Close Encounters of the Monster Kind

Her Little Guinea Pig (Lich)

Icarus looked over the quest board. A slime outbreak in the sewers... nah. He had seen a request for an Arachne hunt... but apparently some other party already took that quest. Huh...

Nothing really up to his standards, stopping a gang of goblins, dealing with a Devil Bug infestation... just some really basic stuff.

However one quest stood out to him. It was written in elegant handwriting, and simply asked if an adventurer would like to explore some ruins.

Icarus shrugged. Why not? Most ruins probably have lots of ancient treasures, and he might find a powerful monster inside it. Sure.

So he accepted the quest, and prepared for the trip.

He was a pretty good ranger in his opinion, surely he can handle some monsters on his own.

He approached the ruins in around a day's travel, and looked down into a dark tunnel leading downwards.

"Huh..." he said, lighting a torch, "glad I brought a torch with me."

As he walked into the darkness, he noticed a distinct lack of monsters. Like, there was almost nothing there.

"That's odd... and it's awfully clean..." Icarus noted, "this feels way different than just some ruins..."

He looked up to see a pair of eyes staring at him, he didn't even have time to react before she raised her hand and whispered "Sleep..."

And then he passed out.

He woke up a few hours later strapped to a table, and his shirt had been torn off.

"You've finally woken up..." a woman's voice said.

Icarus looked at his kidnapper. Her skin was deathly pale, and her hair only went down to her shoulders. Her eyes looked emotionless, and her expression remained neutral. She wore a black cloak, and she had magic symbols drawn all over her body.

A lich, Icarus thought, and he began to panic a little bit. He tried to escape his bindings, but he couldn't.

"Escape is impossible." The lich said, "I've set up traps everywhere in the ruins. No one is getting in, and no one is getting out. Not to mention the undead army I conjured to guard it." She reached over and grabbed a vial of a glowing pink liquid and examined it.

"I've spent years preparing for this..." she murmured, "I'm glad I can finally test out some of my experiments."

She uncorked the vial and drank it.

Her body faintly glowed a bright pink color for a second, but the lich never lost her calm expression.

"Interesting..." she mumbled, "I thought the combination of Corruption Fruit juice mixed in with Alraune Nectar would create a much stronger aphrodisiac, but the only thing I feel right now is that I'm slightly more arousal than normal, instead of the uncontrollable urges I hypothesized would happen."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Icarus asked her.

"Magic is an interesting phenomenon, isn't it?" The lich asked, turning towards him after grabbing another vial of the pink substance. "So is pleasure. They both are quite mysterious. What causes magic to happen, why do we feel pleasure? When I turned myself into a lich, I made it my duty to discover the greatest mysteries of magic itself, but I found another... stronger interest in studying the effects magic has on pleasure. Perhaps if I can understand the depths of pleasure, maybe I will be able to understand the secrets of magic as well. Here, drink this."

The lich opened the vial and held it up to Icarus's lips.

"Drink it." She told him calmly.