A Problem and a Solution

The pink succubus floated with her hands on her hips and horned head tilted to the side as she looked me up and down. Her violet eyes glowed pink and it felt like she was looking right through me. It was odd, seeing Addy in person, her presence was much more serious, almost subdued. At her full size, she was a few inches taller than me, maybe 5'8" and similarly curvy. Though, her hooves and the whole hovering in midair thing made that tricky.

"Marissa, you're too perfect of a Succubus candidate for your own good." She sighed and lounged on a purple cloud with her legs folded to the side and one arm supporting her chin, an elegant finger tapped her bottom lip as she did the same quick observation of Walter. "The only reason you aren't dead or insane is because this dragon of yours was stabilizing you."

My mouth opened and closed a couple times as I... processed what Addy just said. My first coherent thought, after the perfectly reasonable terror at avoiding an apparently narrow brush with ****, was— Duh! Of course the Prize was being turned into a Succubus! How the hell had I missed that? While beside me Walter seemed to be doing his own little mental reset for a minute.

I finally managed to ask, "Can you back up and start again please?"

Walter nodded several times. "Yes, please do."

Addy slumped forward and massaged the base of her horns while her tail flicked in agitation. "Okay, we should have time. Allow me to introduce myself properly, I would've done this pretty soon anyway." She swept herself in an elegant bow, trailing ribbons of purple mist and descending to the floor with her impractically small wings flared wide as her cloud formed into a translucent dress that hid nothing. "I am the Succubus Addishalia, born of the Asmodean bloodline through Lilith. I am one of the lead developers for Gem Ladies and the one who scouted you, Marissa."

A teasing smile that seemed to light up the room graced the succubus' lips before she winked and spun on a hoof as her entire body shifted and flowed like the mist she wore. As the mist cleared a second later, a pretty blonde woman with green eyes and a slender figure waved at us, a dusting of freckles across the bridge of a sharp nose over a crooked smile. When she spoke next, her generic American accent gained a touch of something else I couldn't identify.

"I was born Adelaide in southern France to a common prostitute way back in the 1780s, so I don't really have a surname to give. When I was about nineteen I found a cursed book that turned me into this after I completed its tasks." Judging by her sly grin, I could easily imagine what kind of tasks she had to accomplish. With another twirl, the pink succubus returned. "You can just call me Addy!"

I allowed myself to relax. If we had time to be polite like this and she called me stabilized, then giving in to the shot of panic I'd got wouldn't help. Not to say that panicking ever actually helped. "Nice to really meet you, Addy!" I clapped a few times and she gave another curtsey.

"Likewise." Walter said with his hand lifted in a casual wave. "Now, when you called me a dragon, was that a joke about my family name or..."

Addy tilted her head, her purple hair flowing slowly like it was underwater. "Oh, no. I was being serious. With all the"— she made a few quick gestures involving her fingers smacking into a circle of finger and thumb — "Essence exchanges you two were doing, that awoke your bloodline and took some of the excess from Marissa."

I perked up. "Oh! Is that why his soul is turning a brighter bronze?" I smiled at a visibly perturbed Walter and then at Addy. "Glad that mystery was solved so quickly!"

To my surprise, Addy paled a little. "You can see that!?" She was suddenly gripping my head and staring into my eyes. The succubus' own eyes flashed a familiar pink and I recoiled, though not before seeing a core of brilliant pink with veins or roots of more pink forming a kind of wireframe in Addy's shape.

"Oh, wow. This was even closer than I thought. You have a tiny core of Ichor already condensed and Aspected. It's remarkably stable under the circumstances."

"Is that good?" Stable sounds good, why wasn't Addy smiling and nodding yet!?

"It'd normally be amazing— new Cambions usually take years to gather this much Ichor, but with the energy we put in the app still trying to prep what it thinks is a Mortal soul for Awakening..." With another curious hum she let go of me and floated off to start pacing in midair, her hooves stepping off of short lived clouds. "Without an outlet, it'll keep piling more Essence on and eventually your own soul will collapse under the pressure. Or start growing in unpredictable ways like a cancer. That's never fun."

She must have seen my horrified expression because Addy immediately flew down and pulled me into a comforting hug with my face in her tits and combed her fingers through my hair. "Sorry, sorry! You'll be fine, that's why I'm here, we've been doing this kind of thing for centuries. We have a solution lined up and several backup plans. Worst case we can turn off the app and you'll stay as you are right now."

