Chapter 338: A Fishy Hangover
Ren groaned, her cheek pressed against something hard and freezing cold. Her eyelashes fluttered open, her vision blurry as her brain struggled to boot up.
She was lying face-down on the stone table in the middle of the scullery.
"What the..." Ren mumbled, her voice raspy. She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, and instantly, a sharp ache radiated through her entire lower body.
She gasped, her eyes flying wide open. She was naked. Her emerald silk dress was gone.
Panic hit her like a bucket of ice water. Ren frantically scrambled off the table, her legs shaking so violently she almost collapsed onto the floor. She looked down at herself. Her skin was flushed, her inner thighs were sticky, and her core was throbbing with an unmistakable ache that implied she had just been taken on a one-way trip to pound town.
But she couldn’t remember any of it!
Her mind raced, desperately rewinding. The courtyard. The stupid bone-tossing game. Her terrible luck. The pond in the garden. Uriel’s hands washing her, the orgasm his fingers had forced out of her, and then...
"Show Selene to me."
Uriel had gripped her chin, his icy blue eyes feral, demanding to see the Moon Goddess. And after that? Nothing. Did she pass out from the climax? Did the fish beastman ravage her unconscious body on the garden rocks and dump her back in the kitchen?!
"System!" Ren shrieked. "System, what the hell happened?! Where is my dress?!"
Silence. Ren opened her inventory. The emerald dress was nowhere to be found.
"That overgrown sushi roll stole my dress," Ren breathed, a mix of outrage and confusion swirling in her gut. She felt really weird. She couldn’t describe it, but it made her feel...agitated.
With no other options, Ren quickly summoned a basic fur dress from her inventory and pulled it over her head. The coarse animal pelt scratched against her nipples, making her bite her lip with a sharp inhale.
Outside the scullery walls, the booming laughter and chatter of the feast raged on.
Taking a deep, shaky breath, Ren smoothed down the fur and marched back out into the courtyard.
The second she stepped into the firelight, Syris was there. The Snake King practically teleported to her side, his amethyst eyes wide with concern.
"Ren! Where did you go?" Syris demanded, his large hands immediately grasping her waist. "I have been looking everywhere for you! I turned my back for a moment and you vanished!"
"I’m fine," Ren lied smoothly, forcing a tired smile. "I just... I went to rest in the scullery. The noise was getting to be a bit much, and I think the wine went straight to my head."
Syris frowned, his sharp gaze raking over her pale face and the sudden change in her wardrobe. Ren subtly glanced around the courtyard. She scanned the roaring bonfires, the drinking beastmen, and the dancing females.
Uriel and Selestia were nowhere to be found. They had vanished.
A pounding headache bloomed right behind Ren’s eyes. The sensory overload of the feast, the missing memories, and the throbbing between her legs were simply too much to handle.
"I don’t want to be at the feast anymore, Syris," Ren whispered, rubbing her temples. "I just want to go lie down. Alone."
"I will walk with you to the nest," Syris declared immediately, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
"No," Ren firmly pushed him away, offering a reassuring pat to his chest. "Stay at the feast. You are the King; your guests need you to host. I just need a little space."
Syris’s jaw tightened. He didn’t want to, but looking at her pale, unwell complexion, he reluctantly relented. "Very well. I will send two of my guards to stand outside the door. If you need anything, come find me instantly."
"Bia and Las are perfectly fine," Ren countered quickly. "I don’t need guards."
Syris hesitated, but finally nodded. Ren quickly gestured for the two snake females, who had been hovering near the tables, to follow her.
As soon as they were safely out of the courtyard and walking down the dimly lit corridors, Bia and Las flanked her, their eyes gleaming with excitement.
"Mistress," Bia whispered softly. "Everything is ready for you. The guards ate every last bite of the food. The path is clear for you to save your stinky pig."
"You guys are lifesavers," Ren sighed, reaching out to squeeze their hands. "Thank you so much. I could not have done this without you."
"Please be careful, Mistress," Las warned, her white tail swishing nervously.
Ren nodded, her expression hardening. "I will. But listen to me very carefully. If I do not return by tomorrow morning, I want you to go to Syris and tell him that I was kidnapped by the blue fish."
Bia and Las exchanged a look of confusion. "The blue fish, Mistress?"
"Just promise me you’ll say it!" Ren insisted.
"We promise," they echoed in unison.
Leaving them behind, Ren set off toward the stairs. As she walked, the scrambled puzzle pieces in her brain finally began snapping together into a crystal-clear picture.
"It is bad manners to enter someone’s home uninvited, too." That was what Uriel had said to her. The impossibly bright place under the castle—the blue skies, the rushing waterfall, the lush greenery. That wasn’t a near-death illusion; it was an actual place! It was Uriel and Selestia’s secret home!
Ren was sure of it.
Whatever the fish beastman had done to her during that missing block of time was definitely tied to that place. She was certain of it. And she was going to go back down there and get some answers.
