Freelance Saga 2: Quantum Interference
Page 3
He sighed softly then started to walk again. The river was out, but if he stayed far enough from the water he might be able to occasionally use it as a guide. He would have to watch for river beasts and the occasional thirsty monster, but it was the best lead that he’d found so far.
Chapter 4: Soft and Pink
Soft pink lips parted gently then formed into a tender smile. It was the fleeting glimpse of a warm and friendly personality. “Do you love me?”
Delicately tapered fingers traced the curve of the man’s jaw before she leaned in to ask him again. “Say it. Say you love me.” When he refused to answer she pouted cutely at him then reached toward his shoulder.
The scream that erupted from his throat echoed throughout the forest clearing. Her slender hand, delicate and refined, gripped the arrow protruding from his shoulder. The gentle seeming fingers twisted the shaft eliciting another scream.
“Oh, I do love the beautiful music you serenade me with dear one.”
“St-stop this you demon…” The man feebly attempted to crawl away but he had no strength left.
His tormentor lifted then lowered her hips in a slow deliberate way. Curvaceous hips slid sensually up and down atop his rock hard manhood. She took the time to thoroughly enjoy her sense of power over her prey. “Stop it? You don’t like my foreplay? We’re in love, right?”
She grabbed his throat in a vice-like grip, twisted the arrow once more, and then cried out in a loud and desperate voice. “Give it to me! I want all of it!”
“N-no!”
“All of it! I want your love burning inside of me you worthless human!” The hand clenching his throat squeezed brutally. He started to choke. He gagged desperately due to the lack of air. His spittle turned to foam and he feebly tried to knock her hand free.
Their bodies began to glow with a soft white light, but the light emitted by the dying man declined rapidly even as the woman’s body grew more luminous. “So warm, I can feel the strength of your love for me.”
The girl sighed suddenly and the light faded away. “Seriously? Dead already? Humans really are weak.”
“I’ll never gain another level at this rate.” Her cheeks puffed outward then she pouted. Why wouldn’t one of these weak idiots love her properly?
She looked down at the dead man and frowned. Her lower lip poked out. “I’m cute, right?”
When he didn’t answer she reached down and grasped his head and chin. She made his mouth move up and down like a puppet. “You’re the cutest fox in the whole forest Kitsune-chan.”
“Really! You think so! You’re so sweet Dead-Guy-San!”
She made his mouth move again. “I should have admitted it when I was alive. I could be cuddling with you right now.”
“You’re right! You should have. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I’m so sorry, also I have a really tiny penis and you can do better than me anyway.”
“Well, that’s a start.” She smiled triumphantly for a moment then dropped his head. She sighed then pouted once more.
“Why won’t one of these humans love me?” She hugged herself tightly then took on an expression that bespoke long term suffering. No one understood her needs.
She raised her hand and started counting off her qualities using her fingers. She touched her pinky with her thumb and said, “I’m cute.”
She touched her next finger and said, “I have a pleasant personality.”
She looked down, grabbed her breasts, and lifted them. “I have an amazing body.”
She raised another finger, “I’m fun at parties… I think. No one ever invites me to any, but I’m sure I’d be great at one.”
Kitsune threw her hands up and looked toward the sky. Sunlight streamed down through the canopy of the forest to embrace her with its divine radiance. “I can even cook! Who wouldn’t fall in love with an awesome girl like me?”
She pouted again then sighed gently. “Maybe someday.”
Her bushy tail swished from side to side briefly before a carefree smile spread across her face. “Ah well, at least I have something tasty for dinner.”
The fox girl stood up and dusted herself off. Despite the horrors that she had perpetrated moments earlier she seemed quite cheerful.
A gentle breeze flowed through the clearing causing the wildflowers to sway gently. Their subtle scent filled the air with a peaceful fragrance that seemed intent upon covering up the murder that had just committed.
Beneath the shadow of a fallen log that rested just outside the clearing, Scott continued to lie perfectly still. He had witnessed it all. Even after that man’s inglorious end, he had remained in hiding. The log had fallen in such a way that it was raised from the earth atop the stump of another of its destroyed kind. In that dark, shallow, space he had born witness to the death of a man.
There had been no choice. At least, that is what Scott told himself. He had remained unmoving the entire time that the previous scene had played out. Did this make him a coward? At the moment it did not matter, nor did he care. Fighting these monstrous women had proven disastrous the few times that self-defense had been necessary.
There was nothing to be done at the moment but wait patiently. It felt like an eternity had passed before she made her move, but the fox woman eventually grabbed the large man, hurled his corpse over her shoulder, and skipped off merrily into the forest. Alone, unarmed, and incredibly underpowered against such a monster, there was little that Scott could have done for that poor bastard. So, he continued to do nothing.
When he could no longer hear her happily skipping through the forest Scott started to move away from the area. He needed to find a place to rest, to regain his strength. He had spent several days looking for such a place and had yet to find it.
This world and its people were insane. That was the only answer. The things that he had seen since waking up here a few days ago were beyond any reasonable possibility.
