The rushing sensation of dimensional travel ended just as abruptly as it began, depositing me in a familiar room, right in front of my grinning summoners.

  Deciding for once to act first, I didn’t say anything and lunged forward with my arms spread wide. Kassandra managed a squeal of surprise before I yanked my dwarf lamia up into the air in a princess-carry and spun in a circle.

  Instinctively, the girl’s serpentine coils wrapped around my hips and squeezed tight in surprise. I muffled the follow-up squeal with a kiss on the lips that had Kassandra melting into my arms and kneading my waist with her coils.

  “I suppose that is one way of getting her to hush,” Rieka snickered when Kassandra and I separated again with a quiet pop.

  “Ass,” Kassandra grumbled, punching me in the chest with one small fist.

  “What? I missed you. All of you,” I declared, rubbing the tip of her nose with my own and getting a small giggle from the woman.

  Switching my grip around to support Kassandra against me with one arm, I went through the motions of giving each of the girls a kiss in greeting while Valda watched in amusement from the corner.

  “Your clear affection to Liam is endearing, and I dare say might be concerning to some people,” Valda commented once we’d made our hellos and I’d finally set Kassandra down.

  “Why is that?” Jane asked curiously, the mousy scholar still perched on my shoulders where I’d deposited her after her kiss.

  “Think about it Jane,” I supplied before Valda could comment. “Most summoned creatures are just that, creatures. Seeing you kissing a hellhound would be rather disturbing for some people.”

  Jane’s eep of surprise made me grin and her tail tighten from its spot wrapped around my throat, but she didn’t have enough strength in the limb to actually harm me. The hot blush that I could feel radiating from her a moment later told me she was likely doing her tomato impression.

  “Yes, but not quite where I was going with it,” Valda said with an amused smile on her face. “You have in your wake two of the most eligible young noblewomen in the kingdom, an acclaimed artist and practitioner of a very rare school of magic, as well as one of the most clever minds in Juneau. Any one of those four would be considered prizes to wed, and they all clearly love you.”

  “Clearly,” Shayla chuckled softly, her wings pumping behind her with quiet shushing noises while her fuzzy antennae danced through the air over her head. “I don’t know about Kassandra or Rieka, but I’m rather glad I have no familial obligations to marry for station.”

  “Oh hell no,” Kassandra insisted. “I don’t give a damn about marrying for station. My parents might be a little upset, but they know that I’ll take good care of the family lands regardless of who I wed. Or if I wed. I’m sure I could convince Liam to give me an heir when I’m ready, right Rieka?”

  Kassandra directed the last part to my wolfish princess, who was blushing furiously enough to match Jane when Kassandra elbowed her playfully in the stomach.

  “It doesn’t hurt that in the Coldeye Queendom, noble lines can pass down to both genders without an issue,” Rieka mumbled, looking away. “And besides, I’m the fourth princess. It’s not like I’m in line for inheritance anyway. Mother wouldn’t dare try and marry me off without my consent either.”

  “I notice you didn’t comment about asking Liam for an heir…” Kassandra teased in a singsong voice.

  The comment only served to deepen Rieka’s blush further and she refused to look at me. But from the way that her tail whipped back and forth happily behind her, I was sure that my princess was still as excited about that idea as I was.

  Rather than torment her or Jane any further—it was okay to make them blush but I’d never want my girls to actually be uncomfortable about anything around me—I decided it was time to distract.

  “So, I know the plan was to have me help you all train today while we wait for news—” I started to say, only to halt when Valda raised one clawed hand towards me.

  The lizard-folk woman had her usual leather claw-caps on to keep the sharp digits from damaging things when she went to pick them up, but that only served to highlight the potent natural weapons her claws were, something I was familiar with as they’d served me well as a target for Shape-Shifting for some time.

