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IDWTBTHQ Chapter 130 - Shower Thoughts
🕑 Added 2022-12-01 09:27:09 +0000 UTCIt was early in the morning when Marcus was woken up by the sensation of being crushed by something incredibly heavy. In his half asleep state, the first nonsensical thought that passed in his mind was that a horse was sitting on him. He then decided to ignore it in the hope it would go away.
Only after a few seconds, when his brain started rebooting, he realized that there were several things wrong with this situation. For starters, how did a horse get into his room? Why would it sit on him? And finally, where did it come from, since there wasn’t a single horse in Stonebarrow right now?
Since speculation alone didn’t cut it, Marcus opted for opening his eyes and directly assessing the situation, but that didn’t really help either since there was something in front of his eyes that obstructed his view. He then tried to push whatever that thing was away, but the object proved to be heavier than he had anticipated. It was also round shaped and surprisingly soft.
“Weird.” He thought. “It almost feels like I'm touching a boob...”
It was then that he finally woke up completely and realized that the thing he was touching was indeed a boob. Tiny-Sneaky's left boob to be precise.
The heavy thing that was crushing Marcus was no horse after all, but rather the ogress, who had sneaked into his bed and had fallen asleep on top of him.
“Oh goddammit!” The Vex Queen angrily thought. “Not again!”
He tried to get up, but the ogress’s weight was keeping him pinned to the bed. So he started wiggling wildly in order to free himself, all while feeling more pissed than he’d ever thought possible for someone waking up in bed with a naked female on top of him. But then again, Tiny was really heavy, and Marcus valued being able to breathe and keeping his ribs more or less intact.
Also, the fact that the ogress had been pulling this crap for four nights in a row didn’t help either.
Sadly, he had no idea how to stop her. Telling her to stay in her room didn't work —she promptly forgot about the order as soon as he left her alone— and locking the doors and putting drones to watch over her had proven to be equally ineffective, as she somehow always managed to sneak past everything.
“Guess she lives up to the Sneaky in her name.” Marcus thought. “Too bad that the Tiny part is completely inaccurate!”
After a few minutes of struggling, the Vex Queen finally managed to wriggle free from the ogress, jumping out of his bed while breathing heavily from the effort. Tiny, meanwhile, just kept sleeping soundly, something which didn’t really come as a surprise as she had already proven to be an incredibly heavy sleeper. In fact, the only thing that seemed to be able to reliably wake her up was her stomach whenever she was hungry.
Which meant that if her belly was full then she could keep sleeping more or less indefinitely.
Marcus smirked. Considering that he had fed the ogress almost a whole deer as a midnight snack, it should be at least a few more hours before she got hungry and woke up, and that left him free for the rest of the morning. Just as he had planned.
Feeling in rather high spirits for the first time in days, the Vex Queen left the ogress in his room, walking down to the living room to have breakfast and decide how he was going to spend the few hours of freedom he had.
“Let's see.” He wondered as he munched some raw meat accompanied by some hot but very watered down coffee. “I don't feel like going back to sleep, but what else could I do? Doing chores around the house is too much work, and besides I've got the drones to do that for me, but it’s not as if I’m spoiled for choices here.” He sighed. “Man, I wish I could go to cities again. At least I’d be able to buy some groceries or something.”
He quickly wolfed down the rest of his meal, feeling a faint sense of euphoria as the small amount of caffeine rushed through his veins, and looked outside of the window. A nice, bright sun shone in the sky, reflecting on the snow that covered the village, and the trees were also perfectly still, suggesting that there was no wind whatsoever. In short, it seemed like a perfect day for a stroll.
“Maybe I could do some training.” He thought. “It's been ages since I've had some physical exercise, and it could really help me blow off some steam. Besides, I could also try the new shower I installed afterwards.”
And so, a few minutes later, Marcus was outside, jogging in the mold-wax fields surrounding the village. He was very lightly dressed, with only a pair of shorts and a shirt covering his body, but luckily as he had guessed the air wasn't too chilly —at least relatively speaking— and now that he had warmed up he could barely feel the cold.
Focusing exclusively on the movements of his body, the Vex Queen kept running at a steady pace for almost an hour. As droplets of sweat started running down his face he also felt the pile of stress he had piled up in the past weeks beginning to melt away.
However, as noon approached, a soft wind started blowing, freezing Marcus’s sweat and making him shiver from head to toe, so he decided to call it a day and head for the showers.
Keeping a brisk pace, he then ran for the baths near Stonebarrow, which had gone through a complete renovation. Having realized that the previous pool was basically useless without Felix to heat it up with his magic, Marcus had decided to solve the problem and built some baths that he could operate on his own when the apprentice sorcerer was away. The old dome-like construction was gone, replaced by a much larger square building made of mold-wax and stone, with a very large chimney on the side. Inside the building there were a couple of pools, a very large one at the center and a smaller one on the side. Unlike the previous bathhouse, the floor of this one was made of stone rather than mold-wax, and the reason for this change was that Marcus had installed a large furnace under this one, located right under the large pool of water. This way, the fire would heat up the stone and the water above it, providing warm water without needing a sorcerer to heat it up magically. The Vex Queen had taken inspiration by ancient roman thermae for this building, in particular the so called tepidarium, and keeping in line with that design he had also installed a second, smaller pool of cold water, a frigidarium, to cool himself up after a hot bath.
However, he had also installed some decisively non-roman features, including the shower he wanted to use right now.
