We made our way through the tunnels until we were once again in the open air.

“Whew,” Aurea said. “I like a good cave, but it has to be roomy, you know?”

“I,” Lysandra said. “Do not like a good cave. In fact, I do not believe in the existence of good caves.”

“Me neither,” Valeria remarked.

“Really? You looked so stoic down there.”

“Caves are neither good nor evil. They just are. Ascribing moral value to them is a category mistake.”

Gren snickered. Betsy did too, although it sounded more like a snort.

“Are you trying to be funny?” Lysandra asked.

“Yes,” Valeria replied, without a hint of a smile.

“What a strange thing it was, that vice president person thinking he could become president just because the president was dead,” Inka said. “I imagine if Abby were to die we’d have a series of bloody fights to determine who would be the next ruler.”

“Gren’s in charge after me,” I said quickly.

Inka shrugged. “If she can make it stick.”

I sighed. I needed to set up some institutions that could carry on, with or without me. Also, I needed to not die.

Gren was paying attention, and I was pretty sure she was looking at her system display. She’d leveled up, probably. “Okay,” I said. “Who here has leveled up?”!

Everyone raised their hands except Aurea, causing everyone to stare at her. She still hadn’t bothered to put her top back on, what there was of it.

“I’m a dragon,” she said. “We’ve evolved past levels and classes to use a skill-based system. Besides,” she said, “Leveling would be so easy for us, if we got experience for killing things. People are so delicate. I’ll stand guard while you all look at your displays and stuff.”

Skill-based, huh? Still, I was eager to look at my display.

Uberabberubeyabby “Abby” Thorson.

Species: Demonic Futanari

Class: Necromancer / Seductress

Titles: Uber Archfiend of Tartarus. Queen of Abbyland.

Level: 7

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 8

Intelligence:8

Wisdom: 7

Charisma 13

Health: 30/30

Mana: 510/1024

Endurance: 30/40

Experience for Next Level: 61339

Innate Demonic Ability: Dimension Step

Innate Class Abilities: Back Stab (Seductress version), Special Attraction, Sexual Satisfaction, Stealth, Exposure, Subtlety, Stunning Beauty, Restoration, Versatility, Cross-Disciplinary Studies, Life of the Party

Spells: Life Drain, Detect Magic, Animate Lesser Undead, Find Dead, Mend Corpse, Charm Person, Imbue Fetish, Endurance, Speak with Dead, Fear, Polymorph, Sexual Empathy, Animate Undead, Death Touch, Raise Dead, Love Slave, Mana Battery, Change Sex, Life Extension, Enchant Object, Edging

Given what we’d just been talking about, I was naturally curious about Life Extension.

Life Extension: By sacrificing a virgin on an enchanted altar, with an enchanted weapon, and spending a moderate amount of mana the necromancer may hold off the effect of aging by ten years.

I should have known better. Well, I was a long way from dying of old age, anyway.

Enchant Object: By expending a significant amount of mana, the necromancer may turn any well-crafted weapon, wand, or altar into a casting tool.

Also not nearly as cool as I’d hoped. “Not a lot of synergy between Life Extension and my other class, is there?”

Enash didn’t answer. He was really gone. I smiled.

Change Sex:

For a significant amount of mana, the seductress may change their own form to that of either a male or a female. The change is permanent until the seductress changes again.

I could become a man again, if I wanted. I should want that, right? Looking down, I saw a lot of cleavage, as I’d only pulled the zipper of the bodice partway up. And give those up? As if. I re-read the spell. There didn’t seem to be anyway to change into a futa again, just the binary genders. The system just loved giving me abilities I couldn’t, or wouldn’t use.

Cross-Disciplinary Studies: The necromancer may learn simple spells used by other classes by observing such spells being cast. The spells must be five levels lower than the Necromancer’s current level.

Now we were talking. I wondered if I could learn at least some of what the artificers could do. Or Maggie. Or Aurea’s ice bolts.

Life of the Party: Whenever the seductress is involved in sexual activity, all those nearby will feel more aroused by 10% times the level of the seductress, and will feel favorably disposed toward the seductress by the same amount.

I didn’t know what 70% more aroused meant, exactly, but it sounded good. For once, a seductress ability wasn’t about being sneaky. Once again, though, it was an innate ability that I couldn’t turn off. What counted as nearby? Would it make everyone in the house get frisky, or just the people in the room with me? How about the people who came to watch me and Aurea? Well, it would certainly help out the next time I had to go to Tartarus. It was perfect for cuckolding the Archfiend and getting him all turned on, and would provide me with a little goodwill in the process.

Edging: By spending a moderate amount of mana, the seductress can prevent a target they are touching from orgasming for as long as the spell is maintained. The seductress may permit an orgasm at any time. If they do, the spell ends, and upon the subject’s orgasm any promises made by the subject while being edged become binding on the subject.

More mind control. I shrugged. Enash would have loved it.

When I looked up, the others were all done. Of course, they only had one class, and I had two.

“So,” said Aurea. “We’re just waiting for the gnomes at this point?”

“Yep, it seems so.” I said.

“With no idea how long it will take them?”

“Yeah.”

“We could play a game.”

“What kind of game?” I asked. What sort of games did dragons play?

“We could draw lots, and whoever is picked has to take their clothes off.”

“You’re hardly wearing any clothes anyway,” Valeria pointed out.

“Well, sure. Clothes are silly when you have a body like mine.”

“Hard pass,” Betsy said.

“We could all take turns fucking Abby,” Inka suggested. “I’d get naked for that.”

“I am not a public utility,” I objected.

“Also, she’s not into me,” Betsy said. “We’re just friends. And that’s okay. I’m not really into her, either.”

