Children of a Lesser God

Laz's internal alarm was rather reliable. It usually woke him up at dawn every morning without fail and this morning proved to be no different. What was different was that Laz's memories of the previous night were very vague after he got done helping Abraham.

As such, when he woke up, he found that there was an arm laying against his chest, surprising him. More than that, when he tried to move his body a little, he found out that there was also a leg that had intertwined with his, causing him to be locked up and unable to move without first moving the leg.

Feeling a soft, warm burst of air hit his face, Laz turned his head and noticed that Julia was in bed with him. Knowing this, he quickly figured out that they must had passed out after assisting Abraham. As such, Julia ended up crawling into bed with him and using him as her personal body pillow which she was hugging tightly.

Laz felt a bit awkward considering the circumstances. Perhaps if he had been younger and more daring, Laz would have tried something. He wasn't a saint after all. But sometimes things weren't as simple as black and white.

Sure, Julia was a beautiful woman and Laz wouldn't deny this. But Laz didn't have feelings for her in that way and he didn't think she had feelings for him either. As such, seeing her cuddled up next to him, Laz didn't really have a reaction.

At first.

The problem was that as Laz tried to pry himself out of her embrace, Julia latched on tighter and wouldn't let him go, causing him to remain trapped. Laz's hope was that he could escape without waking her and thus avoid an embarrassing situation. For the moment though, that didn't seem possible.

Laz decided to change his approach. Instead of freeing himself all at once, he tried moving bits and pieces of himself out of her grasp. An arm here and a leg here while sliding himself sideways seemed to work the best. Just when Laz felt like he might have gotten free, Julia grabbed him and pulled him tight against herself. She even ended up ŀicking his cheek while softly whispering, "tasty." Laz really wondered what kind of dream she was having.

If all of that wasn't bad enough, with his moving around, his one hand had ended up stuffed between her legs, in an area that was far warmer than others.

At this point, Laz only had two options. One, he could continue to try to struggle loose. Or two, he could wake her.

Consider the kind of predicament he got himself into the first time, Laz decided to wake her.

"Ahem," Laz cleared his throat.

Julia responded by snuggling up closer to Laz.

"Ahem," he tried again. This time, Julia started stirring a little bit.

Laz didn't move and instead just looked at Julia's face. Just as she was about to open her eyes, Laz turned his head and closed his own eyes, pretending to still be asleep.

Maybe it was a cheap way out of the situation, but Laz was trying to save Julia from embarrassment as well. After all, she had been a big help to him the night before.

When Julia fully opened her eyes, she immediately noticed Laz laying there with steady, measured breathing, causing her to be confused. After a few moments of confusion though, she quickly figured out what had happened. Just as she was about to scream, she covered her own mouth to stop herself after removing her hands from Laz's body.

After taking a few deep breaths, Julia calmed herself enough and noticed that she was still wearing clothes while Laz was still dressed in what he was wearing the night before. It was easy to tell that they had both just gotten tired and fell asleep unintentionally. Thinking about everything that had happened, Julia couldn't help but take a quick moment to observe Laz's 'sleeping' face with a smile, something that Laz had never really seen her do before.

After that moment, Julia started to uncover herself and tried sliding down the bed in an effort to not disturb Laz. It was at this moment that she accidently rubbed herself against his hand, almost causing her to yell out again in surprise. Luckily she stopped herself again in time while spreading her legs and gently moving his arm. After another moment, she was able to get herself down to the bottom of the bed and get free. She stood up, walked towards the door and quietly whispered "thank you," before heading out.

Laz's fake sleeping didn't fool her in the slightest.

As the door closed, Laz opened his eyes and sat up, rubbing his head while laughing..

'Either way, looks like everything is good.' Laz looked over at Abraham and scanned him with his spiritual sense before confirming that everything was ok. Abraham's breathing was normal and his body seemed vigorous and full of energy. In fact, it looked like he had already made his way into the mid stage of the awakening realm considering the amount of energy in his body.

Laz was presently surprised.

And also a bit worried.

Abraham wasn't like him and Laz didn't know what his situation was like. Now that he was an infected, his life would change in ways that he couldn't imagine.

But no matter what, at least he was still alive.

Laz was thinking about going out to do some exercises when he suddenly decided not to. He realized his head and his heart weren't in it today. So much had happened yesterday that Laz was just a jumble of thoughts and feelings that he didn't know what to make of it.

Closing his eyes, Laz assumed a lotus position and tried something he had never really done before, mediation.

Laz tried several different things, deep breaths, calming thoughts, even humming to himself. But he still found that he couldn't settle his thoughts. It was like trying to contain an explosion using your hands. No matter how hard you tried, you would fail.

After a while of nothing, Laz decided to try something else.

Laz started circulating his infinity technique, causing the sparse energy in the air to flow towards him at a faster rate. Normally, Laz circulated it as regularly as breathing, but there was a huge difference in effect when he focused on it.

As the energy swirled around and went in and out of his system, Laz noticed that a few of his own energy pathways weren't as normal as they should be. Having not done this in a while, Laz had not noticed that there was some room for improvement, especially after the experience he had with Abraham and Sarah.

Seeing this, Laz got to work right away, using his black flame to remodel the pathways that seemed to have been stressed, blocked or even just irregular. Laz was able to feel the effects of this as he continued to circulate the energy around. Even change made the flow easier. Every smoothed path, every adjusted pathway, every part that Laz changed around caused the energy flow to increase it's speed. In the same way that the fastest path between two points is a straight line, the changes Laz made caused his energy to be able to flow through his body in a much faster way.

