Chapter 109 Broken.

Chapter 109: 109 Broken.

I heard three of my ribs go right before I felt them.

The sound was like someone stepping on a bundle of dry sticks while a hot chick was moaning in the background.

Then there was an even worse sound from somewhere in my left arm, followed by a truly spectacular pop from my shoulder area that was either a dislocation or the sound of my skeleton hoping to sneak out of my butthole.

"GAAAAH—" I started, but I couldn’t finish the scream because my lungs were currently being compressed.

Juniper was still cumming. Her eyes were rolled back and her body was locked rigid and milk was still flowing from both breasts, streaming down her torso and pooling in the increasingly narrow space between her body and my rapidly flattening chest cavity. The sound she was producing was somewhere absolutely awesome.

My vision went white. Then gray. Then spotty, like a TV losing signal. I was dimly aware that I was dying, but I didn’t worry because Saint Peter was going to take one look at my file and send me straight back down after giving me a behind the back high five.

Then she released.

Her coils went slack all at once and I collapsed sideways off the couch, landing on the hardwood floor with a thud and a wheeze.

Juniper was panting above me, coils splayed across the living room. She was still twitching from the aftershocks. She looked down at me with saucer-wide crimson eyes and her expression transitioned from post-orgasmic bliss to absolute horror so fast that it shocked even me, the dying guy.

"Grey!" She jackknifed upright and her hands flew to her mouth. "Oh no. Oh, gods, no. Did I—are you—"

"Brokennn," I wheezed. The word came out in about four syllables because my ribcage was currently operating on a volunteer basis. "Ribs. Arm. Shoulder. Possibly... spine? No, spine’s okay. I think. Don’t ask me to wiggle my toes right now though."

"Ayra!" Juniper screamed toward the couch. "Ayra, WAKE UP! I BROKE THE CHAMPION!"

There was a thud. Ayra fell off the mud room couch. I heard scrambling, then the frantic click of nails or whatever on hardwood, and then the dog girl skidded into the living room wearing nothing but her collar. Like I needed another erection.

"Master! What happened?! What happened?!" She dropped beside me and her hands were already glowing green with healing magic.

"It was me," Juniper said, her voice very small. She was coiled in on herself, tail wrapped tight, hands still over her mouth. Milk was drying on her chest. If a twenty-foot snake woman could make herself look like a kid who just broke a window with a baseball, she was doing it. "I... we were... and I..."

Ayra looked at Juniper. Then at Juniper’s bare chest, which was still glistening. She then looked at me, lying on the floor with visible rib deformation and a grin on my face.

"Oh," Ayra said. Her tail started wagging.

"Don’t you dare," Juniper whispered.

"Oh!" Ayra said again, louder, as the full picture assembled itself behind those amber eyes. Her healing hands kept working on me, green light flooding into my ribcage, but her tail was going so hard it was thumping against the coffee table like a subwoofer. "You squeezed him! During—Juniper, is that milk? Did you—oh, that’s so—"

"Heal him, Ayra. Please. Just heal him."

"I’m healing, I’m healing! But I just want to say, as a fellow maiden who has also occasionally loses personal control during moments of desire—"

"Ayra!"

"—that there is absolutely no shame in—"

"Ayra!"

The healing magic was good stuff, I had to admit. Painful, but good. I could feel the ribs knitting back together one by one, which was a sensation I’d describe as unpleasant if you held a gun to my head, but given the circumstances it was fine.

"Quite a few breaks," Ayra reported as her hands moved across my torso. "Poor, handsome, evil, brutal, abusive Master." She looked at me with those big, earnest amber eyes. "Master, you should be in significantly more pain than you appear to be experiencing."

I smiled at her softly as a tear flowed down my left cheek. "I’ve never been better, actually.

***

The portal that night spat out three separate creatures at once, somehow linked to each other like the Shadow Wolves were. The fight was ugly. I won’t bore you with the play-by-play because at this point you either trust that we can handle ourselves or you don’t, but the short version is: we won.

I was on the ground when it ended, bleeding from my shoulder. Ayra was healing a gash on her own arm, and Juniper’s tail had a visible wound near the end. Clementine transformed back from horse form and swayed on her hooves, looking paler than her usual pale self somehow.

Nobody spoke for about ten seconds after it was over. We just stood there, five people in a frozen field, processing the fact that the margin of error had just gotten a bit thinner.

The blue notification appeared:

VICTORY! XP Gained! LEVEL UP! Level 20 achieved. You have one new skill point and one new attribute point.

I barely registered it. Normally hitting a milestone like Level 20 would have had me fist-pumping like an idiot, but it’s hard to celebrate character progression when three of the four women you love are bleeding.

ALLOCATE YOUR SKILL POINT:

Mounted Surge (A short burst of supernatural speed while mounted. Duration: 3 seconds. Cooldown: once per encounter.)

Journeyman Fishing (Cast a magical fishing line. Improved bait selection. 15% increased catch rate in freshwater environments.)

"Mounted Surge," I said. Sorry, fish. Maybe next level.

ALLOCATE YOUR ATTRIBUTE POINT.

"CON." I needed to take hits better if things were going to keep escalating at this rate. Also, it might help me handle the tiddy milk squeezes better.

Attribute increased: Constitution (Now 17)

Juniper caught my eye as we limped back toward the house. Her gash was already closing under her own healing efforts, but she didn’t look relieved. She looked like a woman who’d just watched her worst-case spreadsheet come to life.

"Three at once," she said flatly. "And one of them adapted to portal energy in real time."

I nodded. "I know."

I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t even make a big deal about the level up. I just needed a rest after this very long, but somehow awesome, day.