Mage Hound Unleashed (porne)

[jondude]

Character Description:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Name: Irae Freeman (pronounced ee-ray, means 'wrath')
Vague Appearance(s): https://rule34.xxx/index.php?page=post& ... id=8030200 and https://rule34.xxx/index.php?page=post& ... id=2468115
Race: Chimera (aka 'a Frankenstein') primarily sourced from a high elf, a dark elf, an orc, and a draconic salamander.
Physical Description: Just shy of two meters tall, Irae is a heavily built woman most clearly resembling her orc and elven heritage, but with an unusual bronze skin tone. While she appears to be wearing a type of scaled combat armor, her scales, golden eyes, and tiny horns are from her draconic heritage, although she lacks both wings and tail, her hominid blood has asserted enough dominance to maintain that form.
Personality: Direct to the point of curt, her history has left her with a deep seated hatred for slavers and fief lords, but a soft spot for abandoned prototypes. While driven when she sets her mind to a task, she will retreat to her home and either read or tinker with some magical devices if not stopped. While her constituent races are known for their arrogance, Irae mostly demonstrates a deep self confidence from living for more than two centuries mostly relying on herself and being rejected by most hierarchical societies. While having many attractive features, mostly from her elven components, her amazonian stature and visible chimeric elements have settled her into an 'exotic but not [i[that[/i] hot role, which combined with her lack of sex drive has resulted in lack of long term sex partners or interest in acquiring more (so far).

Abilities/Traits/Equipment:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Physical/Racial Traits
Dragon Scales: A natural armor, and one of her few draconic traits, Iraes body grows thick heavy scales that mimic physical armor placement, protecting her 'back and outside' more than anywhere else.
Magic Senses: Iraes various magical organs allow her to both sense and easily understand most 'open' magic, her dragons eyes give her a basic true sight. In addition, she has enhanced dark vision, smell, and hearing. Enhancing her senses with magic makes the organs glow softly.
Mana Gifts: stemming mostly from her elven blood, Irae has great mana pool size, control, and generation; although her inability to cast in combat means she has to resort purely to artificing equipment to actually cast spells.
Physical Boost: primarily from her orcish blood, Irae can channel some or all of her magic into her body to greatly enhance its physical performance. Her salamander blood also gives her moderate passive regeneration, including the ability to surge it to regrow limbs if needed for a large mana investment.

Skills and Training
Artificing: Often the first way to enchant learned by most mages, 'magical cores' are the required component used to be embedded in equipment to imbue a magical nature. While cores can be stripped down to operate as power supply, power storage, or full spell components as needed, the quality of the supplying monster determines the nature of magic that can be enchanted with it. As a result, most upper level enchantment forgoes cores that aren't extremely exotic or powerful, as pure elements are often more efficient to work with. Never the less, Irae has multiple centuries of experience, and with the Earths technology and industrial base has expanded and refined much of her artificing skill.
Gunslinger: While never having a talent for archery, Irae found that Earths preferred ranged weapons, guns, just fit. Combining guns with her artificing skills proved to be a match made in hell for anyone she targets, as she frequently has the mana to drive multiple light artillery spells one after the other, often with pin point accuracy.
Melee Master Of None: Having decades of experience in multiple armies and well built body, Irae is deadly with most traditional melee weapons, but has since migrated to a favored shape shifting one or her own body, even if she's never truly 'mastered' any of the traditional weapons.
Spell Disruption: From an early age, Irae has trained to instinctively disrupt any active spells around her. While she can allow healing spells, sudden shifts of mana related to open spell casting is reacted to near instantly upon detection, making her hell for other mages to be around. She disrupts spells by 'slashing' her own mana through any mana formations, allowing any 'open' spell casting to fall apart. With minor focus, she can allow others to cast spells where she can see, but any any disruption to her concentration will often result in spell collapse. Artificing is one way around this, although many advanced forms still use 'open' mana circles or similar to enhance their power.

Equipment
Combat Harness: A simple mark 4 standardized combat harness, this acts as a rudimentary bag of holding and different 'pouches' on the surface will feed from different chambers, allowing segments to always 'supply' magazines or other items as the user desires. The harness will adapt its camouflage pattern to local area conditions (not active camo, just a pallet swap) and can be used to manifest unit patches and similar as needed. Unfortunately, the rudimentary nature of its extra spatial storage limited it to barely more than a rucksacks worth, leading to its discontinuation in favor of harnesses which could hold armor plates, or had 'expanded volume' storage and a wide variety of other enchantments deemed useful by the general staff. Irae found it more easily enchanted and modified, so kept hers, adding thigh holsters for her preferred pistol and knife, both of which can be used to 'summon' the weapons in question; a self filling canteen; and a 'teleport to me' feature that were incompatible with newer equipment.

Old Reliable: Appearing to be a Bowie Knife with an odd handle, Irae has created a fully adaptive melee weapon. The forward knuckle guard is roughly curved down similar to a knuckle duster, and the back is a hook, however the basic shape and mass shifting spell integrated allows the blade, knuckle guard, spike, and handle to shift size as she needs, allowing it to take the form of knuckles, hammer, sword, pick, and extend the handle from one hand to a short polearm. While this shift allows for little force application, once in shape, it becomes very difficult to bend without enormous force. Silver etchings and a place to lock in an elemental core complete a weapon top brass said was far more expensive than needed.

