Becoming Monsters 2:

I have been insanely busy. I might as well fess up that I'm essentially working 2 jobs right now. Our finances are stable, but I'm working too much. I will maintain this for as long as I am physically able to, though, until something else comes along to help us out. To the surprise of no one, the second job is basically doing editing work for Editor-kun. So understand, I won't tell people or mention anything about what I do for him, only know that there are published works out there that have been outlined and edited in part by me.

PREVIOUSLY ON BM: Sinister things are happening behind the scenes of those running the guilds.

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Chapter 51: Cum Into My Parlor…

When Honoka stepped out of the van into a cold September Norwood morning, her first thought was that she craved chapstick. Norwood was humid, less than an hour’s drive from the beach with muggy summers and frosty winters. She’d lived here for eight years, lived in Florida for the other nineteen: humidity was her natural state of being. And Norwood reached eighty percent some days. However, after living in Harvardtown for only a few weeks, already she had grown used to a constant one hundred percent saturation down there. Norwood was as arid as the Sahara on both pairs of her lips. Honoka smacked those lips as she closed the van door and walked to the building that used to be named

Solomon’s.

“This is a mistake,” Diane grumbled, adjusting her new bra underneath the elegant - if inexpensive - muumuu she wore. The bra had been fitted yesterday, but the pregnant succubus had been fiddling with it the entire drive up here, leaving everything skewampus. The muumuu was a collection of bright colors, like a Jerry Garcia watercolor themed in reds and greens, matching her hair, wings and tail. Clothing was stylishly paired with a simple red purse hanging off one shoulder. Pregnant she might be, but at that moment she appeared regal standing in a parking lot lit with the predawn.

“Grumpy much?” Honoka snarked, holding back a yawn.

Diane shot out a Preggo Glare™, then sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Sorry, spent hours on the phone yesterday with an Enchanter trying to invent a replacement for Hunger Boxes. Sarah - her name is Sarah, works for a guild in Seattle - was like talking to an eight year old genius hyped up on twenty pounds of sugary candy. I wanted to help, but she asked the most random questions on top of each other. I’ve been in orgies less exhausting than talking to her.”

“Did she get what she wanted?” Honoka was understandably curious, thinking her own children might have to use Hunger Boxes in their future.

“I think? She’s still in the preliminary stages, but she ordered one of my hunger potions and I’ll ship it when I have time. If I can help, it could change the world in a few years for all young demonics.”

“Why am I here again?” Miaka asked as she stretched and yawned, finally roused from her seat in the van and joining the other women. A few small feathers shook loose when she flapped to wake herself up after an hour and a half drive. Normally an energetic drill sergeant whipping all the wives onto treadmills and weight benches, the owl woman was beat after returning from a delve a few minutes before the three left for topside. With no sleep and still wearing delving gear, the Japanese fighter nursed her second bottle of warm holstaur milk to stay awake.

“Nobody does anything alone,” Honoka said, leading the three women to the front doors. Honoka’s clothing appeared formal, the black on black of her

kimono

top tucked into a

hakama

, looking dignified even if it appeared foreign. Only someone familiar with Japanese culture would notice the clothing was too small for Honoka. Also, that this uniform was designed for a martial artist and not a formal occasion. Her feet couldn’t fit into the

tabi

style shoes, so they were cut to look more like an open toe sandal. Overall, the black half Asian woman appeared strange yet not unprofessional.

“I mean, I get nobody should go alone anywhere after the attack, but why am

I

here? Wouldn’t some wife who hadn’t pulled an all nighter in a Floor requiring us to

swim

for six hours make more sense?” Miaka chugged the rest of the bottle, tossing it towards a nearby trash can next to the door. Bouncing off the rim, the plastic bottle landed on the floor. Miaka glared at it, but didn’t go to pick it up.

“You aren’t here to fight, you are here to

look dangerous.”

Diane gave Miaka an appreciative glance up and down, nodding absently as she placed her hand inside her purse and fingered something there. “If intimidation doesn’t work, your job is to get me out of the building while Honoka does the fighting.”

