into a further delay as she most likely tries to beg me until I cave, or I just silently accept the request so we can get on with kicking Granberia out of Iliasburg so 'we' can have dangos.
Naturally, I took the best option, and we headed into town.
It appears that the Dragonkin at least showed she was an effective fighter, given the mass of unconscious bodies around her, so at least she wouldn't embarrass me in that regard. She was already making me quite upset considering she was attacking humans against my orders.
First Damn It, Granberia. You're not one to pull shit like undermining my authority like this, I'd expect this more from Alma Elma.
She was in the midst of taunting the town's warriors before she laid her gaze upon me, eyes widening in shock and recognition. It seemed Blueberry noticed something I didn't if the glint in her own eyes was any indication.
"My L—"
"HI GRANBERRY!" Blueberry called out, and immediately the place turns silent.
What conscious humans remained were dumbfounded.
I was, admittedly, trying not to show how dead inside I felt from the second-hand embarrassment.
And Granberia… was mortified.
"H… how…" she breathed out before she cried out in abject terror, "HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT NAME?! WHO TOLD YOU?!"
Granberia, you idiot!
As I expected, Blueberry gasped in excitement. "Oh Beth's gods! There is someone other than Beth who makes cute nicknames?!"
The look in the Heavenly Knight's eyes made her thoughts clear, even without any mind magic.
'By the First, there's two of them.'
And to that I would need to sadly retort, 'no, the slime is much worse.'
Either "Beth" didn't understand her expression, didn't care, or found her horror amusing, and I didn't know which answer was worse. Either way, she continued on with talking to the Dragonkin. "So Granberry, why are you attacking the Ilias People?"
Trying to ignore the now recovering humans' various snickers at the cutesy nickname, along with her embarrassment, she moved to address the disguised monster. "I am here to destroy the temple to Ilias, without that, this continent can no longer produce baptised heroes to kill the Monster Lord."
"Oh wow." Blueberry muttered in a suspiciously innocent tone. "That's impressive."
"Ah." Granberia seemed to be surprised at what she believed was praise, but I had an inkling that would change. "Well, I wasn't the one to come up with—"
"Oh, no, sorry. Beth meant it's impressive how little faith you have in your leader's own capabilities or leadership."
There it was.
Granberia flinched as if the words had actually pierced through her heart like a spear, somehow the reaction just from Beth's statement caused the humans to be more disheartened at the fact something immaterial had done more damage to the monster than all their actual weapons combined. "W-what are you—"
"Beth means a leader wouldn't send one of their only four most elite warriors into the deepest parts of enemy territory on their own, at the very least you would have another Heavenly Knight or a team of soldiers to support you, or at least extract you back home in case of injury. So Beth expects you're doing this on your own without the Monster Lord's knowledge."
"U-um…"
"If the Monster Lord never sent you to attack the temple, but you're the only one who's actually gone to do so, it must mean the Monster Lord didn't order any attack on the temple and wanted it left alone. So that means Granberry is disobeying the Monster Lord and being naughty."
"I-I'm not Disobedient!" she tried to argue back.
"Granberry," the slime said in the tone I would expect from a disappointed mother. The sudden shift caught the Swordswoman off guard. "Did the Monster Lord tell you to attack the Temple of Ilias?"
The dragonkin looked a bit indignant at the tone, but a quick glare from myself caused her to back down. "N-no…"
"Did she tell you to attack any humans?"
"...No…"
"So what did she tell you to do?"
With no way to really retaliate without catching more of my ire, and the fact that she can clearly sense Blueberry was another monster, it became much easier for the chiding parental voice to wear her down. "...she told us to only fight humans in self-defense." That little tidbit seemed to surprise the soldiers laying on the ground, like they had received a small crack to their worldview.
"And were these humans all beat up in self-defense?"
"I… I let them have the first attack…" she meekly defended.
"Granberia." she said a little firmly. "You know full well that's not what your master meant when she gave you that order."
"...I know…"
I found myself almost awestruck, one of the most stalwart and courageous of my forces was… trying to look small, like a child who's been caught doing something she knows was wrong. The slime had taken the tiny opening I'd given her and exploited it to fucking scold the grown-ass adult Dragonkin!
And it was working!
"Then you should know you're in big trouble, along with any other monster who's helping you… but Beth has good offer for you." the girl approached, setting the Dragonkin to react in caution. "You can either submit to Beth's punishment, or we can fight and if you win you don't get punished at all."
That left everyone confused. "But the Monster Lord is—" the heavenly knight began only to be interrupted.
"The only people that know you're here are us Humans and whoever you're collaborating with since you did admit this isn't your plan." Granberia winced as she realised her slip. "And Humans can be very loud when they want to complain about a servant's behaviour to a superior. But, Beth thinks that we'll all be very satisfied if Beth punishes you."
"And what is your intended punishment for The Heavenly Knight of Fire?" I finally spoke up, wishing to judge if what she was planning to do would actually be sufficient.
"Oh, Beth is going to give her a spanking."
And yet again, Blueberry had succeeded in turning the entire plaza silent.
"You… you intend to spank Granberia, the legendary Dragonkin swordmaster."
"On her bare butt in front of all the people she'll need to apologise to for attacking." the disguised monster clarified.
"Do you truly believe I would submit to that?!" Granberia reasonably argued.
"Oh no, Beth is hoping you go with the option to duel."
"What?"
"You're an elite warrior to the point where you have a grand title shared only by three other monsters and second only to the Monster Lord in power and authority! The opportunity to battle such a great fighter makes Beth's blood boil! So Beth wants to fight, and if you win, we'll let you go and you won't get in trouble with the Monster Lord."
"Hey, I didn't agree to let her get away with this!" I snapped out, the spanking in front of a crowd of humans was dumb enough, but this—
"Well, Beth guesses that's fair, Beth means if we just tell the Monster Lord about this instead of Beth's idea, the Monster Lord will need to officially punish Granberia, that means a proper trial, sentencing… Beth shudders to think of all those mountains of paperwork she'll—"
"NO!" What the fuck, why is she so effectively convincing?! "Er… I mean, let's go with your idea, Monster Lord or not, no-one deserves to suffer paperwork."
Blueberry giggled as several of the now recovered soldiers spoke out in agreement, and a few had even shuddered at the thought.
"Very well!" our attention returned to Granberia. "For the sake of protecting my lord against such a horror—and my posterior— I will face you in battle!"
"You know you still get spanked if you lose, right Granberry?" 'Beth' retorted.
"That will not matter, because I won't lose!"
The slime giggled as she… raised her fists?
"Blu—er, Beth, where is your weapon?"
And in response, 'Beth' let out an almost sinister giggle that set me on edge, like how I would imagine Black Alice to have giggled when she was about to 'play' in the stories I was told. "Silly Allie, don't you know?
My body is my weapon~."