Peace Bringer: A modified M1 Mage Carbine converted for pistol handling, the lower segment is chambered in 12.7mm and the upper segment is a Caster Shell Chamber. The lower magazine well has been replaced with a six chamber 'bottomless' drum. Each chamber will generate a fresh projectile from raw materials poured into the drum ahead of time, taking approximately half a second to complete. Each chamber will generate a different type of round (slug, hollow point, SLAP, frangible, incendiary, and spell seat), the 'spell seat' the only round that requires additional magical input from the user; the Caster Chamber has its own segment where a Caster Shell 'spell core' is mounted and fed mana by the user. Eventually discontinued as burst fire weapons took over the 'low magic' niche, Irae found she preferred it over more traditional sized pistols and has continued to tinker with her own, adding a permanent sound suppression feature to the revolver barrel, and leaning into driving the the Caster Shells entirely on her own mana pool allowing her to get away with much cheaper cores. She normally leaves a 'mana bolt' in the Caster segment, swapping to more specialized or elementally oriented shells as needed.

Havoc's Cry: An early prototype of the M1 Mage Battlerifle, the rifle shared many features with the M1 Mage Carbine but with twice the length. Designed more to be slung and fired from the hip by flight mages, the Mage Battlerifle is the source of Peace Bringers ammunition drum, although the 'powder chamber' is significantly more powerful, pushing the projectiles of the BR up into the Mach 2 range, and the upper segment had a larger crystal chamber to allow battle mages
to cast into a sealed crystal chamber without giving away their position for an initial strike. Eventually, a third segment was added allowing for high intensity burst fire of 'mana bullets' in the 45acp impact range for straffing runs. Not needing this feature, Irae customized hers to lean to her strengths, allowing multiple Caster Shell mounts and the drum barrel will give every round fired a thick coating of silencing, shield boring, and a minor explosive spell. Named for being the first sign of an attack on a Mage's Phalanx being a breacher shell evaporating the mage in question.

Companions:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Grimoire of One Thousand Tomes (Grim): A magical book inhabited by Irae's parental figures soul. A Grimoire of One Thousand Tomes is a book enchanted to be able to contain a near limitless number of pages and is fueled by a 'cursed' spirit. Both aware of its surroundings, able to 'read' other books, but never able to rule people, but to be enslaved to help whoever owns the book, this was considered to be the ultimate punishment for agents of the undead Sect Irae is from. Naturally, this 'punishment' meant little changed for the Hobgoblin who raised her, and a few upgrades allows the book to 'print' things as desired, but still acts as both a parental figure and general friend to Irae. Irae has continued to add books and often leaves it in libraries so it can copy all books within. The Hobgoblin, while not tasked with this job, has continued to look into the biomancy that was used to create Irae and has learned and planned much to help her if a situation should ever arrive. This book is truly soul bound to Irae, and physical separation will result in the book eventually teleporting to her location.

Orion: An abandoned chimera found in Irae's current city of residence with three distinct star shaped spots across his back. While no original owner was found, Irae has (correctly) guessed that Orion was an attempt to create a pest control chimera. A mix of an Otter and a Salamander, this amphibious creature was 'designed' to replace a ships cat, hungering for both rats, bugs, and lesser elementals such as the metallic 'gremlins', the only downside appears to be the occasional molten metal hairball. Intelligent but unable to speak, Orion can adjust his size, seemingly between a 'sugar glider' and 'medium sized dog' although this might change over time as he consumes more monster cores. Orion has discovered that a warm lap, chin skritches, and the occasional exotic core is a nice place to chill out in between prowling the docks for monsters and altering the local predators genetic diversity.

Fairchild XAC-191 Thunderstorm: An attempt to update the C-119 Flying Boxcar to a partial military application, this craft was intended to straddle the line between medium cargo and gun boat. Only vaguely resembling its predecessor, she features a heavily blended hull and truncated wings barely extending past the engine nacelles, but all of her numerous gun ports are 'capped' with bolted in steel plates instead of armed. Armaments (sized for, not installed or tested): 1x 150mm antitank gun axially mounted; 1x dorsal dual 30mm gatling cannons turret; 4x autorevolver 30mm cannon turrets around lower perimeter (2x cheek, 2x 'hind leg'); 1x optional belly mounted 100mm rocket launcher (blocks vehicle mount); 6x pintle mounts on doors (2x port, 2x star, 2x aft); 4x wing mounted torpedo mounts; 8x 'spell seat' arrays. The upper/human cargo area has been converted to a small living area and workshop including a small 'automated' golem arm that Grim can control. Her 'bed' is also a 'medi-slab' healing area that allows the experimental automated system to assist a medic, and a sturdy cupboard to store cores to keep Orion out of them. The control station has also had a station that Grim can 'dock' to and control the plane, although it is far from complete.

History:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

A disfavored Sect of undead, primarily vampiric, attempted to create a new super soldier chimera, something only really common among the undead and madmen, by combining a few of their high quality sources of blood and the last of their enchantment vats. The original plan was to create something with the magical defenses of dragons, the physical might of rock trolls, the magical might of angels, and the stealth of dark elves. Whether the blood samples of such 'tasty morsels' would have ever actually made their way to the labs after being secured, most of the samples acquired were not up to par, but were deemed 'close enough' for the lead scientist to move ahead with the process. Bones, scales, and eyes were secured from an actual dragon, although the blood of a salamander was the closest supplied, many of the other parts grown in vats and pots before assembled and a demented mix of life and undeath energies were used to bring her to life.

