by Alyson Belle
“Sorry, Jazz,” he said quietly.
“What are you even doing to them?” I demanded. “You can’t just take out high level players with a magic item! Are you hacking the game or something?”
Lefay rolled her eyes. “Because it would be such a shock, right?”
But Haxor shook his head. “These are Vierdimin’s handiwork. Legit in-game items, powered up by an 80th level Lich. They’ll keep your pals disabled and out of our hair long enough to find a way to deal with your bullshit little trick you pulled.”
Nambla flipped out his dagger and took an experimental slice at me, but the blade passed harmlessly through my body. I didn’t even feel a jolt. I stuck my tongue out at him and flipped him off. The gesture was braver than I actually felt. I was so mad at myself for being helpless while my friends were taken, but I was outnumbered and vastly outleveled, and even if they couldn’t hurt me, it seemed like I couldn’t stop them.
“Fuck. Her Charm is still working,” Nambla muttered. “I was hoping we might get lucky.”
“It’ll keep working until she charms another PC or releases Vierdimin,” Haxor said. “She’s not stupid, even if she looks like she is. Krom was one of our top players. But whatever. We got what we came for. Let’s see what she does without her friends to help her whore herself around.” He shook his head at me. “I’m still pissed you’re using my girlfriend’s avatar, dude. You deserve this.”
“It’s not my fault!” I protested, my voice rising into a high-pitched feminine register that even annoyed me. “I was doing it to help my friends, you backstabbing asshole. Something you wouldn’t know the first thing about.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, this is a kidnapping, okay? If you want your friends back, all you have to do is drop the Charm on Vierdimin and surrender to us.”
“Pfft. Not a chance in hell of that.”
Haxor sighed. “Yeah, I told them you’d say that. Stupid fucking barbarian…”
He turned to leave, and I desperately cried out, “Haxor, wait! They’re going to shut the game down with us inside of it. Topper just told us. We don’t have much time, and we could all die in here. Don’t do this. Help us beat Vierdimin and get out of here!”
He paused, looking at me over his shoulder, his eyes shadowed. For a moment I thought he was going to ask me something, but then he shook his head. “No. Vierdimin put too much work into freezing us in the game like this just to let someone shut it down. He’ll have a plan.”
“And if he doesn’t?” I demanded.
“He has to,” Haxor said with a shrug. “Good luck, Lacey. Give up soon and save us all a bunch of time, okay?” He leapt through the inn window, shattering the glass with a thunderous crash to land on the cobblestones below. Jazzus bounced on his shoulder as he arced through the air.
I flew to the shattered window and watched as he sprinted away, taking Jazzus along with him.
“Jazzus!” I cried. “Wait, Haxor! Come back!”
But even as I watched them go, Lefay was chanting something behind me. I turned around just in time to see her cast Recall on her group, which would return them to a fixed point of unknown origin.
“No!” I shouted, throwing a hand out. But it was too late to do anything even if I could have. Wugduz smirked and Nambla waggled his tongue at me between two fingers while the three of them faded from sight, taking Topper along with them.
I was left alone in an empty inn room with shattered glass littering the floor, once again stranded without my friends. I stood stunned, not quite believing what had just happened. What am I supposed to do now? I wondered. I am so fucked. We’re all so fucked…
I put my face in my hands, sat down on the bed, and began to cry, overwhelmed by the torrent of emotions ripping through my stupid female body.
Chapter 3
“And then what?”
“And then they took my friends and vanished!” I wailed. “And everything is terrible and we’re all screwed.”
Erlix had returned from making his rounds to find me crying and blubbering about the kidnapping, and he now stroked his chin as we stood together amid the glass and debris-covered floor of my inn room, considering the details of the encounter with Haxor and his goons I’d just finished catching him up on. It was an unusually reflective moment for the little guy, who was almost always cracking a joke, stabbing something, or scheming to grab whatever wasn’t nailed down—when he wasn’t bragging about his giant halfling cock.
