Skill Hunter -Kill Monsters, Acquire Skills, Ascend to the Highest Rank!

Scar led them out the back of the resort. Ruby immediately ran ahead with a whoop and vanished into the fog. Before anyone else could follow her, a line of foxes stepped out of the steam. "Men this way, women that way. We've provided bathing clothes for you today, unless you wish to share the bath in the nude."

"Er—clothes is fine," Ike said. I guess if it's a natural spring, they can't help if it comes out into one large pool. Besides, for beasts, it was probably far more normal to share a bath in the nude. After all, animals shared watering holes all the time, and they were always in the nude.

"What? Do I have to?" Wisp asked.

"You can be nude, but you have to stay in spider form," Ike told her.

She covered herself with her hands, mock-aghast. "You want to see my nude true form? Scandalous! You know that's something that's only shared between husband and wife, right?"

He gave her a look. "You run around as a spider all the time."

"My innocence… shattered," Wisp mourned.

Ike crossed his arms.

She grinned, then broke out into giggles. "Yeah, yeah. I'll be a spider if I'm gonna be naked. Dumb humans and your dumb clothing rules. You know, I only put clothes on when the men stopped fighting back as seriously when I was human-shaped and nude. Honestly, how impolite to take it easy on me, just because I'm not wearing armor. It's not like my skin is any weaker when it doesn't have cloth on it."

"That's… not…" Ike rubbed a hand down his face. "Sure. Whatever."

"No one hesitated to attack me when I first developed human form and hadn't found clothes yet," Mag muttered to himself, his brows knitting in confusion.

Ike sighed and patted his back. Some people might hesitate to stab a naked girl in the woods, even if she attacked them, but few would hesitate to stab a naked boy in the woods. He personally would attack both of them, if they showed him aggression, but everyone wasn't as equanimous as himself. "That's one of the cruelties of the world, I suppose."

"Or it's because you were lounging on a mountain of skulls," Wisp pointed out.

"Well, where else was I supposed to lounge? There were a lot of dead bodies in the desert. Lots of shiny skulls. I thought it'd look cool if I piled them all together. And once I piled them all up, what was I supposed to do? Just leave them there?" Mag asked, exasperated.

Ike lifted a hand. "Hold on. You're telling me that the mountain of skulls is because you're a hoarding magpie, not because you killed all those people?"

"Mmm. It wasn't all me. There was already a lot of bones when I got there. But I definitely added a lot to it! Why not? I like gathering things. And there weren't a lot of shiny things in the desert. I grabbed all of them, and then I was bored, so then I started thinking that bones were kind of shiny. So then I grabbed all the bones." He tilted his head in a bird-like fashion. "If you hadn't come, I probably would've started gathering fish, or something. There wasn't a whole lot to do out there."

"Be King of the Birds, or whatever?" Ike asked.

"I am King of the Birds!" Mag proclaimed.

"Yeah, yeah." Ike headed toward the foxes and grabbed a pair of swimclothes. The fabric was dark and slightly stiff, baggy enough to hide his features even after he got wet. The foxes were clearly prepared for the most modest of guests, with options from neck-to-ankle coverage to shorts. Ike picked a pair of shorts and wandered off in the direction they indicated. A small structure stood amongst the volcanic rocks, with curtains for a door. Mag followed him at a short distance, clutching some shorts of his own.

Ike paused. He looked up. "What about you, Shawn? Want some swim clothes?"

"Everything I wear is a manifestation of my will. I'm actually a mountain, in case you forgot."

"Yeah, and Wisp is a spider, but she wears clothes," Ike pointed out. "Plus, didn't you wear clothes in Clarina's city?"

Shawn opened his mouth, then shut it. "I can wear clothes, but… It's more complicated for mountains than beasts."

He swished them aside and undressed quickly, tucking his clothes into his storage ring and putting the shorts on instead. He emerged, and a moment later, so did Mag. It was the first time Ike had seen him without his large red overrobe, in bird form or not.

"Not taking the robe into the bath?" he asked.

"No. It's the only thing I have left from my father. I don't want to get it wet with volcano water," Mag said quietly.

"Oh… I'm sorry," Ike said quietly. He had little from his mother, and nothing at all from his father. If he had something… anything, from his father, it would be precious to him. More precious than anything else. Enjoy exclusive content from My Virtual Library Empire

"You sure took it into battle, for something you don't want to get dirty," Wisp offered, stepping out from around a volcanic stone. She wore a short bathing suit, a jumper with a few inches of shorts and narrow shoulder straps. It was more than she'd worn when Ike had first met her, when she wore the tiny scraps of fabric held together by spider thread.

He rolled his eyes at her and walked on. "Come on, we're meant to be relaxing. Stop bullying the bird."

"You only say that because you have parent-issues too. Things get a lot cleaner when your mom tries to eat you right off the bat. Really toughens you up properly. Gets you prepared for life," Wisp declared, thumping her chest.

Ike paused. He gave her a look. "I know you talk about eating your husband a lot, but do you also plan to eat your children?"

"Yeah? I'm gonna have to protect them in my web for months, eating what little flies into one static web. There's gonna be a few hundred of them, and I'm gonna eat some of them. That's why there's a few hundred, you know? Momma's gotta eat. If I don't, I might starve to death before my next successful hunt," Wisp pointed out.

"I…" Ike shook his head. It was shockingly logical, if he completely and totally disagreed with it.

Beside him, Mag stared in abject horror, his jaw dropped.

"You're a mage. You don't need to eat," Ike pointed out at last.

"Eh, yeah. Maybe not. Maybe so. Having babies is complicated, for mages," Wisp told him. "Baby has to be made from something, you know? You can't just make one from raw mana. If you could, then any of us could just make a baby right now. Me. You. Even the bird."

"I could make a baby? Right now?" Mag asked, confused beyond all limits.

"Making babies? Someone having a baby?" Scar asked, popping up from behind a stone.

Ike grabbed Mag by the wrist and dragged him toward the hot springs. "You know what? Let's just go take a nice, warm dip in the hot springs and forget all about this."