Fight. Level. Survive.

Chapter 75 - Mayry's Boobs

“She what?!” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Yeah,” Mayry was loving every second of this and hadn’t stopped grinning since he had given in and admitted that the old woman gave him super herpes. “She came up to where you had been sitting, asking if anyone knew where you were. Someone pointed her towards us, and she came hobbling at us and told us she felt horrible because she gave you herpes and didn’t tell you.”

“That’s not- we didn’t - It’s not what-“ He stammered, worried that the two women had jumped to the wrong conclusion.

“Oh, stop it,” Mayry said, finally deciding to show him mercy. “I know how your healing ability works. It’s still hilarious, though.” Suddenly, she frowned as if a thought had just occurred to her, “It is gone now, though, right?” she glanced downwards towards his junk and shivered.

He placed both his hands over his crotch as if shielding it from her gaze, “Yes, it’s gone! It didn’t last that long, but it was so bad, like so so so bad. ”

She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to decide whether to believe him. “Then why were you gone for so long? We really did look for you for most of the night.”

Without thinking, he answered truthfully, “The itching was so bad I started absorbing one of the chaos orbs and passed out because it hurt like hell.”

“What’s a chaos orb?” Nina asked, reminding Mason that she was in the room.

They exchanged looks; though they hadn't known each other for very long, their relationship had progressed to the point where they could pretty much tell what the other was thinking through expressions alone. Whether it had something to do with them being linked through Mayry’s demonic side wasn’t something he wanted to think about quite yet.

If he was reading her right Mayry was thinking that she trusted Nina, but she wasn’t sure how much.

From the look on his face, he was trying to convey that he agreed and that they could let her in on some things but not everything, at least not yet. With a slight nod, she showed she understood.

Nina was still standing at the top of the stairs to the trunk, looking down at them. “Come in and shut the lid. There are a few things we want to tell you about.”

The younger girl gave a little jump of excitement before slamming the trunk’s lid and skipping down the stairs, almost tripping and falling due to her eagerness.

Once she got to the bottom, she turned to Mayry and asked, “Does this mean you’re finally going to tell me how he had so many abilities? And why you smell so strange?”

He couldn’t help but chuckle at the look on Mayry’s face at that last bit.

Mayry started, “Yes, we can tell you som-” She cut herself off when her mind caught up with what Nina had said. “Wait, I don’t smell strange!” She whirled on Mason and repeated, “I don’t smell strange, right?!”

Mason, without hesitation, replied, “I mean, I didn’t want to say anythi…” After a glare from his girlfriend, he cut himself off and reconsidered his answer, “I mean, no, of course you don’t!”

Nina had frozen at the glare Mayry had shot at her. She started ranting, “No, no, no, oh my gosh, I didn’t mean it like that! Part of my chaos ability is I have a dragon’s sense of smell, and they can kind of smell magic, and yours smells different from other chaos abilities… it smells like, I don’t know, it sort of like the smell after a bonfire, if that makes sense? I’m sorry! You don’t smell strange, I swear!”

Mayry raised her hands to reassure the girl, “Oh, well, okay, that makes sense….” She took a breath and shook her head to try and regain her flow. “We can tell you some things, but it probably isn’t safe to tell you everything.” Pulling her down to sit on the couch next to her, she continued, “Even the things we do tell you could be dangerous. Are you sure you want to know?”

She sat still for a moment and thought before slowly nodding, “I think… Yeah, I do.”

***

They spent the next hour telling Nina a slightly altered version of everything that had happened to them since they had met. They left out that he was from another world and instead told her that when they met, Mason had lost his memory. They explained that he had made a contract with a remnant of g-o-d and was now on a quest to kill all the ‘others’ in this world. In return, he was given the capability to have many chaos abilities.

They gave a run down of most of what he could do, but they left out a few things, just in case. For Mayry, they explained that her ‘strange smell’ was probably a result of her original ability evolving into her now having the ability to shift into the form of a demon, similar to what Nina could do with a dragon.

He and Mayry each took turns explaining things as Nina sat and watched on, taking in as much as she could. Her expression wasn’t giving anything away and he wasn’t sure how she was going to react once they had finished.

They went on to give her a quick rundown of everything that had happened so far, from the Basilisk fight to the crack hen, his rescuing Mayry from being kidnapped by Gael, and then her turning up in Sparksford. They glossed over the Kethul and the prophecy and told her about the hole and the other he had fought and killed. Finally, they arrived at them, taking out the contract to check out the suspicious cave and then finding her.

It wasn’t the best cover-up story they could have come up with, but he thought it did a pretty decent job. Telling her about his being from another world or Mayry’s demon heritage just had too much potential to come back and bite them in the ass. The prophecy was also skipped over because he didn’t want it getting out that he was supposed to save the world; being treated like some sort of messiah didn’t sound like much fun, plus it would almost definitely go to his head, and nobody wanted that.