“Hope it doesn’t come to that,” Honoka mumbled, opening the doors to the newly refurbished and rebranded

Healthy Priorities,

a complete gym, spa and brothel experience catering to the Greater Boston area.

********************

The monster attack five days ago was largely ignored by officials of Harvardtown, much to the annoyance and outright rage of Honoka. It was explained to her in bureaucratic detail that the residents of Harvardtown were responsible for their own safety and security and any actions require filling out the proper forms before their case would be reviewed in six to eight months.

It took all the willpower Honoka possessed to not allocate, grab the fat man by the neck and find out how far she could toss the unhelpful government worker.

Fortunately, the family survived relatively unharmed. A squad of redcaps made it into the building, but a quick acting Aruna grabbed his sword and a bandoleer of potions and stood in front of the doorway leading to the bath with all the incapacitated wives, a respectable pile of bodies dead at his feet. Aunt Shilo and Uncle Aki hadn’t even noticed anything was happening until the dinosaur roared, running outside after everything ended and helped take care of the injured women. Kenneth had on headphones and didn’t even notice the roar (his hearing was beastkin enhanced, requiring earphones mystically enchanted to cancel out all sound).

In the morning, the family walked the compound and made a detailed assessment of the collateral destruction. The final damage was tallied and Honoka’s respect for Arun Nair’s geomancer skills grew tenfold. Outside of the torn up and cratered open ground in the courtyard and the loss of their plywood gate, the buildings suffered minimal harm. From all the shaking and pressure waves, a lot of books fell out of bookshelves and paintings fell off walls, but very few things actually toppled or broke. While the courtyard was a mess, after a few hours of cleaning the home was back to livable.

For the moment safe and sound, the family then had an emergency meeting to plan out what they needed to do next. It was decided - with oblique language to account for children in the meeting - that the family was on their own and Honoka needed to harmonize as much as possible to get every woman there as many points so that the next attack would be a cake walk. For once, Honoka didn’t buck at the idea and instead suggested it. Everyone she cared about almost died in front of her eyes and she had been unable to stop it. Random chance and a massive octopus saved their lives, not Honoka. To make sure that never happened again, the former architect was fiercely determined to put aside her reservations and

bow chika wow wow.

Sauce the roast beef sandwich.

Plumb the pink palace.

Get her groove on like a talking llama.

Get it on she did. Increasing the intake from her massive morning meals, Honoka put the O back in orgasm and aggressively pleasured her women. It reached the point where the wives sparkled an exhausted glint of fear in their eyes, sometimes hiding themselves in odd places around the complex just so their holes could get a little rest between climaxes.

On Wednesday, four women woke up shouting all at once, the strange pregnancy effects of Honoka’s Race reaching full term. With some difficulty, all four women were brought to Akisame’s

clinic

(the nickname given the dry witted doctor’s room of magical diagnostics) and tests were conducted. The results were all rather unexpected and Diane made sure to record the new Status developments with absolutely zero schadenfreude.

Despite being present for every single delve the guild made, Quinn hadn’t concerned herself with leveling. She was more focused on keeping everyone safe and completing the ticket objectives, only bumping up three levels. Her latest Class Feature,

Pact Infusion,

allowed one of her summon bugs to suck her blood, supercharging the infernal insect at the cost of HP. She put her bonus attribute points into Agility and Charisma, respectfully.

Quinn was pregnant with twins, and while she didn’t gain much more of a waistline than Diane, one of the children was a golem type. She gained nearly three hundred pounds (136 kg) all settling into her stomach. The other child was unnaturally strong, so even with her added weight she occasionally flew into the air as a single kick would launch her in any direction. Only high attributes allowed her to move around at all, though she was covered in bruises and getting up after one of her fetal flights took her a couple of minutes of grunting.