While functional, the disinterest of the projects management led to Irae being primarily raised by the labs Hob Goblin librarian/apprentice artificer beyond magical and physical combat training. Without specific goals in mind, Irae was first trained to be able to rupture active spells, the closest that could be managed to an antimagic field, allowing both focused medium to long range ruptures and instinctive medium to short range. Unfortunately, she found it difficult to impossible to unlearn this training, making it impossible to combat cast any spells, as even the slightest distraction would cause her to rupture her own spell. While moderately talented at artificing with core based magic, and a surprising level of combat skill for her age, she was found deeply wanting by the families responsible for the project, and her Hobgoblin parent was the eventual scapegoat of choice, her soul eventually ripped out and placed in an enchanted Grimoire, which Irae secured.

Having been rejected from the faction that created her, she soon found the same true for all the other races that helped make her up, either for being part something they despised, or simply being something they viewed as an abomination. With little in the way of experience and lacking enough traditional beauty to live as a courtesan, Irae soon found her way to the Immortal Demon Lord's armies, where every bit of walking meat could be handed a spear or shield. She soon found her talents fit well as a 'Mage Hound' who focused on tracking down unaffiliated mages or those simply on the wrong side of the Immortal Demon Lords flag. Picking up bits and pieces over the next century and change, she continued to gather skill and knowledge as her elven roots at least managed to keep her eternally youthful, even if she would never become a feudal lord like most 'true blood' mages.

Things changed when the Immortal Demon Kings armies began pushing into a new world, Earth, that had managed to rupture the dimensional membrane with extensive nuclear testing. Unlike most worlds, which were barely at the point of field guns and rudimentary magic, this world had numerous developed machine weapons which the charging phalanxes found treated them as meat into a grinder than the forces of terror they were used to. While far from the first, Irae's desertion helped cement the eventual direction of the war as she brought her massive supply of artificer knowledge, and in turn, found that the locals preferred weapon, 'guns', to be much to her own taste. Providing early magical integration support helped, she was quickly inducted into the USMCs newly formed Mage Hound division over the next four years. Around the end of the fifth year, the Immortal Demon Lord attempted to cow the local mortals by arriving himself on his flying fortress island. Within hours, the 'Invincible Fortress of One Thousand Broken Worlds' was shattered and broken as its remains were pushed into the sky by the nuclear fireball detonated beneath the several kilometer island fortress.

While not the end of the war, the tactical strike was the end of the Immortal Demon Lords faction as even a vaguely cohesive whole. Additional worlds continued to send the occasional probing forces and islands to Earth, but few ever amounted to anything, much of the ecological, nuclear, and magical contamination doing what damage it could. Irae continued to serve in the Marines and completed a twenty year term before transferring to the US Marshals in order to hunt remaining Mage Lords attempting to set up their preferred feudal systems or engage in slave harvesting until recently.

Irae's last official job for the Marshals involved being sent to 'rescue' a Senator's son who was attempting to set up his own fiefdom and demon slaving was holed up in his mansion as the local villagers when she decided that the proper resolution was the son being executed. While the correct action, this resulted in Irae being forcibly retired after decades of service. Preparing a sky boat she'd picked up in her varied career, she was ambushed by a team of assassins. Opening properly with a heavy sniper round heavily enchanted to pierce shields, many of her primary defensive items depleted themselves to reduce the damage to a fractured skull. Heavily concussed and operating on instinct, training, and rage, Irae returned fire and engaged the assassins in close range combat, butchering them and throwing their mangled corpses into the river. Stumbling into her ship, she slotted her Grimoire into the control system with the orders to get done whatever needed doing, and unlocking her core closet before collapsing onto her medi-slab to try and sleep off her severe head trauma.

You come into consciousness with a sudden jolt, your surroundings warm but cloudy. You bolt upright, resistance making you realize you were in some kind of immersed tank. You break the surface quickly, green fluid sloshing all around you. Where were you? What happened?

The memories come back quick as you look around. You were thankfully safe on your ship, and nothing seemed to amiss. Currently you were on your medislab, or rather in to be more correct. A simple magical device that could heal most physical injuries with complete ease. It seemed your injuries were serious enough however that Zurathrix, your magical sentient grimoire infused with the soul of your caretaker growing up, had decided that rather then just have you lie on the slab it would be better to lower you into the healing gel tank underneath. Thinking of your injuries as well your quickly reminded of how you got them. Assassins had attacked you. It had been a hard fight, 10 against one, but they had not been prepared for your signature layered defences. You had won the fight, but coming under attack from so many at once had resulted in your head taking a lot of trauma, even before all your shields had gone down. Those assassins had uncanny aim to be certain, and your head had whipped around enough to give you whiplash after bullets had impacts your shields just a scant inch away from the side of your head. One of which had forcibly smashed your face against a concrete wall and likely caused a fracture on your skull, thinking on the pain. Of course you had won in the end though, but that had been a close call.

You wonder who would send assassins after you, but in the end it doesn't take long at all for you to come up with an answer: disgraced and impeached senator William Siden. He was the only one who had the resources to pull something like this off. None of the random cults you've busted in the past had the backing to do something like this, especially right in the continental US in the middle of a large city! It seemed he had taken quite the issue with you since you had, rightfully so, executed his son before he could his political power to interfere with your. He seemed to think he and his family was above the law compared to common citizens, even when he knew his son was running a cult that actively engaged in human sacrifice. You'd have to find a way to resolve this eventually...