I slumped further back on the hard wood of the inn chair. I didn’t deserve the comfort of a padded bed, the way I’d just allowed my friends to be taken like that. I kept turning the kidnapping over and over in my head, trying to figure out what I could have done.
“I’m not a lowly level 5 nooblet anymore,” I groaned. “I’m a level 45 class designed to distract, hold, and confuse my enemies, and it shouldn’t have been so easy for them to waltz in here and take my friends away. I’m used to being on top of my game here, but with this stupid Courtesan class, I’m just not…”
If I was looking to Erlix of all people for emotional support, I really must have been desperate, but to my surprise, he delivered.
“It’s not your fault,” he protested. “No one’s ever leveled a Courtesan this high before because no one takes the class seriously. We’re even at the limit of my knowledge, which is wide and impressive, like my cock. How can you know how to use it when we just power-leveled you through 40 levels, Goldie?”
I suppressed an urge to ask him if he was talking about my skills or his cock, but the joke brought a smile to my lips anyway. Although he was rude, crude, and often a nuisance, my halfling pal had really come through for me, and I was grateful to have someone still here and on my side with my guildmates captured. He still called me “Goldie” after the gold bikini I’d been wearing when he found me, despite the fact that I’d long since traded the whole “Slave Princess” look for a slightly more demure and intimidating set of brown and green ranger leathers.
On second thought, “demure” might have been a little strong—in Fantasy Realms Online, all women’s clothing was pretty skimpy. I was still getting used to walking around with my legs bared from my knee-high boots to the crescent curve of the flared leather skirt which barely covered my ass, and both my midriff and a large portion of my rather impressive cleavage were prominently on display despite this being “combat” gear. If this is what the devs wanted rangers wearing, I shuddered to imagine what the end-game class armor for courtesans looked like.
Here’s hoping I won’t be stuck as a girl long enough to find out, I thought to myself. Now focus! Moping around isn’t going to help anything.
I sat up, determined to push through my malaise. “Okay. Enough whining. We need to find a way to rescue my friends.”
“No offense, Goldie, but it sounds like you couldn’t do much good against Haxor and his pals even with backup. I’m still level 32, remember? What’s your plan?”
“Well…” I frowned. Erlix had a point. At a minimum, we had to make some kind of logical plan, just like I would have done while planning a raid on Kromgorn. “So you’re right that we need to figure out what to do. Here’s how I see it: I’m still the strongest weapon we have against The Secret Order, and we’re running out of time, so we need to take every opportunity we can find to keep leveling me up.”
“And your friends?”
“That’s our next highest priority. Even at Level 80, I’m going to need help to fight Vierdimin. So we need to figure out where my friends are being held, and then go get them. If we can level me up on the way, and I can figure out how to use this class correctly, maybe we can kill two birds with one stone.”
“A-ha!” Erlix brightened perceptibly. “Then you, Goldie, are in luck. You just happen to have befriended the best tracker in the game.” He placed a hand on his chest and batted his eyelashes at me.
I gave him a flat stare. “You? Uh-huh.”
“Madam! I am wounded. At level 30 I selected the Night
Stalker specialization for my Rogue class, which lets me track as well as any ranger.”
“How does that make you the best tracker in the game?”
“Perhaps not the best at tracking, but certainly the best tracker when you consider all of my many excellent attributes, to include my giant cock and the fact that I’m the only tracker available to help you.” He grinned and bowed.
