Despite having chosen the idea herself, Zerena still looked unconvinced.

"Are you sure this will work?" she asked, her gaze lingering on Max’s hands as they rested against her thighs, slowly caressing them with surprising gentleness.

She remained blissfully unaware that his excitement had already become a very noticeable problem beneath his clothes.

A fact Max had every intention of keeping that way.

As for Max...

He had absolutely no complaints.

The previous two times, Zerena had only been undressed from the waist up.

This, however, was the first time he’d seen her without anything covering her legs.

Naturally, his brain declared the occasion historically significant.

His hands settled along the soft flesh of her inner thighs as she lifted one leg slightly to give him room. They felt pleasantly heavy beneath his palms, yet incredibly soft at the same time, the warmth of her skin making it dangerously easy to forget they were supposedly conducting serious system research.

They were full and generously soft, but not in an unhealthy way. There was a pleasant firmness beneath the softness, subtle muscle giving them shape despite their fullness. They were easily thick enough that even both of Max’s hands couldn’t wrap around one completely.

He couldn’t help wondering how they’d feel pressed against his face.

The skin along her inner thighs felt even softer than the rest—almost like a blend of fine cotton and silk, carrying a faint warmth and the slightest trace of moisture where her legs met.

His fingers kept gliding over them, unable to resist the temptation to simply feel.

The scent drifting from her only made things worse.

By now, Max couldn’t have been any more aroused if he’d actively tried. Every slow caress along her thighs felt less like conducting a system experiment and more like a uniquely cruel form of torture, leaving him painfully aware that he could touch... but couldn’t do anything about the steadily growing problem beneath his clothes.

"First thing tomorrow, revise the recipes before we start," Zerena said.

Max nodded automatically.

His eyes were fixed on the light-colored panties stretched snugly over her butt. They looked comfortably worn, the sort of everyday pair someone reached for without thinking, decorated with faint little floral patterns that had probably been brighter when they were new.

Fortunately for Max the worn out fabric revealed far more than it hid.

His gaze lingered shamelessly, tracing the gentle outline of her butt beneath the panties before drifting lower. From this angle, he could make out the soft shape of her folds pressed lightly against the fabric. Near one side, a few fine strands of hair had escaped, while the faint outline of her bush formed a subtle shadow above the contours of her folds.

The sight nearly drove him insane.

"Did you understand the rune array?" Zerena asked.

She didn’t even look up, her attention still fixed on whatever she was doing on her phone, completely unaware of where Max’s eyes had been the entire time.

Max couldn’t make out what Zerena was typing, nor what she kept absentmindedly swiping through on her phone.

Not that he cared.

His attention was far too occupied by where his own hands currently were.

"Yeah," he answered. "I understood all of them."

Even as he spoke, his mind remained hopelessly divided.

His hands rested on something he’d spent an embarrassing portion of his previous life imagining.

Now they were actually there.

Warm.

Soft.

Real.

His fingers continued their slow, absentminded caresses, and with every passing second it became increasingly difficult not to think about everything else he wanted to do besides simply touching.

He found himself inching a little closer without even realizing it, his shoulder brushing lightly against Zerena’s.

Still focused on her phone, she asked without looking up,

"What about the runes? Did you comprehend all of them?"

Max nodded.

Even though Zerena had already expected that answer, it still surprised her.

She simply hid it well.

Her eyes never left the phone in her hands.

Not even when his fingers happened to brush lightly against the fabric of her panties.

The contact sent a small jolt through Max.

For the briefest instant, his fingertips registered an unexpected softness. He couldn’t tell whether it came from the material of her panties... or from the folds hidden beneath them.

His heart immediately started beating faster.

Unfortunately, courage remained in critically short supply.

He didn’t dare "accidentally" brush against them a second time.

Squeezing her thighs a little more firmly, however?

That still fell comfortably within his personal survival guidelines.

"Yeah," he said, forcing his attention back toward the conversation. "Most of them are array runes. Individually they don’t do much, but when they’re engraved together, they work really well for controlling heat, mana flow, and the other variables during brewing."

As he spoke, his hands slowly slid farther down her thighs until they rested beneath her knees.

On the way back, his fingers drifted just a little too close once again.

Another light, fleeting brush.

This time there was no uncertainty.

The incredible softness hadn’t belonged to the fabric at all.

It had been the folds beneath the panties.

He even caught the faint touch of her trimmed pubic hair through the thin material before immediately continuing upward, doing his absolute best to look as though nothing unusual had happened.

Seeing that Zerena hadn’t exploded at him—and had instead merely nodded before asking another question—Max grew just a little bolder.

His hands squeezed her thighs a little more firmly, gradually working higher, stopping just short of where her butt began.

"You’ll be making them with mana ink, right?" she asked, still focused on her phone. "Have you ever written runes with it before?"

One particularly unfortunate memory immediately surfaced in Max’s mind.

A memory he would’ve much preferred to permanently delete.

He quickly shook his head.

"No. I’ve only engraved them or formed them with mana in the air. But... I think I’ll get the hang of it after a couple of tries."

"Yeah, it’s a lot easier than engraving," Zerena replied with a nod.

Finally, she turned the phone toward him.

A video was already playing, showing a middle-aged mage calmly drawing rune after rune with a fine brush dipped in shimmering mana ink.

"The hardest part isn’t applying the ink," she explained. "It’s keeping the meaning of every rune clear in your mind while you’re drawing it. The more complete your understanding is, the more stable the rune becomes."

She tapped the screen, pausing the video over a neatly completed array.

"Since you don’t seem to have any trouble comprehending runes, just focus on your brush strokes. The cleaner and more precise they are, the easier it’ll be to control the array once it’s activated."