Welldark

Wednesday flew by me. The classes on engineering and cooking went as expected. I screwed together a simple device that focused or scattered the light created by a magical crystal at the centre. Afterwards, I spent two hours preparing and then eating a casserole. All ingredients were provided at the start of the class, which limited my choices, but also assured quality.

After the three months I had spent attending this class, I realized that there were several members of the Wood Division and Bronze Area, the two lowest of Welldark’s five brackets, that joined the class only for the free food. I felt a strange mixture of respect and annoyance towards them. Respect was aimed at their craftiness, to solve part of their money problems by going to a class that would offer them high quality ingredients for free. Annoyance was born from the majority of them displaying behaviour that deservedly put them among Welldark’s poor.

They put in the minimal amount of effort and had obviously no drive to improve. Lazily, they cut and seasoned the food, wolfed it down with no love for the craft, ignored the advice of the teacher, and left as soon as they had finished eating. It was all representative of an attitude that would keep them where they were for the length of their attendance. There were many ways in Welldark to rise up beyond combat. Tests, additional efforts made in class, working with or for the faculty, that was just the short list. Everything counted towards the score that decided one’s standing.

I wasn’t going to pretend that everyone could make it to the Golden Eagles. The highest echelon was meant to represent exceptional individuals. From what I had seen, however, with enough drive anyone could rise to the Iron Ranks, the middle segment, at which point life was at least comfortable.

Seeing this general lack of drive among so many people made me wonder whether the percentages associated with the five segments were set in stone or if they were a rough estimation of how the motivational differences between people manifested. At some point, I would have to ask Willt about it.

The teacher was obviously used to the low-ranking individuals attending the class. Patiently, they made sure that there was no disturbance for those of us who wanted to do the proper work. Where they could, they offered a hand to those few that weren’t settled in their low-achievement mindset. By my estimation, that was the best that could be done.

It also served to make me feel better about myself. On a normal day, I would qualify myself as a procrastinator, but I did at least do the things I committed myself to. I attended my classes, stuck to my workout, and I never knowingly missed a meeting I had agreed to. Knowing that I was more reliable than about half the student body with those three qualities alone made me… well, it made me something approximating happy. I liked being better than my peers, obviously, but I would also have liked it if I could have reasonably held everyone around to at least that standard.

Thankfully, I had the freedom to pick my circle of associates, so I did not have to be friends with any of these people. I made my casserole, flirted with some classmates, and left half of my food for Esther. My raven-haired lady had her scheduled lunch break after my cooking class, so she typically came over to feast on what I had made while it was still fresh. We could afford the cafeteria, yet saw no reason to leave food on the table – literally.

Much as I liked seeing her react to whatever I had poured up to two hours of work into preparing for her, the saddening fact was that I only had about ten minutes to spend with her on those occasions before I had to head out to my last class on Wednesday.

The advanced lecture on unarmed combat had been mildly awkward after Esther and Karona had their brawl. That situation had essentially faded, with me and the succubus just existing in the same space. Out of respect for the distance she kept between us, I kept my lecherous stares to a minimum. Something made easier by the hideous teacher we had, Grumble Stiltzkin. The half-dwarf, half-troll who was as much annoyed with everything as he was talented at teaching us to beat one another up. I had a great amount of respect for the man, even if his appearance managed to make me question how him and beauty could exist in the same universe. One moment I was looking at a bubble butt jiggle in the aftermath of a kick, the next his wart-covered hide entered my field of view. It gave my perversion whiplash.

In any case, this Wednesday, like most, was relaxed. My first class had been at 11:00 and I was out the door at 18:00, leaving me with ample time to laze about, hang out with my friends and keep my body working. On this particular occasion, I also headed out and bought the oil and other utensils helpful for massages. Only for massages, the erotic toys I wanted I did keep for my next shopping date with Esther, as agreed. It was unsurprisingly useful to have the input of the woman when buying things that were supposed to go inside her.

Thursday was slightly more involved. I only had two classes that day, music and basic weapon training. The former was becoming more interesting for me, now that I had the basics of singing down. Maria Trostwald, the teacher, hadn’t given me any special attention since the initial incident and I appreciated that. After having observed and offered some distraction from my relationship troubles, she had allowed me to switch classes to accommodate my working hours and then stepped back into her role as someone who lectured me and other students about music.

