A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing

Now alone, Erik finally opened his eyes again. "Interesting…" he muttered, a shit-eating smirk on his lips. "Little Naeku might just be somewhat of a closeted slut."

Entwining his fingers behind his head, he walked away. Looking up at the ceiling, deep in thought as he pondered his possible future with Naeku. The grin never left his face.

* * *

Meanwhile, behind that door, a red-faced Naeku had sagged down against the floor. With her knees pulled up, she stared at her hands and groaned in frustration. "How did it go so wrong…?" she muttered miserably. But then she sighed and looked up, "And why do I not feel worse about it…?"

Looking back down at her hands, struggle appeared in her eyes. Slowly, she brought a cum-covered, trembling finger to her full lips and stuck it in her mouth. Instantly, she started to moan as its taste spread across her mouth again.

"Gods, this can't be normal, can it?" she muttered softly as a warm feeling spread through her body, and especially her lower body started heating up again. "It tastes so sweet and makes me feel so comfortable, despite how wrong it should be… no way this is normal!"

Even as she talked to herself, she stared at another dirty finger hungrily… but then she suddenly shook her head and snapped out of it. "Dammit… I have to be careful around him!"

Quickly, she mobilized her runic energy to carefully destroy any remnants of Erik's cream. After a mere second, her hands, stomach, and clothes were cum-free again, yet she couldn't help staring at her hands with a hint of disappointment.

After a moment of sitting there in thought, she stood up with a wry smirk. "If I were smarter, I'd probably stay away from him… but I just feel so damn drawn to him. My nature sense also continues telling me to trust him."

Shaking her head, she walked over to her bed. "Is this the bad boy with a golden heart cliché? I might be in trouble here…"

* * *

With Naeku's first date over with, Erik had no more obligations to fulfil. He'd taken all his girls out, except for Elora, who'd have to wait until she wasn't so busy; his mother was happily in recovery, and no one else currently needed rescuing or murdering.

Well, no one they could get to right now, anyway.

Thus, the only thing left for him to do was train, train, and train. His days started blending over into each other.

In the morning he'd use Elorium to cultivate his body, but since he couldn't handle the stress for too long, he'd stop after a few hours. In the afternoon he'd start exploring his third rank thundersnow rune and glyph, which would continue into the early evening.

Then, in the late evening, Emma would serve him some dinner, and he'd spent a few hours teaching Ankhur's people to forge so they could start churning out some proper weaponry for the army.

Finally, he'd spend his early nights in a foursome with Emma, Emily, and Astrid, so that he could share his Elorium with all of them.

Only occasionally were these foursomes replaced with other activities, like satisfying Elora. She was busy and couldn't benefit from his Elorium, so she let his other wives get a monopoly on him for a while, but she still had her needs…

Some other replacement activities included: spending time with his mother or going on more dates with Naeku. Since their first date, they'd done a number of other things together, often using the illusion room Elora had set up, during which they got to know each other better.

Usually, these dates also ended with some hand stuff, but it didn't go much further than that for now.

With Runa's recovery, and thus the return of the Humanitas Sangh, getting ever closer, Naeku a little too closed off for Erik to make much progress… Although Naeku was certainly enjoying herself with Erik, her first priority remained her people.

She did, however, ask Erik to help her.

Fortunately, he had two methods of helping her grow stronger.

Unfortunately, neither was available on the short term.

One possibility was naturally for her to start having sex with him. Elorium sharing would easily, and rapidly, boost her strength, but it didn't seem like her desire for strength was strong enough to take this step so haphazardly.

The other was affinity fusion. Since she possessed two third-rank affinities, nature and desert, she could fuse them into a fourth rank affinity. The problem here was that it would take too long.

Erik had completed his fusion in a mere month thanks to Elora and the bond they shared, but while Elora might be willing to help Naeku do the same, without the bond, she couldn't do much.

Still, Erik did tell her about it and promised to help when they had some more time. For now, however, it didn't seem like Naeku would be able to grow much stronger before the battle, although he did allow her to use the training room of his dimension.

As for Erik himself, it took about a month for his body and aetherium storage to official reach the very limit of the second rank. It happened without any explosive changes, though. He was still a second ranker, and this was simply the preamble to stepping into the third rank.

Now, all he had to do was discover his third rank rune and glyph…

Currently, he sat cross legged in his dimension's training room, covered by a dark sphere. His eyes were closed, and his hands were stretched outward.

Although it didn't appear he was touching anything, an intricate rune was occupying the left side of his mind's eye, and an even more complicated glyph his right. They were both a silvery white in colour, and Erik was slowly tracing the lines they were made up off. Find more to read at My Virtual Library Empire

He'd already found the right path towards his rank advancement, now he just had to actually draw the lines without making any mistakes. Fortunately, this was the part that just needed some more time.

Yet, the days were ticking away, Runa's moment 0f full recovery was rapidly approaching. It wouldn't be long now, before Erik's fledgeling empire would face its first real challenge.

The question was, would its emperor be ready in time?