I sighed and rolled my eyes. There appeared to be no end to Erlix’s self-aggrandizement. “Okay. Great. So you have the Tracking skill. Why don’t you get on that and let me know where my friends went?” Suddenly, my eyes widened in surprise. “Wait a minute. Everyone gets a specialization at levels 30 and 65, right? I wonder what mine is…”
Excitedly, I pulled up Lacey’s character screen to check my options while Erlix frowned and began to inspect the room for trackable traces of our enemies. I’d blown through the levels leading up to 45 so quickly and been working so hard to attend to the clients I’d been servicing that I hadn’t even though to check what specializations were offered to courtesans. I hoped they weren’t lame. Most specializations gave you an extra skill or two and affected some of the high end skills you could learn. There were rumors that it also had an impact on secret class unlocks, since it was common knowledge that Vierdimin had taken the Necromancer Wizard specialization on his way to unlocking the Lich class, and several other high-level wizards had since reached level 80 and not been able to do it with different specializations.
My character menu appeared like a digital 2D projection in front of me, detailing the statistics that Haxor’s girlfriend had chosen for her character at the time of creation, the skills I’d unlocked for Lacey since then, and the levels I had in each of my skills. I hadn’t spent nearly enough time examining the nuances of my class, if I was being honest, because I was still kind of annoyed at being forced to play a girl and didn’t want to learn any more than I had to. But now I realized that I was being childish and stupid.
You’re willing to Seduce and fuck your way through half of Lorengarde because it levels you up as a class feature, but you don’t want to bother learning what your skills do because of what, girl cooties? I chided myself. Learning to play your class doesn’t really turn you into a chick, even if you’re stuck as one for now. Be a real gamer and learn the damn game.
Down below my skills was a flashing red button that read “SPECIALIZE”, and when I swiped a finger through it I was presented with a set of three options with slightly different focuses, just like every other class when they hit level 30: Seductress, Mesmer, and Moon Priestess . I frowned as I read through the description of each:
[Seductress]
The Seductress takes the Courtesan’s natural assets and abilities to a whole new level. Whereas Courtesans exist to tease and please and cajole their foes to distraction, a Seductress is able to fully lock her enemies down with her sexual prowess, and can take her abilities to command, control, and persuade to a whole new level.
New Skill: Multi-Charm: Allows multiple NPCs to be charmed at once, though charm may break at any time when multiple NPCs are controlled (this chance increases the more NPCs are charmed).
Perks :
+10 Max Charm Skill
+10 Max Seduce Skill
+25 Max NPC Persuasion Skill
+5 Effective Character Level for Control/Distraction Skills
[Mesmer]
The Mesmer builds on the Courtesan’s inherent abilities to tease and misdirect her foes, injecting a dose of the arcane arts into the class. By focusing her raw charisma, she is capable of using illusion magic from the available Wizard Spell list to misdirect her foes, further enhancing her distraction capabilities, and can buff herself and her allies with alluring charisma-improvement spells. Mesmers have small talents in the use of arcane devices, as they’ve studied magic at a rudimentary level.
New Skill: Sexy Shadow: The Mesmer creates an illusionary duplicate of herself which she can control with her mind and/or give orders to in her absence. The illusion has no corporeal form, but can use many of the Mesmer’s skills and last for several minutes (or until revealed as an illusion by an attempted touch).
Perks :
+10 Max Magical Devices Skill
* Allows memorization and use of the Illusion category of Wizard spells.
* Allows Charisma-based casting of all spells (for spells which would normally use Intelligence).
[Moon Priestess]
The Moon Priestess enhances the Courtesan’s natural reassuring and comforting nature by adding an element of divine healing to her soft caresses and secret whispers. She exudes a divine aura of peace and love that makes enemies even less likely to engage her in combat and has an enhanced ability to conceal herself when needed. Her divine connection with the healing rays of the moon allows access to a new set of sexual healing skills.
New Skill: Healing Love: Your passionate embrace and soothing words heal a target for a large amount, equivalent to a Cleric Heal spell 10 levels lower, and clears all magical debuffs or negative statuses from that player.
Perks :
+10 Max Hide Skill
* Reduced threat from healing skills and reduced global NPC threat.
* Access to the Moon Priestess skill progression, allowing additional party-based healing skills.