  “About that,” Valda began when she saw she had my attention. “I’ve actually gotten word in the recent dispatches that more of the strange weapons have been spotted in the front. We are under orders to capture and destroy any that we can, as well as do anything necessary to trace the origins of the weapons. It seems like the other commanders believe them to be something planted by a foreign power, so they want evidence that will tell them who. So we don’t have to wait to act once we can figure out where the damn cave is.”

  “That’s great to hear!” I said with a wide grin. “I can tie up anything I’ve got going back home in a matter of hours, since I’ve been working to stock up the supplies for my business and I’ve got an assistant handling the day-to-day stuff.”

  “I’d love to meet Gloria,” Kassandra butted in with a roguish twinkle. “She sounds like she’d have all sorts of interesting stories, and I have this feeling that she’d be more inclined to tell the truth than your friend Jameson.”

  “Yeah, that much is probably true,” I agreed ruefully. “Still not sure how they’ll react to you all, but I’d like to think that my friends would be open minded if I can figure out a way to either bring them with me or call you back home with me.”

  I’d still not spilled the beans about Traveler’s Call to my girls. It’d initially been the lingering shame of my shitty living situation, but now it was mostly just the fact that my hillside-home wasn’t quite ready yet. I had a feeling that, once they did find out about it, I’d not be going home alone very often.

  And that is going to cost me SP as well to bring them over, I thought silently. Not as much as Tunnel to Contracted but it can still add up quickly. Gotta keep a ready stock of SP on hand and also decide if I’m going to spend what I have on anything, cash in my pure mana crystals, or keep them in reserve for boosting mastery.

  I’d initially been holding the crystals for the mastery boost that they could redeem for, but since the amounts were uncertain and the System itself assigned the boosted mastery, I had been holding off.

  The idea of mastering my current powers and then using the crystals to supercharge my main power of Shape-Shifting all the way to its max was tempting, after all. I was fairly confident I could handle most situations, but I also was chafing at how much potential loss to that mastery gauge I was seeing with my Manipulate Element power for the earth magic school.

  Forcing my mind back to the present, I cleared my throat to get the girls’ attention once more.

  “So yeah, training today, right?” I asked, glancing between Kassandra and Shayla curiously.

  “Yes!” Kassandra said with a happy bounce that sent delicious ripples through her full bust where her everyday corset top was pushing it up onto display.

  Kassandra cleared her throat and straightened, rising slightly higher than normal on her scaled tail before she began to speak again.

  “Liam, we request your assistance in training our magic this day. Will you lend us your powers and guidance in furthering our knowledge of our given schools?”

  Assist your contracted companions: Kassandra Silverscale, Rieka Coldeye, Shayla Valo, and Jane Carsan with their training in magic by using your Traveler powers.

  Reward - 400 SP

  The gleaming letters of the System message faded from sight a moment later and I nodded to Kassandra, getting a happy squeal and another bounce from the dwarf lamia.

  My girls had been doing their best to remember to give me missions whenever they summoned me, but it seemed that the System had finally caught on to their attempts to ‘pad out’ my mission rate via simple tasks like ‘keep me warm’ for Kassandra demanding snuggles, or ‘reveal secret human knowledge’ by telling Jane stories about Earth.

  “Before we head out to the field to practice,” I said as my four girls hurried to get their things while Valda stood from her spot at the table. “I have gifts for you all.”

  “Ooh?” Jane asked curiously, having been in the middle of trying to climb down my body and was now clinging to my arm and standing on my belt.

  “Yep,” I said, gently gripping her by the waist and helping her the rest of the way down. “You know you just have to ask to be let down, right?”

  Jane blushed at that and mumbled something that I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to hear. However, I’d been taking to using my Shape-Shifting almost every chance I had, and I’d tuned my ears to the highest human potential without changing their structure.

  “I like climbing on you…” had been what Jane mumbled, and she gave a quiet squeak of surprise when I ran my fingers through her puffy pseudo-mohawk, tickling the base of one of her rounded mouse ears before having the hand playfully batted away.

