Chương 166: Chapter 164: Snakes on the plains

The change in direction alters our experience quite a bit. We weren't exactly walking along a road, but we were walking among somewhat civilized land. That changes once we direct towards the mountain. Not right away, but another few days later, we start seeing monsters again. And seeing monsters means fighting monsters. The first thing we come across is a giant snake. I've seen big snakes in movies and on television. Massive ones as long as thirty feet, weighing as much as five hundred pounds.

The one we see dwarfs anything from Earth. It's even called a giant snake. Giant snake. Very rare elite serpent, level 50. HP: 12, 500/12, 500. It's fifty feet long, and it weighs about a thousand pounds. The meat is tasty. And the scales are probably useful for something. There are actually a lot of serpents we come across over the next few days. None of them are quite as big as the giant snake, but they're still pretty damned big. We come across a forty foot long snake with a winged head like a cobra.

It spits poison at us, and is about twice as powerful as the giant snake. I harvest its fangs, and we feast once again on snake meat. Then there's a cluster of snakes that are about thirty feet long but a bit on the wider side. They weigh probably seven hundred pounds. Dire constrictor. Legendary elite serpent, level 60. HP: 60, 000/60, 000. The group of them, and there are five of them, put up a pretty serious fight.

But they can't really do all that much other than constrict us, and we're all too fast for them to be able to get the drop on us. They're ambush predators, not fighters, and so we're able to take them out with relative ease. Of course, at that point, we have more snake meat than we know what to do with.

"I'd really like some fruit or something," Vincent says.

"I'm tired of being a carnivore. Aren't we omnivorous? Shouldn't we try to balance our diets a little bit? Some fruit, maybe a vegetable? Or cheese? I love cheese." It makes me think of the cheese at the maester's castle, and I can't help but agree with him. I am more of a carnivore than I ever was before, but I still like the taste of other things. Ash starts to develop a new skill, and begins to harvest leeks and other vegetables as we walk. It slows us down, but it does make mealtime a more enjoyable experience.

Still no cheese or dairy of any kind, but it's at least something. Vincent eventually starts to get impatient about the food, and takes another trip skyward. Then he turns our journey a little bit towards the south, and after another few hours of walking, we end up on the outskirts of a farmland. There are probably hundreds of acres of crops growing, and hundreds more with cattle on them.

We do our best not to disturb anyone, and just walk towards what Vincent insists is a nice sized town, one where we can get some cheese. It's kind of funny how obsessed he is with cheese. But I get it. Gigi starts to get the idea of taking a bath, and it makes her giddy as we walk. She's excited to get back to civilization, to maybe sleep in a bed again. And then there's the possibility of a brothel. That's what El is excited about.

"Not because I want to sleep with a prostitute or anything," she says.

"I just love that they exist. I want to see how sex work is treated in this world."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because sex work is always treated as so taboo in our old world," she says.

"Sex work is real work. I want to see how people are treated. And maybe, if they're nice enough, I'll partake. I could really use a massage."

"With a happy ending?" Vincent asks, giving her a bit of a lecherous grin. El shrugs.

"Maybe. I don't really care. That's something I can do myself, you know? But the really good brothels do more than just provide sex. If they have courtesans, the experience will be fun and interesting without sex. Even Caleb could have a good time." They all laugh at me. Which is good natured, I suppose. But it does make me think about my relationship to sex. We've been in this world close to six months, and I haven't slept with anyone. And that's not a big deal; it's been several years since I've had sex.

I'm not opposed to it. I just don't want to do it with anyone yet. I've done it before. I know it's fun. But for some reason, I just don't. I sometimes wonder if I'm asexual. Or maybe I'm just requiring too much of a romance, too much of a mental connection, before I'm willing to sleep with someone. I still have a sex drive, I think. I take care of myself every so often, when I get a few moments alone. Not on watch or anything, but sometimes I go off and take care of things. And that's enough.

That gets the biological urge dealt with, it's quick, it's fun, and I don't have to worry about anyone else. It's like maintenance. Is that all I want from sex? Just to have the urges taken care of, so I can move on to more important things in life? I know that I still get sexual fantasies. I even have dreams sometimes. And I know that I still find people attractive. El's chiseled physique is very attractive to me. It's not androgynous at all; El is very clearly a woman.

And her muscles are so well defined, in a way that I find incredibly sexy. Yet I don't want to sleep with her. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Gigi, by comparison, is a bit more shapely, more curvy. I know she's also very strong and in great shape, but she is almost pudgy in comparison with El. Which is not a bad thing.

She has great curves, a butt so perfectly bubble shaped that you just want to bite it, and she moves like she knows what she's doing in the bedroom. She is gorgeous. But I don't want to sleep with her. Ash is a bit more statuesque. She's tall and lithe, with a vibe about her that just makes her more attractive. Her skin is black as her armor, her eyes glow slightly in the darkness, and she looks almost inhuman in her perfection. But I don't want to sleep with her.

