To fuck a nation

Aether didn’t explain the plan.

He only looked at Faruzan, then shook his head once.

“Not this nutjob,” he said. “Different one.”

That was enough.

The group packed with sudden urgency. The trail of Lumine’s passage through the ruins was still warm, but Aether turned them back toward the Akademiya anyway. Whatever had been done to his sister — or attempted on her — had come from the people who controlled the Akasha. He would not leave those hands free to act again while he chased footprints in the sand. Distance from the trail was the price. He paid it without hesitation.

They moved fast.

Dehya pushed them hard across the desert by day and through the jungle fringe by night. Faruzan, still bound and now mostly quiet, was carried without ceremony. The pride ran on determination and the quiet, shared understanding that someone had touched what belonged to their Traveler.

Back at the Akademiya, in a cluttered side laboratory that smelled strongly of crushed herbs and volatile resins, Collei worked with single-minded, manic focus.

Vials lined the benches in neat, glowing rows. She had refined her earlier enhancer into cleaner, more stable versions and was already pushing further — testing new combinations that sharpened sensation, prolonged peaks, and lowered the threshold for overload. Her notes were a chaotic mixture of precise measurements and breathless speculation about “safe upper limits” and “what happens if we remove the safety margin entirely.”

She had no idea she was no longer just chasing personal pleasure.

In a few days’ time, the green-haired Forest Watcher trainee and her increasingly dangerous tinctures would become the exact lever Aether needed.

The key piece in a plan that aimed straight at the heart of the sages’ control.

They settled into the Akademiya the way any ordinary group of travelers would — quiet rooms, no unnecessary attention, the appearance of people simply passing through.

While the rest of the women went to the designated offices to receive their temporary Akasha terminals as planned, Aether went looking for Collei.

He found her exactly where he expected: in the same cluttered side laboratory, surrounded by glowing vials, half-filled notebooks, and the sharp scent of over-refined resins. She was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t notice him at first. A new batch of liquid, far brighter and more volatile-looking than the old version, sat in a reinforced flask in front of her. Notes scrawled beside it left no doubt — she was deep in the process of creating the forbidden hundred-fold enhancer she had dreamed about since the jungle.

Caught red-handed.

Collei froze when she finally registered his presence, eyes wide, hands still hovering over the dangerous mixture.

Aether didn’t scold her.

Instead he stepped closer, looked over the setup with genuine appraisal, and did something she clearly hadn’t expected.

He praised her.

“This is impressive,” he said, voice calm and unusually warm. “You took a rough field brew and turned it into something stable enough to push this far in only a few days. Most people would’ve killed themselves or given up. You didn’t. Good work.”

Collei blinked, completely thrown by the approval.

Before she could recover, he continued:

“I need a dozen doses ready by tomorrow. Same strength you’re aiming for now — or as close as you can safely stabilize. No more, no less. Can you do it?”

Her earlier panic flipped instantly into bright, manic focus. The little chemist straightened, already reaching for fresh glassware, the forbidden project suddenly given official purpose.

“A dozen? At this concentration? Yes. Yes, I can. I’ll work through the night if I have to. You won’t be disappointed, Master.”

Aether nodded once and left her to it.

Behind him, Collei was already moving with renewed, almost reverent energy — the girl who had wanted a hundred-fold overload for her own pleasure now preparing exactly that, for reasons she didn’t yet understand.

By the next day everything was in place.

They had rented a secluded hall on the quieter side of the Akademiya and filled it with thick sheets, cushions, and mattresses until the floor was a single soft, chaotic nest. The windows were covered. The door was locked.

Collei burst in first, eyes shining with manic pride, a reinforced case clutched to her chest. Inside were twelve carefully stabilized vials of the strongest enhancer she had ever managed to produce — far beyond the old version, close enough to her forbidden hundred-fold dream that the liquid almost seemed to pulse.

Faruzan, finally unbound and fully professional for the moment, stood near a spread of notes and calmly recited the data she had pulled together overnight.

“Neural load on the Akasha reaches its daily peak in the mid-afternoon window. Concurrent active users are highest then. Any sudden, extreme spike in recorded sensory data during that period has the greatest chance of cascading.”

Aether had even arranged for Layla to be present. The frail RT student sat among the cushions looking half-confused and half-curious, already sensing that whatever was about to happen would be nothing like her usual sleep-deprived routine.

The plan itself was brutally simple.

The Akasha did not merely store finished memories. It intercepted and recorded raw experience before the signal fully reached the host brain. If enough people simultaneously flooded that interception layer with sensory data no designer — human or otherwise — could ever have planned for, the system would face an edge case it had no capacity to handle.

One by one the women drank.

Collei’s mixture hit like lightning.

The effect was instant and overwhelming. They barely managed to sink down onto the cushions before the first waves hit. The mere presence of Aether in the room — the scent of him, the knowledge of what his cock could do — was already enough. Soft, uncontrollable climaxes began rippling through the group with no physical contact at all. Thighs clenched. Backs arched. Broken little sounds filled the hall as the enhancer turned every breath and every heartbeat into pure overload.

Aether waited until every woman was trembling and already lost.

Only then did he reach for the prepared Akasha terminals, switch each one into full intercept-recording mode, and set them to transmit.

He stepped into the nest of overstimulated bodies, already hard, and began his work.