For now though it would be best to figure out just where you were. You start to get out of the tank, and realize you were naked. Normal really for being submerged in medigel. As you start to get out of the tank though you pause. Were... were your boobs bigger? huh?

You barely have anytime to think about it though when a Zurathrix shows up. She's a large black leather bound book now, the cover and back not saying anything at all beyond the black leather that protected the pages. As it floats into the room though the book opens, picking a random page where an animated face of a woman shows, quickly beginning to speak. "Ah! Your finally awake! I was so worried for a time Irae! And I've made some improvements like you wanted as well, all from that last book you were reading about natural core production!", she says happily.

[porne]

I hack a bit as I come up, nasty taste in my mouth as I stop to think. I'm... fairly confident I bit somebody's throat out. Huh. First time for that. I give myself a once over, looking to see if I've gotten any new scars, but just the dozen or so magically enhanced ones that it takes to get through my natural regeneration. My neck has some residual soreness, likely from the sniper shot that they started with hitting me in the godsdamned head. Good show, but not enough. I didn't quite catch the look of surprised when I whipped out a pistol and delivered a 'too whom it may concern' plasma shot into that portion of the building before engaging the close in team, but they were certainly surprised.

A few moments of thought are enough for me to settle on Siden to be my next target, who apparently doesn't know enough to let napping dogs lie. If I recall, he was heavily invested in arms development and the tools to make tools industry. So. I guess I'm going to be giving lessons on magitech. Undermining their finances is the best way to tackle the larger targets. But that's for later. I'm going to check to make sure I'm at one hundred percent. The unusual... shift in body fat is odd, and touching them reveals they are exceptionally sensitive as they send a lot more pleasure than I expected and my back arcs slightly at the new sensations. I can't recall my body ever giving off that much pleasure!

Letting the medi-gel slide off and return to the recharging chamber it's stored in, I glance around, noting that my core supply cabinet is opened and nearly empty. A quick glance shows a few animal hairs and a very satisfied Orion lying on his back and sleeping off the orgy of consumption. Pulling the showering cable loose, I rinse off anything left before looking for my clothes... likely new ones. The old ones should restitch themselves, but blood and bullet holes tend to take a while. I notice I'm a bit... smoother to the touch than I was, from well oiled leather to something closer to silk. Zuras approach signals the end of introspection.

"I assume we're at least a few states away. Anything special I need to know about?" I shift a bit of mana to my eyes, and am almost blinded before I let my eyes adjust to the intense magic flowing through me. Most of it settles to my back ground level, although there's some thick clusters around my navel I'll need to investigate at some point. It's a complex series of runes hovering just over the skin and I recognize a few of them relating to core manifestation from common looting arrays when the squeamish don't like to butcher monsters for their cores. "Odd to mount it in the navel instead of the hands, but I think it should work." I mutter out loud as I follow the handful of bits and pieces I recognize off hand. I hold a hand out, flexing slightly with my magical limbs, my preferred harness jumping to my hand as I slip it on, my preferred weapons ready. The rest of my clothes can wait a bit while I make sure that we're safe, and I head to the cockpit to look around.

[jondude]

Zurathrix is quick to respond to your questions as you get of the shower. "Correct Irae. We've been holding a steady course for about for about 36 hours at approximately 18 knots, slowing down after the initial dash north from San Antonio after is was clear there was no pursuers. Currently we are in the state of Nebraska, which has consistently been one of the most wild and lawless states since the great demon war.", She explains as you get dressed and examine your newish looking figure. "There isn't any large walled cities beyond a couple right on the east side bordering Iowa, but there is plenty of old infrastructure that we can use to hide and resupply raw materials in. Given the wild nature of the land though are likely more then a few varieties of magical creatures, demons both feral and sentient, and odd minor demon cult around around here. We'll have to exercise some degree of caution, but certainly nothing your not used to dealing with."

Once you're sufficiently dressed and armed you head up from you exit your medical area where is was tucked into the back of your living area, crossing through it quickly to get to the cockpit. The old school plane offers a enjoyable view, the controls significantly different then it's original aircraft style ones. Currently your about a few thousand feet up, well below the clouds as you watch rolling green countryside slowly pass underneath you. Zurathrix naturally follows along. "Unfortunately we're starting to run a bit low on fuel, so we'll need to land somewhat soon to find a decent source of diesel that we can pilfer along the old road system. There is certainly vast amounts of it all over since the demon war, and even if we can't find anyway we can just refine some ourselves, though the portable refining drill might need a little bit of maintenance.", Zura explains. As she does so Orion comes jumping into the cockpit, rubbing against your leg for a moment before jumping into the copilot seat and giving you the cute face as if asking for uppies. "Also we'll probably need to get some new cores to keep the various magical system good to go. You may have noticed that some gremlins got into the supply cabinet for the medical room. Orion handled it, but then helped himself to the rest of the cores.

"Speaking of cores though, aren't you curious about your changes? I know you've noticed but you seem hardly phased!", she ends, eager to get a reaction from you.

