After the seal broke, not much else happened. I felt like I had more energy and strength, but I didn’t feel any different.
“Has my personality changed again?” I asked.
“Let’s see… heads or tails.” She flipped a coin.
She caught it. “Nope.”
I glowered. “I would have picked it… it would have been… Crap.”
“I was worried that might happen.” She admitted. “You were able to heal the damage to your soul, but it’s like regrowing an arm. It’s just not the same.”
She said that like it was a very normal thing to say. I had heard that even arms could be reattached or grown from nothing with the right magic, but as a White Mage, I still hadn’t gotten a spell powerful enough to do it.
“H-have you ever had to regrow an arm?” I asked, suddenly feeling a bit suspicious.
“No!’ She cried out, blushing. “That.. never happened…”
Although she said that, she wasn’t looking me in the eyes.
“I just heard from a friend… that it’s never the same. Like it never feels quite like the first arm. That’s not saying it’s worse or better, just that it’s new.”
I shook my head deciding not to ask any more questions on that, as she already looked sufficiently bullied.
“Whatever, so you’re saying that the piece of soul I lost is gone now.”
“Well, if it exists, it isn’t a part of you anymore. You have a complete soul once again.”
“Your slave bond restored, but the other girls didn’t…” I still couldn’t feel them.
Carmine’s expression grew a bit worried. “I know. It almost felt like my connection to the weaker part of your soul was severed, and then reconnected to you. The other girls are likely too distant, so it was not able to create a connection with them.
“My blessings are also gone,” I said, looking at my arms and legs which were blissfully free from them.
“You may not ever be able to recover those blessings, Master.”
I took a deep breath but then nodded to myself. The tattoos weren’t exactly something I wanted. As for the benefits they gave me, they did allow me numerous affinities and perks, but I was never terribly comfortable with most of what they gave me, and I often considered them curses as much as blessings. They had forced the girls to remain my slaves, even if they wanted to leave. They had increased their affinity for me, making them feel things that might have exceeded what was natural.
Although I had accepted their love, and vowed to accept the love of all the women in my life, that didn’t mean I wasn’t always aware of my slave affinity.
I still had my points, and that was what mattered. Then again, it’d be nice if I had at least one tattoo so I could re-access the dungeon store.
On that note, I tried to cast a Portal, only for it to fizzle out. I didn’t have my ability to travel out of the dungeon. Even if I had the blessing, giving the strange nature of this dungeon that supposedly sat in a bubble outside of reality, I had no clue how good my Portal was.
I cast Portal one more time, this time aiming for the fort. The Portal opened without a problem. As long as we were within the same area of a dungeon, it would work. At least we had resolved the issue with walking. Carmine and I took a step through and returned to the fort.