Haji shook his head in disbelief at the suite he'd been directed to. It was more like a large apartnt.
He wondered for a mont how they had the room to have a suite like this, let alone the number of suites that the other doors he saw implied, but the answer ca to him pretty quickly. Nexus magic; the place was spatially expanded on top of the general expansion for the entire zone.
For now, he shoved most of his gear into the closet, took one of the provided healing potions, and set about getting cleaned up. All of the anities he could ask for were provided, including hot running water. Hmm.
After he got cleaned and changed into fresh clothes, he examined the suite more carefully and took the ti to lightly probe it with his aura. The space was expanded relative to its exterior volu, but almost everything in the suite was hand-crafted, including the walls.
While Haji couldn't say for certain the order of events, as far as he could tell the room had been built and enchanted by inhabitants before the nexus had warped the space it took up, with final attachnts being made only after the exterior had been shrunk while keeping the inside the sa.
That was a tricky bit of work, and not truly necessary unless a nexus was actively training their inhabitants to have skills and power beyond that granted to them by the dungeon. Another trick that was more common in older nexus.
This didn't an that inhabitants of younger nexuses didn't already do so of that themselves, but it was usually self-guided as the nexus wouldn't know how to provide and direct the training yet.
Amused at his discovery, Haji left the suite long enough to have a al and then returned for a long nap. Fighting those two bosses had been exhausting, and would have been problematic if they hadn't had a chance to fully rest up beforehand.
It was early evening when he was awoken by a knock, and he pulled on one of the provided robes before answering the door. There he found Betty along with two more won; one of them with long white hair that was practically translucent and the other with thick, wavy hair that was such a dark red it was nearly purple.
"There's been a slight change of plans," Betty said with a wink before she led her guests inside. "It looks like I won't have much ti for a day or two, there are a lot of parties scheduled, but my friends here don't have to worry about that tonight and have until nearly noon before they need to be ready. However, I can't say that they are here with quite the sa enthusiasm as I would be."
"I, ah, oh," Haji stumbled verbally as he tried to catch up with what was going on. "Then why have you two co? You're both beautiful, but I don't want to impose on anyone reluctant." Besides, he hadn't been expecting to have any bed companions during this delve at all, so he was already feeling a bit spoiled by just the company Betty was able to occasionally supply.
The white-haired one smiled as she looked at him with golden eyes. "Oh, do not worry about that. We find ourselves curious, so we are here quite willingly for now. But I think it will be up to you to keep our interests. If either of us finds ourselves bored, we will simply leave."
Betty tugged at Haji's robe and pulled him in for a kiss before saying, "Mm, that's for a fresh mory to keep warm. Now, Dhamini and Cephelia aren't mammals in their true forms, so they don't have the sa sort of experiences I did before their minds were awakened. They were confused about exactly why I wanted soone to keep you company until I explained it a little better, and then they both volunteered. Well, they asked if I thought you'd be a good teacher first, and I said yes, so I am relying on you to not prove wrong."
Haji laughed softly, "What a way to pressure a guy with expectations. Alright, I'll see what I can do, though no promises about what is going to happen until we've had a chance to figure out what they like, if anything." He stole a kiss back from her while she was still close, but after that, she slipped out of his embrace and left.
He turned to face the two won who were watching him and examined them a little more closely. They looked like they had dressed to match their hair, with Dhamini in layers of diaphanous material that floated as lightly in the air as her hair did and Cephelia wearing mostly leather clothing that was dyed the sa dark red as her hair.
Hmm.
Realization slowly dawned as he recognized where he'd heard the nas before, and the two ocean zone bosses smiled with slightly wicked amusent. "I do hope you'll treat us sowhat more gently this ti," Cephelia said.
Shadows eat that damn rabbit woman!
His ntal curse was not heartfelt, but he needed to vent internally as he recovered from his surprise. "This is, um, unexpected. Though I am wondering why , other than Betty's influence."
Dhamini shrugged and said, "You aren't the strongest to have won their way past us, but you are the strongest of your group. While the other six could have defeated either one of us, they could not have defeated both of us without you. Plus, you were entertainingly resourceful and clearly have so worldly experience."
"It's not like we weren't already curious," Cephelia said, "but until Betty's inquiry, we weren't curious enough to act or explore on our own. So in so ways, it's simply a matter of convenient timing. This type of mating seems more complicated than my faint mories of laying eggs."
"Also," Dhamini said, "I am curious about another thing. I want to taste more of those interesting treats you have. I didn't get a good enough taste to master all of them during our fight."
Well, that was a little scary. The pretty lady with the floaty hair wanted to taste more poisons so that she could use more poisons.
"Alright, hmm, this is a slightly awkward start," Haji said. "Usually people get to here through at least mutual attraction. Ah, I know. Let's play into the fact that we are at an onsen, only we'll rotate roles and start slow."
Dhamini tilted her head to the side and asked, "What would that involve?"
