PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

Desmond still had the stamina and libido to go on a little longer, but seeing Claire’s tired face, he threw the idea out the window. As much as Desmond enjoyed the activity, to him, it was more about finding a physical and emotional connection than about mere carnal pleasure.

In a way, although Desmond was still a person of carnal pleasures, his personality had changed quite a bit in the last few months. Aside from a couple of incidents, Desmond wouldn’t get into bed with anyone other than Claire or Sasha and would always prioritize his partner’s pleasure over his own, something the old man Desmond would find unheard of.

Whatever the case, Desmond found great satisfaction in seeing Claire’s face full of love and passion, who, despite her exhaustion, was still looking back at him with those emerald green eyes as bright as ever.

The first to break the silence was Claire, who, for some reason, thought back to the incident that took place at dinner a couple of hours ago. “I still can’t believe Silvia’s sister asked a question like that.”

Despite what she said, Claire still had an amused smile; she clearly didn’t think much of the matter and instead focused on something else. “Seeing Sasha blush so much that steam started coming off her horns was quite amusing, but Cecilia’s expression of complete disbelief and lack of understanding was just as good.”

After a small tired laugh, Claire was still again for a moment until a question formed in her little mind. A question she had asked herself in the past after reading a particular article in a magazine.

“Hey, Desmond, would you like to do something like that?”

Since Desmond was busy thinking about specific problems to be dealt with in the future and how complicated dinner with Silvia ended up being, it took him a while to understand Claire’s question.

.....

Looking at the genuine confusion on Desmond’s face, Claire was shocked; she was sure Desmond would have at least thought of such a thing. “I mean, what Samantha asked about doing it with more than one of us at the same time.”

The instant need to drink from a glass of water and then spit out its contents flashed through Desmond’s mind, a thought quickly dismissed, his mind having better things to think about at the moment.

As ignorant as Desmond was of formal romantic relationships, such as courtship or marriage, those legendary stories of jealous wives asking all sorts of tricky questions still reached his ears by one means or another. The fear of the results of such legends showed clearly on his face.

Just the look on Desmond’s face was answer enough for Claire. Claire wasn’t the best at reading people, but when it came to Desmond, she might as well read minds directly. Claire concluded that Desmond was probably interested in the matter, but it wasn’t something he thought about often, and it wasn’t something he wanted very badly.

Since there was no need for an answer, Claire decided to change the subject. “It’s been some time since we had the opportunity to rest so peacefully. With the city in its current state and everything Garden has been up to, I feel like we haven’t been able to chat much. Things have been a bit chaotic ever since you brought Cecilia home.”

“You’re right; it’s been three months of working nonstop. Between one thing and another, it’s been hard to really have any quality time.” Desmond responded with an apologetic tone.

Desmond’s apology was answered by a laughing Claire. “It also doesn’t help much that you’ve been ravaging my body every chance you get, and I can barely get up the next day.”

Although Desmond knew that Claire was just trying to annoy him, he still felt quite embarrassed. After all, it was true that they hadn’t talked much recently because they were too busy having sex.

Slightly proud of having managed to embarrass Desmond, who used to be somewhat stoic, Claire felt satisfied and was encouraged to change the subject again.

“Why don’t you tell me about your last trips? You have been taking an association mission once a month since you brought Cecilia home, but you have never told me much about it.”

If being punched in the liver by a boxer while watching your wife cheat on you was a type of facial expression, that would be precisely what Desmond would have had when he heard the question.

As Claire had mentioned, Desmond had taken three missions for the association since he got back with Cecilia, from which he drew many of the resources and knowledge he used to strengthen Claire and Garden, as well as some exciting items for himself.

In fact, right now, on the left arm Desmond was using to wrap around Claire’s bare waist, a tattoo could be seen near his wrist. The tattoo was a small wheel made of hundreds of black and white feathers mixed together; it was one of Desmond’s rewards from his travels.

In terms of results, Desmond couldn’t complain; these had been high-reward missions. The missions weren’t overly complicated or anything like that either. There were no hidden conspiracies or ancient evils that returned for revenge to unleash their wrath right where Desmond was passing.

It could be said that they were pretty normal missions, which was to be expected; it would be too ridiculous if Desmond couldn’t even take a step without running into some disastrous and incredibly complicated event. After all, ancient evils and sinister conspiracies would not wait for Desmond to pass by to occur.

Despite all of the above, Desmond had been through a world of misery through his missions, or rather, through three worlds of misery. It was as if the universe conspired against him to marathon the worst day of his life.

His first mission was to visit a primitive world to retrieve cargo that was aboard some kind of crashed spaceship. Because the ship had a few moments before hitting the ground, the transport coordinates were quite precise, so locating the cargo wasn’t too tricky.

This was where the hunter association got kind of redundant and weird; fixing an incident like this should have been absurdly easy, but they still sent hunters across the multiverse to do it. From the few words he got from Titania and Katya, Desmond already had more than a few suspicions about the association, but that was a topic for another day.

In any case, it turned out that locating the cargo was not difficult. What became quite tricky was the escape. By a twist of fate, some kind of small-scale cosmic event was taking place then, so the teleportation system was down for a couple of hours.

The thing that Elaisa called a dimensional tidal wave lasted for quite a while, which usually wouldn’t be much of a problem, but there were two things that Desmond hadn’t expected at all.

The first thing that surprised Desmond was that he faced a tide of his own kind on the planet he was on. The second surprise was that the wave was made of thousands, if not millions, of spiders.

It turned out that the planet Desmond was sent to was predominantly inhabited by spiders, a detail he didn’t hear when talking to Elaisa because he was distracted at the time.

Although Desmond couldn’t be said to have arachnophobia, his hatred and revulsion for spiders were no small thing. One can imagine what it was like for Desmond to run for hours from a bloody tsunami of killer spiders of all shapes, sizes, and colors.

By the time the teleportation system was activated, and Desmond was able to return to the association, his body was already clouded with all sorts of strange fluids from all the spiders he had killed; Needless to say, it was an unpleasant experience.

Whether luck or misfortune, the size of the bounty forced Desmond to swallow his rancor and nod obediently. As for the three days he spent having nightmares where he was chased by seas of spiders? It just happened that Claire was on her special days during those dates, so she didn’t spend the night in Desmond’s room, which saved the exhausted hunter some explaining.

Listening to the whole story, Claire couldn’t stop battling between worry and laughter. On some part, Claire knew that everything Desmond went through was for his family, to get stronger as fast as possible to survive in this ever-changing world. On the other hand, Desmond’s bad luck had reached legendary levels during his history, and it was hard not to laugh a little.

Laughing, Claire couldn’t help but comment. “Maybe it was karma for bringing a girl as pure and kind as Cecilia to a den of wolves.”