Summoned by Monster Girls

Apparently, being ‘well rewarded’ by Kassandra meant that she was going to increase how much she flirted with me and become even more clingy. For now at least.

Not that I was going to complain about it.

Finishing off the two stunned flame serpents wasn’t an issue. Removing the heads for the claim trophies also doubled for extra profit for the girls. Apparently, the fangs could be used by some craftsmen and while the flame serpents weren’t venomous, their fire breath was aided by a chemical pouch that was placed roughly in the same spot as a venom sac would be on a normal snake. Thankfully, the girls brought a sack this time.

Returning to town, we were also able to knock off one other task along the way, stumbling across another animal that we’d been requested to hunt. Thankfully it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as the flame serpents. Rieka was able to bring the river antelope down with a single spell that stunned it long enough for me to finish it off with minimal damage to the pelt.

Rieka and I ended up transporting the river antelope on a carry pole while Kassandra managed the sack of snake heads. The dwarf lamia kept pace beside me so she could continue to flirt with me in the guise of checking on my ‘burns’.

“Again, I’m sorry about your hair, Liam. That was just bad luck on your part.” Rieka called from her point in the lead, shooting an apologetic smile over her shoulder. I wasn’t too bothered at this point, between Kassandra’s flirting and watching Rieka’s tail swaying happily over her sculpted bottom, my hair was a small price to pay for a successful day.

“Hey, I’d rather take one for the team and lose my hair than either of you girls have to deal with rocking a bald look.” I replied genially. Which was true. The fire had crisped my hair to the point where it had crumbled and fallen out entirely, all except for a small patch on the back of my head, which I resolved I would be shaving when I got home. “At least my head is nice and smooth, no lumpy spots. Your ears are far too charming with your hair coloration to be without it.” I buffed the top of my scorched bare head to make the point and Rieka laughed while blushing furiously.

“Smooth, Liam. You are going to have her eating out of the palm of your hand in no time.” Kassandra complimented me with a wink, not a single bit of jealousy showing on her cute face. Shrugging, I smiled down at her in return.

“Hey, I’d settle for being trusted. I heard about how hard it is to trust someone who doesn’t have eyebrows.”

<><><>

“Okay, I have to say it. The shaved look is better with the extra bits trimmed off. Consistency makes it work.” Kassandra giggled as we wound through the early morning bustle of Kintos.

The girls had sent me back Saturday night and I’d immediately set about making my new ‘hairless’ style look intentional. Unfortunately, even with it being the later half of summer, there was no way I’d be able to cover it up at work. A stocking cap would probably kill me from heatstroke and I didn’t own any ball caps. But I pushed that off for a ‘future me’ problem instead.

It was Sunday now and I’d been summoned back, this time for some more relaxed ‘adventuring’ to clean up the rest of the notices. I’d gotten the ‘mission complete’ notice from the System the previous day, when we’d finished eliminating the flame serpents. That put me back up over 500 SP, but with nothing to spend it on for the moment. I was still holding off boosting my stats again to avoid being thrown off balance. Cerebaton’s advice was ringing in my mind and I’d actually been considering if it would be better to just slowly boost my stats, rather than doing massive increases at once. That way my body could slowly acclimatize to its new normal. Something that I’d decided to run past Cerebaton at my next practice session with the daemon in his human disguise.

“I agree. Though I do also empathize with what Liam said yesterday. Seeing someone without eyebrows is just strange. It would make it hard to trust him if we didn’t already know we could.” Laughed Rieka, her tail stirring up a storm as she walked beside me, opposite Kassandra. That fluffy banner occasionally bumped into my legs as it wafted back and forth, it was honestly cute to have such an obvious signal of Rieka’s current mood.

“Glad that my actions are helping counter the loss of credibility that my eyebrows’ fiery demise created.” I sighed with a roll of my eyes. “So what’s the plan for today? Hopefully something low-key, I dunno if my armor is going to hold up to much more.” I tapped the singed front with my fingertips meaningfully.

“Oh don’t worry about that. The leather is still supple, it just got scorched. Uncle Silas has an oil that will make sure it's only cosmetic. The fire didn’t burn through the leather, we just need to make sure it doesn’t go brittle and crack. We can get some on the way back today. I’ll make sure it's treated during the week between classes.” Kassandra reassured with another broad smile that made her eye squint behind her silver-rimmed spectacles. The dwarf lamia was once more dressed in a black leather underbust corset and silken top, this time in a dark blue, with a neat skirt of a matching shade to protect her modesty. The whole ensemble worked well with her red and brown scales.