I sagged against her and let out a shaky breath. Okay. We have a plan. I laughed a little hysterically. "Maybe lead with the good news next time?"

Addy winced and apologized again. "I'm sorry, Hedonea usually steps in when stuff like this happens, but she's been pretty busy this past decade and the app has only made a few Cambions so far." I filed away that name to ask about later.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'd like to circle back around to the whole dragon thing?" Walter spoke up again. "Will I start growing scales and coveting virgins, calling down storms and things like that?"

I honestly wasn't sure why his voice was shaking so much, all of that sounded better than soul cancer! Maybe I was being a little unfair here, since I dragged him into this mess and he'd been nothing but helpful. Still, Soul Cancer!

Addy raised a calming hand without letting go of me. "No, you're fine. It'll take far more than fucking a new Cambion to fully awaken your bloodline. You might notice new instincts and have another decade or two of youth and a boost to your overall health, but nothing else will change without some real effort on your part. Even a true succubus like me couldn't do it if I tried. Our Aspects are too different in nature."

I heard Walter let out a heavy sigh of his own. "Alright. Sorry, I just...sorry." I could practically see him rub his eyes and press his palms together in front of his face as he performed a calming exercise his grandmother taught him. "What can I do to help Marissa?" The steady resolve in his voice sent butterflies to my stomach. I was totally gonna let him be the first to fuck my ass later!

"You already did more than enough and you can't really do much else to help directly. Your soul has reached a point where it won't accept anything more from Marissa." Her voice grew a touch wry. "This is my mess to clean up anyway."

I pulled my head out of Addy's bosom reluctantly. "So what is the plan? And what caused the problem anyway, you said I was too perfect a candidate somehow?"

Addy shifted to sit herself on the couch, between me and Walter. "Alright so, usually the people chosen to play our game —and they're not always women, just a large majority— make it ten to twenty levels in before they get cold feet and quit with the rewards they've earned, long before they gain obvious magic."

"You can quit? You didn't mention that Friday night." I wasn't actually upset, it'd never occurred to me that was a possibility. Why would anyone want to quit?

She gave me an odd look. "Yes, you can quit after every ten levels completed, did you not see the purple button?"

...I did a quick search back through my memories and realized that indeed there was a quit option under the reward screen less than twenty minutes ago. "Uhhh...no comment?" I blushed at Addy's smirk and Walter's sigh.

"You really are perfect for this." Addy patted my head and I flailed in defense as she chuckled. "Let's get back to the matter at hand shall we? As I'm sure you realized pretty quickly," —yes, we'll call it quickly— "the purpose of the Challenge is to increase the amount of Lust in the world to Awaken more Cambions and hopefully a few full Succubi. This is only the latest iteration in a long series of cursed books and jewelry, we even ran a few board games that corrupted mortals into Cambions last century." She added as an aside. Walter straightened up in interest, but let Addy continue her explanation.

"That leads us to our first issue. The app itself is not actually a thing of electronics and code we can go in and change on the fly, it's more like a ritual. Rigid and fickle, and nearly impossible to stop once it gets going." She paused when I raised my hand in question. "Yes?"

"Is that the only way for new Succubi to be born? Are there no Incubi?" Was that even how things worked with magic involved?

"Eager to try a sex demon's dick, are we?"

"Well, yeah— That's not what I meant!" I groaned. Though I would be the last to miss a chance to fuck an Incubus with literal centuries of experience. Children though… that can wait a long, long time.

Her teasing smile grew slightly sad. "We can have children the normal way, it's just very difficult and laying with human men results in unawakened Cambions at best. Due to many historical reasons we don't have time for, Incubi are far rarer than Succubi. I have only heard of three on Earth." Addy shook herself from her melancholy and continued. "Even the Candidates who quit or fail enough to earn three penalties produce more energy than we put in and increase the amount of Lust in the world, which has a variety of benefits." She grinned at me. "Then we have the occasional overachiever like Marissa!"

"What does that even mean?" I huffed and crossed my arms, then tried to ignore the stirring of pride in my chest.

Walter laughed. "It's the video isn't it? It's at nearly five million views when you count all the sites it's on." How did he— five million!? I wasn't sure whether I was gonna pass out or cum on the spot.

