Abyssal Kama Sutra

((If you would like to support my work, or just want to read more than one chapter today, feel free to check out my Patreon))

John was looking at the Quest of the day while in the shower. When he got it on Monday, he had set an alarm on his phone. Not to make sure he remembered, since he hadn’t been worried about forgetting, but to make sure he got up in time. That had proven unnecessary, given that the alarm rang as he was finishing up breakfast.

A lot had changed since he set that alarm. For one, his original plan of spending the week preparing in order to hopefully clear the Bonus Objective had completely fallen by the wayside. The rewards for it also looked a bit less impressive now, though the Epic item was still very enticing, especially considering the Alchemfist, and free stats and Skill Levels were always nice. So he still wanted to shoot for it.

The problem with that was that he had done absolutely nothing that he thought would improve his art in the past week. While he considered himself a decent amateur artist, what admittedly fairly little he had seen of June’s own artistic talent utterly left him in the dust. Without some sort of preparations, he had very little faith in his ability to impress her in that sphere.

That left him with two options that he could think of. He could show her the Abyss. Even if most of his tricks weren’t the flashiest, taking her into his Training Room barrier should knock her proverbial socks clean off, all while being perfectly safe. In fact, as far as he knew, it was unusual enough even by Abyssal standards that in the unlikely case that she was secretly Abyssal herself, it would likely still do the trick. The only thing he could think of that might cause it to fail was if the Developer decided that it didn’t count as “during the lesson”. If so, he’d be screwed regardless though.

The problem with that was that pulling people into the Abyss still put them in danger, so he was a lot less than keen on doing so to anyone. He had to admit to himself, though, that if the reward list had included giving Qhila the ability to pair bond, he would take the guaranteed success without hesitation. That, in turn, meant that there could be a level of desperation where he’d do it for what was on offer here too. Since he wasn’t that kind of ****, this was mostly a hypothetical consideration.

That left the last approach; a sexual one. June had seemed very flirty when she offered the private lessons, and showed both knowledge of and interest in the lewd art and comics he had been posting on the internet. There had also been a flirty undertone while he helped set up for the second art class of the week, even if it’d been much less overt.

In other words, June was definitely open to advances in connection with the lesson, and might be outright planning for part of it to get intimate. How far those plans went, he didn’t know. But between his recent CHA increases and Pheromone Aura, which Qhila’s indicator strip had confirmed was just of the ‘communication’ variety of pheromones, he might be able to persuade her to go further if needed.

As for actually impressing sexually, Climax Control made for impressive sexual stamina and the olfactory dirty talk aspect of Pheromone Aura would probably help as well. But perhaps more importantly, he had a carnal Skill Book just waiting to be used in the form of the Abyssal Kama Sutra. Pragmatically speaking, this approach was the best one, offering the highest chance of success without putting June at any risks she hadn’t knowingly opted into.

A significant part of him felt weird about making plans like this after everything that happened between him and Qhila yesterday. But going with a non-exclusive relationship had been her suggestion, and she came from a species and culture that didn’t do exclusive relationships in the first place. In other words, it wasn’t really her feelings that were at risk here, just John’s sensibilities.

Those sensibilities were, admittedly, not as firm as they probably should have been. Despite his misgivings, he had been rock hard since the alarm brought the art lesson back to the forefront of his mind. Besides, having a shot with June had been a contender for his foremost fantasy since his first art class at Ashcroft. Missing an opportunity to fulfill that in order to keep an exclusivity to Qhila that the kobold hadn’t asked for seemed like the kind of thing that could easily breed regret and bitterness down the line. Which was the last thing he wanted.

Okay, technically, the fantasy was only a contender for second place. The foremost one had started as a wet dream wherein he discovered that both June and Marisa were secretly monster girls and then proceeded to have a threesome with them. But that didn’t exactly detract from his point.

Finishing the shower, he made his decision. He was going to shoot his proverbial shot. And in order to make it the best shot he could, he opened his inventory and used the Kama Sutra.

Climax Control assigned the [Sexual Proficiency Branch] tag.

1 [REDACTED] Level assigned to Sexual Proficiency.

1 [REDACTED] Level assigned to The Thrust.

The vertigo that came with having knowledge crammed into his mind was manageable, even though it felt like there was significantly more than his textbooks or the dictionary had contained. Much harder to control was his own reaction to what that knowledge was.

Sudden knowledge of myriad sexual positions and scores of carnal rhythms, of countless sensitive spots commonly found across demihumanity and the ways to stimulate them, of the balances of pain and pleasure, domination and surrender, freedom and restraint all throbbed across his mind. For all of his enthusiastic forays into pornography in all its forms, he now understood that he had barely scratched the surface. Even now with his mind freshly broadened, he realized that there was still so much left to learn.

As John’s arousal surged, his erection went from rock to diamond hard and aching. Still, he did not masturbate. It felt… almost sacrilegious to waste his sexual energy alone, rather than lavish it upon a partner. He was very close to abandoning all plans for the day, as well as such trifles as getting dressed, in favor of marching back to Qhila’s nest and initiating a sexual hermitage with her until the end of her heat.

Barely, he resisted the siren’s song of more sexual adventures with his shortstack friend, in favor of taking his shot with June. And also in favor of not getting arrested for indecent exposure. On the topic of which, wearing pants would currently be rather uncomfortable. To remedy that a little, he returned to the shower and turned on the cold water for a bit.

