My Infinite Gacha In Another World: Surrounded By MILFs

Chapter 46: Chapter 46 — Unlocking

Odessa arrived at dawn.

She didn’t knock. She simply stood on the porch, the grimoire shut under her arm and her white robe immaculate, as if she’d ironed it with magic. The fabric didn’t even have a crease from sitting. When I opened the door, still blinking sleep from my eyes, she looked me up and down with those electric-blue eyes that never seemed to blink on time — always a beat too slow, like a lizard assessing prey.

"Samira?" she asked.

"Inside. Having tea."

"Good." She brushed past me without waiting for an invitation, her shoulder nearly clipping mine. "The sooner we begin, the sooner it’s done. I don’t like dragging out procedures. Efficiency suffers."

"How romantic," I muttered, closing the door behind her.

"My job is to unblock channels. I leave romance for novels. Bad ones, mostly." She paused in the middle of the room, glancing around the cabin’s interior with the clinical eye of someone cataloguing the furniture. "Though I suspect this household has enough romance to fill several volumes."

I followed her inside. The cabin was quiet, that particular hush that comes when half the inhabitants have already left. Lia had been sent off to Dorko and Domack’s room at first light, and the two orcs had taken her to the clearing to teach her how to identify edible mushrooms — a lesson that would probably end with someone eating something they shouldn’t and Runi having to fix it. Chimera, however, was sprawled on the sofa, legs stretched over the armrest and an expression of pure displeasure she wasn’t bothering to hide. Her tail draped over the edge, twitching in sharp, irritated flicks.

"Why can’t I be there?" she demanded the moment she saw me enter. Her voice had a growl underneath it, low and warning.

"Because Samira said so."

"Samira isn’t my boss." She sat up slightly, her mismatched eyes narrowing. "We’re all in this together. That’s how it works. That’s what you said."

"No, but she’s the boss of this." I gestured vaguely toward the bedroom, keeping my voice calm. "First session, mage only. If it works, we’ll talk after. I’m not sidelining you, Chimera. This is just... step one."

Chimera snorted. Her fingers drummed on the arm of the sofa, claws making faint scratching sounds against the worn wood. Her eyes — one gold, one violet — shifted toward Odessa with a silent promise that this wasn’t over. The air between the two of them crackled like the moments before a thunderstorm.

"You owe me one," she said at last, her gaze still locked on the mage.

"I owe you one," I agreed.

"And it won’t be boring. No grimoires. No lectures. It’s going to be fun." She bared her teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. "My kind of fun."

"Whatever you say."

Chimera rose from the sofa with the deliberate slowness of a predator who wants to make absolutely clear she’s leaving because she chooses to, not because anyone is making her. Every movement was calculated — the uncoiling of her legs, the roll of her shoulders, the swish of her tail. When she passed Odessa, she stopped. The height difference was considerable: Chimera, at nearly eight feet with her horns, towered over the mage by almost a full head. But Odessa didn’t flinch. She didn’t even look up.

"If you hurt him," Chimera said, her voice dropping to a low, silky register that was far more dangerous than any shout, "I’ll tear your throat out. With my teeth. Slowly."

"I’ll make a note of it," Odessa replied, utterly unruffled. She finally lifted her eyes to meet Chimera’s glare. "Though I should point out that the whole purpose of this procedure is the exact opposite of hurting him. That’s rather the point of medicine. Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do."

Chimera held her stare for three long heartbeats. Then she shot me one last look — half warning, half promise, with something wounded flickering underneath — and strode out onto the porch. The door clicked shut behind her with an air of finality.

"Is she always like that?" Odessa asked, adjusting her sleeve.

"Only when she’s in a good mood," I said. "You should see her when she’s actually angry."

"Fascinating. Your household dynamics could fill a case study in interspecies cohabitation." She turned toward the bedroom. "Shall we?"

Samira was waiting for us in the bedroom. She had stripped the bed of its blankets and sheets, leaving the mattress bare except for a single pillow. The windows were slightly ajar, letting in the gray morning light and the smell of damp pine. A candle burned on the nightstand — out of habit. Samira always lit one before anything important. She said it focused the mind. I suspected it was more about ritual than function, but I’d never questioned it.

She sat on the edge of the bed, hands resting on her knees. She wore a light, loose robe that parted slightly at the collar, revealing the delicate line of her collarbone. Her violet hair fell loose over her shoulders, still slightly damp from a morning wash, and the scent of lavender reached me from across the room. She didn’t smile when we entered. Her expression was all business.

"Rules," she said, looking directly at Odessa.

"I’m listening." The mage clasped her hands in front of her, the picture of professional attention.