[porne]

I give Zura a look, before turning it back onto Orion who is now demanding uppies. "Yes. Some gremlins got into my core storage." With a sign, I grab the little glutton who no doubt cleaned out all of my exotics, holding him up to my shoulder and letting him snuggle behind my neck. I can't feel them really, but he likes getting rubs from my neck plates, and he soon drapes himself across my shoulders. Of course, he makes sure to dig a paw into a tit, and I wince at the increased sensitivity. I had a much higher pain tolerance before the damned things got so sensitive, first time I get punched in the tit I'm going to dismember somebody on pure instinct. As the little shit continues to rub his head against my cheek and enjoys scratching himself, I take stock of my surroundings.

With the massive mana storms and the shattered mountains from the Demon War, the area which I vaguely recall being rolling plains before is now covered in short mountains, thin rivers, and small lakes. I look for a good spot as I check my fuel before sending mana to my eyes, the cockpit illusion matrix disappearing as my draconic eyes shrug off any attempt at optical deception even though it's supposed to feed me accurate information through those illusions. I'm mostly looking for unusual magic concentrations with any of the more useful 'flavors' that I could harvest. "Zura, come here. Map overlay time." I tell my companion quickly as I pull out her magical pen and let her control the page, sketching what I'm seeing over the well defined map, one of the many advantages over traditional 'books' my companion has.

Once my sketching is complete, I page over and begin muttering out loud, "If we can't depend on diesel supplies from an organization any more, we'll need to create alternatives. Most of our remaining cores are simple and common stuff, but we could probably do a Combination on the slime cores to synthesize diesel from water and air, or possibly as a more advanced bio disposer like what we've got in the waste area, the issue being continuous power supply as slimes are much better at breaking things down than combining them into an energy positive form. A lightning core could do some of the work, but I also think a plant core to consume sunlight might work. We'll need to check to see if a light core, assuming we can find one, can directly convert light into mana to power these features or if the plant core is a better 'all in one' option. We may need to add the entire set into the primary spell matrix even if it adds a lot to the 'to do' list. I also need a decent 'mana missile' oriented core to replace the one I shredded... two days ago. Probably a spider, moth, or caterpillar monster as well if we need to make new clothing..." I trail off as I finish up my notes.

As I finish out my plans, and highlight somewhere to try to land, I get out of my chair and head back to my personal armory-slash-closet area and pull out one of the jump suits I've found work best. A mix of leather padding and 'almost' silk material quickly adjust over me, the leather protecting my clothes from my plates and scales, the tight fitting clothes making sure it doesn't have too much room to rip itself to shreds. My purring scarf soon jumps back into his little pouch at the back, peaking his head over my should and continuing the nuzzles. I know he doesn't like shifting size or form after glutting himself on cores, hence why he wanted to be carried instead of shifting to his little sugar glider shape and just jumping. A quick glance up shows his biggest prize, a core from a hundred kilo gremlin he had to shift to bobcat size to fight is still humming along in the planes primary spell matrix and keeping the hull in perfect shape.

At Zurathrix' question, I stop to think my words through before I turn to look at her cover/face, "I know you've had a long list of things you wanted to work on beyond simply preventing me from melting into a pile of organic goo in case something went wrong with the Chimera spell. While we've only discussed some of them, I trust you Mother. Now that we've got a rough plan and aren't at risk of falling out of the sky, why don't you tell me what you've done. I already know that my figure has been altered a bit, even if it's something you cared about much more than I did, and I can assume I've had a full 'bloodline conversion' so I've got actual functional DNA now. I can feel some alterations around my navel as well, but I'm assuming that was an additional requirement to something or other."

[jondude]

"Well... yes actually." Zurathrix says as you ask if you have actual functional DNA. "You're quite aware of your own origins and the Vampire keep we keep from. You'll be happy to know that despite being literally built in a fashion that you are undeniably alive and not some form of extremely passable undead anymore, so congrats! It's a good thing we've advanced quite a lot since we've come to Earth! The humans here are certainly capable of much more then just making shockingly big explosives eh?", The book says, the face on the page tittering happily. "Realistically though it doesn't really mean much to your daily life or how you did anything before. It's more just a nice wrap of an annoying technicality."

"Anyway, beyond imply being truly alive now you'll find there is a good deal of other changes made. Many of which I had planned to do anyway, however given our current circumstances they'll be more important then ever! We'll be needing to get our own cores now, and now we can. I'll be straight with you though. The creation medium is you, and the delivery method is sex."

Well. You suppose you can appreciate the directness of that statement if nothing else.

"I know you've had your brief ventures into sex and relationships before and it didn't really appeal to you at the time. But if you give it another try I think you'll find your experience much different this time around! That and you'll kind of have to, otherwise it'll take forever to get all the cores we need to go much farther and arm back up. I won't bore you with the technical details too much, but suffice to say you'll be able to gestate cores within your own womb, and you'll be able to make cores by mating with... essentially anything. You can still conventionally breed of course, should that desire ever hit you, _{which I suspect it might hehe}, but all it'll take from you is a brief bit of minor concentration around the time of conception and instead of a baby you'll produce a mana core. Naturally the more strong your breeding partner, the more powerful the core that will be produced!"