But first, she had a fox to break out of jail.
Ren navigated the descent to the lowest dungeon with significantly more confidence this time. She knew exactly which raised stones triggered the venomous dart traps, and she used the braided rope she had left behind to effortlessly swing across the bottomless chasm.
However, without the magical heating properties of her emerald silk dress, the freezing, damp air of the lower levels bit ruthlessly into her skin. The coarse fur dress provided minimal insulation, and she was shivering violently by the time she reached the door.
Lying in a tangled, uncoordinated heap on the stone floor were the snake guards. They were snoring loudly, completely dead to the world thanks to Bia’s Somnus-Weave Ivy.
"Alright, gentlemen, don’t mind me," Ren muttered, dropping to her knees beside the closest guard.
She did not have the key to Vex’s cage, but standard prison logic dictated that a guard on duty must carry it. Ren began awkwardly patting down one of them. She checked his loincloth and shamelessly patted down his muscular thighs.
"Is that a key, or are you just very endowed?" Ren grumbled as she rummaged blindly. Her fingers finally brushed against a cold piece of wood. "Gotcha!"
She yanked the heavy door open and slipped into the pitch-black dungeon.
"Vex!" Ren hissed into the dark.
"Well, well," Vex’s smooth, arrogant voice floated from the center of the room. He sounded genuinely shocked. "I must admit, Little Rose, I fully expected to die at sunrise. You actually came back."
Ren marched up to the wooden cage, feeling around the logs until she found the crude keyhole. She shoved the key in and twisted. The wooden door creaked open.
Vex stepped out of the cage, towering over her in the gloom. The second he was free, his sharp, sensitive fox nose twitched. He leaned down, burying his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling deeply.
"My, my," Vex purred. His hands settled warmly on her waist. "You smell like sex, Little Rose. And not with the Snake King. Did you have a busy night?"
"Shut up and move," Ren snapped, her face burning hot in the dark as she shoved him toward the wall. "I don’t know how long those guards will be unconscious!"
She quickly found the secret, smooth stone door in the wall and pushed. The mechanism slid open silently, revealing the terrifying, pitch-black abyss.
"Ladies first," Vex offered with a mocking bow.
Ren didn’t hesitate. She stepped over the edge and plummeted into the darkness, screaming exactly like she had the first time. Vex leaped in right behind her.
They fell for what felt like an eternity before hitting the pool with two massive splashes.
The freezing saltwater immediately soaked into Ren’s fur dress, dragging her down. But this time, she didn’t fight the current.
Instead, Ren took a gulp of air, kicked her feet, and swam downward into the darkest depths of the pool.
Vex, treading water near the surface, watched her sink with wide eyes. He dove under, his powerful limbs catching up to her in seconds. He grabbed her ankle, pulling her back.
Vex gestured wildly upward toward the exit. The stairs are up there!
Ren kicked his hand off her ankle. She pointed determinedly downward, straight toward the powerful suction of the rock tunnel.
Vex’s eyes widened in disbelief, but his curiosity overrode his survival instincts. If she was diving into a black hole, he was going to follow her.
Ren allowed the fierce, terrifying undertow to catch her. She was violently sucked into the narrow, smooth rock tunnel, shooting through the dark like a bullet in a high-speed aquatic waterslide.
A second later, Vex was sucked in right behind her.
The tunnel was incredibly tight. The rushing water slammed Vex’s muscular body directly into Ren’s back. They were tangled together as they shot through the twisting, turning darkness. The friction of the high-speed water pushed Ren’s fur dress all the way up to her chest, leaving her lower half bare.
Vex’s hands instinctively clamped onto her bare hips to brace himself against the wild ride. Pressed flush against her from behind, Ren could distinctly feel the length of his rapidly hardening cock grinding against her bare ass cheeks with every twist and turn of the watery tube.
Even while drowning in a pitch-black subterranean waterslide, the Fox Shaman was perpetually horny.
Ren squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the burning need for oxygen as the water battered them around. Just as her lungs were screaming for relief, the narrow rock tunnel abruptly ended.
They were shot out into open space, falling over the crest of a massive, rushing waterfall.
Ren and Vex plummeted through the air and slammed into the crystal-clear basin below with a colossal, splashing impact.
Ren kicked to the surface, breaking the water and gasping greedily for the sweet, fresh air. She wiped the water from her eyes and looked around.
It was exactly as she remembered.
It wasn’t nighttime here. Blinding, brilliant sunlight beat down on them from a perfectly clear, vibrant blue sky. Lush, green tropical foliage surrounded the water basin, filled with exotic flowers and towering trees that looked nothing like the dismal swamp above.
Vex breached the surface right beside her, his orange hair plastered to his forehead. He wiped his face, his three tails floating in the water behind him.
The Fox Shaman looked around, his jaw practically unhinging. For a beastman who had lived for centuries, who knew every secret, every hidden corner, and every dirty rumor of the Beast World, his expression was one of shock.
He had never seen a place like this before.