Chapter 285

It was fitting, Zoey thought, that the first holy ritual held in her temple ended with the sacred stone drenched in cum.

It wasn’t just the altar, too, but her, Sabina, and the surrounding area as well: completely coated. Half-flooded, really. Both girls were panting and exhausted when they’d sated themselves, Sabina’s stomach rounded nicely by the heavy loads that had been poured into her. Zoey didn’t know why she loved that sight so much, but she really did. There was something amazing about stuffing another girl so full it became visibly obvious—that she looked pregnant.

A few minutes passed as they lay in sweaty puddles, the alchemically-fueled fuck-fest having drained both of them in ways they—or Zoey, at least—had never experienced. She felt empty in the best way possible.

“Oh,” Sabina murmured eventually. “I can feel it. How curious.”

“Hm?” Zoey asked.

“I felt myself advance.”

She cracked an eye open in surprise. “Without sleeping?” That was how all rank-ups happened, she had thought. Sleep, or at least unconsciousness, was a prerequisite to progressing in advancement.

“It did occur thanks to a skill,” Sabina mused, idly resting a hand on her inflated belly as she spoke—which did something to make Zoey’s arousal stir, regardless of how many times she’d ravaged her teacher in a row. “If anything would break convention, it would be an ability such as yours.”

She propped up onto an elbow, interested by the development, her intrigue breaking through her exhaustion. “What’d you get?” she asked before she could think better.

Then she remembered: skills were private information. There was some irony to be found in hesitating over an ‘intimate question’ considering what they’d just done together, but that was different: sex was just sex to a lot of people.

“Let me check,” Sabina said, eyes fluttering closed and brow furrowing as she sorted through her tabula anima. She snuggled into Zoey, erasing some of the hesitation she’d felt a moment prior.

A minute passed as Sabina concentrated.

“Hm. Useful.”

“Useful?”

“I received two skills. Both passive, both consistently applicable. I’m pleased.”

Zoey raised an eyebrow in response to that, and, to her happiness, Sabina continued explaining.

“Efficient Extraction is the first. And no, the name isn’t an innuendo—it’s not a skill like yours.” Snorting softly, she said, “It’s an excellent staple skill for an alchemist; I’ve seen ones like it before. In short, I should be able to pull better yields out of reagents when I prepare them myself.”

“Oh? That does sound useful,” Zoey said, excited on Sabina’s behalf.

Of course, the ability wasn’t as strange as the ones she herself received, but Sabina didn’t have a class from the heavens: she had a normal Rune of Alchemy. That also meant the fourth-advancement skill wasn’t as insanely strong as some of hers either, probably, but Sabina’s tone of voice indicated it was something she was pleased with, and she would know what standards to judge alchemy skills by.

“The second is Essence Sight,” Sabina said. “The description is vague, but I believe it will help me intuit the use of strange reagents, as well as possible combinations that would synergize well.” She hummed. “It’ll cut down on the experimentation stage. I would have appreciated an active skill as well, but these two passives are excellent. No doubt, they were influenced by my relation to you.”

Zoey blinked. “What do you mean?” Neither of those skills seemed related to her lewd class in the slightest.

“Both aid in identifying unusual reagents and making more out of them. Who, recently, has been providing a surplus of those?”

“Oh.” That was a good point. “Especially the extraction one,” Zoey said. “Because lots of what I find is rare, maybe even one-of-a-kind.” Unless another person ended up being imbued by a lewd goddess and having their shards—and loot—affected by divine influence, they might never show up again.

“Precisely. With careful rationing and low-yield initial experiments, I can extend a limited supply into many batches—but there’s a limit to how far it can be stretched. Effective Extraction ought to help immensely, especially since it’s a fourth-advancement skill.”

Rather than if she’d gotten the skill at first advancement, Zoey assumed she meant.