Before he started, even when focusing, Laz was at most able to circulate the energy around his body about 10 to 11 times a minute. As he worked though, the time it took for one full rotation decreased, allowing him to circulate fully more times per minute.

When Laz finished with the abnormalities, he realized that he was able to circulate his energy around 30 times per minute, an increase of almost 300 percent. Seeing this, Laz was thrilled.

Take a gun for example. No matter how big the chamber is or the bullet you can put in it, if the barrel of the isn't big enough, you'll never be able to successfully fire the shot. You will always be restricted in caliber of the bullet. In that way, as Laz's foundational center increased in power, although he was able to use the more concentrated energy, he was still limited by how much he could bring out at a time.

But now, having fixed the problem of the pathways, Laz could bring out almost 300% more power.

There was almost no way to describe how much stronger this would make his energy based attacks. If before all he could do was let out a stream of black flames, now he was able to let out a firehose worth of it.

But Laz wasn't done yet. As he was working, Laz noticed that his black flame truly was designed for this type of work. He could use the flame to slowly mold the pathways, causing them to expand. As such, with bigger pathways, Laz could exert even more power. The only problem was that this would be slow going since he could only do it a little bit at a time. After all, he couldn't just enlarge one part of the pathway while ignoring the same pathway further down. All that would do would be to cause the pathway to burst as too much energy traveled down it.

As such, he was going to have to go slow and work on it a little bit at a time, piece by piece.

Despite having meditated for almost three hours now, Laz was only able to expand about one percent of the pathways safely. He was going to need a lot more time to successfully complete this.

Opening his eyes, Laz was excited about his gains. He realized that he would have to spend more time mediating to improve himself. Perhaps working out made the body stronger, but now he had a way to improve other aspects of his abilities.

Laz noticed that Abraham was still sleeping and checked the time, seeing that it was already past when he would have normally gotten up and started exercising. Spreading out his sense, he noticed that everyone except for him, Abraham and Julia were outside, drinking coffee and talking.

Since he had no plans to work out today, Laz instead decided to hit the shower before making himself a cup of coffee and heading outside. He had been busy lately and hadn't been spending time with everyone like he wanted to. He didn't have a hidden agenda in doing so, he just enjoyed interacting with others after having spent so much time alone. Especially normal people.

After finishing his shower, getting dressed and grabbing his coffee, Laz strolled outside and sat down before noticing that everyone was giving him strange looks, especially Benny and Eddy.

"What?"

"Nothing," they both responded at the same time, causing Laz to be even more suspicious.

Laz stared at them for a moment with a half smile on his face until they turned away. Laz then looked over at Steph, Madison and Angie. Their reactions were rather similar to Benny and Eddy, except Madison and Angie's faces turned bright red while Steph looked like she wanted to say something.

"Alright, come on. Spill it. What is it you want to say?" Laz had a feeling that it had something to do with last night.

Steph was the first one to speak up.

"We aren't kink shaming here, ok? Everyone has their own likes and dislikes, but none of us thought that you were the type that liked to be dominated, that's all. It's just surprising." Steph said with a straight and supportive face.

"I'm... wait. What?"

"It's cool buddy. Me and Benny were talking about it too. Like, how do you know you won't like something unless you try it, you know? So we were thinking it might be fun to visit a place that specializes in that and maybe have a bit of an adventure. We decided to invite the girls as well since why the hell not?"

"Because... it's just not normal. That's all," the apparently reserved Madison said.

"It's very normal," Steph commented back.

"It is, actually. A talented dominatrix knows just how much and how little to treat a man. There is no need to feel ashamed either," the normally quiet Angie added on, causing everyone to look at her. Feeling the attention on her, Angie got a bit more red and tried to hide her face in her cup.

"I... I've missed something here, didn't I?" Laz figured they would be scolding him for being loud while 'having sex,' with Julia. But it seemed like they had the wrong impression of what went on.

"No, no. It's nothing. It's nice to see that a strong man such as yourself enjoys being treated roughly," Steph replied back in a comforting tone.

Laz froze up as understanding dawned on him. He couldn't help but laugh soon after.

"Umm... I think you all have the wrong idea."

"Hey. It's fine. No need to explain. We are happy you and Julia have your shared interest. But I'm surprised about Abraham though. He didn't seem like the type," Benny added in, causing everyone to nod their head in agreement.

"He was sleeping with headphones in. I think he went to bed sick and he didn't stir in the slightest," Laz understood that explaining wasn't going to get him anywhere and could only accept his fate. The only thing he could do at this point was to save poor Abraham's reputation since his was obviously a trash fire right now.

"Ahh..." Everyone collectively nodded in understanding. Apparently it was easier for them to imagine that Laz was the one with the fetish while Abraham was normal.

"Well, next time if you need some space, just send Abraham over to our side of the house. He can always just cuddle up with me since he reminds me of my little brother," Angie offered in a honest way.

Benny, Eddy and Laz shook their heads at her statement but agreed anyway. No man wants to hear an attractive girl say he reminds her of her little brother and that makes him safe. Even if he doesn't like her in that way, it still hurts the ego.

Just then Julia walked outside after having showered and gotten herself a cup of coffee from the girls side.

"Good morning mistress Julia!" Benny and Eddy said at the same time as though it was planned. Laz couldn't help but spit out his coffee he had just sipped while Angie, Madison and Steph giggled.

Julia couldn't help but look at everyone in confusion.