TDH Vol. 1 pt. 25

I was left on my back once again, panting as my entire body felt overly sensitive after everything that we did. And by “everything that we did,” I mean after she decided that she wanted to refill her mouth with my taste because she missed it and couldn’t resist before actually training.

“I wish I could live off of this for the rest of my life,” Elanah said as she held her hands against her cheeks, a smile curling her lips. “It should be impossible for my fated to taste so good.”

I’m pretty sure it’s all in your head. From everything I’ve heard, no woman actually likes how that stuff tastes.

“Oh… right. We were supposed to train. S-sorry. It’s just… I love you and your taste so much. But I’ll get serious now! Because we have to get out of this place together!”

I can barely move after what you did to me. I feel like all my strength has been sucked out, too… also, thanks. I know I’m whining in my thoughts here, but I appreciate it. I seriously appreciate it.

Elanah helped me back up onto my paws before stretching in front of me. Watching her stretch showed me just how slender and toned her body was. From a quick look, she’d look pretty skin, but any closer inspection would reveal her fit physique with subtle muscle definition. Her calves, arms, neck—she had that subtle definition all over. She might not have been anywhere near as muscular as some of the other prisoners, but she was even more muscular than I was back when I was a Chosen. Well, in my defense, I did have some natural muscle that I got over time from helping in the fields, but that was more… casual. Elanah looked like she actually exercised to get the body that she had.

When she stretched her arms high above her head, she lifted her shirt up which revealed that even her abs had some definition to them.

That was when I had a thought that I never could have imagined having before.

I want to sleep on her abs.

Her thighs were still the best part of her body because thighs, by default, were always the best, but her abs were nice, too. Seriously nice.

Elanah slapped her cheeks and said, “Alright. I’m ready now. How much fighting experience did you have before coming here? You can… oh! Nod your head faster the more experience that you had. So a little nod for a little experience and a lot of fast nodding for a lot of experience.”

I shook my head.

“A—a shake… so, no experience?”

A nod.

“That’s okay. Actually… it makes me a little happy. That means I get to be your first trainer! If you didn’t have any experience then you’ve never been trained before, probably! Ehehe… I get to be my fated’s first.”

Well, technically, my dad taught me how to hunt, but I never actually partook in the killing part. Just the tracking part. So, I nodded to confirm and let her feel a bit happier. That made her giggle even more.

“I know how we can start! One of the most important things that you can do is survive. No matter how much damage you’re able to do to somebody, as long as you can avoid ever getting hit, it won’t matter. You can keep on getting small attacks in whenever you can while evading all of their attacks and eventually win. Once you’re good at dodging, we can practice throwing attacks into the mix and countering.”

That makes sense. As long as I’m alive, I have a chance, so it’d be good to learn how to stay alive as much as possible. I’ll never make it to the end of the dungeon if I can’t do that. But how are we going to practice that? That’s the kind of thing where live combat is the only way to really… wait.

Elanah smiled and cracked her knuckles. “Don’t worry. I promise not to hurt you.”

For some reason, I don’t feel comforted by that.

She then held out her hands and concentrated, causing two daggers of swirling, black and purple energy to form within her hands.

Void magic.

She mentioned knowing it naturally before… but this is my first time ever seeing it. Well, other than that time Fane used it in the dungeon. But this is my first time ever seeing it in person. It’s… kind of beautiful.

I knew that void magic was feared for how incredibly destructive it could be. It was feared as magic that indiscriminately destroyed, and it served no useful purpose aside from killing. Most elements of magic had civilian uses… but not void magic.

“Punching and kicking you would be too hard, but I can still throw these at you,” Elanah explained, flipping one of the daggers into the air before catching it.

I thought you promised not to hurt me?! Those things are going to hurt if they stab me! Seriously hurt! And I’m not in the dungeon! What if you kill me?!

“Oh, wait.” She snapped her fingers, causing the daggers to disappear. “Here, you should stretch first.” I blinked a few times as Elanah got down on her knees next to me, picked me up, and placed me down facing away from her. Shen then grabbed my front legs and stretched them out in front of me before lifting my rear up as high as it could go. “You should do stretches like this every morning before you have to go into the dungeon. Well, you should do them every day anyways. It’ll loosen you up, making it easier to dodge and prevent any muscle pains! The beds in this place aren’t the best, so if you have back pain at all, it should also help with that.”

