Chapter 190: Cupid City
Kalon stood before the high council and gave them what he had promised.
He did not hand over every mechanism of his travel. He did not explain the Space Seducer System, the seduction stages, or the full structure of his growth.
What he did give them was practical knowledge: the way planetary conditions could differ, the kinds of environmental barriers that made conventional light-speed group travel inefficient, the existence of worlds beyond their current reach, and the broad limits of what a single traveller could and could not safely map alone.
He answered some questions. He refused others. Poppy allowed the refusals without trying to push him.
By the time he finished, the council had enough to work with.
Poppy formally closed the session. Science heads left with recording crystals and low, urgent conversation. The generals departed too.
Daisy was the one who spoke once the last officer had gone.
"Well then, you are free to leave and explore the planet if you wish."
Kalon nodded and left the citadel.
Cupid’s capital was much more impressive when he was not moving through it as an intruder or a threat.
It was a city-planet in the truest sense.
Layers of white skyscraper’s rose into the sky. Vehicles moved without visible wheels, gliding on roads. Storefronts projected soft interface panels into the air. Advertising markers shifted colour as people passed them.
Compared to Earth, it felt like someone had taken a major human capital and rebuilt it with better materials, tighter design, and no interest in looking old.
The people were the stranger part.
Everywhere Kalon walked, Cupidians stared.
Not always with hostility. Often with open curiosity. Children pointed at him. Adults watchee him with pure black eyes and murmured behind their hands. It took him a few streets to figure out why.
It was his hair.
Every Cupidian was bald by nature, their status marked by the pink crystal growths across their scalps.
Kalon’s dark hair stood out immediately in a population that never had any. To them, it looked foreign in the most basic biological sense. A man walking around with a full head of hair was more unnatural than foreign armour or unknown weapons.
He ignored most of the attention and kept moving through a central commercial district long enough to understand the shape of the place.
Once he had seen enough, he left the open street, and entered an alleyway.
Once there, he traveled to his next planet.
[Initiating Travel Sequence...]
[Adapting body to suit conditions...]
[...]
[You have arrived!]
[Welcome to Veylora!]
The air changed, and so did the smell. It became sweet and earthquake.
Kalon appeared near the outer approach to the cathedral grounds and stopped.
Veylora was celebrating.
Priestesses and ordinary Veylorians filled the open space in loose groups, talking, praying, and passing bowls of nectar-sweetened drink.
The fear that had hung over the planet during the Berry Hunter crisis and the Cupid invasion threat was no longer sitting on everyone’s shoulders in the same way.
And through all of it, people kept looking at him.
"Light Bringer."
"Messiah."
"Chosen of the Mother."
The words followed him as he walked. Some bowed fully. Others pressed fingers to their chests.
A group of trainees with still-closed robes stared at him like he was less a man and more a walking god.
Nyphara found him before he reached the cathedral doors.
The head priestess looked as composed as ever, heavy green breasts naked under the open cut of her robes, vine-threaded hair resting over her shoulders. Her smile was warm and beautiful.
"You return in the middle of thanksgiving," she said. "The people are still giving thanks for the ending of the outside threat. And for you."
"I noticed," Kalon said, not sure how to feel about the attention.
It felt even more intense than when he won the duo tournament.
She led him through the square toward a newly raised platform near the cathedral’s side garden. As they got closer, Kalon saw a statue.
It was carved from living wood and pale green resin-stone, shaped by growth rather than ordinary tools. The figure was unmistakably him. Same build. Same face. Same posture, one hand slightly raised as if in offering or command.
It was also completely nude.
And the carvers had not been modest.
The statue’s cock was thick, heavy, and deliberately prominent, hanging in full detailed view for every worshipper passing the platform. A pair of younger priestesses stood near the base with their heads bowed in prayer as if nothing about the anatomy was strange at all.
Kalon stopped in his tracks.
"...Why am I naked?"
Nyphara followed his gaze and answered without embarrassment.
"Because the Mother does not clothe truth. You came to us as a giver of light and seed-bearing change. You entered the sacred current and returned altered. To cover the body of a chosen vessel would be to imply shame where the Mother placed power. The statue shows you as you were received by her design: unhidden, fertile in presence, and large enough in spirit that the people will not forget the scale of what stood among them."
Kalon stared at her.
Then back at the wooden cock on the statue.
"...That’s the reason."
"It is a great reason," Nyphara said seriously.
A few nearby Veylorians overheard and nodded in agreement, as if the priestess had explained the weather.
Kalon exhaled once through his nose and turned away from the statue before the conversation could get stranger.
Since beginning his travels, he gradually come to understand that different planets were strange in many ways.
Cryons would completely melt upon orgasm.
Cupidians were unable to grow hair.
Vendurions had bright purple skin.
However, he had to admit that Veylorians were the strangest he had seen so far. Not only were their bodies living plants, but they also had no care for nudity.
He glanced at the Veylorians with their breasts exposed, and then the newly erupted statue of him with the cock exposed.
Yes... Veylora is definitely the strangest so far.