Chapter 400: Difference of Opinion

While there were many wonderful things about having a bevy of beautiful lovers to share her life with, there were a few drawbacks as well. One of those drawbacks was actually a boon in most cases, but at the moment, it didn’t feel like one. Multiple lovers meant multiple perspectives and opinions. And with such a varied group with strong and differing personalities, as well as different backgrounds and life experiences, those opinions didn’t exactly line up all the time. Jadis was reminded of an old saying: put two people together and you’ll get three opinions.

“Bonded Harem Leader is perfect,” Kerr insisted once more. “It’ll boost our power, which will boost Jadis’ power! And it’s a bonded class! Come on!”

“It’s not even comparable to Cycle Breaker of the Gods,” Aila calmly reasoned. “If multiple gods are offering their support, how can you simply walk away from that offer? The power such a class would grant has to be comparable to a Hero class.”

“That may be true,” Eir said, her tone no less certain than Aila’s clear voice. “But the Progenitor of the Succubi will help ensure the safety and growth of Jadis’ children. A new race born onto Oros, one with our Jadis’ bloodline at the start. I do not believe such a unique and unheard-of class is something to be dismissed out of hand.”

“Just because it’s unique doesn’t mean it’ll be any good,” Bridget reminded Eir. “I started with a pretty unique class and it was basically trash until I met Jadis and she was able to give me the stat boost I needed. Progenitor might be great, or it might have some weird, hard to please requirements for its skills that make it basically unusable.”

“I don’t think that will be true,” Sabina argued. “This is Jadis’ tertiary class. It’s very rare for a tertiary class to not be something that is geared specifically towards the person it is being offered to. Not that I’m saying that it should be chosen over the other classes, I’m really not sure which I would pick if I were in Jadis’ shoes, which are shoes that definitely wouldn’t fit on me because her feet are huge, but I don’t think the Progenitor class would have skills that Jadis couldn’t use since she’s both extremely capable and she has all of us to help her as well.”

“Still might be a trap, though,” Sorcha frowned in thought. “From Samleos, I mean. Probably don’t want to get your hopes up around that class when it could be something that Samleos is trying to bait you into picking. For that matter, Cycle Breaker could be a trick, too. I’ve never heard of a class where multiple gods lend their power before. Not even with Heros. Don’t you think that’s kind of suspicious?”

“No…” Alex said in her simple terms. “Cycle is… Still wrong though… Choose… Progenitor…”

“Oh, come on, Alex!” Kerr groaned as she shook a hand at the Demon. “You’re a Bonded class too! The Harem Leader will benefit you just as much as me! And you know that everyone else here is going to get a bonded class. I bet even the green gloom butt will get a bonded class! Just look at how much she ogles Jadis when she thinks no one is looking.”

“Hey!”

“Well you do!” Kerr stuck out her tongue at Sorcha. “It’s not like it matters. We all stare at Jadis. She’s hotter than dragon fire on a summer’s day.”

“Okay, fine, I stare at her,” Sorcha crossed her arms in front of her while glowering at the therion. “But I’m not a ‘gloom butt’ you prick. And put a shirt on!”

“Why? Are my bare tatas too distracting for you?” Kerr teased as she shook her chest back and forth.

“Yes!” the goblin yelped as she pushed Kerr back when she got too close. “Your boobs are very distracting when I’m trying to think about actually important things! Jadis, help me out here!”

Without comment, Dys whipped a blanket around Kerr from behind, covering her torso completely before dragging the struggling woman back and onto her lap. She would have forced a shirt over her head, but Kerr’s horns made that sort of maneuver tricky. So instead, she treated her like a disobedient cat and wrapped her up like a burrito, ignoring her muffled protests. When Dys was done, she set Kerr down on her side on the bed next to where she sat, letting her head rest in her lap. Though Dys kept one hand on the therion’s horns to keep her from poking the tips into her stomach.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” Dys nodded. “Please continue.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Kerr grumbled.

“No, you get a ten-minute time out for lewd taunting,” Dys warned her. “Remember, we’re trying to focus here.”

“Fucking Metethys’ tits…” she groaned as she wiggled around inside her woolen cocoon. After a few seconds though, she looked up and smirked at Dys. “This would make for a pretty kinky sex thing, though. You could do anything you want with my mouth right now.”

“Another lewd foul,” Dys said, though her she felt her cock twitch at the suggestion. Maybe she wasn’t as dead tired as she had thought. “Another five-minute penalty.”

“Alright,” Aila spoke up, “Weird punishments aside for the moment, let’s review what we know again. Which isn’t much, I know, but let’s see if we missed anything.”

