Conquest

by Felix von Falkenlust

  “This is insane,” I said.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. And now, on to the bedroom.”

  She led me down the hall, one side open and looking down onto the front room, and opened the door at the end.

  It was a complete medieval fantasy. Light streaming in from an open shutter revealed tapestries hanging on the walls, a suit of armor in the corner, a big oak chest on the floor, and a canopy of rich textiles surrounding the bed.

  I looked around in amazement, and then my gaze rested on Anaksa, who stood close in front of me. I must have been conditioned by my activities in Conquest, where being next to a bed with a woman inevitably ended up with my being on the bed with said woman, because the next thing I knew my arms were around her and my lips pressed tight on hers.

  Oh shit, I thought nervously when I realized what was happening and that I currently did not look like Karl, but instead was just scrawny Ace Singleton, still wearing his glasses even. But she made no move away from me, if anything she pressed her big chest more firmly against my body.

  Where the kiss had been triggered by the instinctive reaction formed in the game, now that I was in the middle of it, it was kind of strange because of the contrast to the game: this was no level-ten enchantress or archer or merchant; she might have passed for a four or five, only she was decidedly modern with her glasses and her blue hair and her anime shirt.

  But I didn’t care. I knew then that I wanted her. I didn’t care what theoretical level she was, or how she compared to the gorgeous women I had in Conquest, it was what was inside her that made me want to be inside her.

  But then she stepped back, and for a second that horrible feeling of rejection that I always tried so hard to avoid began to rear its ugly head, until I understood the reason she broke away was to lift off her shirt. I quickly followed suit, fighting away my self-consciousness as I unveiled my spaghetti-like arms and thin soft torso, but she didn’t seem to care, and anyway I was busy looking at her hefty chest and then at her wide hips as she slid off her pants.

  I quickly shed my own pants, then I led her to the bed, resisting the urge to throw her on it Karl-style. I eased open her thick thighs and leaned my face toward her center. I didn’t need to earn Experience points, all I needed was to make her feel good.

  The practice I had earning EP in Conquest carried over to this semi-real world, and soon her moans filled the ancient-looking room, and then she pulled me by my shoulders up onto her body—the body of a regular woman, a little chubby, and at that moment all I wanted.

  I slipped into her, my hard flesh nothing like Karl’s Tenner but she cried out anyway, and the sweet softness caressing me felt wonderful, and I’m glad I had brought her so close to the edge a moment ago because a second later the feelings boiled over into climax, but she was right behind me.

  When I opened my eyes a few seconds later, I looked at her face, kind of goofy-looking and decidedly nerdy. Yet I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

  Afterworld, I mean.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  I stayed there with Anaksa on the bed for hours, talking and feeling the warmth of her body against mine. Finally I worked up the courage to ask, “So, are we like . . . a thing?”

  “I’d like to be, if you want to be.”

  “I do.” After sleeping with women like Anna as Karl, was I really committing myself to this average nerdy girl? Call me an idiot if you want.

  “But,” Anaksa added, and something in her voice made me tense up. “I have to ask you something.”

  “Okay,” I said, wary of what was coming next.

  She stared at me for a few seconds before coming out with it, her tone accusing.

  “Do you play Conquest?”

  I froze as if I had found myself in the center of a police spotlight. I might have made some strange noise with my voice, but certainly not words. All the happy feelings that had filled me a minute ago went out like a deflated balloon. At last I said quietly, “Yes.”

  “A lot?” Her expression reminded me of how my mom looked at the dog the time he took a dump on our carpet. I suspected my expression looked like the dog’s.

  “Quite a lot, yeah. I probably spent more time in the game than here.”

  “I see. . . .” Her tone was not comforting. “So, you’re in that game, sleeping with all these different women?”

  “That’s about the gist of it,” I said, avoiding her disappointed gaze.

  For a long time she said nothing, and when she finally did it wasn’t at all what I wanted to hear.

  “Would you be willing to give it up for me? Would you stop playing that game if that was what it took to stay with me?”

  My spirits sank even lower. I thought for quite a while, and then gave her my answer.