The weapon training class was primarily interesting because I was everyone’s target dummy. That sounded like a thankless job, but it was exactly what I wanted. I was in that particular class not to learn how to wield one or several weapons, but to learn how to fight against them while utilizing my gauntlets. To that end, I was practice on a moving target and in return learned the most common attack patterns.

After that, I had another shift at Café Served. Thursday was my least favourite shift. Esther wasn’t there. Thursday also had a low workload. Less work was surely more enjoyable? A naïve thought only someone who had never worked in the service industry could have. Less and especially no work were the absolute worst. An overabundance of work was tiring for the body and that had its issues. Lack of work was tiring for the soul and there was only so much I could do on my Ashod in the breakroom before twiddling my thumbs became a torturous exercise. I cleaned the tables three times more regularly than I needed to. My desperate search for something to do eventually led me to partly reorganizing the storage.

 Boredom was part of the university life though.

________________________________________________________________________

I had a swing in my step as I wandered through the corridors of the Etiquette branch of Welldark. Of all the segments of the campus, the buildings dedicated to this branch were by far the most ‘normal’. There was nothing really special about the purple, black and gold that had been intertwined in the gothic design of the tall stone walls. No concoctions in the walls, no great statues, no otherworldly lights or intense heraldry, just shaped rock and clear glass.

‘I suppose that is representative of etiquette – a front of bland behaviours existing so you can get along with strangers,’ I thought. The smell of peppermint and black tea in the air was swiftly replaced by the sweet fragrance of flowers. A colourful carpet of petals stretched over the surface of the medium sized park that I walked across. Even the butterflies frolicking in the air were pale in comparison to the brightness of my mood.

It was close to 11:00 on Friday, which meant that it was time for my penultimate class of the week. While the lecture on dimensional heroes I would have later that day was held in great esteem in my mind, the class I marched towards at the present had the dedication of my heart.

Of course, I was talking about the Sexual Skills class.

After a few minutes of walking, I approached the Sexuality branch of Welldark. Even from the outside, the character of that building was clear. The stained-glass windows of its gothic towers depicted humanoid forms, primarily women, in erotic poses. Many statues adorned the walls, the corners, and the roofs, each showing the pinnacle of a flavour of attractiveness, ranging from the bouncy shortstack to the muscular amazon.

On the outside, such displays had just enough modesty that a minor walking around the campus could have been shown around without issue. Inside, those restrictions were shed, and the statues depicted people and acts in full nudity. The stones were expertly cut, giving a soft appearance to the rigid material. The air was pregnant with the stimulating smells of vanilla and burning sandalwood. Every surface was clean, every piece of art graceful. I loved Welldark’s Sexuality branch for how it displayed sex not as something depraved to sinfully revel in, but as the intimate, almost holy, union between consenting partners it optimally was.

I entered the classroom and looked around. Like with most classes, attendance had gradually decreased over the weeks. Still, the Sexual Skills class retained three quarters of attendants, which was a lot higher than most classes. Although there were more than seventy people in attendance, the room was less than half full. A deliberate decision, I had eventually come to guess, as it allowed pairs of attendees to sit with at least some space between them and their peers.

Esther and I were no different. I swiftly located the lady of my love, chatting with Arlethia. Sitting straight, her tricorne placed in front of her, she chuckled at something the succubus had said. Arlethia tilted her head, lazily resting on her palm, and looked at me.

“Our stripper is here,” Arlethia joked.

“I don’t want to hear that from you,” I responded swiftly. The red-skinned succubus was in her underwear, a particularly attractive set of black lingerie, complete with garter belt and stocking. It complimented her red, curvy body fantastically. The straps dug into her squishy assets, emphasizing the size of her tits and thighs.

Arlethia was far from the only one in a state of partial undress. At the start of the second month, Danielle, the teacher of this class and Mistress of Sexuality, had told us that she encouraged us to get comfortable with public nudity. More advanced classes in future semesters were held entirely naked, as per her own description. It was all part of her philosophy that there was nothing shameful about openly displaying one’s sexual desires, as long as they were tempered by discipline. The class was a setting where desires and bodies were laid bare.

“Willt is a lucky guy,” I said, admitting to my attraction to her physicality as platonically as possible. That was part of the discipline one had to have to keep this openly sexual setting wholesome. Sexy as Arlethia was, objectively, I did not covet her.

“I know, right?” Arlethia asked and unashamedly pushed her boobs together. She only did it for a laugh, not to entice, and stopped quickly. “Too bad he’s too fucking shy to show up.”