Scott shuddered at the thought of the last few days. He had been forced to hide repeatedly. The monsters he had run across were incredibly strong compared to the dragon-turtles that he’d had to deal with during the tutorial. Most of the notable monsters were humanoid. That meant that they would all count as boss monsters, as queens. How most of this damnable forest’s denizens could be boss monsters was beyond his understanding. Either way, he could not stand up to them at all.
As Scott walked away from the scene of the brutal murder he noticed something wedged between two trees. It was a backpack! “Must belong to that guy, or did anyway.”
It would not have been safe to check it here, so he took it and ran from the area as fast as he could. The man wouldn’t miss it, and Scott needed anything that he could get his hands on.
There was no way for him tell how much distance had been covered in that trackless wilderness. When he grew tired of running he stopped and leaned against a convenient tree. Hungry and dehydrated, he panted heavily as he opened the backpack. The first thing that he saw nearly made him cry. “Bottled water!”
The only reasonably safe water that Scott had been able to drink in the last few days was supplied during a rain storm. He had drunk his fill from the large green leaves that he had used as a bowl, but he’d lost that during a panicked flight brought on by a massive frog and an overly amorous monster girl.
He had found no other reasonably safe water sources, and he had succumbed to his thirst once the day before. He had drunk from a mud puddle swarming with Seductia knew what. His old friend, explosive diarrhea, had come to visit him again last night.
There was a river nearby, but that place was swarming with the monsters that constantly attacked anything that got near. Monsters and monster women were everywhere and they all wanted to eat him or love him. Scott suspected that some of them wanted both at the same time.
Scott smiled at the bottle of water. The language printed on the side was not one that he recognized, but it was obviously water, right? He opened it up and drank his fill.
The source of the discomfort made itself known. Scott looked into his pants. His genitalia had become obscenely, gloriously, erect! “What the hell!”
“What was this shit, Viagra water?” He stared at the empty bottle then pressed back against the tree to fight the pain of the intense and massive erection.
It was too much. The pain was too much. Scott had to set the beast free from its imprisonment! He unbuckled his belt then dropped his pants as quickly as possible. His absurdly swollen member pointed outward like the veiny accusatory finger of an angry god.
He stared down at it utterly transfixed by the sheer girth of the thing. “What the hell! Is it going to explode?”
Scott had always considered his man-hammer to be rather average in both length and girth until it had miraculously increased in size during the tutorial. It had never been small, but it was also nothing to worth talking about at parties. The thing that he bore witness to now, the evil existence trembling in barely constrained rage, was certainly not what he was accustomed to seeing.
Experimentally, he touched it. The effect was electric. He gasped involuntarily in response.
It had not hurt at all. If anything it had felt amazing. “Man, I need to take a few bottles of this stuff back home with me! I’d make more money in a year than most countries do in a decade.”
Scott trembled softly as a light breeze blew across his rock hard member. The sensation was bliss itself.
“I, I need to distract myself from this unholy thing.” He gently squatted down then reached into the backpack to fish out a few more items. There were several more bottles of instant erection, and a few packets of what looked like food. Scott did not trust it one damned bit due to the mishap with the water, but when he took his current predicament into account he could not afford to be choosy. The only food that he had eaten in several days was the occasional insect or grub worm.
There was one other thing that caught his attention. A bracer, black with a bright red stone at the center, was stashed among the various odds and ends. The whirling gold symbols on the band made him think of the cheesy looking magical props a wizard in a game might wear.
Between the bracer and the insta-erect water Scott could only come to one conclusion. “Was he a wizard pimp? Who owns something like this?”
One of the backpack straps slid forward then lightly dropped down to antagonize his insistent shaft. Scott yelped excitedly at the sudden sensation. “Sheesh, behave yourself you damned penis!”
He took a deep breath then sighed. Hopefully the grotesque erection would fade away soon. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take.
Curious, Scott put the bracer on then admired it for a moment. He envisioned himself as a wizard pimp then grinned like an idiot.
The idiotic expression turned to surprise when the bracer clamped shut around his wrist and a bright red flash of light erupted from it.
If that was not enough a message screen popped up not long after the bracer had taken hold of him. “Telepathic whispers have been reinstated?”
Words and images invaded Scott’s head after he closed the message window. An angry feminine voice shouted at him in the recesses of his mind. He could not understand her. The words seemed to be unintelligible screams of rage instead of true language.
Between the pain in his manhood, and the pain in his head, Scott could not think straight. Unable to do anything about the strangely familiar voice shrieking inside the back of his head, he tried to rip the bracer from his arm. It chose to be obstinate and refused to come off.
The girl started screaming louder. She became more insistent. Finally, he could not take it anymore. He gripped the bracer tightly and shouted, “Get out of my head, dammit!”
Light flared from the gemstone then began to shine around his fingers. A few feet away a thick red mist began to form. It rapidly coalesced into a familiar person. It was the red haired dragon girl, Scarlet. He had captured and bonded her during his tutorial phase. He had tried calling for her repeatedly on his first day back, but she had not come.