  “No. I don’t think I can. Listen, I really like you. Honestly, I’m pretty sure I can safely say I love you. But this world—I mean it’s a lot longer than what passed for a lifetime in the real world. And that game, it’s like a dream come true for a guy like me. I just . . . I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  I braced myself. I saw her lower lip twitch a little, her eyes starting to crinkle. And then a smile formed on her face. A big smile.

  “Good. I like honest guys. And I like the fact that even after playing that game, with all those gorgeous women, you still ended up here in bed with me. And you didn’t lie just to stay with me. That’s the kind of guy it takes to score with Elise.”

  “Huh?” The gears of my brain creaked to life slowly, gradually beginning to understand. She smiled at me, laughter in her eyes.

  “Welcome to Level Eleven.”

  Chapter Fifty-three

  A few days later I was in Conquest again, tall and handsome and bulging with muscle. I was Karl, searching for a golden temple.

  I had not previously explored this area of the game world, and I’d had to kill quite a few monsters on the way there, but I hadn’t slept with any of the many willing women. I was saving my energy.

  At last I spotted the glimmer of gold in the distance. I looked up to see the temple at the top of a high, steep hill. Rows of trees, the leaves an autumn yellow despite the summery warmth of the air, lined the path toward the hill. I strode briskly down the long path until I came to the base of the hill, and then began the climb up the hundreds of stone steps. Ace Singleton would have been winded, his legs failing, a quarter of the way up, but as Karl my thick legs carried me fast until at last I reached the summit.

  I stood in front of the temple. Six columns on a round base supported a domed roof, all solid gleaming gold. Breathtakingly intricate designs covered the base and wound up the columns but I hardly noticed. Because in the middle of the temple was a round bed, rich golden velvet cascading over it, and on it, in the flowing white robes of an eleventh-level Enchantress, was Elise.

  Elise, the woman in Conquest I had yearned for since day one, who I now knew was Anaksa. She lay seductively on one side, a slight smile on her impossibly beautiful face.

  I flashed an eager smile and took a step forward, and then stopped and stared. Her white robe began to disintegrate, to break apart into hundreds of pieces, and each of those pieces took the shape of a white butterfly and fluttered away into the sky.

  Her body lay there in the exact same position, only now completely exposed. My eyes followed up the line of her slender thigh, over the white curve of her hip, then dipped down her waist and back up to rest on a small, wonderfully shaped breast, peaked in pale pink at the crest.

  Her long black hair poured over her shoulders in gentle spirals. Her deep brown eyes caressed my massive chest and arms, the ridges of my abs, my thighs; the bulge between my thighs, which grew by the second. Her eyes went back up to meet mine. I stood there staring back for a long time and then finally I stripped away the leather at my loins. The size of my muscles did little to take away from the impressive display that sprouted out in excitement.

  Still I stood, and it wasn’t until Elise shifted her body sligh
tly that I stepped up to the round bed. Before I could get on it, she crawled over to meet me and encircled her arms around my muscled torso and pressed her lips softly to mine.

  At last. I kissed Elise. I had already kissed this soul as Anaksa, yet that did not make kissing Elise any less special. Yet my feelings for Anaksa did make it more special, for I was now kissing the woman in the game I wanted most and the woman I loved.

  And then she kissed me somewhere else. I did not complain. She paused to whisper what must have been a spell, for when she enclosed my sensitive skin between her lips, her tongue did things that a tongue simply could not do in the real world. It felt as though ten tongues at once caressed me with wet gyrations, and it felt so good I tried to step back to avoid a finish, but Elise wouldn’t let me, her mouth held me hostage and I had no choice but to abandon myself to the pleasure.

  Her smile was mischievous as she lay back on the bed while I wobbled on weak knees. She waved her hand and a pink ray swept over my spent shaft, and in an instant I felt as though, instead of having just been relieved, I had gone a month untouched.

  “The Spell of Renewal,” she explained as she parted her smooth thighs.