  Rather than leave attention on Jane, though, I redirected it just like I had earlier for Rieka with a wave of my hand that had a bundle of cloth in it a moment later.

  “Yes. So I apologize if these are the wrong sizes, but they should be a bit more forgiving due to the elastics. I noticed a while back that there weren’t really any analogues in this world yet,” I said, handing the brightly colored garments out.

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  Kassandra held hers up, appreciating the bright purple fabric with a sharp eye while Rieka rubbed her sky-blue one between two fingers.

  “What kind of fabric is this? And what are they for?” Kassandra asked.

  I grinned down at my dwarf lamia as she stretched the top between her hands.

  “May I introduce you to the sports-bra?”

  <><><>

  Once the girls figured out how to get the tops on, every single one of my girls was appreciative of the additional support that they granted, though Shayla was the most vocal in her support.

  My dear moth-winged lover was the most generously proportioned of all my lovers, and her normal choice of breezy sundresses didn’t really give her very much in the way of support for her ample bust. So when we managed to get the sports-bra into place—a feat I had to help with given the number of zippers on the style I got for her because of her wings—she sighed in relief and gave me a long and deep kiss.

  Only Kassandra was bold enough to wear hers as a top without a shirt over it, though. It was amusing to me that the objection was not the idea of wearing what might be considered ‘underwear’ on the outside, but instead the sheer amount of shoulder that would be left exposed.

  “If those are something that you can bring easily enough, Liam. I’d like to request a few sets. They would make my sword practice infinitely more comfortable,” Valda said as we walked out to the open, stony field that had been set aside for magic practice for the Juneau students.

  “Sure, I can bring a few different sizes with me next time I come back,” I said, giving the lizard-woman a broad smile. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I’d held off because I was worried it’d be creepy to show up with underwear as a gift for my girls.”

  “I hate you a bit for hesitating, Liam,” Shayla said in mock-offense. “Breast-bands cut into my back and don’t give enough support, and I can’t wear a corset because of my wings. So I’ve been dealing with back issues for most of my life.”

  “I’ll see if I can get the pattern for them then,” I replied. “Maybe you can find a seamstress who can recreate them? Do you think they’ll catch on as a fad?”

  “Unlikely,” Kassandra said with a sigh. “The material will be hard to source, the only one I am aware of that has enough stretch to fill the gap would be silk. And most who would be able to afford silk would want something more delicate.”

  “I think they can be made with ties and plain cotton, too,” I said thoughtfully, trying to remember the various tags I’d seen in the women’s section of the sporting goods store.

  That had been a bit awkward of a trip, since the sales ladies had been giving me the stink eye for spending so much time trying to figure out sizes and the like. I’d been about to give up when one older lady walked over to ask me if I needed help. From the look in her eye, I was pretty sure she’d been about to throw me out, but that look softened when I explained I was shopping for some ‘foreign friends’ whose sizes I didn’t know. She’d done the rest in coming up with excuses and now that the girls had tried theirs on, I knew which ones needed adjustment for a perfect fit.

  “Honestly, if you got us a few spares that they could take apart, I am sure some of the better seamstresses near Juneau would be able to figure out how to make these,” Kassandra said thoughtfully, picking at the bright purple material so it stretched before she let it snap back against her full chest sharply.

  “There are a number of female warriors who would appreciate the ease of dressing in these rather than using a roll of cloth as a breast band,” Valda interjected. “If you do find someone who can make them, please let me know. I can’t guarantee a massive market, but if word starts to spread amongst the female guards, then it is likely it might take off as niche equipment at least.”

  “Speaking my language, Valda,” Kassandra said with an even wider smile. “There are a few tailors that I know who might be up to the task on my family land… I’ll have to see about drafting a letter to them if Liam can get me a few more samples.”

  “Sure, I don’t mind sharing the secret of comfortable women’s underthings. I doubt that’ll cause a dangerous expansion in scientific advancement,” I replied with a grin as we reached the field.