He smiled and made his way toward a side cabinet that he'd discovered earlier, which held so oils and lotions. "One of the common services provided is massage. If we start with hands and feet, we can slowly discover where you enjoy being touched. I think I should begin by working on one of you while teaching the other, and then switch which of you is being massaged. Then you'll both have an idea of what the experience is like before you try it on . After that, we can work on more areas and see what happens from there."
"Interesting," Cephelia, "I thought people liked to get to the mating part quickly, especially n. Did I understand wrong?"
"Oh, you aren't wrong," Haji replied, "and if you both were here with experience and enthusiasm, we might do that. But I doubt you'd find it interesting, let alone enjoy it, if we jumped right in, and honestly, that would make it less enjoyable for as well."
It would, in fact, kill his mood entirely. "So if we take our ti building things up, we should all have more fun. How does that sound?"
They were both in agreent and so Haji started by directing Cephelia to the massage table to be the first recipient of attention. As things turned out, he was very glad to have slept the afternoon away; it took hours to work through just massaging.
This was partly from teaching them how to be more playful and less intense about the learning process. Every step of the way was supposed to be enjoyable. There were also other discoveries made that distracted everyone, such as finding out that neither of the won had known what being ticklish ant.
Dhamini was prone to ticklish reactions from the right sort of light touches anywhere on her skin, while Cephelia was more ticklish to massages that reached the right nerve clusters. However, instead of flinching away, she tended to grab at the massaging hand while still having the sort of laughing yelp reaction.
anwhile, massaging that deeply on Dhamini tended to cause her to nearly pass out from relaxing so much. Which made it fun for Cephelia and Haji to ss with her by tickling her only when she was that relaxed.
While the two won did seem to enjoy themselves when things got more intimate, their baseline enthusiasm seed much lower than with soone like Betty. Haji suspected that they would both always need more attention and ti invested to get into the proper mood, though that mood didn't wear off imdiately either.
Which was how one of Dhamini's inclinations was discovered.
The night had been slow-paced, with breaks for food and rest between, so it wasn't the first ti he'd woken up entangled in limbs and prehensile hair. But it was the first ti he'd felt so deliberately pinned by the hair entangling him, and Dhamini was staring into his eyes.
"You know," she said in a low whisper, "I rember touching your mind before. But that was such a small taste, and I find that I want much, much more."
The soft glow of her eyes invited him to give in to her desires and he could feel her mind brushing against his own, but Dhamini wasn't pushing at his mind. Instead, he could simply feel her eagerness to take over anything he allowed her to, and Haji was certain that if he gave way to her even a little, it would terribly easy to keep giving up more until her conquest was complete.
That was scarily tempting, in part because he could tell how much the idea excited her, but that was not sothing he could give her right now. Haji cleared his throat and forced his voice to be calm as he said, "I can't do that, not right now. I have secrets that I want to keep for a little while longer. But if you still want to play after the tournant is over, then we can."
Dhamini wasn't entirely satisfied with that, though extracting a promise from him through slightly unfair, if enjoyable, thods certainly seed to help settle her mood. After she was done, she settled down to lay on his chest and made happy sounds when he petted her hair gently.
"That was certainly interesting to watch," Cephelia said thoughtfully, "and I think there's sothing there for , but I'm not sure what."
Haji needed to rest a little bit before he could help her figure that out, which was an entertaining adventure that Dhamini was happy to help with. As it turned out, Cephelia had a bit of a weakness for having her own hair used to bind her arms and legs, though that didn't exactly subdue her either.
He wasn't sure why that particular combination was what worked for her and not any other form of being bound, but this wasn't exactly the sort of thing that was logical and rational.
It was well into the morning, after breakfast and a shared bath, when the two of them decided it was ti to leave.
"Last night was entertaining," Dhamini said, "though I'm not certain it's sothing I want to seek out very often. It took quite a while and I don't think I want to spend that much ti on it very often. How do people do that so much?"
He smiled and reached up to run his fingers through her hair. "Do you rember when you were extracting that promise from ? Imagine if you could get that worked up within minutes of physical contact with a person, or even before touching them because of how much you are anticipating what is to co."
"Oh," she replied and blushed a little. "Um, I didn't push too much, did I? I won't hold you to that promise if you don't want to."
"No, it's fine, really. I think it will be interesting if you still want to give it a try then. But I think you need to be careful; it might be best if you don't try playing with anyone with an aura weaker than mine and even then you want to make sure they have a will to match. The circumstances make you harder to resist, though you had good instincts in holding back and not pushing. It could still be too much for so people to make a real choice."
Cephelia frowned at that and said, "I think I have a similar requirent, if for different reasons. At least, if I want to be bound like that again. I can't be truly entangled in my own hair without soone making stay that way."
Honestly, that had taken both him and Dhamini to manage and Haji wasn't certain that many people could do it alone. "If you et soone who can do what you want all by themselves, just make sure you trust them before you get started. I was counting on Dhamini to let know if you were unhappy and couldn't make that clear to directly."