"This is a training session. You are the instructor. I am the primary conduit. You stabilize, I guide." Samira’s voice was steady, but I could feel the undercurrent of steel beneath it. "If at any point I feel you’re taking advantage of the situation, it ends. And you leave this house. Permanently. I don’t care if his channels close up again — I’ll find another way."

Odessa nodded, her expression unchanged. "Reasonable."

"I don’t care if you find it reasonable. Those are the rules. They’re not negotiable." Samira rose to her feet. Even barefoot, her presence filled the room — the set of her shoulders, the quiet authority in her stance. Four thousand years of existence had taught her how to command a space without raising her voice. "Now. Tell me what we need to do."

The mage set her grimoire on the nightstand, beside the flickering candle. The runes on its cover pulsed once, faintly, as if acknowledging the shift in atmosphere. She began unbuttoning the collar of her robe with precise, economical movements. Each button slipped free without fumbling.

"The procedure is straightforward enough in theory," she said. "Harold lies in the center. You initiate the Dual Cultivation with him, as you’ve done before. The connection is already there — I can see it woven through both of you like a second circulatory system." She paused, unbuttoning her cuffs. "I will position myself behind you and channel my mana through your body. Your ether and my mana are energies of fundamentally different natures — spirit and arcane — but they can work in parallel, like two rivers sharing a single bed. The ether will break the spiritual scar tissue clogging his channels. The mana will widen the physical conduits. Two keys turning in different locks on the same door."

"And what do you get out of this?" Samira asked, her eyes tracking every movement of Odessa’s fingers.

"An student who doesn’t die halfway through a lesson." Odessa shrugged, the motion causing the loosened robe to slip a fraction from her shoulders. "And perhaps data for an academic paper. It has been centuries since anyone documented a case of Dual Cultivation with a System summoner. The energetic interactions alone would be worth recording. It would be a waste not to."

Samira’s eyes hardened. "You’re not publishing anything about us."

"As you wish." The mage finished unbuttoning her robe and let it fall to the floor with a whisper of fabric. Beneath it, she wore nothing — her body lean and pale, all sharp angles and blue-veined marble. Small, firm breasts, a flat stomach, hipbones that jutted slightly. She looked like a scholar who had spent too many decades in a library tower and forgotten what sunlight felt like. "Shall we begin?"

I lay down in the center of the mattress. The bare linen was cold against my back, and I could feel every ridge and seam in the fabric. The wooden ceiling above me had a crack I’d seen hundreds of times — a thin, branching line that ran from the corner toward the center beam. I’d stared at it during sleepless nights, during lazy mornings, during moments when the world felt too heavy and I needed something simple to focus on. Now it seemed different. Everything seemed different. The air smelled of candle wax and clean skin, and my heart was beating with the stupid urgency of a teenager on his first date.

Samira positioned herself over me. Her knees sank into the mattress on either side of my hips, and her robe slid from her shoulders without her touching it — an ether trick I’d seen her do before, but it never stopped hypnotizing me. The fabric pooled around her waist, then she shrugged it off entirely. Her breasts, freed, brushed my torso as she leaned forward. Her violet hair fell around us like a curtain, shutting out the rest of the room, the rest of the world.

"Relax," she whispered. She spoke with the voice of the lover — the one only I got to hear, the one that set aside the warrior and the mother and the four-thousand-year-old spirit. Just her. Just us. "We’ve done this before."

"Not with an audience," I murmured back, my hands finding her waist.

"She’s not an audience. She’s a tool." Samira said the word loudly, deliberately, making sure Odessa heard. Behind her, the mage let out a quiet snort but didn’t rise to the bait. Samira’s lips curved slightly — a flicker of satisfaction. "Now shut up and kiss me."

I obeyed.

The kiss was slow at first, almost lazy. Her lips tasted of herbal tea and something sweeter I’d never been able to identify — something that was just Samira. Her tongue brushed mine with softness, testing, reminding me that this wasn’t a fight. That there was no rush. I slid my hands up her waist, feeling her muscles tense under my fingers, then slowly relax. She melted into me by degrees, the tension of the morning finally starting to dissolve.

Behind her, Odessa had positioned herself on her knees, back straight as a ruler. Her lean body was a stark contrast to Samira’s generous curves or Chimera’s imposing mass — a scholar’s body, built for endurance rather than display. Her skin was pale as porcelain, and the bluish veins visible at her wrists and throat made her look almost fragile. Almost. She remained still, not touching me. She simply placed her palms flat against Samira’s back, just below the shoulder blades, and closed her eyes.

