Chapter 297 (Patreon)

Chapter 297

Sophia finished boosting everyone in the core group and then went to update Kel on the recent events, as well as introducing Lime to him. The dragon was slightly concerned about there now being two overpowered birds, but he was even more curious about the new powers of the tiger, who definitely wasn't an overseer, no matter how many overseer traits and features said girl had.

“Okay, you need to tell me everything!” Once Sophia finished briefing Kel and the group had lunch together, they returned to the monster country to find some griffins. While walking through the desert, Chloe, who was under her snow cloud together with Steph, looked at Maya with sparkling eyes. “For you not being able to walk afterward, magic sex must’ve been amazing!”

“Well, to be honest, it was more Sophia motivated and less the magic.” Maya looked at the blonde with a cheeky smile while replying.

“Hehe.” Sophia looked incredibly smug.

“Really? The magic had no influence?” The fox sounded a little disappointed. “Even though Sophia managed to turn Anna and Ari on simply by touching them? Is she actually just that good? Why was I not affected, then? I’m not hard to turn on, you know?”

“That is very true!” Steph energetically nodded after hearing her claim.

“I said it was more Sophia being motivated, not just.” The cat-girl smiled at Chloe. “The magic was an amazing bonus.”

“Exactly what I wanted to hear!” The fox-girl’s ears perked up again. “How did it feel?”

“It’s a little hard to explain.” She tilted her head while thinking about it. “There’s this filling feeling that has some grounding effect I liked a lot, but then there’s the magic itself that was doing work. Hmm…” Maya paused for a moment. “Think about the warming and vibrating toys from Earth, okay? Now, imagine these sensations being integrated into your actual fingers!” Her eyes were sparkling while talking about it. “Oh, and your TONGUE!”

“That sounds lovely~.” Chloe liked everything she just heard. “Steph, please keep yourself free tonight. There are some experiments I want to try, and I could use some help.”

“I love you so much!” The dog-girl was a big fan of experimenting, and her tail started wagging like crazy.

“…” Anna was rather silent on the topic for some reason.

“You do remember that we have the same amount of magic now, right?” Chloe smiled at the tall tiger. “You can do your own experimenting without having to worry about running out of authority now. Ari does, too.”

“Ohh!” The princess also got rather excited after hearing that and looked at the jaguar with sparkling eyes.

“Sure.” Ari already knew what her question would be.

“Let’s go!”

----------------

Once that topic was over, the group finally ventured deeper into the desert to get closer to the center of the monster country.

“Maya, do you still want a portion of the desert for the biome? How about this area? I think it looks pretty nice!” Sophia gestured at the massive dunes in front of them. The sand hat turned into an even darker orange, and the sight was just like that from a reference book for deserts.

“I definitely would like to become a sand-cat~.” The cat-girl smiled at her. “I’d love to have this as the base for my project!”

“Alrighty!” The blonde lightly clapped her hands, and a moment later, everything in front of them was suddenly wrapped in the pink and purple sparkles of her portal magic. Once it disappeared again, a multiple-hundred-meter-wide crater in the sand was all that was left.

“Thank you!”

“Aura! Fenny!” While this was going on, Steph looked at the wolves. “You know it’s a shocker because it’s obvious how much I love deserts, but how much longer do we have to be in here before getting to a different area?”

“About 300 kilometers?” The female wolf tilted her head.

“Closer to 400 would be my guess.” Fen did the same. “Maybe something in between, yeah.”

“Awesome news!” Her left eye started twitching after hearing that.

“Wait!” Chloe also suddenly got loud. “The outer layer was kind of like a warm steppe or savanna, and the middle layer is a desert! It got hotter! What is the inner layer going to be?!”

“That’s just the route we took.” Aura shook her head. "If we had taken a route further east, we never would’ve gotten to the desert part. Not all of the middle layer is this hot.”

“THEN WHY DID WE GO THIS WAY?!” The cold-loving duo got a little angry.

“Because it’s the shortest route from our cat’s hometown.” The male wolf just looked at them. “Also, deserts are nice.”

“True!” All four cats agreed with him.

“Anyway, don’t worry.” Aura's voice turned softer. "The inner layer is on quite the plateau and away from the desert. It’s not cold, but absolutely not hot, either. It’s nice and temperate over there.”

“Finally, some good news!”

“Is there anything interesting in here?” Sophia also changed her attention to the wolves. “I love deserts, but it’s not really any different in the monster country compared to the one we were in before.”

“The color is a lot better than the previous desert, though.” Anna kicked up some of the orange sand that had almost the exact same color as her hair while smiling at the blonde.

“I think that depends on the circumstances.” Ari also looked at the sand while tilting her head. “For a desert, I agree, but for a beach, I’d prefer Sophia, err, I mean light yellow or even white sand.”

“Thank you very much~.” Sophia gave her a thumbs-up.

“Betrayed by my own girlfriend?!”

“Well, it’s the same for me.” The blonde looked at her cat-girl who preferred the orange sand instead.