“Probably good, we don’t want our protector looking disreputable.” Rieka agreed with a grin to show her teasing.

“Hey, a knight in shining armor is someone who’s never had their mettle tested.” I fired off with a quip that my dad had told me before that stuck with me. “I don’t care about looking a bit battered, it shows that I’m doing the job you girls contracted me for. As long as the function doesn’t suffer, then I’m good.”

Kassandra decided that was worth a hug and hung us up for a bit in the middle of the street, thankfully no one complained we were blocking them as she popped my back with her thanks.

“I still think we should look at upgrading your armor when we get a chance.” Rieka said as we headed through the northern gates of Kintos and out into the plains that surrounded town. The only people on the road this early were a handful of merchants passing by and some students from Juneau heading out on their own missions. I also spotted a double handful of serious looking teens and young adults with the badges of the Hunt guild that were kitted out with weapons and armor, rather than the metallic rods for magic use. They must be one of the teams handling dangerous monsters that stray too near town, or at least the ones that the students at Juneau don’t snatch up.

“Upgrading would be good, but imagine how much trouble I’d have been in if my armor had been made of metal?” I reminded Rieka, doing my best to not think about what hot chain-mail would have done to my skin. The wolf-kin shivered as well at the thought and nodded quickly.

“That is a good point. Maybe a shield then? Something to deflect stuff like that would be good and you could always drop it in a similar situation if it got too hot.”

“That would work…I’ll talk to Cerebaton about it. He’s the one helping me train with the sword in my off time. If he thinks adding a shield to the mix would be good, I’ll start working with him on it and we can look at it next week?”

“Damn it!” The sudden bout of cursing from nearby made all three of us jump and we whirled to see a young woman kicking at the ground in frustration some distance from the road. From what I could see, she could only have been a mouse-kin due to the obvious size of her ears and a long tail I saw dancing behind her. “There goes another three silver worth of mana. What am I doing wrong!?” The small woman bounced in frustration, literally bounced up and down. She cleared nearly a foot of space in the air with each frustrated hop. Her long tail, nearly twice as long as she was tall and tufted with black hair at the end, whipped back and forth in frustration. Her ears were large and expressive, and absolutely covered with piercings that jingled merrily while she bounced in anger.

“Jane?” Kassandra called and the little mouse woman froze in place for a moment before darting a look towards us. “Jane! It is you! What’s wrong?” Kassandra slithered around me to cross over and leave the road, heading to check on the other girl. Rieka and I followed after, with Rieka explaining to me in whispers.

“Jane is also from Rue House, you might remember her from that first accidental summoning, she was there for that. She’s also a classmate of ours for a few classes.”

Thinking back, I did remember a mouse girl with large ears, though there were enough surprises that night that I didn’t remember much in the way of details other than the ears.

“Miss Silverscale! I am so sorry if I bothered you and Princess Rieka.” The formerly animated and cursing mouse girl was now standing stiff as a board and darting glances between all three of us. Her tail wasn’t still though, lashing rapidly and nervously behind her like a snake striking at random. She was dressed in a simple blouse and knee-length skirt combination in a dark gray and tan that actually helped her blend in with the long grass that was browning in the late summer heat. This close, I noticed she had her hair cut short on the sides and styled into a compact, fluffy mass that looked halfway between a pompadour and a mohawk between her large ears.

“Nonsense, Jane. You didn’t bother us at all. And I told you to please call me Kass.” Kassandra insisted, coming to a stop nearby and letting us catch up. “Now, what's wrong? Maybe we can help?”

The mouse-kin’s expressive eyes darted from Kassandra to Rieka and to me again before going towards the city guards for some reason. All the while she gnawed on her bottom lip. I wanted to reassure her that she was safe, but before I could find the words, she clearly came to a decision.

“I’m having trouble summoning the bonded creature I got.” Jane said quickly, as if admitting it was some kind of failure and she wanted to confess as quickly as possible before she lost her nerve. “I bonded with a sylph once the summoning circle was repaired. The little bint just refuses to come to me when I call for her. I have missions I need to complete, but it isn’t safe to go out alone. I thought with her to scout and look out for me, I could get in and out with my retrieval tasks.” Jane heaved a sigh at the end of her rant, her long tail flicking back and forth behind her like a wind-swept pennant.