“Not everyone is as forthcoming as us,” I stated as I unbuttoned my shirt. Once I pulled the red cloth off me, I orderly folded it and placed it on the table. I couldn’t suppress a smile. All across the room, women of the single variety were glancing or overtly salivating over my exposed chest, hairless and toned. They knew as well as I did that it didn’t stop there. My pants and underpants followed my shirt quickly.

I had always said that I did not care whatsoever about being nude in public. Presented with a chance to prove it, I had taken it. Six weeks had passed since Danielle’s encouragement and I had been naked in this room six times since.

Folding up the rest of my clothes, I placed them in the empty chair next to me. “Nice cock bro,” Arlethia laughed in the meantime.

“Do you have to say that every week?” I asked, feigning disapproval. Our friendship hadn’t changed at all over this. To start with, she was a succubus and nudity was a more casual affair for her kind in general. Further, we both knew that we were mutually off-limits, so we could appreciate how good the other looked on a platonic basis. “Any reason you let me be the lone naked fool this week?”

Arlethia pulled softly at the lace cladding her curves. “I had something to show off and wear in.”

“That’s fair enough,” I surrendered and finally sat down next to Esther. Loudly, my hand slapped down on her naked thigh. She let out a tiny squeal in response.

Although she refused to loose or even unbutton her top, the lady of my desires had followed my first display of nudity by at least taking off her pants. A week later, the panties had followed, and ever since then her bottom half had been naked during these lessons. It made it exceedingly clear to everyone in the room that she was hiding something under that shirt. That no one asked helped her a little bit to be at ease with it. What helped even more was that with every week, a few more of the people attending the class gathered the resolve to follow the general example.

Many had imperfections that they likely felt some level of shame about. None were as pronounced as the scars that disfigured my love’s back. Regardless, being surrounded by people who managed to display their imperfections did make Esther a bit more comfortable with herself. She had told me as much. The entire practice of stripping in this semi-public setting was more for people like her than it was for people like me, who hadn’t had a problem to start with.

Even with those insecurities under the surface, Esther managed to give me a chiding glare. “You dare accuse Arlethia of redundancies, yet you always greet me with a smack to the thigh.”

“I will not apologize,” I told her straightforwardly and squeezed. There was just so much to hold onto. The thickness of her thigh was pancaked on the surface of the leather seat. Her annoyed sigh was compromised by the excitement accompanying it. “Let me make it up to you,” I hummed and reached up to her face with my other hand.

Leaning into the gesture and then towards me, Esther presented her red lips. They came closer and closer, until they left my field of view and I felt them on my own. She wrapped her arms around the one I had on her leg and pressed her boobs against me. Even the accursed barrier that confined her delicious melons could not fully rob the fantastic sensation from me.

Our tongues and then our lips separated. My excitement was plain to see, yet neither I nor Esther acted on it. Shameless honesty and loyal discipline, those were the core tenants of the Sexuality branch of Welldark. The shameless honesty of many of the students was on open display. The loyal discipline was to stay in control of those desires rather than have them control us. As much as I wanted to have Esther ride me where I sat, this was not appropriate for the time.

I had to restate to myself: this space was not about quick indulgence and certainly not about depravity. It did not treat sex as something cheap to be had whenever desired. Sex was an extension of love itself. That was what the local philosophy (which I largely agreed with) said. By extension, the act had to be treated as preciously as the emotion. Those were concepts I had to hold on to, even when my erection was telling me that it was all annoying and that I was better off just pumping a load in the closest cunt.

Arlethia, Esther and I distracted ourselves from our physical desires through idle banter, until Danielle entered. The fox girl was already stark naked when she walked down the stairs. Her tanned curves were flawless, save for a reddish birthmark under her right shoulder.

The lecture began soon and I listened eagerly. Danielle was an excellent speaker and the topic she taught us about was an easy sell to start with. Everyone was glued to her red lips, as she retold stories of what she did for her King and what her King did for her, of how and why it worked, and how we could go about discovering similar paths if the one described did not map onto our own preferences.

It dawned on me that the way I sat there was representative of my university life so far. I was completely comfortable in my own skin. Although I had many urges pulling on me, I remained in control of whether I indulged them or not. My Queen sat by my side and although she denied me teasing touches of her sacred sanctum, she did occasionally sneak a glance at me – and smiled. A seat further, one of my best friends rolled her eyes, completely content in her own position. The lecture I listened to was engaging. The space around me intrigued me.

For all the boredom and the disappointments I had to occasionally endure, this was where I wanted to be.