Daily stretches in the morning. Alright. I can do that. Not like I have anything else to do while waiting in my cell.

Elanah proceeded to show me a few different ways I could stretch after that. She seriously must have been thinking about me a lot in order to have so many ideas about what to do with my body. There was no hesitation or confusion or anything else whenever she handled my body.

I liked that. At the same time, though, it was kind of creepy.

More importantly, I felt pretty nice by the time she was done showing me how to stretch. The stretches were all simple enough for me to remember, too.

But the end of stretches meant that she conjured those daggers again.

“Okay. Ready, Woofen?” Elanah asked.

I wanted to shake my head.

Every last inch of my brain shouted at me to tell her no in any way that I could because there was no way that her throwing daggers made out of void magic at me was a good idea.

I gulped and probably would have been sweating if I could. Instead, I panted.

But it needed done. She had a good idea for training and I wanted to get stronger. So, as much as my mind might have been shouting at me not to, I nodded.

Besides, she promised not to hurt me.

There’s no way that she’d—

I had next to no time to react. I dodged to the right as quickly as I could only for one of her daggers to land in the ground exactly where I was just standing, and it cut deep enough into the floorboard to show me that it would have impaled me had it struck me.

The dagger disappeared, taking with it all of the floorboard immediately surrounding it. There wasn’t a trace left of anything that the dagger touched.

That was part of what terrified people, myself included, when it came to void magic. Anything that touched the “void” was lost forever. Nobody knew where it went.

Wait. Void magic would be really good for getting rid of garbage. I wonder if anywhere employs people with void magic to get rid of all their—

“Next!” Elanah shouted.

The second dagger flew toward me even faster than the first. It just barely grazed the tip of some of my fur, and the fur that it did touch was basically erased from existence.

Seeing it in the floor made me think of something else.

How come it doesn’t keep on falling forever if it… absorbs or whatever it does, everything around it? Shouldn’t it keep on falling until it falls through the bottom of the world?

Seeing void magic in action filled me with questions, but the most important question was whether or not I would survive as Elanah summoned four void daggers to hold in her hands.

And how come they don’t absorb her hands?! Well, that one makes sense. I guess she’s protected since she’s the one creating them.

I jumped to the right to avoid the next dagger. Elanah planned on making me work, though, and had already thrown the next dagger to intercept me. The only way for me to dodge that one was to twist my body to fall onto my side, letting the dagger go just over me rather than into me.

Before I could get up, though, the third dagger was on its way and it was impossible for me to dodge in time.

I saw it right in front of my eyes.

Time slowed down and I felt like my heart was beating a million times per minute.

I’m seriously going to die!

There was no way I would survive a void dagger, let alone a normal dagger, piercing me straight through my skull.

But then… it vanished to the sound of Elanah snapping her fingers.

I fell onto my side and sighed.

“Wha-what’s wrong?” Elanah asked. “Are you already tired?”

I’m happy that I’m still alive! I mentally sighed. I guess I can trust you when you promise that you’re not going to hurt me.

She proved to have incredible control over her magic. Once I got back up and the training resumed, there were several more times where I felt convinced that I was about to die even if I knew to trust her. The daggers got so close to me that it was only logical to fear they were going to kill me. But every single time before they could stab me, they vanished.

Part of me didn’t want to place too much trust in her, either. The more I trusted her to not hurt me, the less likely I’d take the training seriously on a subconscious level or something, I figured. If I knew I was in no real danger then maybe the training wouldn’t be as effective. So long as I genuinely feared I would get hurt, I genuinely put effort into avoiding getting hurt. That made the training all the more effective and, by the end of it, I felt like I seriously improved when it came to dodging attacks.

I learned new ways of dodging, too. Before, I always relied on simply jumping out of the way. Elanah made sure that simply jumping left or right wouldn’t be enough to dodge her attacks. Running toward the attacks and dodging underneath them was probably the hardest new method to learn.

It also gave me an idea for a more aggressive style of fighting. Before, I was always dodging away from my attacker when avoiding their attacks. I either maintained distance or put more between us. If I could get better at dodging attacks while closing the distance between me and my attacker, though, then that would let me attack them before they’re able to try again.

That was what I imagined, anyways.

I started to picture myself as a fast, aggressive fighter who always tried closing the distance between me and my opponent. Any distance between us would be entirely the cause of whoever I was up against.