The tail itself was actually rather hypnotizing. Even whipping about, the long appendage added several feet to her height. Since she had to be at least five and a bit feet tall, that made for a very long tail. Forcing myself to focus on the tail’s owner and not the appendage, I saw a girl nearing tears of frustration. And apparently, Kassandra saw the same thing and scrambled to do what she could to help.

“Oh Jane, I’m sorry that it’s giving you trouble. Is there anything we can do to help you out?” Rieka added her agreement with a nod, stepping up to stand next to Kassandra.

“Am I doing the summoning wrong? I thought it was just a normal conjuration spell once the contract was formed…” Jane sighed, digging into a small shoulder bag she’d been carrying to pull out a leather-bound notebook, which she flipped through and held out to Rieka. I noticed the mouse-kin woman was leaning more towards Rieka than Kassandra, but my dwarf lamia companion didn’t seem to care, shuffling over to peer at the diagram on the page over Rieka’s shoulder.

“No, that looks right. It’s the same that we’ve been using to summon Liam.” Rieka said after a moment. I peeked over their shoulder to find a simple circle with a handful of runes drawn into it, rendered onto the page in ink.

“Do you have to draw that on the ground?” I asked curiously, the question making the mouse kin jump in surprise. Her eyes widened as she looked past the two girls and up at me. She bit first her bottom lip and then her top lip in sequence, looking rather adorable doing it while bouncing from foot to foot anxiously.

“I channel the diagram into the spell. It’s drawn by the magic using my rod and then the summon is supposed to appear in it.” She answered nervously, peering up in curiosity. Jane’s eyes were a dark brown, nearly so dark they were black and they watched me with focused interest. “Are you really a human?”

“Last time I checked I was.” I gave her a gentle smile, hoping to reassure her. Jane giggled sweetly at that before turning her question back to the girls.

“So, have you two ever had your summon fail? I know that it is hit or miss with whether or not a summon will respond to a call at first, until you build rapport with them. But she hasn’t come once since the initial summon…”

Kassandra stared at Jane dumbly for several seconds before turning to Rieka, who was equally surprised. Both of them looked back at me, which caused Jane’s gaze to dart back to me as well.

“I hadn’t thought about that actually.” Kassandra muttered, blinking owlishly behind her silver-rimmed spectacles. “Liam, you haven’t ever turned down one of our summons, have you?”

“No, why would I?” I was more surprised that they were surprised over it, I had made them a promise after all?

“Because you didn’t want to, or didn’t feel like it?” Jane supplied, her gaze locked on me intently.

“Uh…” Was my intelligent response.

“Seriously, Liam. Why is it that you have been so willing to come and help us like you have? I’m not complaining, mind you. I just…summons normally don’t do that. I hadn’t thought about it until Jane mentioned it.” Rieka glanced me over once more before locking eyes with me.

“I mean, I promised I’d protect you girls. That means whenever you need it. Not just when I feel like it.” I shrugged. They continued to stare so I decided a bit of levity and some charm might break them out of their stunned silence. “You two do so much to make sure I’m informed of when you’ll need me next. That helps as I can plan around it. Plus, it’s easy to respond to requests for help from such beautiful ladies, especially for a guy like me.”

“Liam!” Kassandra’s laughing exclamation of my name was just enough warning for me to brace myself before the dwarf lamia launched herself at me like a striking snake. Which was a rather apt analogy given her species.

Forewarned, I braced and caught her so that the move again failed to knock me over. Instead, the giggling dwarf lamia wrapped her coils around me and buried her face in my neck while her arms and tail squeezed my middle firmly.

Jane had actually hopped back two steps when Kassandra launched herself, her hands up near her mouth in horror that slowly melted into confusion as she watched me hugging the girl back. Rieka just rolled her eyes, though a slight blush dusted her cheeks.

“I don’t think that’ll help Jane with her summoning, Liam. Buttering up your summoner only works for the summon after all.” Rieka sighed when Kass continued to cling to me. “Thank you for the compliment though. Kass, let him go please. We are right outside of town and you’ll get a bad reputation clinging to a man like that in public.”

“No! Liam is warm and I like hugging him like this. Besides, it’s Liam! It’s not just any man.” Kass protested and blew a raspberry at Rieka, getting a laugh from the other woman who gave up at that point.

“Fine, I know getting you away from something warm is a battle not worth fighting at times. Sorry, Liam.”

