by Reed James
“I don't know,” I said, lacing up my breeches.
“Well, it's incremental, but as you gain those levels, you'll grow. You're lucky to be a Shardhunter and able to gather experience and take it into you to make yourself stronger.”
“Ah, that's how it works,” I said.
“And, and you gained a new skill! Vigilance! It's a Passive Camp Skill that gives an increased chance of gaining an advantage in a camping ambush.”
“And camping's how I regain my Hit Points and Technical Points.”
“Outside of leveling,” she said, nodding. “It's also a great time to get to know a pretty lady or three.”
Or three... “I like your attitude, Iris.”
“Well, I am your helper. I should be compatible with you.” She turned around and bent over, flashing her little pussy at me. “See how wet I am. If only you could fit your cock in here, but you're toooooooo big.”
“That's never been a problem for me,” I muttered. Then I leaned in and licked her pussy, swiping across her rump and ass. She tasted like... apricots. “Damn, I like that.”
“So did I,” she cooed.
I picked up my discarded shield. I had to actually hold it. The shield had weight. On the inside, there was an iron band I slipped my arm through and then a handle I held. I hefted my copper ax and sheathed it on a loop on my belt. Curious, I tapped her belly.
The menu appeared, dazzling like a hologram before me. It showed my stats. I had 48 HP and 12 TP now. My Strength had gone up to 14 but my other three primary stats, Dexterity, Faith, and Intelligence had not changed. Somehow, those generated my four secondary stats: Vitality, Resilience, Knowledge, and Perception. Not surprisingly, Vitality and Resilience were higher than the other two. So I wasn't as good at figuring out lore or spotting things, I guess. But I could take hits and probably resist status effects.
The other menus, like for Options and Items were missing. And there was no Lore menu, either. It was just character stats, info on my weapons—which were all basic, Level 1 gear—my abilities, and my traits. I guess I had the items in my belt pouch. It seemed small to hold two potions and coins. I reached in and felt nothing.
My brow furrowed.
“Just think about it,” Iris said with a patient reminder.
I thought of the Potion of Diluted Angel Passion and suddenly I felt it in my hand. I pulled it out and nodded. It was a strange hybrid of realistic physics and video game logic. I pushed it back in and felt it dematerialize.
“Well, I guess we should press on,” I said. “You said this was a temple to some fertility goddess.”
“Shuwëmeri,” she said. “She would be horrified by what I've seen. Look, it's been defiled.”
She pointed to bloody runes drawn on the wall. It still looked tacky, like it wasn't more than a few days old at most. “Those cultists that old man mentioned.”
“Right,” she said. “Shall we rescue the maidens fair?”
I smiled. One of those girls would be a quest reward. I said, “Let's brave these perilous ruins and save them from the foul cultists who have so churlishly taken them.”
Iris giggled. “Your speech got all serious and stuff. I like it. Verily, I doth declare, let us sally forth and kick ass!”
She darted ahead, leaving a streak of pixie dust in her wake.
She soared towards a hallway mouth with a curtain of vines. It grew dark beyond, but she shed light, blowing like a bobbing lantern. I pushed the fronds out of the way with my right hand. My fighting hand. The feathery tendrils caressed me. They had a wet scent about them. Almost like moss.
The walls here were made of the same mortared brick. They sagged in places, bowed outward or buckled inward. Stones had shifted, the mortar crumbling. The ceiling looked precarious, like one wrong stone knocked out and it would drop on my head. Water trickled down, bringing an earthy musk with it.
Did I get thirsty? Hungry? I didn't notice a food system when I was playing the game, but maybe I missed it. No, one of the daughters was a cook. How did that work? I felt full for now. I guess I hoped that Iris wouldn't have led me in here if I didn't have what it took to sustain my life.
The corridor had several rooms branching off. One had caved in, rubble spilling to the door. The next had rotten furniture. A dresser or cabinet. The metal fixtures had tarnished to a bluish-green, the verdigris dribbling down the wood. A musty smell lingered. I moved on, my heart beating faster and faster.
The feeling of being alive. Not an office slave crammed in a cubicle. Not a middle manager clawing his way towards the executive office. Not a schlub who'd reached the top and was now realizing how empty it all was. That work to get there only have everything you care for crumble from your grasp. I didn't live before.
I worked.
I smiled and moved faster. This young body was in better shape than I'd ever been. I rounded the corner, Iris buzzing beside me. The hallway stretched out before us, a statue in an alcove broken in half, revealing a hollow shell. Bits of and pieces, a nipple on a breast, a dainty nose, several fingers, lay amid the dust and detritus on the floor.
They crunched beneath my boots.
A whimpering yelp drifted down the hallway. A cry for help. A woman in danger. I grinned. She needed a hero to come save her. Marcus Aurelius, Shardhunter. Fighter. I drew my ax and readied my Yell. Ahead, the corridor widened onto a dark room.
“Please, please, you don't have to do this!” the woman gasped.
“You're airy existence is just what the Destruction needs,” a harsh voice rasped.
Iris squeaked in alarm.
I burst into the room to find a shaft of sunlight falling on a makeshift altar. A woman, but not human, lay bound to it. She had blue skin, her body tall and lean, petite. Her small breasts quivered as she fought against the bonds binding her hands and feet to the slab of stone. Her white hair—not from age given the firm loveliness of her body—moved like an unfelt breeze gusted through the room. Her head tossed back and forth.
She saw me. Gray eyes locked on me.