"Hmm," Cephelia replied. "You have a point. Thank you for the experience and I think you were probably a very good first teacher for us. However, I probably won't be joining Dhamini if she cos to visit you again unless it's just sothing social. While it was fun enough, there's sothing else missing for and I don't think either or both of you can fit that. I'm not in a rush to figure it out either, so don't worry about it."
After that, they left, and it was ti for Haji to think about preparing for the tournant.
During the ti left until then, both Betty and Dhamini visited him on occasion, though never together and he still spent about half of his nights alone. He could have changed that, but honestly, he felt rather spoiled with attention as it was and saw no need to find even more company.
Of the two, Betty was always in the mood to play when she visited, but Dhamini's desires were a little more complicated, even if she didn't recognize her own needs at first. She turned out to be very cuddly and enjoyed spending ti with him and could be quite happy snuggled up against him when he was working on his gear or just reading a book.
On the last night before the preliminary rounds began, she visited him again, but this ti she seed nervous. He gave her so ti to figure out how to say what was on her mind but eventually, he had to prompt her and ask, "What's bothering you?"
"I, um," she was rather adorable as she fought to find the words, "well, it sort of has to do with what you promised for after the tournant. I still want that, maybe even more now. But, I, I don't know that I am going to want to let go once I have you that much. But that would be wrong, and I don't want to hurt you, but I feel so greedy to just have and keep all of you."
Oh.
There was a lot to unpack there. Hmm. "Dhamini," he said gently, "I think there are layers there that you are getting a bit mixed together. So let's try untangling them. First, I am not concerned about you letting go once you have ; even without everything else going on here, I am certain you would find yourself unhappy keeping in that state. I think you'd have a lot more fun repeating the conquest."
Plus, in a worst-case scenario, he would start working free when she wasn't focused on him. She simply wasn't strong enough to keep his full self under indefinitely, even if it was from him allowing her to do it in the first place.
Dhamini squird as she thought about it, then nodded hesitantly. "Maybe. I hope so? I don't know, I'm feeling a little confused about it still."
"I think that there's sothing else," Haji said. "Consider the future after the tournant. I won't be staying here forever, so you need to figure out how that makes you feel."
Her expression told him so much right then, and it was painful to watch. He reached out to draw her to him and Dhamini flinched away, but this was one of the few circumstances where he was willing to ignore that sort of rejection. Dragging her into his embrace was a lot more dangerous than with most won, and he had to close his eyes and duck his head as he wrapped his arms around her.
A mont later she was crying. "I'm sorry, I didn't an it, I didn't an to hurt you."
"It's alright. I understand and I am not mad at you. Please, just don't run when I let go. I need you to stay here and help , and then we can continue talking."
When she nodded, Haji forced his arms to let go. Which was harder than it should have been, but he was having to fight several toxins ravaging his body and there were very angry red welts all over his skin.
"There's still potions in that cabinet, and there's so antitoxins I can direct you to in my gear." It took a few minutes, but eventually, she had fed him enough potions to mostly nd him, and he should be able to heal up the rest by morning.
"I don't know why I did that," she said miserably.
"Because you were scared and confused and those emotions involved ," Haji replied as he stretched out a few muscles that were still kinked from spasming that hard. "In other circumstances, I wouldn't have grabbed you when you were feeling that way, but we need to talk about this now and you might have reacted by running away if I had given you the chance."
She sniffed and said, "Why are you so calm about everything and why am I feeling like this?"
"Calm?" he said with a laugh, "No, I'm not calm, I just have a better understanding of what is happening and I am making sure that we do this right, or at least as right as possible. Dhamini, if I am not careful, I could hurt you worse than anything you've done, and I don't want to do that."
He really had screwed this part up.
"This is my mistake for assuming that you would be as unattached as Betty, and I've been keeping my emotions a bit distant because I knew and understood that I would be leaving. You didn't know to keep that emotional distance, and now you've gotten very attached to . We won't label that attachnt because you don't have the experience to really know what it is yet. Also, I am going to need to reexamine so things from my end."
Dhamini's face slowly went slack from shock as she started to put it together. "Wait, you an that, I am..."
"Shh," he said with a smile, "no labels right now. So attachnts are more fleeting than others, and you need to figure that out first. Making a label too soon could make that harder. Now, I think it best that at the very least I don't visit with Betty or anyone else while I'm here; you're the only one who gets to visit like this right now."
They talked well into the night, which kept him up much later than he'd planned.
At the end of it, he still didn't know what he was going to do in the future. Haji did care for her, but that wasn't the sa as what she was feeling. It might be easy to just let himself beco more attached, but that brought a slew of complications. He was going to have to think about it a lot over the upcoming nights during the tournant.
In the morning, he collected all of his stuff so that he could move down to a room next to the arena, which was what he'd already been planning on doing before last night's talk with Dhamini. Staying in the luxury suite instead of the sa accommodations as everyone else seed wrong, plus the trip from here down to the arena was a bit longer than he was going to want to do constantly.
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