  The magical practice field had already seen some rather heavy use, with the students who had been forced to assist in fending off an attack realizing just how deadly this deployment could be and wanting to train to be ready for the next time danger came for them.

  Most of the tufty grass that had been growing in the field between the loose stones was gone, either cut down by wind magic or burnt up by fire magic. The stones themselves were blackened, melted, or broken in many spots. To put it bluntly, it looked like a war-zone, minus the blood stains.

  “Liam?” Rieka asked and I turned my attention back to her with a smile. “Can you form some practice lanes and give us some targets? Nothing fancy, but close together to simulate a large group? I was hoping to do drills and practice combos with our spells.”

  “Of course, my princess,” I told her, getting another faint blush and making Rieka’s tail start swishing back and forth happily again.

  “Isn’t that a bit much to ask—” Valda began to say only to stop when I pressed outwards with Manipulate Element and the stones began to smooth out in a ripple around me.

  After all the work that I’d put into molding my underground den, I’d gotten really good at the minor tweaks needed to do things like vitrify sand into a pseudo-glass, smooth rocks, and cause them to flow like water. Since I wasn’t actively shaping the stones and earth, they just settled into a smooth, even shape and flowed to fill in the cracks around them.

  Broken spars from earth spears melted into the ground, filling in the gaps left behind by fire spells melting into the earth. Cracks left by ice and high-pressure water magic filled in with the sand mixture.

  Mentally, it took a fair amount of focus to smooth the ground out, but it took even more focus to extend the effect in a specific direction once I had the ‘staging area’ set up.

  Before, the students had simply used whatever was handy as targets. This resulted in a lot of the larger boulders in the field being pounded into small shards and any small trees or bushes being burnt to a crisp. So I raised a dozen squat pillars of hardened stone from the earth in a scattered arrangement starting at about thirty feet from us and stretching out to either side a further ten feet to either side of the first one and fifteen feet back.

  “There,” I said roughly a minute and a half later, blinking rapidly as the effort left me with a head rush. I knew that I’d blown through almost all of my mana doing that so quickly, but it was done and my girls could focus now.

  “Liam…” Jane murmured and I looked down to see the mousy scholar staring up at me in surprise. “How did you do that so fast?”

  “Uh… magic?” I said, not really having any other response. It did have the hoped effect, as Jane snorted and punched me in the thigh lightly, her ears reddening faintly but the blush remaining off her cheeks.

  “That was impressive, Liam,” Valda said calmly while my girls moved to take up spots in a loose array on the near edge of the smoothed section. “Do you think you could do more of these? It would help the others to train and may save lives.”

  “Sure, I just need to rest for a bit to let my mana recover,” I said, getting an arch look from Valda. “Remember, I don’t use mana-infused metals like you do. If I wait then my native reserves will regenerate.”

  “I keep forgetting that, my apologies,” Valda said with a sigh and a grimace.

  “Oh, that reminds me. Liam, could you?” Rieka asked, pausing and lowering her spell rod to look my way.

  “Of course,” I replied with a grin. “Feel free to use the stored power and just let me know when you need it replaced. The more we train Grant Power, the sooner we might see if the expanded version will let me offer you all a more permanent version.”

  “Permanent?” Valda asked curiously and I paused.

  Did we not mention that one to Valda? I thought for a moment, locking eyes with Rieka. My princess gave a minute shrug that told me she’d leave that choice up to me if I wanted to fill Valda in.

  “I have a power, much like my Shape-Shifting that is part of being a Traveler,” I explained, gesturing for her to step away from the girls so we could talk. “It lets me lend one of my other powers to one of my contracted, but in a very narrow window.”

  Valda hummed thoughtfully, rubbing her chin with the pads of her fingers while she studied me as the girls began their spell practice. I felt it when all four triggered the Mana Reservoir power that they had stored right before Jane opened with a wave of driving wind that stirred the loose dirt and sand that I hadn’t compacted into the air and threw it at the pillars of stone.

