Chapter 117: Suggestion Box [Bonus Chapter]
"My turn," Morwenna demanded.
She didn’t wait for Silas to move his stool.
She waded aggressively through the hot water, pushing past Eluned, and spun around, pressing her broad muscular back directly against Silas’s chest.
Silas grabbed the sponge, lathering up fresh soap.
He washed the pirate’s back.
The contrast between the two women was staggering. Where Eluned felt like delicate, fragile silk, Morwenna felt like carved marble.
Her back muscles were thick and hard and her shoulders were broad enough to carry a heavy cannon.
He scrubbed the dark oil and forge soot from her skin, washing over the battle scars on her ribs.
"Turn around..." Silas murmured.
Morwenna shifted in the water, turning to face him. She didn’t have a shred of the Goddess’s modesty.
As Silas raised the sponge to wash her collarbones, Morwenna reached out and grabbed both of his wrists.
She forcefully pulled his hands forward, pressing his large calloused palms directly onto her massive breasts.
"Fondle them, Captain," Morwenna ordered. "Squeeze them. I want to know what it feels like when you do it."
Silas’s throat went dry but he didn’t hesitate.
He closed his large hands around her heavy flesh, kneading the soft weighty curves, using the slick soap to slide his thumbs over her dark hard peaks.
"Mmmm~"
Morwenna gasped.
’Ah, what was that sound?’ Morwenna thought in surprise as her face went red, she couldn’t control it...
Her stormy gray eyes went wide as the foreign jolt of pleasure shot straight through her nervous system.
It wasn’t the sharp thrill of combat. It was an intoxicating heat that pooled deep in her stomach.
She loved it.
"Lower, Captain... Haah~" Morwenna breathed heavily with her fierce facade cracking.
She grabbed his wrists again, shoving his hands violently under the surface of the steaming water, directly between her thick thighs.
"Down there... Touch me right there... Exactly like you did for her."
Silas shifted his grip, moving his fingers directly to her core.
Unlike Eluned, who was shy and delicate, Morwenna was a brawler.
She didn’t wait for him to find the rhythm. She aggressively thrust her hips forward under the water, grinding herself violently against the heel of his hand, seeking maximum friction.
Silas slipped two fingers inside her, using his thumb to rub the slick swollen peak hidden in the dark curls.
The reaction was explosive.
Morwenna didn’t let out soft breathy whimpers.
The pirate queen threw her head back with her wet dark hair splashing against the water as she let out a loud uninhibited moan that bounced off the slate walls like a thunderclap.
"Nnnnnghhh~ Ahhh... Fuck!" Morwenna cried out.
She grabbed the edge of the wooden tub, her thick biceps flexing as she bucked her hips wildly against his hand. "Captain! Yes! Right there!"
Her moans were incredibly loud, echoing through the steaming room with zero shame.
She sounded like she was drowning in the sensation, consumed by the overwhelming pleasure of being touched so intimately.
"Mmm~ Ah~ D-deep~ Deeper my Captain~"
From the other side of the tub, Eluned glared through the steam as her face flushed with indignation.
"Keep your voice down, you loud brute!" Eluned complained, covering her pointed ears. "You are just showing off to get his attention!"
"I’m not... Mnn~... showing off~ Weed~" Morwenna screamed back with her body trembling violently as Silas increased his pace, moving his fingers in a rapid relentless rhythm. "It just... feels that damn good~ Holy shit, Captain~"
’Since we’ve come this far, might as well just continue.’ Silas thought, loving the look on her face.
Silas didn’t stop.
He held her hips steady under the water with his free hand, letting the pirate ride his fingers until her body suddenly seized.
"Haaaaaangh~"
Morwenna let out one final shout of pure ecstasy with her heavy thighs clamping down hard around his wrist as a massive wave of climax tore through her insides.
She collapsed back against the water with her chest heaving violently as she gasped for air like a fish thrown onto a hot deck.
Silas slowly pulled his hand back, washing the soap from her trembling legs.
"You’re clean, Morwenna," Silas said, fighting to keep his own breathing steady.
The pirate queen just stared at the ceiling with her eyes glazed over as a sloppy satisfied grin stretched across her flushed face.
"I finally understand why mortals like this so much. My Captain... let’s do the real thing!"
Outside the heavy wooden door of the master bathroom, the hallway was quiet.
Aeliana stood perfectly still, balancing a massive silver tray loaded with freshly roasted Umbral Wolf steaks, warm bread, and spiced wine.
She had hurried to the kitchen and back, eager to serve her Lord after his long day in the mines but as she reached the door, she stopped.
Even through the thick reinforced ironwood door, the sounds were unmistakable. She heard the heavy splashing of hot water.
She heard the soft whimpering moans of the Eluned and then, she heard the loud screaming climax of the Pirate Queen echoing down the stone corridor.
Aeliana stood frozen. Her grip on the silver tray tightened so hard her knuckles cracked.
She thinned her delicate lips, pressing them into a perfectly straight, trembling line.
The calm demeanor of the Arcanist began to crack.
"Is Lord Sy... ravaging those two in the tub?" Aeliana whispered to herself with her voice incredibly quiet.
Hearing the loud desperate moans coming from the other side of the wood, it was completely impossible to think otherwise.
He was giving them exactly what she had been dreaming about for quite a long time now.