Would that be entertaining for the crowds? I knew that they liked to see clumsy people make stupid mistakes, but what about watching somebody fast and efficient taking down their enemies up close? When I thought about watching that myself, it sounded pretty entertaining.

I’ll have to try and get even faster. Maybe I should run some laps in my cell in the mornings after I stretch. Get all loose from stretching and then train my speed by running in my cell. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to do much damage with my body as it is, because it’s not like my jaws can get infinitely stronger, but… as long as I’m fast and never getting hit, I can kill them with enough bites. Death by a thousand bites.

“I think that’s enough dodging for now,” Elanah said. “You did good! And you’ve really improved!” She bent over and picked me up, holding me against her chest with one arm as she stroked the top of my head with her other hand. “Good work, good boy,” she cooed.

That was the second time she ever called me a “good boy,” and…

I liked it.

A lot.

It made my tail wag and my ears twitch, and she noticed that.

“Ehehe… do you like it when I call you that? Good boy, Woofen,” Elanah cooed again.

Those words are way too powerful. Seriously too powerful.

“I’ll have to remember to call you that the next time we do that together. I wonder if you’ll feel even better if I call you during it.”

If you call me that during… that time, then that might be dangerous. Way too dangerous. Seriously dangerous. No, even more dangerous than seriously dangerous.

“Now that I’m thinking about it… hey… Woofen, we’ve been training enough, haven’t we? We should take a break and have some fun, don’t you think? The more I hold you close to me like this—the more I feel your warmth against me… the more I want your warmth inside me.” Elanah set me down on the ground and positioned herself over me. “Hey… come on. Let’s—”

The door to the training room opened. Standing there was an annoyed Stefan with his hands on his hips as a sigh left his lips. “Seriously? You two again? You can’t just… you can’t use the training rooms for this. You’re not allowed to use any of the rooms for this.”

While Elanah might have sent death glares at any of the other criminals who tried to interrupt our time, she behaved when we were faced with a guard. She knew that getting on the guards’ bad side would only be worse for us. They could easily make it so that we never saw each other.

Stefan then looked me in the eyes and…

He looked jealous.

Not only did he look jealous, but he… I felt connected to him.

Maybe it was when we shared that bonding moment earlier after my reading.

Following another sigh, Stefan slumped his shoulders and went to close the door. “Don’t let me catch you again. I’ll be back in an hour.”

And with that, he closed the door, leaving me and Elanah alone.

If he really wanted to stop us like he was supposed to… he wouldn’t have left us alone.

Stefan… you might have been an asshole at first, but you’re the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever had now. Wait, from everything that I’ve heard from kids with siblings… brothers are supposed to be assholes sometimes anyways.

“Are… you friends with him?” Elanah asked me. “He… he’s letting us do it?”

I wasn’t sure if I’d call us friends, but we were at least on good terms, so I nodded.

“My fated is amazing! You’ve even befriended the guards and made them serve you!”

I—I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t know about them serving me or anything like that.

“I shouldn’t be surprised. My fated is the cutest and coolest in the whole world! You’ll make everybody want to serve you. Every man will want to be your friend and every woman will want to be your mate! But… that makes me kind of jealous. I know you’re amazing and that you deserve to be with as many women as you want, but… even if you get a hundred wives, you’ll still give me attention, won’t you?”

What are you saying all of a sudden?! Where did a hundred wives come from?! And are you saying that you’re alright with me having a hundred wives?!

“You know, Woofen… I’d even help you get other wives if you want. Like the nurse, or the reader! They’re attractive, aren’t they? I could try teaching them about how amazing you are!”

They’re taken already! I don’t want to ruin anybody’s relationships!

“Wait, never mind! I—I’m not ready to share you yet. I’m sorry for being so selfish. I know you deserve them, but it’d make me happy if I could keep you to myself for a little bit longer. And… also… I—I want to be the first one to have your child. That’s why—”

Elanah positioned her crotch over my body, straddling me with her legs at my sides as she looked down at me with nothing but desire in her eyes.

Yeah. We’re going to have to do the rest of our training another day. Also, thanks, Stefan.

((Alrighty. One chapter for TDH today, then two each the next three days, and then another on Friday to wrap up all the advanced chapters. Also, if you haven't read the weekly update I posted yesterday, you probably should just so you know what's up. But tl;dr: was sick over weekend and am dedicating this week to finishing getting the advanced chapters for this done, so that I can post it to RR and SH next week. So, expect 7 more chapters of this this week!))