Vincent looks like one of those guys in the nineties that everyone wanted to look like. He's svelte, he's thin, and he's wiry. But I don't want to sleep with him. Am I asexual? Do I just appreciate their forms from an aesthetic point of view, but don't want to actually do anything with them? Is that what being asexual means? Is there a scale for asexuality? I stumble forward as El shoulder checks me. She does it gently, but it comes as a surprise. She looks embarrassed when I finally get my feet under me.

"Sorry," she says.

"You were just lost in thought, and I figured maybe you could use a nudge to get out of there." I smile at her.

"Thanks," I say.

"What were you thinking about?"

"Sex."

"With who?" I shrug.

"Just sex in general." El gives me a long look.

"You know it's okay if you don't want to join me at the brothel," she says.

"I won't think any less of you." I smile again.

"Thanks." We get to the town proper around dusk. Like the last town we were in, there's a castle on a hill right in the center of it. Clearly, the castle came first and the village grew up around it. This castle looks bigger than the maester's castle, and looks like it's designed to let the villagers retreat to the castle in times of trouble. I like that. The first thing we do is find an inn that has a bath house. Gigi pays for us each to get our own room.

Vincent starts ordering all the cheese, fruit, milk, and vegetables the inn has to offer. I get some apple cider and join him while the girls all go to the bath house. We're sitting at a table that is just covered in food. There's no meat on the table, which seems wrong to me, but I understand the desire to just eat something else. Some people can't eat the same thing every day without fail. Some people need variety. I munch idly on cheese and crackers.

Vincent tastes everything, sometimes only taking one bite of each item before moving on to the next. He savors each bite, closing his eyes and enjoying the taste, letting it linger on his tongue before moving on to the next thing.

"So what was the ocean crossing like, really?" I ask him.

"It was terrifying," he says.

"There were huge swells, even when we flew above them. Sometimes there were waves that looked like they were hundreds of feet tall. And there were all kinds of creatures in the water."

"What, like sharks?"

"Sharks, giant squids, monsters of all varieties. The beach guardians aren't the only thing that prevents sea travel. I felt like I was in an HP Lovecraft story part of the time."

"Which one?"

"Did you ever read Dagon?" he asks me. I shake my head.

"It was about this huge island that appears in the ocean one day. Full of silt and sludge from the ocean floor, like it just got spewed up there. Undulating land. I remember that word. Undulating. There were fish people, and a gigantic monster that reached for us even though we were several hundred feet in the air. We actually had to fight it off."

"Did you kill it?"

"No, we didn't stay around long enough to kill it. Besides, it had too many hit points. I've never seen a unique elite creature before."

"What level was it?"

"Eighty. And it had almost a million hit points. It was way easier just to fly a little bit higher and get the hell away from it."

"I'm kind of surprised that Amanda didn't stop and kill it." He chuckles.

"I think she was about as scared as I was. It was almost immune to magic, even to mine. I fired spells that should have done a thousand points of damage, and only did about fifty." I let out a whistle. That's really bad. Even if they had stayed out of range, they might not have been able to kill it before running out of mana. Not while keeping their flight spell up.

"So there are evil creatures in the ocean?" He nods.

"I hesitate to call them gods, but they might be."

"It's weird that there's a world with oceans, and no one can cross them or use them for anything. You can't even go out fishing."

"I do wonder if there are boats on smaller bodies of water," Vincent says.

"Large lakes and the like. Maybe there is a navy somewhere in this world. Or maybe even the lakes have monsters in them." I think about my water breathing spell. That would allow me to go into a lake and fight a monster, if I really wanted to. Though it would definitely be difficult. How is one supposed to fight underwater? I can't cast Fire Bolt under water. And Mab's Rage would just freeze the water around me. Gigi and Ash come back from the baths around then, and sit down and start tucking into the food.

Their hair is still wet, and they're smiling.

"Where's El?" I ask.

"She's looking for a brothel," Gigi says. She laughs a little.

"I thought she was kidding about that."

"So did I," Ash says.

"But she insists she wants to go looking for the red light district. She'll be back in a little bit. I don't think she's going to actually indulge, at least not tonight."

"Brothel in the morning?" Vincent asks.

"That seems odd, somehow." I don't know how I feel about a brothel. As long as the people who work there are doing so out of their own free will and have at least a modicum of control over their clientele, I don't see a problem with it. I mean, selling your body isn't exactly a rare thing to do. Laborers do it all the time. As long as the people working there are giving consent, I suppose there's nothing wrong with it. It's as good a career choice as any other.

Which does bring up the question, though: are there skills that these workers gain? Like, are there secondary skills for sex? There's almost certainly one for massage, and probably for dance. But is there one for seduction? What about for actual sex acts? Is it possible to look at someone's sheet and just know how they are in bed? That seems weird to me. Maybe I'll ask someone, if El does end up dragging me to the brothel.