You give that a bit of thought as stare out your cockpit window, looking at the curious altered landscape below as you give Orion the adorable otter fox some chin scratches, his front end draped on your left shoulder so he can look around from his spot on the pouch on your back. Your last venture into the world of relationships had been... well it had been fine. Not really a bad experience, but hardly anything that really called to you. It may have been your created origins that had been a factor though. Thinking on it a bit more though, you suppose comparing that to what Zura was proposing wasn't really the same thing at all. Yeah there would be sex you guess, but it's not like you needed to take demons and magical monsters out on dates. This would be much more rough and tumble by the sounds of it. Still it was sort of amusing to think of it like that. Maybe you can finally learn why your vampire masters and all the the other demon clans were so fascinated with sex.

A few minutes later in your thoughts and eventually you come across the half overgrown remains of a town that pops up behind from what likely had been a floating island keep from some demon clan, blasted to pieces by the humans weapons. It's an old small middle American town, maybe hosting around 5000 people before magical creatures took over all the country side around the urban centres. There should be plenty of things you can loot there, including fuel, and if no doubt there would be something around here that you might be able to... test your new core creating abilities with.

There seems to be a few places you can land. Several areas on the outside edges of the town. But there was also a grassy baseball field as well as an old school yard if you wanted to land in the middle of town. Given that the whole area was pretty wild now, it theoretically shouldn't be anymore dangerous to land in town then not.

[porne]

I almost interrupt about being able to harvest our own cores, but after a second of thought stop. The ability to duplicate cores endlessly rather than hunt down anything more common is definitely a good thing, even if I had to have some... equipment repurposed. And, given its role, it makes sense that the womb was easy to adapt into something to produce cores. And why the ability can't be... outsourced to a non living factory. Well, an automated factory of some kind? Depending on the strength of magics involved, it's entirely possible to function with undead. But, some very brief inspection shows that it's not a one and done situation, I will need to dedicate each core to a specific round of gestation, although there might be some parallel production capacity in there. It's hard to tell purely by feel. And... I think I detect a bit of succubus or psycher ability attached to it, an intense lust inducer, presumably to shift a monster away from 'hungry' to 'horny'. Still... once I get a hold of one core, I'll need to do something to make sure I can use the new core as a mold to create more.

With a sigh, I tell Zura that we may need some sort of mechanism to produce pregnancy on demand with nothing but a core supplied, and she should probably work on that. I've no doubt that someone as pent up as a goblin stuck in a book for two hundred years would have an ample supply of sex magic, including the ability to create various types of... dildos if I recall my sex toys properly. Now, they need to produce sperm instead of just looking and feeling real. Off the top of my head, a slime core and mimic core would be prime sets of material to craft such a device from; the slime to convert raw material into usable and a mimic to 'copy' the biology of whatever is being created. Most shapeshifters would probably be okay, but the closer to a full shape shifter I can get, the less effort it will take to adapt the core, and both are fairly common, slimes more than mimics. I let my mind drift over my short and frankly disappointing attempts at romance and sex, neither having significant effects or being particularly fun, something Zura has harped on for some time. I've still used a bit of seduction to get closer to targets, but usually a bright smile is enough to at least get me in range of magical disruption field and that was it for that would be tyrant mage. Not that I haven't interrupted quite a few rounds of coitus which seemed fun, but I never felt nearly as strongly as every other race seems to.

Of course, now that I'm expecting monsters to be added to my list of suitors, and their rather well known lack of interest in preserving clothes, I'm going to have to move the 'new clothes' equipment up the list, or make them self healing. Hm, liking the second option better as I think on it. Probably need something to go under my harness, which already has most of those features (suggestion?). This is going to make clothes that are comfortable and don't get torn to shreds on my scales and plates even more of a problem. I force my mind away from mulling over those problems, knowing I'll get myself stuck in a loop trying to solve the various problems before I start gathering supplies to investigate exactly what is around.

Surveying the town, I don't seem to detect any particular flavors of magic that might do what I need to do. It's been some time since I've been to an abandoned town like this, particularly one this old, I'm hoping that they at least got their magitech industry started before the town was evacuated. I struggle to recall my summary... history reading about how the towns changed shortly after the initial invasion but before the greater nation collapse. Towns shifted from sprawling to a much denser form, favoring five to seven story apartment structures with almost entirely walkable areas surrounded by a pair of walls, the 'inner' wall surrounding the town itself, the outer the more vital agriculture that couldn't be outsourced or shifted onto the rooftop and industrial gardening structures, as well as the bunkers and fortress walls on the outer section only accessible from the inner wall to provide primary defense. If this was near... twenty years after the World War III, then each town should have the necessary mix to be self sustaining with a few other options to produce equipment and machinery to meet greater national needs. Which means, a small arms factory or ammo plant, some kind of basic chem plant for dealing with waste and producing fertilizer, and a decent set of machine shops to service the battle cars and light fighters preferred at the time.

With as large as my ship is, I don't think I could use any fighter oriented landing strips, even with my VTOL capacity, so that leads me to either set down outside the town or in that baseball diamond. Without any defenders, the walls themselves won't do much, assuming they're not simply overgrown and torn apart if they were still doing the short walls. Considering the nature, it'll probably be faster to simply drop onto the diamond and begin looting the area. So, several questions, did my concussion prevent me from loading my bicycle or cart, or am I good to go? If so, I mount up my harness and prepare to leave, drawing my pistol and beginning to search the area for anything of interest.