A heavy shadow fell over the upper half of Aeliana’s beautiful face.
Her glowing eyes darkened into a dangerous turbulent storm of pure jealousy as a hot blush spread across her cheeks and down her neck.
She stared at the wooden door with her heart hammering with a toxic mix of lust and bitter resentment.
"Why..." Aeliana muttered as the pirate let out another loud groan inside the room. "Why didn’t he wait for me?"
...
A full week had passed since the massive haul.
The heavy monsoon rains of the Umbral Basin had finally broken, leaving the sky a crisp bruised purple that actually let some genuine sunlight hit the mud.
Silas sat behind the massive ironwood desk on the top floor of the Keep.
The heavy wooden shutters of his office windows were pushed wide open, letting a cool damp breeze wash over the scattered papers and ledgers covering his workspace.
’Not like I need these for much either way...’
He leaned back in his heavy leather chair, running a calloused hand through his dark hair, and took a long slow sip from a cold cup of crushed berry juice resting near his elbow.
Things were actually going well.
Blessed Land was thriving.
The raw ore they had dragged out of the mountain had changed everything.
He had taken a hefty chunk of the star-iron and void-amethysts, securely loaded them into his Lord Inventory, and was going to sell them pretty soon... which would be the next time that he headed up to Earth.
Silas set his cup down and leaned forward with his golden-ringed eyes tracing the massive detailed map spread out across the center of his desk.
The wireframe layout of his territory had expanded massively over the last seven days.
His scouts had been pushing the fog of war back mile by mile, mapping out the jagged ravines, dense ironwood forests, and treacherous swamp zones of the Umbral Basin.
Silas picked up a piece of charcoal and circled three separate, newly discovered zones located about ten miles east of the Keep.
’These rock formations match the topography of the first cave...’ Silas thought as he analyzed the terrain markers. ’High elevation, dense bedrock, and sparse vegetation... There’s a very high probability that these are fresh mining nodes. If we can secure these zones, we basically have a monopoly on deep-earth alloy in this grid...’
He tossed the charcoal down with a satisfied smirk touching his lips.
It wasn’t just the map that had received an upgrade... The faction itself finally had an identity.
After the humiliating realization in the Foundry that he hadn’t even bothered to design a guild logo, Silas had sat down with a piece of parchment and sketched out the official territorial emblem of the Blessed Land.
He didn’t want something complicated or pretentious. He wanted a mark that looked tough and sent a clear message to anyone who saw it.
He had settled on a striking, heavy design: A cracked dark obsidian shield, pierced straight down the middle by a glowing golden sword, with a heavy dwarven pickaxe crossed behind the hilt.
It was a perfect representation of who they were... at least in Thora’s words.
They fought hard, they defended their walls, and they dug their wealth straight out of the dirt.
Thora had taken the sketch and run with it like a woman possessed.
The dwarven blacksmith had spent the last week engraving, stamping, and branding that emblem onto every single piece of gear in the territory.
It was on the heavy breastplates of the new infantry. It was stamped into the leather belts of the scouts.
It was even painted in stark white ash on the massive iron gates of the Keep itself.
Seeing his troops walking around the courtyard wearing his crest gave Silas a strange sense of pride.
"My Lord?" a soft perfectly polite voice called out from the doorway.
Silas looked up.
Aeliana stepped into the office.
The Arcanist was dressed in her usual immaculate, pristine spider-silk robes, her long silver hair falling flawlessly down her back but instead of carrying her usual stack of reports or clipboards, she was holding a simple wooden box in her hands.
It was a square wooden cube with a single, narrow slot cut into the top, and a small brass padlock securing the bottom.
"Ah, right on time, Aeli," Silas smiled, gesturing for her to come closer. "Let’s see what the troops are complaining about today."
The shuffle box had been Silas’s latest leadership initiative.
He knew from years of playing strategy games and dealing with terrible bosses back on Earth that a dictatorship was a fragile thing.
If you locked yourself in a tower and never listened to the people doing the actual dirty work in the mud, resentment would build.
Morale would drop and people would stop caring.
He needed the girls to feel like they had a voice. He needed their brains, their varied class experiences, and their perspectives.
So, he built the suggestion box and placed it squarely in the middle of the barracks mess hall...
The rules were simple. Any girl in the territory could write an idea on a piece of scrap paper and drop it into the slot.
It could be a base upgrade, a suggestion, a complaint about the food, or a request for better gear.
Once a day, Aeliana would bring the box up to the office, shuffle the papers around, and draw one out at random.
As long as the suggestion wasn’t a blatant joke or completely impossible to execute, Silas had promised to take it seriously and try to implement it.
It was a massive morale booster.
The girls loved it.
Two days ago, a heavy-infantry shieldmaiden had suggested reinforcing the soles of their combat boots with thin strips of star-iron to prevent the swamp mud from rotting the leather.
Silas approved it instantly, and Thora had been retrofitting the armory ever since.
Aeliana walked up to the edge of the desk with a serene devoted smile on her beautiful face.
She gave the wooden box a firm, deliberate shake. The sound of folded paper rustled inside the wood.
"I must say, Lord Sy, the morale in the lower barracks has been exceptionally high since you instituted this practice," Aeliana praised him, her eyes glowing with admiration. "The new recruits feel truly seen by their Warlord."