Marcus usually preferred bathing to showering, but for some reason the second option made him feel cleaner after he had worked up a sweat. Besides, he liked taking his time and relaxing when taking a bath, and he likely wouldn't be able to do that since Tiny could wake up at any moment.
When he entered the bathhouse, the interior was already pleasantly warm since he had his drone lit up the furnace underneath it while he was running, and when he touched the hot pool he found the water inside to be at a perfect temperature —which was good, since that was the water he'd be using for his shower. He then left his dirty clothes in a basket beside the entrance, grabbed a towel and headed down a set of stairs that led underground.
The stairs ended in a dark corridor, lit only by the bioluminescent mold-wax that coated the walls, and at the end of it there was a small, semicircular room, with a drain on the floor and a showerhead that came out of the ceiling. A few alcoves around the room were made to place clothes, soap or towels, and two levers came out of the wall.
The shower received water from the two pools above it, using gravity to build up the necessary pressure, and the two levers would control the flow of water from those pools, opening or closing the connection to hot and cold water.
Of course, that was all in theory, since he still had to test whether or not this system worked. But he was confident that it would, and besides even if there was any problem he could still just take a bath upstairs.
Marcus left his towel in one of the alcoves and walked up to the levers, pulling the left one —the one connected to the warm pool.
Almost immediately, hot water started pouring from the shower.
“It works!” He thought triumphantly, feeling the warm droplets of water pleasantly running down his naked body. “Gotta say, this is even better than I thought it would be! I guess that completely filling the pools was worth it, since it built up some nice pressure for this shower.”
With a wide smile on his face, he grabbed a piece of soap from a nearby alcove and began to clean himself.
After a few seconds, as he reached peak relaxation, he also started singing.
Now, in his previous life Marcus didn't really have the chance to cultivate a specific taste in music and his repertoire perfectly reflected that, as it was nothing but popular pop songs —the ones that were put on loop at his various workplaces. However, since all he wanted were catchy tunes he could sing with his brain turned off, they perfectly suited his needs.
Besides, he had to admit that he kinda liked some of them.
He opened up humming a piece from the late 2000s as he washed his hair, with his mouth closed to keep the soap out. Then, as he rinsed, he actually started singing out loud, and much to his own surprise he found out that he wasn’t completely out of tune. That came as quite a shock, since in his previous life he had been a most atrocious singer, but now, in his new body, he was apparently able to carry a tune.
“Well, this is a surprise for sure, but at least it's not an unpleasant one.” He thought. “Maybe now my neighbors won't mistake me singing in the shower for someone being murdered and call the police to my apartment anymore.” He paused and mentally added: “That is, if I still had any neighbor.”
Wanting to explore the limits of his newfound talent, Marcus decided to try another song. He picked one that he had always especially sucked at —Hot and Cold by Katy Perry— and started singing while he washed his body. Again, he did much better than he'd have expected, to the point that he actually started grooving to his own singing. He even began dancing a bit, or at least moving around following the rhythm.
He was almost halfway through the song when he heard someone calling his name.
“Gah!” He cried in surprise, immediately stopping his singing. “Who's there?”
He looked around, instinctively covering his naked body as best he could with his hands, but he saw no one. And yet, he still had the impression that someone was calling for him.
It took him a few seconds to realize that he was hearing his name called not through his own ears, but rather through those of one of his drones. The copy drone that he had left in Brettholz, to be precise.
“Of course.” He thought, a bit annoyed. “Even in this world, you just can't take a shower without immediately receiving a call! I guess that must be some kind of multiversal law or something.”
The Vex Queen then focused his attention on his clone, which was standing still inside a small, empty room in the marquis's palace that had been given to him. Making its head turn, Marcus saw that the door was open, and a man —probably a servant judging by his clothes— was standing on the doorframe.
“Uhm... sir Marcus?” The servant asked rather nervously. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can.” The Vex Queen replied. “What can I do for you?”
“Ehm, sorry to disturb you, but the marquis asked if you could see him in his study, sir.” The man said. “He said he needed to speak with you.”
“Sure.” Marcus made the drone nod. “I'll go there immediately.”
“Very well sir. Do you need me to accompany you?”
“No, don't worry.” The Vex Queen declined. "I know the way and I can get there by myself."
“As you wish sir.” The man bowed and left the room, leaving the drone alone.
“Uhm... Why would the marquis want to see me?” Marcus wondered. “I really hope there isn't another problem, now that I am just beginning to relax a bit.” He sighed. “Well, I won't learn what the matter is by just standing here, so I better go hear what Eisen has to say.”
He then made the drone exit the room as well, closing the door behind it. At the same time, in his real body he also turned off the shower, grabbed his towel and headed upstairs. At first he was going to dry himself and get back to his house, but before he could do that he noticed that the hot pool was still almost full, and the water inside seemed invitingly warm.
“Well, it'd be a waste to let this water cool off.” He said to himself. “And I can easily talk through my drone while having a bath, so why shouldn't I enjoy myself a bit longer? That would at least take the edge out from any potential bad news I’m going to receive.”
And so he dropped his towel to the ground and dove right into the pool, splashing water all around him. As he had guessed the temperature was absolutely perfect, and with a satisfied sigh he made himself comfortable, closing his eyes and basking in the warmth while his drone walked to the marquis's study.
Comments
It’s not too bad mate
Valentino Conti Angeli
I'm sorry about it, the chapter was basically finished but thenI noticed some rather big flaws required some serious editing.
Nilbog
3 days of editing? What's the point if you hadn't even started writing it then you'd be better served just keeping quiet about it rather than posting that "draft" and keeping the rest of us hanging like this