  The spell didn’t do much visually, but I knew that it would greatly distract fighters in a combat situation as their eyes and mouths filled with grit. Something Rieka and Kassandra capitalized on with a crackling field of electricity that enveloped one half of the dozen targets while the others were peppered with daggerlike blades of ice.

  “What sort of limits does this power have?” Valda asked curiously, her left hand resting on the pommel of her sword idly as we talked.

  “Mostly that I need to have achieved a level of mastery for the power in question before I can loan it out. Then it basically acts as an emergency reserve for the person who activates it. How much use you get out of it after that point is dependent on the Grant Power ability. At the moment, I can only do that with my ability to hold a reserve of mana back as a natural reservoir, and my Shape-Shifting power. Sadly, both are only small benefits at the moment,” I said, explaining what we’d discovered during our experimentation.

  “And you hope to make these loans permanent with time?” Valda asked, her voice even but I could see the gleam of excitement in her eyes.

  “Yes. If things progress like I expect them to for the powers, that’s the way it’ll go,” I said with a shrug. “But the downside is that I can only do it for one of my contracted partners, like them.”

  I gestured to the girls, who had moved into a layered attack series, where two would attack while the other two prepared a spell that they would launch next while the others took a break and prepared their next one.

  “Hmm…” Valda murmured, still drumming her chin with her fingertips. “From my experience interacting with you, I have come to understand you appreciate a candid and straightforward approach to things, Liam.”

  “You want to see about forming a contract with me?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

  “Maybe,” Valda qualified with an upheld hand. “I have spent quite some time bonded to my salamander companion, and it would be a rather sharp adjustment to change that now. But I cannot help but imagine how my swordsmanship might change and grow with access to some of your powers.”

  The smile that I’d been sporting turned into a smirk, which earned me a raised eyebrow from Valda in return. It also showed how mature a woman she was that she didn’t immediately jump to conclusions at my smirk.

  “Just thinking about my mentor,” I answered quickly. “The one who taught me swordsmanship went on and on about how much Shape-Shifting helped him win fights when he could use even a small amount of it to alter the odds of things. Everything from changing his range of motion by shifting his joints to packing on an extra helping of muscle mid-swing.”

  I remembered my discussions with Cerebaton quite well actually, and I made a mental note that I should check in with the daemon soon, since I also considered him to be a friend.

  “That…” Valda’s eyes lost their cool look and widened in surprise before her expression went calculating. “That is actually a good point. I had been mostly thinking about expanding and hardening my scales, or being able to form armor at need when caught unaware. Hmmm.”

  “Oh there is plenty that can be done,” I agreed with a nod, holding out my right arm and pressing outwards with Shape-Shifting to add an additional joint and cause my hand to harden and fold into a chitinous blade with a razor-sharp edge before the limb flowed again into a flexible tendril that stretched a good ten feet before returning to normal. “The only limits are your imagination and your comfort. The girls struggled with dysmorphia when they tried it, but we agreed it would be handy for disguises.”

  “Dysmoopiea? I don’t recognize that word,” Valda murmured, studying me intently now.

  “Ah, it’s…” I trailed off as I considered how to explain it. The fact that I could speak and read any living language in the world I was on was extremely handy, but there were times when a word I knew from Earth did not have a direct translation for the new language.

  “I suppose it would be easiest to describe as a sensation of not being comfortable in your body,” I said after a moment. “The idea that you feel like an impostor or an alien in your own skin often creeps people out, sometimes with violent and visceral reactions.”

  “You said the others have those problems. Does that mean you don’t have them? This… dysmorphia?” Valda asked curiously, carefully sounding the word out this time.

  I paused for a moment, not out of concern about revealing it, but because my lack of reaction had been something that had caught my attention in the past and my lack of a reaction had caused me some concerns.

  “No,” I said after a long moment of thought. “I don’t seem to have any problem with it.”

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