The little goblin woman was so focused on school, she barely left the house to do anything. This led to her Intelligence rising by two points naturally, though she got enough fighting in for one level and a new Class Feature. Dreadnought was a powerful ability for brawlers: for a few seconds a woman became an unstoppable force breaking all laws of physical momentum.

Eve had triplets, each one an abnormally large size. The goblin’s womb wasn’t just stretching her stomach out a little bit, her tummy ballooned four times as large as the rest of the goblin. Completely immobile, the small girl shrugged and took it like a champ, moving her computer to her bed and deciding to try to finish the semester early. One of her children possessed fire magic, though, so occasionally a gout of fire flared out of her pussy, forcing the family to fireproof her room as well as concoct salves of fire resistance for Honoka’s dick.

When Padmava wasn’t frantically sewing and altering the clothing of a family constantly changing their shapes and sizes, the naga mother was taking her children into the jungles surrounding Harvardtown and leveling them in the relative safety of the third Floor. This allowed her to level her own Class, her knowledge of effective leveling almost as comprehensive as her late husband. Predictably, she put her two bonus points into Health. For her Class,

Battle Awareness

allowed her to turn barriers into remote viewing screens, each barrier able to act as both camera and TV with one another.

Padmava would have also had triplets, but after she announced she used the stored semen from her surprise copulation last month (naga biology strange and too much like a snake’s), she was pregnant with quadruplets. In terms of volume, she was as large as Eve, her stomach stretching her scales to the point that the skin underneath became exposed, pale pink striping her abdomen. Her snake biology also affected her children, each child currently incubating inside a large egg inside Pad’s womb. Akisame didn’t have an answer whether the children would be hatched inside or outside of her body, other cases of pregnant nagas having gone both ways.

Whether as a healer or the designated Penis Blesser, Banda gained levels hand over three-fingered fist, taking those eight bonus Attribute points and putting them right into Wisdom. However, Banda also milked herself dry and ran herself to physical extremes trying and keep the failing expenses of the family afloat, using milk blessings too often without enough food. She lost three points of Health and a few hundred pounds before putting those pounds back on with her pregnancy. The massive amount of Class Features she chose included Sustaining - the longer a blessing is activated, the stronger the effect, but at the cost of more MP - Harvest Home - can now dedicate a building to Teteoh, which becomes a sanctuary with special magical effects - and Wheat To Tares - gains the ability to switch blessings into curses, gaining attack magics.

Banda was both the least extreme and the most extreme with her baby. Pregnant with only one child, the large woman gained a waist comparable to a normal woman only six months pregnant, just a small bump compared to the unreal proportions of the other wives. However, it appeared as if this child generated the same thaumian readings as Diane’s kid and was more intense in how it

kicked.

An air elemental of some sort, Banda’s stomach would randomly expand to five or even ten times its size, followed by a blast of air queefing out of her vagina with enough strength to knock the mighty holstaur off of her feet. However, if that was all she went through Banda would have gotten off lucky.

All of the breasts of all the wives grew in some way as they filled with milk in preparation for the upcoming births. Banda’s breasts did more than just gain a few inches, her breasts tripled in size. After a quick conference call with Aunt Cholena - who immediately announced she would be moving down there to help out - it was discovered that a holstaur’s boobs grew when they were pregnant proportional to the thaumian levels of the child. Typically, it was only a few inches. The holstaur matriarch warned that Banda’s milk production was about to increase dramatically, though she couldn’t begin to guess by how much. During her next milking, the girls discovered Banda now produced five times as much milk as she previously produced, the cream a light yellow in color and thicker and heavier. They sold out of that batch in less than an hour with people camping outside for more later, preggo holstaur milk apparently a delicacy.

While not as high a level as Banda, alchemists were notoriously difficult to level. There were currently only six in the world over level twenty and no alchemist was anywhere near level thirty. Gaining four levels in a week wasn’t just difficult, it showed Diane spent most of her time in her lab these days. In fact, every conjugal visit Honoka made for the succubus coitused in that lab. Sex became an interesting logistical problem each time as they tried not to bump or spill anything while the succubus screamed

harder mommy!