They finished talking, and a heavy silence settled over the room. Nina just sat and stared off into the distance as if not realising they had finished speaking.

Finally, she let out a long breath, breaking the silence. "Wow. That's... a lot."

Mason and Mayry exchanged a glance but stayed quiet, wanting to see if she had anything else to say.

Nina turned to Mayry, her eyes wide with curiosity. "So, you can turn into a demon? Like, an actual demon?" She gasped, then added, “That demon that appeared near Sparksford! Was that you?!”

Before Mayry could reply, Mason coughed awkwardly, “Err, no, that was actually my fault… I accidentally said a word I shouldn’t have said, but in my defence, it wasn’t an actual demon; it was just an echo!”

She looked at him like he had grown a second head, like he was the absolute dumbest person in history, “You managed to accidentally say a taboo word that summoned a demon?” She looked over at Mayry as if to say, ‘You’re dating this fool?’

She just shrugged and answered Nina’s previous question, “My demon form only turns me half-demon, so it isn’t nearly as big or as scary as the one that dumb summoned.”

Nina leaned forward and whispered. “Can you show me?"

Mayry hesitated. It would be the first time showing the form off to anyone who wasn’t Mason, but the excitement the girl had was infectious. "Alright, sure!”

With a flicker of concentration, Mayry's form began to shift; she grew taller and more muscular, her skin darkened to a deep shade of crimson, and small horns sprouted from her head.

Nina's jaw dropped in amazement, her eyes wide with wonder. “Wow… you look…”

Mayry inwardly cringed, waiting for the words ‘scary’ or ‘horrible’ to come out of the girl’s mouth.

“Hot!” she finished, prompting Mayry’s jaw to drop.

“Really?!” Mayry asked. He knew her ego had been bruised since her true form had changed from human to demonic, but with the wide-eyed girl staring at her, he could see it being healed.

“Yes! Is the whole demon thing what made your boobs bigger in your human form?!”

Even in her demonic form that was red, he could see that she was blushing.

It took him a second for his brain to put things together. “OH, THAT’S WHAT YOU CHANGED!” Mason blurted out suddenly. He had noticed that she had changed something about herself back in the mayor’s office after she had learned how to regain her human form. He hadn’t been able to figure it out, but now it was super obvious.

Mayry transformed back into her human form with her face bright pink. “Stop staring! Both of you!”

Nina’s head snapped away, but he stared on until Mayry swatted him upside the head.

Mayry turned to Nina, exasperated, “Really?! Everything we just told you and you’re main concern is my boobs!?”

“I was just curious! He’s the one who made it weird!” she defended. In a weak attempt to change the subject, she added, “So, Mason, you were saying something about passing out from chaos orbs?”

Happy to take the attention away from an embarrassed Mayry, he answered, “Yes! Chaos orbs, I found them on the body of the other I killed in the hole. Absorbing them lets me progress my abilities without having to kill things. It is horribly painful, though, so it knocked me out.” It wasn’t really a lie. Logically it made sense that if someone who had a chaos ability but not a system tried to use the orbs, the essence would for sure help evolve their ability, as long as they could withstand the pain long enough.

He wanted to tell Mayry about the new guidebook page, but with what they had revealed to Nina, he couldn’t think of a way to make it work. They hadn’t mentioned anything about the system as it wouldn’t really make sense to anyone not from Earth; he knew even Mayry still didn’t really get the appeal of video games. If he didn’t get a chance to talk to Mayry about it soon he was just going to take a look at it on his own.

Nina’s eyes went wide at the description of what the chaos orbs did. She stared at him like a dog stared at a juicy steak. As innocently as she could, she asked, “Would the orbs work on, I don’t know, say, my ability?”

There was a long pause, during which he and Mayry exchanged a look. Again, he thought that it would probably work, but was it a risk worth taking? Hesitantly, he replied, “Possibly…” He sighed and decided to be blunt. “Yeah, it would probably work on you to an extent if the pain didn’t kill you first.” He saw her about to object, but he raised a hand to stop her. “The only reason I can take it is one of my other abilities lets me handle pain better.”

She pouted for a moment but let it drop, “Did Mayry ever talk to you about the contract I was on before the fleshy monster thing got me?”

A grin spread across his face, “She did yeah, said you needed some help? Something to do with a suspicious tree, right? I’d love to help.” He said a bit too enthusiastically.

She glanced at Mayry, “Wow, you were right. He really does have a thing for trees.”

“I do not have a thing for trees!” Seeing the look on the girl’s faces, he added, “They know what they did! Do you want help or not?!”