I smiled at Betsy. It was strangely nice to have someone who wasn’t into me.

She shrugged. “Look, I have enough breasts for any relationship. If you were a big hunky guy, then maybe.”

“Your timing is off,” Gren said.

“Huh?” Betsy asked.

“Abby used to be a big hunky guy.”

“Really?” The others looked interested, too.

Gren glanced at me, and I shrugged. “You started the story. Go ahead.”

I didn’t feel as connected to that past as I might have been. Maybe that was for the best. I was comfortable in my own skin. Abby’s skin. And yet all my life experiences were part of me, too, and I didn’t want to make a secret of them. At one point I had been concerned about people knowing too much about Earth, but now that the gateway was down that wasn’t an issue.

I let them talk. I went over new abilities again, memorizing the wording as best I could. There was often a way to make even the worst abilities useful, if I found the right circumstances.

A few gnomes popped out, followed by a few more. Bing, Crash, and Boom were part of a group that headed our way.

“Queen Abby,” Bing started, and bowed slightly.

“President Bing,” I said, and bowed back, conscious of my breasts trying to pop free. They didn’t, though. I suppose I should have zipped back up, but I liked the outfit better this way. After all, I had a better view, too.

“We have discussed, and we have a proposal for you.”

Well, that was progress. “I’m all ears.”

Bing looked at my chest. “Pretty sure those aren’t ears. They are kind of big, for ears.”

“Figure of speech. I mean that I’m listening.”

Boom nudged Bing in the side.

“Oh, yes. Of course,” Bing said. “Well. We can provide you with some of our magic, under certain conditions.”

“And what would those conditions be?” Apparently he wanted to have me draw it out of him.

“Well. One, that together we build a road through the southeastern forest, connecting our village with Abbyland, and ultimately, Blowhaven.”

I nodded. “That’s doable, certainly.” We had to get logs from somewhere, and making a road would just change which trees got chopped. A road to the forest would help move the logs.

“Two, that we make a military alliance, agreeing to protect each other from harm.”

I nodded. “That’s a bit one-sided, I think.” I didn’t object if it would get me what I wanted, but I didn’t want to sell it short. “We can do more to protect you than you can do to protect us.”

“Of course. I’m not underestimating your intelligence, Queen Abby. But you want something from us, and that is the price. In return, we agree to duplicate such objects as you send us, to a limit of one standard gnome-weight a week, providing the objects are made of base materials. Duplicating things like gem stones and gold is prohibitively expensive in terms of mana.”

I nodded. That would work for most things, but not everything. What counted as a base material, anyway? And I didn’t necessarily want to export my technology to the gnomes. Anything they duplicated for me they could also make a duplicate for themselves, without me knowing about it. “What if the amounts of non-base materials were very small? So small, in fact, that one couldn’t even see it, but they were part of something that was mostly other stuff?”

I was thinking of the cobalt in cell phone batteries, but I was sure there was stuff I didn’t even know about.

Bing shrugged. “It could be doable. If the amounts were small enough, it might not even cost much. So let us put it this way – a gnome-weight in base materials, or its equivalent in terms of the time and mana spent by our artificers. I expect five artificers to be working full-time on this project.”

“How much is a gnome-weight?”

Bing looked at me like I was stupid. “The weight of one standard gnome,” he said.

“Can they work in Abbyland?”

“They’d be working here.”

I considered it. “It would be very useful for at least one of them to be closer,” I said. “Even with a road, it will take days.” Maybe less, if the road was good and we used bikes. But days, walking.

“But that would leave them far away from their own kind,” Bing said. “And they would be sad. And a sad gnome –”

“I’ll go,” Boom said suddenly.

“You’re an artificer?” I asked. Somehow I envisioned wrinkled old gnomes doing the work, and Boom looked like she was maybe twenty.

“Well, yeah,” she replied. “Got a problem with that?”

I shook my head. “No, not at all, we’d be delighted to have you.”

“But Boom,” Bing said. “You’ll be lonely.”

“Bing dear. You know that Clang would be happier if I wasn’t around, even if there’s nothing between us. She knows you have a thing for tall women, and even though you’d never so much as touch another woman – well, except as some sort of joke – she doesn’t trust me. Also, everyone looks at me like I’m a freak for being so tall. No, at least for a while I’d like to see what it’s like being shorter than everyone for a change.”

“You know they say that the tall trees choke the light from the shorter ones,” Bing said.

“Yes. I’ve heard your wife say just that. Fortunately, as I informed her, none of us are trees. Besides, I’m almost Abby’s height.” She stood on tip-toes, as if to prove it. She still had a way to go, but yeah, almost.

“I’ll go, too,” said one of the other artificers, this one older, and male. He had a shock of white-blue hair that looked a bit like Einstein’s.

“Splat,” Boom said, “You know you don’t have a chance with me, don’t you?”

Splat shrugged.

It seemed like the time was right. “So, if both of them are willing to come to Abbyland, and we only have to send things by road for the rest, then I think we have a deal, if they can do what I need them to do.”

I pulled out three objects from my bag. One was a simple nut, with a machine screw that matched. If they could duplicate the screw so that it fit in the nut smoothly, that would mean I could get replacement parts to keep things like lawnmower and windmills functioning.

The third was my cell phone. Infinitely more complex, with chips that were etched to specifications even Earth couldn’t have produced ten or twenty years ago, and containing a mix of relatively rare materials, including cobalt and probably all sorts of other things. I understood the screw. The cell phone was, for all practical purposes, Earth magic.

Both Boom and Splat reached out their hands. I handed Splat the screw and Boom the phone.