Jadis didn’t mean to sigh, but she couldn’t help the mental one. After several hours of circular debates, she could feel her patience waning. Part of that was due to it being somewhere around five in the morning. She was tired, exhausted really, and starting to feel a little sleep-drunk. Not that she felt like she could actually sleep. She still felt so wound up from everything that happened. Yet, at the same time, she wanted nothing more than to just let her heads hit the soft pillows on the bed and fall into a dreamless slumber for the next week or two.

The discussion of Jadis’ four tertiary class options had gone on so long that they had been forced to abandon the temple bathhouse. The girls were turning into prunes from soaking for so long, though Jadis was surprised to learn that her fingers didn’t prune. She hadn’t known that about Nephilim biology. A minor point, but still. In any case, they had made their way back to their shared suite and had continued to discuss the options in privacy.

There were basically four camps of thought among Jadis’ companions. Excluding her own opinion, the others had drawn lines of sorts and were each arguing for their own perspective on what was the best class to choose.

Aila strongly argued in favor of the Cycle Breaker class, with Bridget adding her own support to that opinion. From their mixed perspective, Cycle Breaker was simply too powerful both in raw potential and political capital to not take. Just having a class that proclaimed she had the support of multiple gods was by itself a massive boon, since it cut through any argument that others might have against her purpose in the world. She was blessed quite literally by the gods. Cycle Breaker was essentially a Hero class without the Hero, at least on the face of it.

The arguments against Cycle Breaker mostly revolved around how others felt that their own choice of class was better. No one thought that Cycle Breaker was a bad class, except that Sorcha had put one seed of doubt into the mix. They didn’t know which gods were offering their support. Jadis presumed it would be D, Lyssandria, and maybe Villthyrial since he had given her the magic grub. They didn’t know for sure, though, and that left things nebulous. While the others didn’t see that unknown factor as too much of an issue, Jadis agreed with Sorcha on that point. She didn’t like the idea of potentially binding herself to patrons that she didn’t know. She didn’t think it would be a problem, but there was some nagging doubt in her that she couldn’t quite set aside.

Eir and Alex were adamant that Jadis choose the Progenitor class. Alex’s reasoning was simple enough. From her perspective, the only priority was making sure that her and Jadis’ children were given the best possible chance at life. They had no idea what challenges a Succubus might face, both from the world and from their own unknown biology, but a class that was centered around aiding the new lifeform was the obvious best choice so far as the Demon was concerned. Eir felt the same way, though her own opinion had some additions. Her interpretation of the class description was that since it said “your offspring” instead of Succubi specifically, that meant the skills and spells could be useful for any of Jadis’ children, not just her and Alex. Since Jadis, Lyssandria, and pretty much everyone related to Lyssandria’s faith, wanted the Nephilim to be repopulated, a class that was beneficial to her progeny, even as a side effect, could be a great help.

One point that Eir had made, which was both a pro and a con in terms of the Progenitor class, was that Jadis and Alex’s children, should they have more, were not guaranteed to be more Succubi. Since they were both Avatar races, that meant there was actually a better chance that if either were to impregnate the other again, the resultant offspring could be either a Nephilim, or a Demon. Having a class that could potentially help Jadis deal with having literal Demon kids might be a good idea. If the class worked that way, which was a big If.

Kerr was the primary proponent of the Harem Leader class. From her perspective, anything that helped Jadis’ lovers grow stronger was something that would enable all of them to better protect both themselves and their future children. There was definitely some selfish motivation in the mix, Kerr freely admitted. The idea of Jadis being bonded to them with a class was deeply enticing to her. Even the others had to admit that the thought was attractive. Kerr knew her love for Jadis was true, and that Jadis loved her back in equal measure. She didn’t need Jadis to have a bonded class to know that. But she still wanted Jadis to have a bonded class.

In all honesty, it wasn’t a bad argument. Putting aside the purely personal reasoning, Kerr was right that the more she and the rest of Jadis’ lovers grew in power, the more they and their little tribe would be protected from harm. That was a desirable outcome, so far as Jadis was concerned. The counterpoint that others made though, was that Jadis already had her Ritualist class. She was already capable of empowering her lovers, and chances were good that she’d get more rituals to empower them further as she leveled that class. Additionally, as Aila logically pointed out, they were all already very dependent on Jadis’ rituals to remain powerful. Making it so that they were even more dependent on Jadis for power wasn’t a tactically sound strategy. As they had just experienced when Jadis had been knocked out of commission for weeks on end, they couldn’t guarantee that they would also be able to rely on Jadis being around to empower them.