Two interesting potions she developed and gained a level when finished was a concentrated protein and hormone concoction that was the secret behind her recent increase of Strength. The second was finally creating a potion allowing someone with a Race to spend an hour as a normal human.

She put her points into her Intelligence,

Chrysopoeia

allowed her to substitute certain ingredients into her potions.

Target Elixir

created a potion with twice the potency, but it only worked on a single person it was specifically brewed for.

Diane had adjusted to pregnant life, little changing from the previous activities she did normally. Despite being an outrageous flirt, the succubus was actually a reserved woman who liked her private time. Anyone else would find alchemy for hours on end boring. The ability to start and complete something calmed the emotionally broken woman and gave her peace. She was now eating a quart of ice cream every day, but figured that was just what pregnancy does to a woman. Never mind Akisame told her this wasn’t the case.

Training all the women every morning in combat and leading them in exercising routines - while also delving as much as Quinn - Miaka hadn’t gained many levels. The final tally was a slight increase to fifteen and earning the

Gyroscopic

Feature, which allowed her to lock an object in a specific distance from herself and spin that object in an orbit around her.

However, on the Harmony side, the owl woman was driven and insatiable. Fully half of the sexual encounters since Sunday were with Miaka, the woman like a ninja sneaking onto Honoka and orgasm the poor woman nearly to death from every available place around the compound. Honoka discovered crawl spaces in the ceilings, tiny closets in most hallways, a storage compartment underneath Padmava’s bed. None of the other girls were safe, either. Banda discovered she enjoyed watching kinky sex while milking, but the rest were content to grab popcorn and cheer the bird on. These activities gave Miaka a natural plus one to her Endurance while accumulating eleven Harmony levels.

On Monday Honoka sat down with Miaka and opened the Harmony menu for the first time, gathering all the data on Miaka’s options for when they spent these points. It was during this session that Honoka learned what exactly a kikiyaon was and why Miaka didn’t talk much about her Race. Kikiyaon may appear like owls, but they had more in common with vampires than other Races. Not the undeath thing, but the Racial abilities and options made it clear kikiyaon gained power from devouring souls of monsters and people. Miaka was always reminded of this fact because her eyes spied HP on a person, essentially telling her how close a person was to death.

Ergo, most of Miaka’s Racial options involved how those souls were used to terrible effects. In a fit of desperation, the poor woman begged to have her points spent on a Race change. There were two choices: Alghul and Phoenix (the third was the weird god option, Zhūquè Abdicates His Celestial Throne Of The Sì Xiàng, three thousand points). Alghul embraced the soul sucking part of the talent tree and cost ten points, the Phoenix option delving more into the bird. The problem was that the Phoenix option was fifty points. Combined with a slew of nerve and brain damage from her time in the MMA totaling twenty-five points, just those two options were already seventy-five points. Which led to Miaka becoming Honoka’s most frequent cuddle buddy. Diane collected all this information and Honoka closed the menu, giving the poor girl a single point of Intelligence.

Dolly was driven in a completely different way. Sex remained difficult for her and every session was with one or two other wives to help her through it. However, she appeared to not need or want sleep, spending every waking moment possible to grind out another level deep in the bowels of the dungeon. Going with the wives, going solo, hitching a ride with

Carnival,

Dolly forced her levels into the stratosphere, lending credence to the theory that being collected by Honoka really did give the girls a leveling boost. Also, still recovering from her ordeal, eating right, exercising, Dolly regained weight and Attributes lost from her imprisonment. Two Strength, one Endurance, one Perception, one Wisdom, then putting eight points into Perception and four points into her Luck from the twelve levels she gained. Her new Class Features included

Flat Earth

- the ability to visually ignore the curvature of the earth -

Imbue Arrows

- can spend MP to give arrows a magical effect -

Lure

- an activated ability drawing aggro from a single target - and

Refining Hunter

- increasing the thaumian content of harvested materials from monsters and dungeons at the cost of Stamina.