"Beginning channeling," Odessa announced. Her voice had shifted into something more clinical, more focused. "You’ll feel a momentary cold. It’s normal. Don’t resist it — let it flow through."

I felt it. Odessa’s mana flowed through Samira like a current of ice water, sliding down her spine, spreading through her arms, filtering through her fingers. When Samira placed her hands on my chest, the cold hit me like an electric shock — a jolt that made my breath catch and my muscles seize for a half-second before they adjusted.

"Now you," Samira said, her voice a little rougher than before. "Ether. From the core. Don’t force it — let it rise."

I closed my eyes. I reached inside myself, into that golden well the System had carved into my soul, and let the ether flow. I didn’t push it. I didn’t shove it. I let it rise, the way Odessa had taught me, like water finding its own path downhill. The lessons of the past three days came back to me — the ruptured channels, the sparks, the frustration. All of it leading to this.

The golden ether bloomed from my chest and met the blue mana in Samira’s hands. The two energies collided in her palms, and for an instant, I felt a sharp pain — a needle-stab right in the center of my sternum, precise and bright. I gasped. But Samira pressed her fingers down, and the pain dissolved, replaced by a warmth that spread outward toward my shoulders, my arms, my belly. The cold of Odessa’s mana and the heat of my ether balanced each other in Samira’s body, and she became the fulcrum, the point where two opposing forces met and merged.

"More," she said, her hips beginning a slow, grinding rhythm against mine. "Don’t stop. Keep it flowing. I can take it."

The ether kept flowing. Odessa’s mana kept flowing too. The two currents worked in parallel, one breaking the invisible scars that blocked my channels, the other widening the conduits so the flow wouldn’t jam again. I could feel it happening — a series of tiny, internal releases, like knots being untied one by one. Two keys turning in different locks, and I was the door being unlocked.

"Now the physical," Samira murmured, and she slid down onto me.

The sensation of her body enveloping me — warm, wet, exquisitely tight — tore a groan from my throat. Samira began to move, slowly, with a rhythm that wasn’t about urgency but precision. Her hips traced slow circles, each rotation sending a fresh wave of ether cascading through my channels. The heat rose and fell, pooled in my stomach and then surged outward toward my limbs. Odessa’s cold was still there, pressing against Samira’s back, keeping the temperature in check so the ether didn’t burn me from the inside out.

The mage didn’t move from her spot. Her hands remained glued to Samira’s back, her eyes remained closed, her breathing remained steady and measured. But at some point — I couldn’t say when — her palms slid from Samira’s shoulder blades down to her sides, brushing the curve of her hips. Samira tensed for a moment, a flicker of awareness crossing her face, but she didn’t stop her. The contact was light, almost professional. A positional adjustment to improve the flow. A clinical repositioning.

Or so I told myself.

"Concentrate," Odessa ordered, her eyes still closed. Her voice hadn’t changed — still calm, still detached. "You’re on the verge of opening the main channel. If you lose focus now, we’ll have to start over. And I don’t think any of us wants that."

"I’m not losing focus," I growled through gritted teeth, my fingers digging into Samira’s hips.

"I should hope not. Because I don’t intend to spend the entire day in this bed." A pause. "I have books to read. A backlog, in fact."

I let out a laugh that slipped between my teeth before I could stop it. Samira smiled too — a brief, secret smile that only I could see because I was inches from her mouth. Her violet eyes sparkled with something between amusement and exasperation.

"Shut up, Odessa," she said without breaking her rhythm. "You’re ruining the moment."

"This is a medical procedure. There is no moment to ruin." But the corner of Odessa’s lips curled upward for a fraction of a second, and I knew — despite everything — she was enjoying herself. The clinical detachment was a mask. Maybe not a lie, exactly, but not the whole truth either.

"Medical or not," Samira breathed, leaning down until her lips brushed my ear, "if you don’t stop talking, I’ll throw you out. And I mean it."

Odessa said nothing more. But the faint upward curve of her lips remained.

Samira’s rhythm quickened. Her movements shifted from slow, deliberate circles to something deeper, more urgent. The ether in my chest churned like a golden whirlwind, spinning faster and faster, absorbing Odessa’s mana through Samira’s skin. The cold and heat alternated in waves — ice, fire, ice, fire — until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. My fingers dug into Samira’s hips hard enough to bruise. Her nails raked down my chest, leaving faint red lines. The mattress creaked beneath us, a steady counterpoint to our breathing.

"Now," Samira gasped, her body shuddering above me. "Release. Everything. Let it all go."

And I let go.