Sabina and Sorcha were in what Jadis was referring to as the fence-sitter camp. Neither argued strongly for one class or another. Sabina tended to focus on the good points of all the classes, while Sorcha had a habit of pointing out the potential pitfalls. Both offered useful insights, but since neither could fully commit to a class, they weren’t acting as any kind of tiebreaker. If anything, they were keeping the debate going.

Thea, on the other hand…

“Hey,” Jay tapped her quiet lover on the shoulder. “You haven’t said anything for a while. Don’t you have an opinion on the classes?”

Thea’s lips thinned in a slight frown as she considered Jay’s question. She was sitting on one of the couches, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her legs tucked up underneath her. She had said a few things earlier in the conversation, though for a long time now she had been silent. Jay sat on the floor near the brunette, half turning around to look Thea in the eye.

“I d—do,” she said as she took Jay’s hand in hers. “But I think your, ah, opinion matters more. It’s your c—class. You should d—decide. Not, ah, me or anyone else.”

Jay’s lips quirked up in a mile.

“Thanks Thea,” she said sincerely as she placed a kiss on the back of her sweet shieldmaiden’s hand. “I know. I’m just not too certain what I want myself. Hearing everyone’s opinions is helping me sort out my own thoughts.”

There was one class Jadis knew she absolutely was not going to pick: no need to sort her thoughts on that one. Champion of D was completely out of the running. The main reason behind her choice was the stated class mechanics from the description. Jadis had already been offered some random chance skills and spells with her Mirror Knight class and they had been far too unreliable for her to consider taking. A whole class dedicated to spells of that nature sounded like a nightmare. Jadis had no doubt the Champion class was powerful, maybe even Hero levels of powerful, but the potential cost was too great. Maybe if she didn’t have lovers to worry about or future children to care for, she might have chosen Champion of D. But that version of her would have been the kind of lonely person who didn’t much care about what happened to those around her. That wasn’t who Jadis was or ever wanted to be.

“Look, I don’t think there’s any point in going on with this any longer,” Jay interrupted Aila’s recounting of the facts. “I mean, we’re all exhausted, so we aren’t thinking straight. Alex excluded, of course.”

Alex nodded once in acknowledgement. The Demon didn’t need to sleep, after all, so the time of day made no difference to her.

“We need sleep. We also need to talk these options over with some other people. I want to do the oracle ritual with you, Eir, before I make any decisions. I think I might want to talk with Aurea and maybe some of the other high priests, too.”

“Probably Vraekae,” Dys grumbled. Seeing the look the others gave her, she shrugged her shoulders. “She knows he shit when it comes to politics. Getting her perspective on all this isn’t a bad idea. She’d keep her mouth shut, too. I don’t want either prince to know beforehand. I don’t want them trying to interfere.”

“I think we may want to consult with Lady Jocelyn,” Eir suggested. “I believe speaking with the gods is the right choice. If she can also consult with the gods on our behalf, that could help us answer more questions.”

While Jadis agreed in theory, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know whatever answers would come from Jocelyn’s ritual. She was Valtar’s oracle, after all. She wasn’t sure what D’s stepfather had to say about her attempts at breaking the cycle, and she almost dreaded to know the answer.

“We’ll talk about it,” Jay said after a pause. “Not to sound like the voice of reason or anything, but let’s all try to get some rest now. Maybe we can go over the other class options we all unlocked in the morning. I did get an odd-numbered level, after all. I’m sure some of you did, too.”

There were general nods of agreement around the room, which Jadis took as a sign that they all had new class features to go over as a group, and also that no one was objecting to the idea of resuming their talks in the morning. Everyone looked just as tired as Jadis felt. They all really did need to get some sleep. Even if all they wanted to do tomorrow was spend all day talking about their class options, chances were good that outside forces would be interfering in those plans. They needed at least a little rest before the responsibilities of the next day fell upon them.

“Hey, uh, one question,” Sorcha held up a single finger as they all began to rise and make their way towards the bed. “Before we go to sleep, I just have got to ask. What exactly does Cycle Breaker mean when the description says, ‘Your soul has come from beyond the veil?’ That’s kind of a weird statement. It makes you sound like you were dead or something.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Bridget frowned and nodded. “I was kind of ignoring that part since we had so much to talk about, but that is a weird bit, isn’t it?”

“Oh, that?” Sabina blinked in surprise. “Jadis didn’t tell you she’s from another planet yet?”

There was a general silence in the room, broken only by Kerr’s sudden cackles of wicked laughter.

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