Orgasm system: These beastwomen must moan!

Chapter 26: Helping without helping

Stefan’s POV

I walked out of the tent with my jaw set and my stomach already staging a protest.

The System dinged behind me, chasing me out.

[OPTIONAL QUEST: Find out what’s wrong with Jonquil and elevate her mood.]

[REWARD: +1,000 AP]

[Accept / Decline]

I jabbed decline without breaking stride and didn’t look back.

Zinnia’s tent was where I was going, and Zinnia’s tent was where I was going to sleep, and nobody - not the System, not Jonquil, not a lust god I’d never met was going to stop me from doing exactly that.

Not some measly AP.

I got to Zinnia’s tent in no time and I pushed through the flap, crossed the space in four steps, and let myself fall backwards onto the animal skin fur in the corner, my back hitting it with the full weight of a man who had nothing left.

The ceiling of the tent stared back at me.

"What the fuck am I even doing here on this planet? I should just go to hell... " I gritted out.

I was angry. I was hungry.

I had just confirmed that a hungry man was an angry man.

"Fuck it all." I couldn’t stop fuming. I had never been starved like this before.

In my penthouse, a huge, luxury breakfast was always waiting for me before I woke up from bed.

"There should be a way for me to go back, right?"

My eyes got heavy and I fell asleep before I could continue thinking.

~~~~~~~~

I woke up an hour later to the System.

[DAILY TASKS REMAINING:]

- Help two slaves — +100 AP

- Complete 100 push-ups — +100 AP

- Don’t eat until noon —+100 AP

I lay there staring at the notification, unmoving, for a long moment.

"Help two slaves," I said to the ceiling. "Or do a hundred push-ups." I paused. "While hungry, uh?"

I sat up slowly, every muscle registering its complaint, and looked around the tent. Zinnia was nowhere in sight, apparently, off doing whatever second-in-commands did with their mornings.

"I can’t just keep lying around like this." I mumbled then got up.

I stepped outside just to have somewhere to be.

The camp was moving around me in its usual rhythm, warriors crossing the grounds in pairs, the low rumble of voices in the beast language I still hadn’t learned a single word of, and the slaves, moving between all of it like furniture, heads down, water pots balanced on shoulders and heads, back and forth, back and forth.

I watched them for a moment.

"So how do you expect me to help two of them?" I threw at the system which I knew was definitely hearing me.

Carry water, presumably. Haul something. Do whatever it was they did all day with their backs and their bowed heads.

I scoffed.

"That dude is really underestimating me," I muttered, mostly to myself. Then I turned to the System notification still floating in my peripheral vision.

"If you hadn’t noticed and apparently you hadn’t, I wasn’t a small person on earth. I was rich. I had housekeepers. Multiple. I employed people specifically so I would never have to carry anything heavier than a phone."

As I talked to myself, a slave near the path glanced up at the sound of my voice.

My face hardened I glared at him.

He looked back down instantly.

"You know what’s good for you, bro," I scrunched up my nose.

I walked away from the water-carrying operation with my dignity mostly intact and made a mental note to ask Zinnia about new clothes the first chance I got. The slave cloth was doing me no favors. I needed something that at least looked like I had a rank.

I wandered further into the camp, not entirely sure where I was going, just moving because standing still left too much room for my stomach to make its opinions known.

That’s when I heard it - a rhythm. Faint at first, then clearer as I rounded the side of a large tent and the source came into view.

Three women, moving together in something that wasn’t quite dancing and wasn’t quite fighting, something in between, bodies rolling through a sequence of movements that made every curve they owned work in its own favor.

The supposed clothing they had on was so obscene. It was a light animal-skin fabric, barely there, cut in a way that seemed specifically designed to jiggle with every step, which it did, magnificently, their backsides bouncing and their breasts jumping with each beat of the rhythm they were moving to.

My cock twitched.

My stomach growled immediately afterward, loud and indignant, like it was personally offended by the competition for my attention.

I pressed a hand to my abdomen. "I know, I know. One thing at a time." I muttered.

Then my eyes caught the woman standing in front of the women. It was Lily.

Lily’s arms were crossed, as she watched them with the sharp focused expression of someone running an assessment rather than enjoying a performance. She said something in the beast language, short and cutting, and all three women immediately adjusted their movements, posture snapping.

Then the system chimed, providing me with information that wasn’t any of my fucking business. Not when I was even this hungry.

[LILY’S CURRENT MOOD:Frustrated]

"Dude, I’m frustrated too." I gnashed then kept walking. Whatever that was, it wasn’t my business right now.

~~~~~~~~~

I made it approximately forty more minutes before my body staged a full revolt.

The hunger had crossed from uncomfortable into something more insistent, the kind that made it hard to think properly, hard to keep walking in straight lines, hard to care about AP debt or recruitment progress or anything except the very simple biological fact that I needed to eat something.

"Okay, that task can go to hell." I snapped at no one in particular as I made up my mind.

The AP could go to hell with it. Whatever penalty the System assigned for defaulting on the miracle debt , be it van crash, bone-crushing loop, whatever it had planned, I’d rather endure it on a full stomach or not at all.

I turned back toward where I’d last seen Lily, already composing what I was going to say, already deciding that pride was a luxury I couldn’t currently afford.

I found her still near the same spot, the three dancers gone now, Lily standing alone reviewing something in her head by the look of her, her lips moving slightly.

I was three steps away from tapping her shoulder when movement in my peripheral vision made me stop.

A slave - young, smaller than the others I’d seen, the clay pot he was carrying genuinely larger than made any physical sense for his frame, hit his foot on a stone jutting out of the ground.

He stumbled. The pot swayed. His whole body tipped forward, momentum already committed to a direction his legs couldn’t correct.

My hand shot out before I’d decided to move it.

I grabbed his arm, pulled him upright, steadied the pot with my other hand before it could complete its arc toward the ground.

We both stood there for a second, the disaster averted, the water sloshing but contained.

The slave looked at me with an expression I recognized; the same sideways, disbelieving look the man in the punishment tent had given me when I’d first arrived, like he was trying to work out what the catch was.

[DAILY TASK PROGRESS: Help two slaves — 1/2 complete.]

I glared at the notification. Then at the slave.

"Don’t read into it, I wasn’t thinking." I snapped with irritation. I didn’t know who I was directing that to between the system and the slave. Maybe both.

The slave flinched then dropped his gaze immediately.