  I climbed onto the bed, taking a moment to look at the autumn-yellow trees below, and to my surprise the trees began to move to the right. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t the trees that moved, it was the bed. I lifted my brows and then leaned down and kissed Elise in the center of her fine body. In minutes she was shaking with joy, and then I pressed my body against hers and pushed into a shocking tightness.

  I felt as though I had never been so sensitive, and yet I lasted. She turned around and stuck out her shapely ass, and I took her from behind, the brutish persona of Karl taking over as my hips smacked into her body with rough passion.

  Elise climbed on top of me. Our chests and lips pressed together and our arms wrapped around each other and she began to move slowly in my lap. I watched the world spin round behind Elise a second before my lids fell closed, and as she picked up speed it felt so good that I almost didn’t notice when we lifted right up off the bed. My eyes opened again and I looked down to confirm that we hovered two feet from the mattress, and then I realized we were still spinning, and then my eyes closed again and I thought of nothing save for the joy of warm flesh caressing mine, the feeling growing and growing, so good I knew I should have finished long ago and yet it kept getting better, impossibly good, and then at last I exploded with an intensity I could never have dreamed of but it didn’t stop, the waves of heavenly pleasure came again and again and again and I knew I was in the grip of the Spell of Neverending Joy. Elise’s body rocked in mine and her moans seemed to fill the valley below as we spun in the air in the throes of a ten-minute spasm of ecstasy.

  It seemed like an eternity before we finally fell back softly onto the bed. We collapsed next to each other, panting from the wonderful exertion. We opened our eyes to look at each other, smiled, and then laughed. We kissed.

  It was several minutes before I felt like I could speak.

  “I’ve been waiting my whole afterlife for that.”

  “Was it as good as you imagined.”

  “I couldn’t have imagined anything that good.”

  * * *

  “Life is good,” I said to myself as I cracked open a beer and sat down in front of a bowl of macaroni and cheese. “No, scratch that. Death is good.”

  That sounded weird to say, but I had to admit, my life had improved greatly since dying. I had smashed thirty-plus women in Conquest, and though a few from the early days were total dogs, the majority were hotter than any girl I could’ve hoped for in the real world. On top of that, I now had an awesome girlfriend who was into manga and anime and video games.

  And I was getting better at the drums every day. Once I found a good teacher, I felt like I was leveling up pretty fast.

  It turned out that Bob-slash-Berbifaberama played a mean guitar, and I finally convinced him to step out of Conquest once in a while and jam. It was a shock to see this huge fifty-something guy after knowing Bob as a skinny wizard, but I soon got used to it. We decided to put together a band.

  Anaksa took on vocal duties, and, despite insisting she had no talent, she was really a good singer. All we needed was a bass player.

  The day after I had talked with Bob and Elise in Conquest about searching for a bassist, a shy, petite Russian woman showed up at my house to audition. She rocked.

  Anna had been within earshot of our conversation, and I knew damn well it was her. The next time I saw Anna in the game, I tried to get her to admit it. She said, “Foolish warrior. I know naught of music beyond the pipe and the lyre.”

  All in all, I was happy. I was surrounded by my friends both in and out of Conquest, I had a band, and I had the coolest girlfriend in the afterworld. Despite all my action in the game, I never tired of going to bed with her. I had it all: in Verterria, I could sleep with nerdy, busty Anaksa. And in Conquest, I could sleep with beautiful, fair, slender Elise or strong, dark, buxom Anna—and everything in between.

  A Message from the Author

  Thank you so much for reading my ridiculous book! If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review.

  I started writing Conquest in December 2018. The idea for the opening paragraph came to me and I jotted it down so I wouldn't forget—and then I kept writing.

  It took me until March of 2020 to finish editing. It's the first novel I've actually finished, and I'm proud as heck. Probably much prouder than I should be.

  Will Ace Singleton and his deceased friends have more adventures, explore more games in The Arcade? I hope so.

  I don't have a mailing list, so if you want to be kept informed about new books by me you'd better go to my author page on Amazon and click that yellow "Follow" button.

  Your new best friend,

  Felix von Falkenlust

  PS:

  Feel free to get in touch!

  falkenlust@Outlook.com