"That's the core of our problem, that video has gathered a lot of Lust, but not all of it. Marissa here is such a little slut she skipped a few normal steps." How did she make calling me a slut sound like a term of endearment!? "The punishments and rewards are based partly on the player's desires. Even the people who become Cambions don't get any dramatic transformations until level fifty or so. They stick to clothing restrictions and very minor cosmetic transformations for a lot longer." She poked my exposed lower belly and I shifted my sweatshirt to cover it. "You don't even have a real digestive system anymore and half your body is basically a succubus' already." Addy flicked a long purple tongue out and curled it in a spiral like she was sucking a dick the same way I could. I saw Walter squirm at the sight. "Not to mention your soul."

All the pieces clicked together for me. "So my soul and body are at like level seventy or something, but the Challenge is treating me as if I'm still level twenty."

"Exactly! Think of it as a scaffolding or cocoon for your changing soul. What usually happens is the ritual expends all of its energy compressing a mortal soul's Anima into Ichor and provides stability so your new soul can essentially hatch safely."

Walter rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "But since Marissa is so close to being a Succubus already, it's putting pressure on her soul and might break in unpredictable ways. Like if a kid broke a bone and the cast was left on for years as they grew, long after they would have healed."

The Succubus simply nodded with a smile. "Good analogy. If we don't expend the extra energy soon, Marissa's soul will either begin to crack under the strain or grow in dangerous ways." She said that far too calmly for my comfort. "Right now the only obvious symptoms should be impulsivity and clouded thoughts. Maybe some uncontrollable euphoria."

…Oh. That might explain some things.

Walter let out a short bark of laughter. "What about nearly breaking down my door to suck my soul out through my dick?"

"Mmh, yes, that is certainly a possibility." Addy nodded then leaned towards him, she even tucked a lock of hair behind one slightly pointy ear. "Would you describe it as animalistic desperation or was she able to be tastefully seductive?" An old fashioned book and quill condensed out of mist into her hands.

"She growled at me!" Walter exclaimed. "Have you ever heard the noise an angry panther makes in person?"

"I can't say I have, although I did have the misfortune of coming across a bored sphinx once."

The two of them quickly devolved into a mix of flirting, making fun of me, and, somehow, a short tangent on how to deal with hungry cats. Wasn't Addy under some kind time limit?

"...the behavior you describe is definitely a warning sign. Considering how quickly she regained control of herself, I'd say it's just a quirk of Marissa's and not an instability of the soul." Hey!

"Okay!" I clapped my hands together to draw their attention back to the matter at hand. "Now that we've returned to the terrifying prospect of Soul Cancer, what do we do to avoid all that?"

Addy had the decency to give me an apologetic smile and Walter looked slightly ashamed. I decided to forgive their transgressions. For now. "It's simple, we share some of your excess Essence with the people who need it!" She declared. "Do the same thing you did with Walter, it shouldn't require more than two or three people if we're careful about it, maybe fifty or so Essence per person at most. Once you hit the next milestone at level thirty in a couple days, the app will have run out of extra energy and you'll have grown strong enough to break it on your own no problem."

Oh! I already have a dinner with Vanessa and Andre lined up, then a coffee date with Claire. The simple and easy path forward left me feeling optimistic about life. It was nice.

Then Addy looked me over again, lingering on my curves as she considered me. I preened for a moment, always eager for more admiration, only to wilt at her next words.

"We will need to give you a bit of a makeover first. You'll draw far too much attention as you are." She reached out to cup my beautiful tits in both hands. "Especially these." Addy lifted them slightly then let the orbs drop, they bounced and jiggled for several seconds too long to be natural or fake in a mundane way. "Yeah, they gotta go before you walk around outside. You'd cause an orgy or a witch hunt. Or both."

"Do we have to?" I whined while cradling my tits protectively. "I just got these."

Addy rolled her eyes and she gave me that same wicked grin she had Friday night. "Oh, don't worry Marissa, it'll be a temporary measure. And don't you want your level 20 Reward~"

I couldn't stop the smirk from forming any more than I could stop the words as I leaned toward her. "I thought the Reward was you!"

The Succubus matched my smirk and was suddenly embracing me again, soft lips whispering in my ear and hands running down my back to slide under my skirt. "Hmm~ It really can't be overstated how much I'm looking forward to your full Awakening into a Succubus, it's like you were born for this." She trailed a line of kisses along my flaming cheek and gave me a teasingly chaste peck on the lips. "I can't wait to call you little sister…"

We kissed, but that was far too simple a phrase to describe what occurred. Sure, our lips locked and our tongue wrestled, our hands wandered and fondled and my clothes vanished to let our nipples rub against each other. Addy's tail even got involved, the rubbery spade tip flicked my clit and spread my pussy lips open to drive me wild. The fact Walter was watching the whole time just made it better!