“I’m sure I can accept this great burden.” I replied with dignity that made both of my contractors laugh and Jane blink in confusion. “Seriously though, when the girls send me a summon, I just get a notice requesting I respond. It does mention it’s a ‘non-urgent’ summon though. Is there a way to attach a level of importance to your summoning? I don’t know if your summon is just ignoring you to be lazy or not, but she may not realize it's important. Did you mention to her the plan for today?” I said the last part to Jane who blinked again and groaned, rubbing her face with both hands while her shoulders slumped.

“No, I didn’t even think of telling her. She can’t really talk back, she just chirps like a bird when I talked to her before. But she did seem to understand me. Damn it…” She heaved another sigh before flipping through the notebook to find another circle. “Okay, I’m going to try an urgent summon. I really really need this one to work, I’m already dipping into my emergency funds for class. I need to get some more mana to start rebuilding that and I don’t wanna fall behind on the practical work.”

“Okay, we will let you focus on that. Please, feel free to ask if you have any problems.” Kassandra actually released me with her arms so she could turn and address Jane, her voice filled with earnest concern for the mouse-kin woman. Her coils stayed firmly wrapped around my waist though and I had to lean back to keep balanced as she moved.

“I appreciate it, Miss Silverscale. If I can’t get this to work though, I’m going to have to figure out something else I can do to supplement my mana income.” The determined look on the mouse-girl’s face was rather cute, given the fact she kinda looked like a cross between a librarian and a goth with her outfit and piercings.

“All right. Good luck on this, Jane.” Rieka added before nodding back to the road.

Since Kassandra didn’t seem willing to unwrap me yet, I started to walk carefully towards the road. The sort of wide-legged waddle was enough to get a giggle from the snake girl and she shifted her tail’s grip a little higher on my hips to support herself. It was difficult to walk over the grass with the added weight throwing my balance off, but once we were back on the hard-packed road it got easier. Not by much, but easier.

“I hope it works for her.” Kassandra murmured once we’d made it a few hundred feet down the road.

“I do as well. After making the commitment of a summoned creature like this, she needs to find a way to work with it if she’s going to complete the coursework needed to get a pass. It is a high-risk, high-reward strategy after all.” Rieka added as well.

“And we are definitely getting a high reward with Liam!” Kassandra cheered, wrapping her arms around my head and pulling my face into her chest. I had to stop walking because I couldn’t see anything besides freckled skin and her blouse. Even that went dark as she crushed my head into her bosom.

“Kass, you are going to suffocate the poor man…” Rieka’s words were muffled by the soft flesh surrounding my head.

“Oh, he’d die happy if I did, but you know I’d never hurt our Liam.” Kassandra shot back from above me, though she did loosen her grip on my head enough that I could breath.

“Good, we are going to need help. Sovereign Oak is not light weight in general and the carpenter wants as much as we can bring back.”

“I’m sure Liam is good with wood.” Kassandra teased lasciviously as well. She did uncoil after another few steps to instead slither along the road beside me, apparently having had enough of riding me like she was pretending to be a cute, snakeskin backpack. We chatted about the classwork that the girls were doing and I tried again to explain to them what my job entailed. The fact that I ensured food supplies were delivered around town sounded nice, but the fact that I spent my whole day loading ‘giant carts’ confused them.

Kassandra interrupted me trying to explain how the trolley’s and their tugs worked for moving supplies from storage to the trucks to ask me another question that caught me by surprise.

“Liam, I was wondering something. Rieka has to return to the castle next weekend to deal with official business, so I was going to take that weekend to work on my other studies. We were going to talk to you about it on the way back today, but I had an idea that I wanted to run past you.”

“Oh? What’s that Kass?” I turned my attention back to the red-headed dwarf lamia next to me and she smiled up at me brightly.

“I know that we need to keep summoning you to build you up, so I don’t wanna just leave you hanging on the weekend if you are free. It might not be worth as much, but would you want to come on the first day of the weekend to visit me? I’m sure we could find something interesting to do around town. At the worst, you could help me get some practice with my spells. Besides, I want to make sure you know how much we appreciate your work protecting us.” She asked shyly and I couldn’t help but grin at this new side of Kassandra. She was normally flirty, brash, and very open but now she was rather reserved and the counterpoint to her normal behavior was adorable.

“It’d be better if we stuck close to the campus anyway, no need for us to take unnecessary risks when the team is down a person after all.”

“So is that a yes, Liam?”

“Did you expect me to say no?” I was honestly confused at the question, which led to me not noticing the grin on Kassandra’s face when I agreed. I didn’t miss the tackle though when it came. She managed to take me off my feet this time, with a happy squeal and another body-wrapping hug while Rieka laughed her head off.