She blinked twice then started to scream again. “You dickless bastard! How dare you not summon me for almost a week?”
He didn’t know what was going on here. Scarlet had just popped out of nowhere and started to bitch. Hadn’t he seen enough crazy shit today? What was with her?
Between the pulsating evil that raged within his cock, and the incredibly shitty week that he had been having, it was hard to focus on what she was asking. “What…?”
Her eyes locked onto the bracer on his arm. She stared at it, took a step forward, and then blinked. “Why are you using a spell bracer? You did not need one before.”
“I just found this thing. Look Scarlet--“
“Just found a spell bracer? Those things are supposed to be extremely expensive.”
“Scarlet, I’m sorry, but I’ve had a hard few days.”
She eyed me critically then looked down. The angry girl finally noticed Scott’s throbbing man-hammer. Naturally, all she could do was stare. “Wow, you don’t waste any time do you?”
Scott tried to shift out of her view, but the motion caused a trill of pleasure to shimmy up his spine. He moaned involuntarily then bit his lower lip in frustration.
She quirked an eyebrow then smirked. Delicately, she touched her index finger to her chin. “I suppose your non-apology will have to do.”
“Huh?” He had only grown more confused. What was this red haired monster woman talking about?
Scott started to say something but she cut him off. “We need to get out of this forest. You’ll die here easily considering your level.”
Quietly, his mind zeroed in on the word, level. She could tell what level he was? Even he couldn’t do that right now. The level menu screen would pop up if he called it, but everything was jumbled. However, she had mentioned something far more pressing. “I’m all for leaving this damned forest, but where do we go?”
“You don’t know?”
“I’m not from around here, remember?”
She eyed me suspiciously. “Hmm, fine. Touch the gem on your new bracer. Use command function ‘recall’. We’ll return to the last logged recall point.”
“Ok.” Scott touched the gem and a screen popped up. The strange new addition to his life was just one more bit of oddness in an incredibly odd world.
He became self-aware enough that he began to wonder at his calmness in this situation. Perhaps he was in shock? Either way, Scott knew that he could either accept it or go insane. Hell, at this point there was a good chance that he might do both.
“If I press recall on this screen, will it bring you with me?”
“Yeah, it will transport anyone you are grouped with. Your battle harem is automatically grouped.”
The words battle harem piqued his interest but questions could wait for later. He picked up the backpack, stood up, and then pressed the recall button. A wave of light washed over the area. When the light cleared they were in an entirely different place.
Scott looked around then stated the obvious. “There are no trees.”
“Yeah, I remember this place. It’s the fork in the road that leads to the Roxi Woodlands. There should be a motel about a mile up the road on the left.”
“You’ve been here before?”
She smiled softly. “Sure have. Queens gather here to compete against each other and hunt for human mates. Places like this have monsters with wildly different power levels.”
“I see.” That explained so much about that damned forest that Scott felt cheated for not figuring it out on his own. Still, he was damned glad to be out of that death trap!
Scarlet yawned then stretched. “We should get a room.”
“Ok, I’d love to get a room b
ut what about money?”
“Money? Check the bracer.”
Scott touched the gemstone then looked through the menu options. Curious fingers clicked on the treasure option and he saw that the unlamented corpse had stockpiled six hundred copper coins.
“How much is six hundred copper worth around here?”
“Not much, but we can probably get a room for the night, some dinner, and some supplies. Maybe a bus ride to a better place for you to train, too.”
“Oh? What do you mean train?”
“You’re level one. If you don’t want to be killed off, you’ll have to get stronger.”
“Level one? I’m really all the way back to level one?”
Scarlet nodded to him then shrugged. “I don’t know what happened to you, but that’s what I sense when I look at you.”
He remembered the other thing she had said. “Why would I be killed off? Who would want to kill me?”
The red haired demon stared at me briefly then said, “You really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Where are you from? You’re human! Human! Monsters will want to take your experience points. Humans will want to take me. At level one you’re just a target!”
“I see.” Scott frowned then turned toward the direction of the supposed motel. Rest and food sounded great. He did not care for the idea of being a walking target but that had been life for him during the last few days anyway. They walked toward the motel that Scarlet had mentioned. Scott hoped would find the answers and the rest that he desperately needed.
Chapter 5: Starting Over
Water, warm clean water, cascaded down onto scratched and torn flesh. The last few days had been brutal. Scott had been chased through the wilderness by scantily clad women with superhuman powers, witnessed multiple murders, and discovered that the world was not behaving in the manner that the company had claimed it would.
“Alterra, what kind of name is that for a world anyway?” He sighed softly as the warmth of the water washed his cares away. Scott closed his eyes and chose to let that thought go. He would allow it to flow down the drain along with the rest of the misgivings and concerns that he was plagued with. For the moment, this world and its inhabitants could go fuck themselves. He intended to enjoy every bit of this shower.