That was all a sideshow to what was transpiring on the soul side of things, a dozen streamers of pink wove in and around my body, faint ribbons of midnight blue reached out to meet them. Those pink and purple lights I've been seeing? I was now 100% certain that it was the magic energy(Ichor? Essence?) from the succubi who made the Challenge. With Addy's own pink as a comparison, I'd say at least three different succubi contributed.

As our little makeout session reached a crescendo, with me pinned down on Walter's couch and Addy grinding her clit against mine and her tail coiled around my left thigh, a final burst of pink flowed from Addy and into me. It settled inside me like it belonged there, immediately dissolving and turning that same midnight blue that was my own soul. I shivered in orgasm as tingles ran over every inch of skin and sank into me.

I didn't need to check the app to see what I'd gained from Addy, MALLEABLE MAKEOVER had just gotten one hell of an upgrade! Prior misgivings forgotten in the excitement of a new ability, I shrunk my tits and ass down so I could wiggle out of Addy's clingy grip and pose proudly as my curves swelled back to their full glory and my height grew two inches, then shrunk four to let my assets expand even more and go full shortstack. I could slightly change my proportions now!

Addy started clapping and I bowed. "Looks like you figured that out pretty quickly! There should be more to what I gave you though, I expected it to synergize more."

"Yeah, I can feel it trying to connect with several other things in my soul, it's weird, like when a joint refuses to pop." I wiggled and stretched in place like rubber then snapped back to my new standard proportions, bouncing on my toes a little to get the jiggle right as my clothes reformed around me. "I'm missing something."

Walter shifted uncomfortably as he slowly got up, worn jeans straining to contain his erection. Oh yeah, he'd been watching the whole time~

"I'm just gonna... go handle this on my own. Have fun ladies! Nice meeting you Addy!"

The potentially-a-dragon man scurried away with his hands clasped in front of a growing stain in his pants. The bathroom lock clicked into place and the shower started a second later.

Addy huffed a laugh as she rose up on her cloud again to float beside me. "That's a bit of a shame, I'll have to taste him another time." She sighed wistfully. "I'll really need to leave soon, but before that..." My phone flew into her hand from its place under the couch and she offered it to me. "I think I know what you're missing for everything to synergize."

I looked down to see the store opened to an option I'd considered and discarded earlier, RAINBOW TRESSES for fifty Gems. With the score multiplier and punishment modification Walter talked me into buying, I only had forty-five at the moment.

"I have two more games I can play today, should I try to get it now?" Addy began shaking her head before I finished the question.

"No, it's too risky at the moment. Stick to playing three games a day and don't get five perfect scores until you're ready for those last milestones." She said, voice deadly serious and the stern expression made its return as she tapped my phone with a glowing finger. "I've added a feature to your App, it should automatically funnel extra Lust into a way for you to gift it to someone else. I won't be able to tell you the specifics on how it works and it will take at least an hour to charge each time…" She trailed off with a shrug.

I looked down to see a new option, SHARE THE LOVE!: Loading…0.7%. Well, alright then. She did say this was a magic ritual pretending to be a puzzle game.

As Addy continued to explain what we needed to do to stop my soul from exploding or whatever, I grew more and more eager. When she blew me a final kiss a bit later and vanished in a puff of pink mist once again, I had a solid life goal and a simple plan to reach it for the first time in probably years.

I was gonna be a Succubus!

Walter poked his head out of the bathroom, hair damp and a towel tied around his waist. "Did she leave already?" He glanced behind himself as if he expected Addy to appear at his words. And I honestly couldn't blame him, I'd do the same if I could teleport.

When his face contorted into a half-relieved smile half-disappointed pout I laughed and skipped forward to hug him. "I'm sure we can schedule a playdate for you two~"

He rolled his eyes but didn't deny it, shooing me away after my hands got grabby. "Away with you, foul temptress! Go have a threesome with your friends or something."

I giggled and stuck out my tongue, in a totally normal way this time, then spun to strut my way out the door. My body slimmed down and my clothes shifted into an oversized sweater and comfy blue jeans with worn sneakers. I waved over my shoulder and twiddled my fingers within the too-long sleeve.

"Byyye, Walter! I'll tell you how things went tomorrow!"