“That’s not true.” Maya shook her head. “I completely agree with Ari here. Orange sand has a better desert feel, but light sand on a beach is leagues ahead of its counterpart."

“I knew I could count on you~.” The jaguar just smiled at her.

“Anyway, what about it?” Sophia ignored them and looked at the wolves again. “If it’s just sand and nothing else, I wouldn’t make doing a quick skip.”

“Not that I know of.” Fen shook his head.

“I don’t recall anything, either.” Aura agreed with him. “I’m not picking up anything with my detection magic, so I doubt we’re going to find any griffins in it, either.”

“Yes, that’s true.” The blonde nodded in agreement. “I’m also detecting absolutely nothing in the entirety of my range.” She then looked around some more. “Which way towards the inner layer?”

“That way.” Aura gestured a little to her left.

“Okay!” Nodding once, Sophia created one of her portal stones and shucked it in the direction with incredible speed, together with a sound that rivaled an explosion. It was so fast that it disappeared into the horizon in the blink of an eye.

“Woah!” Steph watched it disappear in awe. “Isn’t your throw usually a lot more gentle?”

“It usually is, yes.” The blonde shrugged in return. “Normally, I aim for around a hundred kilometers so the destination stays in my detection range, but as we’re in the middle of a desert deep inside the monster country, I don’t have to worry about accidentally hitting someone, so I decided to try and get us to the edge in one go.”

“You threw that stone over 300 kilometers away?” Chloe raised an eyebrow. “The 100 kilometers were already super impressive, but that’s just being excessive.”

“I mean, it’s Sophia, so her being excessive shouldn’t be a surprise, right?” Fen didn’t understand why she seemed surprised.

“You know what, fair enough.” The fox-girl had nothing to add there.

“Hey!” Sophia didn’t like that. “Not wrong, though… Also, it’s still flying, so I will have thrown it 300 kilometers away in about five or so minutes.”

“Doesn’t make it any less impressive.” It changed nothing for Ari.

“Oh, speaking of your detection magic, now that your authority exploded, has your range at all?” Aura wondered whether Sophia's new powers came with even more perks.

“Mhmm…” The tiger concentrated for a moment before shaking her head. “No, doesn’t seem like it. “Well, I never had to use all my magic to get my full detection range in the first place, so I probably have to keep using it constantly like before for it to become bigger. I mean, did your range get bigger now that your authority doubled?”

“Good point.” The female wolf shook her head. “You’re right, mine’s still the same, too.”

“Though, now that you mention it, I wonder how far it could reach if I were able to use all my authority in it.” Sophia’s curiosity was piqued.

“From the right position, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could scan the whole continent in one go.” Aura nodded a few times.

“Ohh, that could be fun!” The blonde’s eyes started sparkling. “I definitely need to keep training to get there!”

"Fun?" Steph looked confused. "I've been training ever since Fen taught me how to detect things, and I’m slowly getting closer to a kilometer of range, but it completely overwhelms me whenever I use it. Just imagining detecting the whole continent makes my head hurt. It would probably explode once I’d actually try it.”

“It’ll get a lot easier once you learn how to filter out weaker signals and can focus on interesting readings only. Like, I'm constantly using it, but my default setting is to ignore anything weaker than the previous authority of Anna and Ari unless I'm looking for something specific. That way, the only thing I accidentally detected so far was Kel in the desert.”

“Ohh!” The dog-girl clapped her hands. “I better focus on that before I grow my range more and accidentally fry my brain in the process!”

“Might not be a bad idea.”

“Is there any reason to be able to detect everything on an entire continent if you ignore basically everything and everyone?” Anna tried to understand the reasoning. “From what I remember, Fen and Aura mentioned a few times that there is basically no one stronger than even old Ari and me, right?"

“On this continent, correct.” The female wolf nodded at her.

“We’re about to depart for the demon continent, though,” Sophia continued, “And we also recently found out that there are multiple dozens of elder dragons like Kel I’d like to meet and invite to my domain.”

“Ahh!” It immediately clicked for the princess. “That would be super helpful indeed! Wait a moment!” She suddenly raised her voice. “Now that I have the same authority as everyone else, would I be able to learn this detection magic, too?”

“It’s not impossible.” Fen looked at her. “You have to properly get used and become able to control your new powers first, though. It’s quite intricate magic that requires a lot of control. I mean, you just heard Steph mentioning that her brain might explode, and she’s been using her high authority for a good while already.”

“Okay!” She clapped her hands.

“We’ll be having a lot of time once we’re on the ocean towards the demon continent. If you're up for it, I'll teach you a few things." There was a bit of a challenging undertone in Aura’s voice. “I noticed that your feeling for magic is quite good and you, most of the time, seem to have a good head on your shoulders, so this could lead to something interesting~.”

“I’m not sure how I should feel about the way you worded some things there, but I don’t care, so please teach me!”

“Sure~.”

Having spent the wait time for the portal to land chatting, Sophia eventually clapped her hands a little over 5 minutes after throwing the stone and opened a big portal in front of them to skip the desert.