[jondude]

Your thoughts go this way and that as you ponder your apparently now modified self and the apparent capabilities that go along with it, Zurathrix answering any more technical questions you might have as they come up. As you survey the town though you eventually decide to go for the abandoned baseball diamond. It was surprisingly close to the center of town, and you spot what looks to be a few hardened concrete structures and rusted out trucks. It's hard to tell with the overgrowth and the natural decay of time, but you might be looking at an old national guard armoury. If so it might already have a lot of what you need manufactured, and if not it would be all the exact kind of materials you were looking for. Of course a bit of recycling might be necessary.

As you set down the long overgrown grass of the baseball field ripples in the down draft pleasantly, the area mercifully free of any trees and really looking like a small patch of the plains found further north typically. You toggle some controls to deploy the landing gear, metals arms coming out with a pleasing solid thunk noise that gives confidence in their hardiness. A few moments after that and you're on the ground, allowing you to power off the engines and conserve a little bit of fuel. Now it was time to get to work!

Luckily it seems the meditank completely healed your poor abused skull, your concussion seemingly completely cured by the tech's magical wonders. That means your using your bike or cart is good to go, though powering it through the grass will take a little extra bit of effort. Luckily both were equipped some rugged off road tires to help you in these more wild and overgrown environments. Dressed and armed you exit your ship, take a deep breath of crisp clean air, and take a cursory look around.

There are three things that catch your eyes. One of which is a boarded up bank which seems to be intact. It might not have much, but given the time frame of the third world war it was likely to actually have some gold and silver bullion, which was always valuable. The second immediate catch is a mechanical and welding shop about two blocks down, your eagle like vision able to read the sign from even down here. Might have some metal sheets that you could use for projects or selling for scrap. The third is of course what you had spotted on the way down. It's a couple streets over, but you see some signs directing the way to Fort Jackman, the apparent home of the 505th Mechanized brigade of the Nebraska Army National Guard. It was the farthest away, but was liable to have most of the things you were looking for.

[porne]

With three primary locations to search, I decide a preliminary search before bringing out the bike with cargo bags for after a quick clearing sweep and a better idea of what is available and usable. An all purpose multi fueled bicycle seemed like it'd be useful, and it might, once I've got plans. I've also got a wide variety of different equipment I'll need to craft, either starting from neutral cores or working from the more specialized ones. The raw materials are also going to be nice, although the machine shop is very likely to have some serious gremlin issues if the towns suppression field has failed. The Fort will have a back up unit, but there's no telling if it was built to properly handle ambient mana or if it's been allowed to completely run down.

With the plan made, I pull the aggressively head butting animal off my shoulder and let him flop down in the ship. "Guard the ship Orion, I should be back soon." I tell him, knowing that if he was in a really affectionate mood, I'd be trying to shake off a big poof of purring fluff off one hand. I look to the bank first, heading there with my pistol drawn and my knife at the ready, prepared for anything. I pulse my eyes with a smidge of mana as I go. I've been told it creates a soft glow with some serious 'uranium glass' that overlaps the intense dark emerald my eyes naturally have. It doesn't show up in mirrors because of the strange mechanics of magical reactions. It should, at the least, royally butcher any of the more common illusion mechanisms the common mutations have.

[jondude]

Pulling out the bikes is a relatively simple task made only slightly more complicated due to Orion's extra affectionate mood, the little chimera creature loudly purring as he head butted and rubbed his face against yours as he clung to your shoulders like a living scarf. Probably because the rascal was so glutted up on your more rare cores right now he was actually satisfied food wise, so now he wished for play and snuggles. You oblige the little critter as much as you can, not holding his eating of your cores against him since he also did his job eating elemental gremlins. Besides with him eating those cores he was essentially extra juiced up for shape shifting and combat if need be, so there was always a benefit!

Eventually though you decide to move out, deciding on the bank. You place Orion down much to his chagrin, but for all his apparent feline tendencies sometimes adorable little guy is remarkably well behaved when the situation demands it. He rolls around on the ramp, chittering cutely in a very fox like manner, but begins roaming skipping around the area, checking the ramp and landing gear to try and intercept any pests before they can maybe crawl up in your ship. Like he is to do though he does this in a rather adorable manner, soon chasing butterflies in the long grass but always staying close to the ship.

You head off the short 3/4 mile you need to go to to get to the bank, a fairly large stone building whose signage has long since decayed. Probably a defunct one anyway. As you approach everything seems all calm though, so you head up and try the door. To your surprise it just... swings open. Heading inside is a rather typical sight, faded stone counters with large panes of bars and bullet proof glass in some areas. It would've been a pretty nice room back when it was in operation, but now it was just a dusty relic, old type writers and rotten paper and ledgers around. The main counter for business however was not barred in anyway, so it would be a simple manner to hop over it and perhaps look for a key into the secure area.

Something however doesn't quite feel right. As you examine the room a little more you find there to be a curious amount of fine claw marks on this, and the dust on the floor showed signs of being disturbed quite a bit. Looking upward to high ceiling you actually spot a bunch of ropes, a net, and some crude platforms attached to some pillars the lead up to the rafters. The net however isn't a trap by the looks of it, but more of a large hammock. Examining it further it seems they lead toward some windows that were likely second story offices that looked over the banking floor. The windows were long smashed out however. You could try to climb up there if you wanted, but there was definitely some stairs somewhere to get up there somewhere.

