Together, we walked through the forest, cutting down and poisoning the medium-sized Boars we found. Although our teamwork was functional, Camula always seemed frightened whenever she met Alicia’s eyes.

When I saw the expression on my Saintess’s face as she stared at Camula, I could see the coldness in her gaze directed towards my Slime. I think that was one of the few times I could say I felt sorry for Camula.

Two lessons I learned today: the first is that even Demons can be afraid of something, and the second is that Alicia might dislike someone for a reason other than the size of their bust.

I thought about doing something about Alicia, but whenever I asked her about scaring Camula, she would just smile at me with her eyes closed and pretend she hadn’t heard what I’d said.

I would like my wives to get along well, or at least as well as possible, but in their case, there didn’t seem to be anything I could do at the moment. I won’t lie: I was tempted to use the Punishment Collar on them.

[ Punishment Collar: You can create a collar around a female’s neck. The target will be unable to fight, run, or lie to you, and must obey any of your orders until you choose to dispel the skill. If the target is an Awakened, her HP must be below 100 for the skill to work successfully.

Cost: 5MP ]

If it weren’t for that HP restriction, I would have already punished their bad behavior. But since I had no solution to their relationship problem, I decided to leave it alone for now. I was more interested in the gains from our training.

[

Name: Richard Forster

Class: Valkyrie Tamer

Level: 53

Valkyries: 6/6

Health: 550 points

Mana: 295 points

Strength: 80 points

Defense: 30 points

Magic: 72 points

Agility: 40 points

Status Points: 0 points

]

[

Name: Alicia Ludvila Von Astrea

Level: 27

Class: Saintess

Title: Valkyrie

Master: Richard Forster

Health: 170 points

Mana: 300 points

Strength: 1 point

Defense: 10 points

Magic: 73 points

Agility: 22 points

Status Points: 0 points

]

[

Name: Camula

Level: 32

Monster: Demonic Slime

Title: Valkyrie

Master: Richard Forster

Health: 483 points

Mana: 205 points

Strength: 22 points

Defense: 63 points

Magic: 8 points

Agility: 22 points

Status Points: 0 points

]

After properly allocating the Status Points, I realized that we had also received skills as a reward. My eyes widened at what I saw, and I didn’t know whether this was Freya helping us face our enemies or whether she wanted to add more fuel to the fire.

Knowing the goddess as well as I did, I tended to believe it was the second option.

[ Alicia ]

[ Healing Circle: This skill creates a magic circle around the caster that heals allies while it remains active. It can be deactivated at will, but the caster must remain inside the circle.

Cost: 20 MP ]

[ Camula ]

[ Counter: The user begins accumulating the damage they take as true damage, then releases it in a single attack against the opponent, with the attack based on either the user’s Strength or Defense Points, whichever is higher. The user becomes unable to use skills or recover HP while Counter accumulates the damage they take.

Cost: 20 MP ]

Healing Circle was a skill that could be very useful in long group battles, but the skill Camula had received was the real cheat, an unfair skill that could change the course of a battle, though in our current situation, it had another function.

Counter was a skill that shifted the balance of power between my Valkyries. Alicia, who could damage Camula with her healing powers, would now have to deal with a skill that returned the damage taken if she wanted to do something like that.

The moment Camula learned that she could reflect all the damage she received, she began smirking at Alicia.

"Ooh, what excellent news. This really is wonderful news," Camula said with a smile as she approached Alicia.

I could see Camula’s malice in her ear-to-ear grin. Now that she had the advantage, she intended to return all the psychological pressure Alicia had put on her.

"Now nothing will stop me." Camula looked very happy as she approached Alicia.

"Camula," I said to her in a firm voice.

"Don’t worry, Master. As I promised, I won’t hurt either you or the other girls." She approached Alicia as if she were going to grab her.

"What do you intend to do to me?"

"Nothing much," Camula replied calmly. "Just teach a cute girl that she shouldn’t threaten scary Demons."

Alicia’s fingers seemed to move lewdly, like the tentacles of an octopus.

"If you take one more step, I’ll—" Alicia shouted at the approaching Demon.

Camula was close enough to get payback on Alicia, but when she was only one step away, a sound in the distance reverberated through the forest, drawing our attention.

"Hruink!" The distorted sound of a Boar was so loud that it made the two young women cover their ears with their hands.

"Master, is that..." Camula asked me.

I was already looking with my Hawk Eye in the direction the sound had come from.

"Yes, that’s the larger Boar I saw before. It woke up."

"It seems really irritated. Do you think it noticed our presence in the forest?" Alicia asked me.

"I don’t think it noticed our presence. It isn’t heading in our direction. But it certainly must have noticed that there are fewer of its kind in the territory—Wait, the direction it’s heading in."

I started running in the direction that Boar was heading.

"Master...?" Camula seemed puzzled by my sudden reaction.

"It’s heading towards the river!"

"What?"

"If it keeps going in that direction, it’ll reach the river soon. Come on! We have to take that thing down."

The two girls accompanying me nodded.

We quickened our pace until my Sixth Sense alerted me that the monster was nearby.

When the smaller Boars were close to me, I felt some discomfort, nothing too strong, but near that creature, I felt the hairs on my body stand on end from my skill’s warning signal.

I signaled for the girls to stop, and we hid behind some trees, only to see that giant pig devouring a bush near us.

If the smaller Boars already looked repulsive, this one, which was ten times bigger than them, managed to be ten times more disgusting to look at.

Foam seemed to spill from its mouth as it enjoyed the plants it ripped out by the roots with no effort at all. I breathed a sigh of relief that it had stopped to grab a bite. If it had kept going, or charged straight ahead, it would have reached the place where my wives were.

"It’s really big," Alicia said.

"And fat," I added.

"It looks delicious~"

The two of us looked to the side, where Camula was, and stared at her with disgusted faces. It surprised me how unselective Slimes could be when it came to food.

[

Monster: King Boar

Level: 35

Health: 1000 points

Mana: 200 points

Strength: 80 points

Defense: 65 points

Magic: 10 points

Agility: 60 points

]

"What the fuck?! Why does this pig have such high stats?" I had to lower my voice to keep myself from shouting.

I was stunned that this pig in the middle of nowhere had such ridiculously high stats. My Strength and Magic might be very high, but even so, that didn’t make it any less surprising.

"Should we call the others?" Alicia asked me in a serious tone. "Maybe use Gather?"

"Yes, I think it’s better to call them. It would be much better to take it down if we’re together."

We moved far enough away from the creature so that it wouldn’t hear any sudden noises from us. Quietly, I called upon my Valkyrie Tamer skill, "Gather."

I gathered my Valkyries one by one and showed them the creature we were going to face.

"He seems like a really sturdy opponent," Diane said to me, hugging Alicia.

After Diane arrived, Alicia wouldn’t leave her side, as if she were using her as a shield against Camula. For some reason, it seemed like Camula was naturally reluctant to get close to Diane, probably because she felt that if Diane wanted to kill her, there wouldn’t be time to use Counter.

"Yeah, he really is a formidable enemy, but more importantly, we’ll probably gain a lot by taking him down, so I thought it would be better for us to defeat him as a group."

"So we can gain more levels and more skills as a result. Makes sense."

"I also wanted us to try our new powers on him. Since he has a lot of health, he seemed like the perfect test dummy."

"Indeed, he looks like a fine opponent to sharpen my blade on," Sarah said. "But why... do we have to fight in bikinis?"

Aside from Alicia and Camula, all the other Valkyries were wearing bikinis.

"There’s nothing we can do about it. I called you all in an emergency. At least your clothes won’t get in the way of your movements."