Chapter 163: The Price of Staying Awake (R-18)

Max somehow managed to keep her there for another half hour, constantly pestering her for more kisses and finding one excuse after another to delay her.

Yennefer’s patience was wearing thinner by the minute.

Every time she thought she was finally finished, Max would appear beside her again with that shameless grin, as though the previous excuse hadn’t already been rejected.

"Max..."

She said his name more than once, each time with increasing irritation.

Eventually, she stopped arguing altogether and simply endured his relentless pestering with a look of exhausted disbelief.

By the time she finally managed to put all her clothes back on, Yennefer looked like a woman who had just completed an entirely unnecessary second battle.

Even now, a few buttons on Yennefer’s shirt were still undone, with her gray bra slightly visible underneath as she made her way downstairs, bag in hand.

Max stood behind her, still dressed only in his underwear, looking far too pleased with himself after everything that had happened.

As she headed down the stairs, Yennefer suddenly called back, "I want to learn about those array-making processes next time, so make sure you have some notes ready..."

Max nodded.

"Well, if Zerena is out again tomorrow, this will officially be your classroom. So come as early as you can in the morning. The classes are going to be quite long..."

Yennefer stopped at the bottom of the stairs and gave him an annoyed look.

After spending this much time with Max, she was unfortunately starting to understand his sense of humor.

"Getting some hold over me doesn’t mean I’ll stop beating you..."

With that, Yennefer finally left the house. Max let out a tired sigh and simply collapsed onto the bed. He was exhausted, but a huge smile slowly spread across his face. He had finally lost his virginity.

And somehow, he’d even managed to do it twice on his first time. For Max, that wasn’t just a memorable first experience. That was an achievement worth being proud of.

And soon, Max was completely fast asleep.

It was only approaching evening, but Max had been awake continuously since yesterday morning. More than a full day without proper sleep had already caught up with him, and things had certainly not been restful during those hours.

In that time, he’d gone through roughly ten orgasms as well.

Even Max’s absurdly high energy had limits.

His body felt heavy, his eyes had been struggling to stay open, and whatever little energy remained in him was quickly disappearing. Normally, he would’ve spent the rest of the evening thinking about everything that had happened, pestering Zerena to come home early, or trying his luck by asking her to send him some nudes.

But not today.

The moment he finally collapsed onto the bed, sleep claimed him almost immediately

His eyes finally opened when a beam of annoyingly bright sunlight hit his face.

Max blinked at the ceiling.

Then he remembered.

He had forgotten to close the curtains last evening.

With a tired groan, he sat up and stretched. His entire body felt surprisingly relaxed, but the soreness around his hips immediately reminded him just how much he’d put himself through the previous day.

And, for some ridiculous reason, Max was proud of it.

The soreness wasn’t exactly pleasant, but he couldn’t help seeing it as proof of his achievement.

’So this is what it feels like after having sex?’

He looked down at himself, then gave a satisfied little smile.

He had spent an entire day exhausting himself, finally lost his virginity, and somehow managed to turn the whole experience into another protagonist achievement.

His gaze dropped toward his crotch, where the shape of his erection was still obvious beneath his underwear.

It was still early morning, yet Max had already slept for more than twelve hours straight.

Apparently, his body had finally decided to collect all the sleep he’d been missing.

He reached for his phone and checked the screen.

There were a few missed calls from Zerena, along with a couple of messages—but all of them were from the previous evening.

Max stared at the notifications for a moment.

So while he had been completely knocked out, Zerena had apparently been trying to reach him.

This probably would’ve given the old Max an existential crisis.

The current Max?

He simply ignored the thought and put his phone aside.

He just missed having Zerena nearby, where he could relax against her and let his uncomfortable morning wood settle down.

And now, Max didn’t know whether to blame his ridiculous luck or the strength of his own wishes.

Because no sooner had he finished washing up and brushing his teeth than Zerena suddenly appeared from downstairs.

Max stared at her.

Apparently, his desire to have her around that morning had been strong enough to summon her.

Max looked surprised when he saw Zerena coming upstairs with a few bags in her hands.

He quickly stepped forward, took them from her, and looked at her curiously.

"You came early?"

"Yeah..." Zerena nodded tiredly, looking like she had barely gotten any proper rest. "The meeting was scheduled for this morning, so I left yesterday evening and traveled through the night to make sure I could attend it."

There were faint signs of exhaustion on her face, and even her voice sounded heavier than usual.

Max looked surprised.

"You traveled all the way back just for that? Wasn’t it dangerous?"

Zerena gave him a tired look.

"I didn’t exactly have much choice."

"And it’s not that serious. Only a few incidents happen at night, and most of them involve other humans, so traveling here at night isn’t really that dangerous."

She said it casually, though Max knew there had been a few reports during the past month about people running into trouble while traveling here from the cities at night.

Still, compared to everything else happening around the army post, Zerena seemed to consider it nothing worth worrying about.

With the army post connected directly to three cities and several nearby settlements, the area usually had far more traffic than a truly remote location.

Because of that, traveling here at night wasn’t considered especially dangerous.

It wasn’t exactly a quiet, isolated road in the middle of nowhere.

Max offered her some water before returning to the kitchen to finish preparing breakfast. He was already in the middle of making it when he glanced back at her.

"Did you have something to eat?"

Zerena shook her head.

"Could you make me a sandwich, if you can...?"

Max nodded and got to work.

Max nodded. He was already making a sandwich for himself anyway, and it was going to be a fairly heavy one.

He’d burned through quite a lot of energy over the last forty or so hours. The twelve-plus hours of sleep had recovered a good portion of it, but he still felt a little lightheaded and, more importantly, extremely hungry.

At this point, Max’s body was making one thing very clear:

He needed food.

Max had already laid out everything he needed for two heavy sandwiches.

He started with generous layers of thinly sliced dried meat, then added fresh tomato slices, some other salad vegetables, and several slices of mozzarella. With how hungry he was, he wasn’t exactly being conservative with the portions.

He quickly stacked everything together, pressed the sandwiches into shape, and had both ready in barely a minute.

Meanwhile, Zerena had gone back into the bedroom, where she had her travel bag set down near the bed. She was changing out of the clothes she’d traveled in and into something more comfortable.

By the time Max finished preparing breakfast, Zerena was still in the bedroom getting changed.

Seeing how quickly Max had prepared everything, Zerena looked surprised.

She finished changing and stepped over to him just as he handed her the sandwich, her discarded clothes left on the floor nearby.

Max wasn’t caught completely off guard, but he still glanced at her for a moment before turning his attention back to his own sandwich.

Zerena took a bite and nodded appreciatively.

"It’s nice. Did you put on the same garlic-lemon sauce?"

Max nodded as he took a bite of his own.

"Just a bit."

Max sat down on the bed while Zerena finished changing nearby. She handed him her half-eaten sandwich, apparently expecting him to hold onto it for her.

"You really are good at cooking things up. Potion food or otherwise, it’s always great..." she said.

Max took the sandwich back and finished another bite.

"That useless daughter of mine couldn’t even make good instant noodles..."

Zerena said it with the casual disappointment of a mother who had clearly complained about this before.

Max simply nodded along, taking another bite with a satisfied expression.

"So, when are you supposed to go for this meeting?" Max asked.

He was almost gulping down his sandwich at this point.

Max found himself facing a surprisingly difficult decision: should he focus on Zerena standing nearby while she was still getting dressed, or listen to the much more immediate demands of his mouth and stomach?

His stomach won.

For once, food had managed to defeat Max’s perverseness.