All three of these were pretty interesting choices, and they had a lot more depth than I had been expecting from the Courtesan class, since it was almost always written off as a joke by serious players. But clearly someone or other had designed this class to fulfill an intended role in the game. I bet they were really frustrated that nobody played the class. I wondered if there was some secret about it that might make it really powerful at high level. I had already been impressed by the power of my Charm skill and the ease with which I could level—as long as I could get over my squeamishness about handling a few dicks—and I’d played lots of games where the strongest characters end up starting as one of the seemingly weakest until they were leveled up.
This first specialization choice would also be very important in how my character developed, since I had heard from other players that your specialization options at level 65 branched out further from your class selection. And while it was rumored to be possible to respecialize, it came with severe level and XP penalties that almost made it not worth doing. I had no idea how these might branch out later, but I could see what the devs were doing with my three options: basically I had a choice to double down on my existing seduction and physical sexual skills, add an element of arcane magic to my class, or add an element of divine healing magic to my class. My later choices would all be extensions of the general theme I chose now.
There was an extra wrinkle here, because I didn’t intend to play Lacey forever. As soon as we could defeat Vierdimin, I would return to Kromgorn the Barbarian, go back to being a dude—thank goodness—and none of the skill choices I made on Lacey would matter anymore. So I should probably pick a specialization geared toward battling other human-controlled players and leveling up as quickly as possible!
It didn’t make any sense for me to take the Moon Priestess specialization, though I thought it would be a neat option for group support, because I didn’t have a group to support right now. Even once I’d rescued my friends, I was the only one to have immunity to Vierdimin’s guild attacks. An invincible healer would be pretty handy, actually, but it would be too easy to wear my mana down since I was only one player. Ideally I should specialize in something that allowed me to take a little more active role in the battle than I could right now.
The Seductress specialization was obviously the most powerful of my three choices, and the default option for any player who wasn’t sure what she should take. It made all of the Courtesan skills better without increasing the complexity of the class. Plus, an extra five levels of effective CL for all my control and distraction skills would be huge, minimizing the chances that PCs or NPCs of equal level would resist them. Multi-Charm was also a really cool skill choi
ce, since I’d be able to command more than one NPC at a time and be able to charm higher-level NPCs. I was already drooling at the prospect of sending a few charmed orcs to beat down my enemies.
Mesmer was a weird choice. I’d never considered that Courtesan might be able to be specced into an arcane casting class, but the more I thought about it the more it was generally in line with her skills, since the spellcasting was restricted to the illusion school of Wizard magic. Wizards learned spells from spellbooks they found while adventuring or purchased from a spell vendor in cities (although the rare ones were all dropped by mobs). Sexy Shadow would offer a creative player lots of options for misdirection, although it would be less useful than the other two specialization skills once actually in a combat situation. The bonus to Magical Devices was lame unless you had access to a bunch of them, which I didn’t, but Charisma-based casting was interesting.
Lacey had been built to maximize Charisma at the expense of every other stat except Agility and Dexterity, which wasn’t something even most wizards did with Intelligence, because it would make you horribly fragile. But with the inherent Courtesan Unintimidating skill, you were a little less likely to draw the ire of dangerous monsters than the average wizard. Lacey would be an extremely powerful illusionist, given that, if I chose Mesmer .
With Moon Priestess off the table, my choice really came down to what I thought would help me the most when it came time to do battle with Vierdimin and his lieutenants. Multi-Charm was extremely tempting, along with the bonuses to my standard class skills, but I was worried that choosing Seductress might turn me into a little bit of a one-trick pony, and also it’s not like I’d had a hard time charming or seducing people so far. Even though Sexy Shadow didn’t seem as powerful as the other skills, the opportunity to use Illusion magic might offer some powerful options for me outside of my standard sex-based skills. Mesmer might not be the obvious choice, but it seemed like the best one for me in my immediate battle with The Secret Order.