In addition to making pants more practically feasible, that also served to calm him down a bit. Enough to take a bit more of an analytical view of his new Skills. Which really mostly just brought a different kind of enthusiasm about.

Combined, they were going to make anything sexual 51-52% better for both himself and any partner and that was just the start. It would eventually scale up to an increase of more than 200%. All of that at the miniscule cost of not being able to Level Climax Control until Sexual Proficiency overtook it. That was a fantastic trade by any reasonable measure.

When he left the house half an hour later in his nicest set of casual wear, it was with a confident spring in his step.

He somewhat regretted not looking up the address she gave him ahead of time. Not because he was going to be late, he had left home early enough that an Uber ride or other pseudo-taxi could have gotten him anywhere in town with time to spare. If he hadn’t been able to get there faster through the barrier alleys, anyway.

No, the reason he was mildly lamenting this particular choice of past-John’s was that he would’ve liked a little more mental preparation for the realities of a detail he hadn’t known about his art teacher. She was, apparently, loaded.

Springfield had three major rich people neighborhoods. The downtown area where Christie lived and the stretch of manors along the north western shores of Springfield Lake that held the Brighton Manor, as well as the homes of the Hawthornes and Dickinsons, were both fairly old and storied parts of town.

In contrast, the soft hillside overlooking the rockier south western shore of the lake had still been part of Springfield Forest when John was born. The houses here were all 21st century architecture. Dominated by large windows and sharp angles, often with bits of an upper floor protruding further than the floor below it.

It wasn’t an architectural style that John liked much, as he felt it prioritized being eye catching over actually looking nice. A few of them, however, managed to combine the commanding of attention with genuinely pleasing aesthetics and he had to admit that those looked great.

June’s house looked to be in the latter category, though he couldn’t actually see the whole thing. The ground floor and surrounding garden was obscured by a wall tall enough to ensure privacy, decorated in abstract patterns in shades of dark gray. Like what he could see of the house, the decoration possessed the distinction of looking great despite being in a style that John wasn’t overly fond of. Even more impressively, it managed to do so while the difference between the shades of gray was minute enough that the artwork more or less faded into the background if you weren’t paying specific attention to it.

Which he was really only doing because he was self-distracting and stalling. For some reason, his art teacher being wealthy made him nervous. In a different and more visceral way than when he had been visiting Christie or meeting Lord Brighton, too. Obviously, it coming as a surprise had something to do with why, but even though he couldn’t really pin down the reason any further, it felt like an insufficient explanation.

Taking a deep breath, John swallowed his anxiety and checked himself a final time. He had decided to lead with a Shrödinger’s Present under the pretext of thanking her for taking the time. When he popped it out of his inventory, the chibi dragon on the wrapping was holding an easel and paintbrush, and wearing a black beret.

He had also turned off Background Create entirely, in order to free up mana to sustain putting Pheromone Aura on high intensity arousing pheromones. Finally, he looked down at himself, determining that he hadn’t managed to get dirty or otherwise mess up his clothes on the way over.

Taking another deep breath, he manned up and hit the bell-marked button on the display next to the gate. A moment later, a small screen came alive showing June’s face. Based on the angle, he was guessing the system connected to her phone. She immediately lit up in a smile. “Hi John, come on in, make yourself at home. I’ll be right down.”

The image vanished again with a buzzing sound, and the gate started opening. In a detail that was simultaneously pretty awesome and a bit unnecessarily fancy, it opened by sliding down into the ground.

The garden beyond it was well kept with fairly little lawn and a lot of decorative flowers. There were also a few sculptures, including an abstract mass of curving lines in brass that John found vaguely reminiscent of a whole cuddle pile of Qhila look-alikes. He was fairly sure that was a case of the inkblot test principle, or whatever it was called, though.

The centerpiece of the front yard was a life sized sculpture located by the point where a path to the front door split off from the driveway. It depicted a man and a woman locked in embrace and kissing. Aside from the man’s cloak, they were naked, but between that garment, them being pressed together, and the woman’s hair reaching to the back of her knees, all of the ‘spicy’ bits were mostly covered. Interestingly, the outline of the man’s bones was etched very lightly, giving the impression that his skeleton was supposed to be visible through his skin and flesh. Even more interestingly, it was showing magic item glitters.

Well, that was pretty neat. It was also something he wasn’t going to spare any more attention for now, since June had just opened the front door. His gorgeous art teacher was wearing a yellow sundress with a flower adorned straw hat. A high sash kept the otherwise loose fabric of the dress hugged close to her magnificent chest. When she stepped forward with her left leg, a slit in the skirt revealed most of her thigh. No such slit existed on the right side, causing her to switch smoothly back and forth between wholesome beauty and seductively sexy as she walked.

“H- Good morning, June. I brought you some- uh, I mean, I wanted to thank you for taking the time out of your weekend to…” He faltered and held out the Schrödinger’s Present instead of trying to salvage the sentence.

June giggled melodiously. “You really didn’t have to, John, it’s my pleasure to have you over. That said, I do like surprise presents, and since you already went to the trouble of getting me one…”

She accepted the present and took a moment to giggle at the painterly chibi dragon on the packaging before opening it with a few deft movements. Out came a box containing a few tubes of paint, which seemed fairly underwhelming to John for a moment. Then June finished looking at the label and gave him a sly smirk along with a tone of obviously feigned scandal overlaid on approval,