Chapter 7: 1.07

“Do you have a name?” Logan asked.

“Aseri,” his strange partner responded. “You?”

“Logan.”

“Logan,” she repeated. “Logan. What the hell kind of name is that?”

What kind of name is Aseri? 

His newest … what, subjugate? Let’s go with staff member. His newest staff member was, like Logan himself, clearly not human. Sure she was humanoid. She had the ratios, both in her face and body, that suggested human. But her skin color, an ashen gray, and her eyes, a vivid, smoldering orange, and lastly—but not leastly—the short black horns poking from her skull, amidst shoulder-length white hair, left little doubt to her nature. 

Aseri led them down the hallway he’d painstakingly, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, carved out, and Logan tried not to watch her hips sway. Human in all the ways that matter. He shook his head clear. But seriously—the white clothing, same as his, adorning her body did little favors in accentuating her curves, and yet … there was still so much to show off.

I’m sure that my first staff member has a gorgeous body is a total coincidence, Logan thought dryly. Surely, fate isn’t intervening, or trying to set something up. 

Would he really have a problem with that?

As long as Aseri was willing, then obviously not. Isn’t there a … what is it called? An imbalanced power dynamic? Aseri had all but referred to him as her ‘boss’.

“A pink core,” Aseri said. “What is pink mana? What’s the specialty? I can’t remember.”

“I don’t know,” Logan said. It was only half a lie. He didn’t know, he only had suspicions.

“Pink,” Aseri said. “Pink.” Her hands were on her hips as she stared down at the core, repeating the word, as if trying to summon the memory. “No clue. Weird.” She turned to him, and Logan was struck—not for the first time—by the intensity of those burning orange eyes. Pools of lava. Christ, this woman is heartstopping.

Logan forcibly didn’t allow his thoughts to run wild, because in these thin, loose shorts—practically a single layer of cloth—an erection would be, uh, hard to hide.

And he would prefer not to die of embarrassment. He’d already shamed himself with his display of combat incompetence. Popping a hard on because of some pretty orange eyes and a nice figure would be … well, not very flattering of him.

“Hello?” Aseri said.

“What?” Shit, he’d been staring, even after all that internal monologuing to not.

“You don’t have any idea?” she repeated. “If anyone would know the core’s specialty, it’s you.”

Logan paused.

“No,” he said.

Aseri narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying. Why? I’m your second in command. And I’m bound to do whatever you say. So tell me.”

There were a few things to address in those claims, ‘second in command’ to name one, but instead Logan paused, considering the ‘bound to do whatever you say’ part. “You are?”

“What did you think ‘bind’ means?”

“But … anything?”

“If you impose it on me.”

Don’t think about it, Logan pointedly told himself. Even if a few ideas flickered into his mind, he was disgusted that he had them. “That’s troubling,” he said. “You just, don’t have free will?”

By the way Aseri stared—something happening a lot in the past few minutes—Logan could infer he’d said something weird. He supposed this was how the world operated, down here; an Avatar’s ironclad ability to command was taken for granted, and not something people thought about. The sun sets, waves crash against the shore, and Avatars hold dominion of their dungeon. Equivalent concepts, in their eyes.

But wasn’t it ever abused? 

It seemed a topic best not brought up.

“I didn’t lie to you,” Logan said, bringing them back to more important matters.

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“You know the core’s specialty. You’re its Avatar.”

“I … have a guess.” He winced. He couldn’t even imagine bringing the theory up. It was hardly his fault, but somehow he felt responsible for the core’s perverted nature.

The core’s suspected perverted nature. He didn’t even know anything for certain.

“Then tell me,” she said. “Why pussyfoot? We have work to do. There’s no time to idle, growing a dungeon. Or are you trying to get us killed? I like my name, I’ll have you know. And I’m sure you’d prefer to keep your status as Avatar.”

Likes her name? There was some meaning behind that sentence that Logan didn’t grok.

Logan cleared his throat. If there’s a benefit to having red skin, he thought, it’s that people can’t see me blush. “It’s only a suspicion.”

She leveled a flat look at him. 

‘Get to it’, it said.

“Eroticism,” Logan said. “That’s the theme of a pink core, or pink mana. Fittingly, my class is incubus.”

Some of the confidence in Aseri’s posture drained, and she blinked in surprise. “Eroticism? I’m sorry?”

“It’s my best guess,” Logan said. “And I could easily be mistaken.”

“Incubus?” Aseri said. “A sex demon? You?”

The doubt in her voice was, if Logan was honest, slightly offensive.

“Like, you’ve got the build for it, but you don’t radiate sex appeal, big guy. Your class is incubus? Really?”

Logan crossed his arms and frowned at her.

She coughed. “Right—uh. No offense intended. And, I guess it’s not the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. Dungeons take many themes.” She paused, glancing over at the core. “But still pretty strange. Eroticism? What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know,” Logan said. “I don’t know anything that’s going on. I’m not from this world.” He’d been briefly hesitant on revealing that, earlier, but there would be no getting around it. And why not say it? Especially now that Aseri was bound to him. Maybe it dampened his credibility, but like Logan had already said, for all his flaws, arrogance wasn’t a major one. He didn’t have credibility, so he didn’t mind letting that be known.

“Right,” Aseri said slowly—in the way a person talked to a crazy person, to calm them down. Logan didn’t take full offense at that; his circumstances were fantastical. It would take time for her to see he wasn’t insane. Maybe she’d never believe his claims, but she’d see he had a sound mind. “That’s fine. You have me. We’ll figure things out together.” Her eyes flicked right, again. “Like what shape a dungeon with a theme of eroticism will take.”

They stood in silence for a few moments, both staring at the slow-pulsing orb.

“So what,” Aseri finally said. “You think sex will provide mana?”

“Oh,” Logan said. “I uh, wouldn’t know.”

“Or anything erotic, I guess,” Aseri said. “Let’s try it out.”

His mind blanked. “I’m sorry?”

“Worth a shot, isn’t it? Mana’s hard to come by. Rule number one is using everything we’ve got at our disposal.”

“You—are you sure about that?”

“I mean, I don’t really want to get railed by a dude I barely know,” Aseri said. “But what’s a handy, right? It'll test the theory.”

“Uh.” 

She rolled her eyes, then gestured at his shorts. “Toss ‘em down, big boy. We’ve got mana to harvest.”

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