You take a few more quiet steps in then, trying to locate those stairs and hoping they weren't deeper in. As you take those steps though you see a flash of yellow from above. You look up at the smashed out windows, but the lights are gone. You didn't get a good look, but you've been around long enough to recognize a pair of reflective eyes when you see them.

[porne]

The little shit knows full well he's not supposed to be digging around in my core supply, even if it gets left open. But, he continues with his lethargic physical affection as he attempts to grind some of my facial scales down with pure determination. Shaking the blob of cat monster loose from my shoulder and cheek takes a moment, but I'm otherwise fine with the little turd being glutted. My understanding is that even if a cat is full they tend to be particularly aggressive about keeping their territories clean of any hostiles, so if anything shows up while he's full, I can expect a dead magical critter waiting for my return so he can show off. I'm still not entirely sure on how intelligent he is, and how well he understands local common... English beyond the most basic of domesticated animal commands.

My path doesn't take long to settle on, a simple scouting mission out, and then I'll grab any useful assets on the way back before switching to loading my bike on a set of more lucrative runs. While the bike is quiet, I'm quieter when on foot, and if I don't get in a running gun fight, I should be able to do a decent amount of scavenging. I look back at Orion chasing butterflies, something I know he's doing to amuse himself, as if he was legitimately hunting something that small, I'd just see a tongue flick out and drag the creature back to be devoured, as is the fate of many a gremlin.

I set my bike up some distance away, unfolding the tiny solar panel to counter the minuscule amount of power I've burnt just getting here. I could sit and peddle for a bit to recover, but you never know when you need to hop on and run like hell. I look to start clearing the bank, cataloging a few items of possible use. The bullet proof glass might be usable, although I recall that modern equipment uses something closer to artificial gemstones than glass. The typewriters can be torn apart for their spring steel, but most of the other stationary looks to be scrap by this point. The flicker of possible activity draws my attention upwards to the... nest up above.

A quick once over indicates something at least human sized, likely making a nest up above. The flash of eyes... I flare mana to my own eyes, hoping to catch something, either movement, heat signatures, or some kind of magical signature. Alas, I don't have the salamanders ability to see through rock, or whatever they do, but I'm mostly hoping than expecting to catch anything. I drop Old Faithful, which jumps back to its sheathe, resting my pistol on my arm as I flex my claws. With my gun out, I've got range, but my adjustable knife is more for mid ranged melee than extremely tight quarters. Shining eyes is a clue to what I'm facing, indicating something with night predator ancestry or components of their mutation, and they tend to like up close and personal if they can ambush. I'm stronger than I look, even before I start pumping mana and a lot of ambushers stop when you rip a fistfull of flesh off their torso. I push into the building, looking to see if I can greet or bait whatever is in here.

[jondude]

When you flare the magic in your eyes to help peer into the dark alcoves above you don't see much. No movement, beyond some slight swinging on the ropes, no real magic, and no large heat signatures. What you do spot however are some warm spots near the long smashed out windows. Spots that indicate that some one had certainly been standing there shortly ago as they are gradually cooling off as you stare at them. You continue to scan around for a good fifteen or seconds or so, hoping to spot something else as you draw your pistol with such practiced ease it almost appears casual. Unfortunately you don't really spot anything else, so decide to push a little further in, deciding that your sidearm and claws should be good enough weapons for what you were likely dealing with.

When you push into the building further nothing comes out to attack you, but you do keep spotting warm spots. Some a little warmer then others indicating something had stood there for a bit, other much more fleeting, indicating steps. They are thin feet, though perhaps a little wider then your own with slightly larger toes, which hints at claws to you. Definitely humanoid, definitely bare foot. More telling though though is that despite your hearing they are silent as ghosts, a very impressive feat that might be subtly magic boosted. Am ambush predator of some sort certainly. You head up the stairs to office area, greeted with a large open are that leads to other more private offices and conference rooms surrounding the area, looking into the first reveals what seems to be a sleeping area, piled high with salvaged blankets, pillows, along with more natural furs from various prey animals. It looks quite cozy and surprisingly clean, and with that you think have enough information to know what kind of "creature" your dealing with here.

"Hello!", a sudden voice rings out, almost comically cheery in the near complete darkness of the second floor.

You turn towards the voice, to the right and slightly behind you, and find your suspicions confirmed when you see a humanoid cat girl peeking around the corner of a cubicle at you. She has long raven hair, with one black and one white ear and fluffy tail swishing away behind her, with little patches of patterned fur that adorn her hands and wrists with the rest of her is basically human. In the few seconds it takes for you to look at her the cat girl suddenly decides your lack of attack means you must be safe, and so quickly comes out of cover and skips over to introduce herself. She's... quite bouncy, wearing only a simple fur loincloth bikini, and clearly quite young and a little trusting. A part of you really wants to laugh, as it makes you think of scenes of random kittens approaching people and climbing their legs demanding attention. The cat distribution system you've heard it called. Well maybe there was a cat girl distribution system too.

Before you say anything and before the new cat girl has completely made her over you spot another cat girl in the distance suddenly peaking up over a different cubicle wall. She has striking orange hair and ears that have a tiger pattern, ear that are currently laid back in hunting or combat mode. She looks a little more mature and serious by her eyes, which are currently staring at the other cat girl as if she was a complete idiot.

"I haven't seen anyone like you before! What'cha doing? You got my sisters all riled up when you landed but I don't think you're necessarily dangerous. You don't look like you want to fight to me, especially since you're all alone."