The ether exploded from my core like a golden supernova. It tore through my channels at a speed I’d never experienced, shattering every obstruction, widening every conduit. Odessa’s mana escorted it, a cooling sheath around the blazing heat, keeping the temperature stable, preventing the energy from frying my nervous system. I felt a crack in the center of my chest — a resonant snap, like a lock finally yielding — and a surge of pure, liberated energy flooded through me. My channels were open. Completely, fully open for the first time since I’d arrived in this world.

Samira collapsed onto me, gasping. Her heart galloped against my ribs, rapid and wild. Her skin was slick with sweat, and her limbs trembled with the aftershock. She smelled of lavender and sex and something else — something electric, like the air after a thunderstorm, sharp and clean. Her breath came in short, ragged bursts against my neck.

Behind her, Odessa withdrew her hands and sat back on her heels. Her breathing was uneven — not quite panting, but close — though her expression remained stoic. Her silver hair was disheveled, a few strands plastered to her temple with sweat. A thin line of moisture traced down from her hairline to her jaw. She said nothing for a long moment, composing herself.

"Well," she said at last. Her voice was slightly hoarser than usual. "Channels open. Flow stabilized. Projection potential increased by an estimated thirty percent, perhaps more. A successful procedure by any metric."

"Do you always give percentages after sex?" I murmured against Samira’s hair.

"Always. It’s good academic practice. One should document results while they’re fresh." She paused, and I could hear the rustle of her retrieving her robe from the floor. "Though I suppose the peer review on this particular case might be... complicated."

Samira let out a tired laugh against my neck, her body still pressed flush against mine. Then she lifted her head and looked at Odessa over her shoulder, her gaze sharp despite her exhaustion.

"You did your job," Samira said. "Now go."

Odessa nodded. She rose from the bed, pulled her robe on without haste, and smoothed the wrinkles with her palms. The white fabric settled back into place as if it had never been removed. Before leaving, she paused at the door, her hand resting on the frame.

"Harold."

"What?"

"You did good work." She hesitated, just for a beat. "For a useless fool."

The door closed behind her. Samira shook her head, still draped across my chest. Her fingers traced lazy circles over my sternum, right where the ether had erupted.

"I don’t like her," she said.

"I know."

"But she’s good." Her fingers paused, pressing gently against the spot where my main channel now pulsed with steady, unobstructed energy. "Very good. I felt what she did with the mana. The precision of it. If she’d made even one mistake..."

"Also something I know."

We lay in silence, tangled in the rumpled sheets. The candle on the nightstand had burned down to nothing, leaving only a small pool of solidified wax. Sunlight was streaming through the window now, strong and golden, catching the dust motes floating in the air. The world outside the cabin was waking up — birdsong, the distant thud of orc training, the faint sound of Lia’s voice somewhere in the woods.

"How do you feel?" Samira asked.

I flexed my fingers. I closed my fists. The mana flowed through my channels without resistance, without pain, smooth as a river that had finally broken the dam. I could feel it in every limb, every extremity, a warmth and readiness that had never been there before. The System was still there — I could sense it, the golden interface lurking at the edge of my awareness — but it no longer felt like a crutch. It felt like an extension. A tool I understood rather than a machine that controlled me.

"Like I could set a forest on fire," I said.

"Don’t set anything on fire. We just cleaned the cabin." She pressed a kiss to my chest and sat up, stretching her arms over her head. The morning light caught the curve of her back, the lines of her shoulders. "The last thing we need is you burning down the porch."

"A candle, then."

"Not even a candle." She kissed me again — on the forehead this time, quick and firm — and swung her legs off the bed. "Come on. Get up. Lia will be back soon, and I don’t want her seeing you naked in bed smelling of magic and sweat."

"And you? Don’t you mind if she sees you?"

"Me? No. I’m her mother." She pulled her robe on with a fluid motion, the fabric settling around her like water. "Mothers don’t smell like sweat. We smell like sacrifice. It’s a completely different category."

I laughed and propped myself up on my elbows, watching her move around the room. She was disheveled, barefoot, with red marks on her knees from kneeling on the mattress. She was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life.

"Sami," I called.

"What?"

"Thank you."

She turned toward me. Her expression was soft — no trace of the hardness she reserved for the outside world, for enemies and strangers and meddling mages. Just her.

"Save your thanks," she said quietly. "Just don’t die again. That’s all the thanks I need."

"Deal."

She threw a towel at my face and went out to make breakfast. I heard her footsteps in the kitchen, the clatter of pans, the familiar sounds of morning settling back into its routine. I lay there for another minute, staring at the crack in the ceiling, feeling the mana hum through my newly opened channels. It felt like a beginning.