“Please, please, save me! They're going to kill me!”
They turned out to be three men wearing black, rotting robes that hung over their emaciated frames. One turned his head to face me, human, but eyes maddened. He held a rusting dagger in a gnarled grip. He turned back to her and muttered in a harsh language.
“Foul Dēmodith,” gasped Iris. “The language of demons and the Dark Gods of Chaos. They must serve Rūzem, God of Decay and the opposite to fertile Shuwëmeri.”
The muttering was reaching a higher pitch. The woman screamed for help again. If I kept to the right side of the room, I could bypass them. The exit lay beyond. The cultist hadn't aggroed on me. This was a sidequest.
Optional content.
Maybe if this was a game, if I had controllers in my hands and a VR headset on I might skip it. Might. But I was here in the flesh and blood. An adventure. Seeing her bound naked and these three foul men muttering incantations over her set my blood to boiling.
I Yelled.
The roar surged through me and infused me with power. Strength. I felt it coursing through my body like an extra-wild jolt of adrenaline. I felt invincible. Ready to destroy these cultists. I charged forward, boots thudding on the ground.
“Beware their daggers!” Iris called. “They look foul. Stained. Something festers on them!”
The cultist I charged finally realized the danger as I fell on him. I raised my ax. There was no button click. No menu I had to navigate. I knew how to deliver Hard Strike. I slammed my Level 1 Fighter skill into him, feeling the potential, martial might in my body surging to fulfill the need.
My copper ax slammed down and crashed down into the cultist's upraised arm. A deep blow, cutting through his rotted robe and into his arm. Bone shattered. He snarled, but not in pain, in ecstatic joy. His face twisted with an almost sexual mania.
“Fucking sadomasochistic perv!” I growled and wrenched my blade free. His ruined arm collapsed, his dag
ger held in the other. He went to stab me, but my ax fell down harder. I buried it into his chest, cracking ribs and his sternum. Hitting lungs and heart. His eyes widened. In that last moment, I witnessed horror.
Then he collapsed to the ground; his body wrenched free of my ax.
“Fair maiden, I am Marcus Aurelius, and I am your champion!” I bellowed, this rush of invincibility surging through me as the other two cultists rounded the altar.
They hissed at me, robes whisking as they rushed at me. One had brown spittle bubbling at his lips. He had a look of abject rage in his eyes. He reached me and thrust in with his knife as I swung my ax hard at him.
He ducked.
His knife slithered past my shield and cut into the meat of my inner arm. Pain exploded through me. A festering, burning agony. The wound turned black. Rotting blood pumped out, a thick, dark gunk. It devoured up my arm, consuming my vessels from the inside.
“God fucking damn shit!” I snarled, my fingers clenching on my shield. It kept hurting. “A damned DOT at level 2?”
DOT, Damage Over Time, was an ability that would keep hurting me. I felt my Hit Points dwindling with every heartbeat. How long would it last? Would I survive it? Did the rules of a video game apply enough, or had I just gotten some virulent infection that would kill me?
Rage surged through me.
Hard Strike slammed into the bastard's shoulder. I ripped back my weapon and used it again as he recoiled back. The damage was overkill. I split his skull open. I roared my triumph over the grizzly death and kicked the bastard back. My shield arm boiled with pain, feeding my righteous satisfaction in killing him.
“Stab me, you pencil dick pissant!” I bellowed.
Footsteps whisked behind me. He attacked in fast. I raised my shield up to catch the rusted dagger. It gouged into the wood. My TP dwindled with my HP. I was down to enough TP to use Hard Strike one more time, and then I would be out. I wouldn't get any more until I leveled or camped.
And I didn't feel like I would level.
The pain in my arm begged me to use the ability. To kill this last cultist before he hit me with that blade, and I suffered more pain. The gamer in me thought of resource management. This was a dungeon slog. I had to conserve. Use abilities at the right time.
“Dammit!” I growled and attacked, feeling the strength of yell flagging. Twenty seconds seemed like an eternity in the midst of the fighting, but it was almost up.
My ax hit the cultist in the arm, leaving behind a bleeding wound. He exulted like the others, his lips curling back to show rotting teeth. Black pits dug into stained enamel. Cackling, he thrust his dagger at me again and again. I blocked the two hits and swung, biting into his side.
Blood welled across the copper head of my ax. It stained his foul robes. He staggered and recovered, a low swipe that ducked under my shield and slashed across my leather pants. The blade cut flesh.
The agony devoured up and down my leg. I snarled, the burning reaching to my groin. It hurt worse than my arm, which was dying down. I howled and swung my ax in a brutal swing that caught the cultist in the neck.
Blood spurted. Sinew severed. Half the head leaned over. Then the cultist toppled to the ground, twitching on the buckled stones. I staggered into the shaft of light bathing the blue-skinned woman. I leaned on the edge of the altar, feeling my HP dwindling fast.
“Goddamn!” I spat. “That fucking hurts, Iris.”
“Festering wounds,” she said. “How are you?”
“It's going away,” I panted and stared down at the sylph. She stared up at me with such joy on her lips, arms thrust over her head, body quivering.
“Thank you!” she said, tears beading her eyes. “Thank you, good Shardhunter!”
I nodded, the pain in my leg dwindling as the DOT ran its course. With a snarl, I slammed my ax down into the rope binding her arms over her head. My weapon cut through it with ease.
Chapter Three: First Quest Completed
The moment my ax severed the rope a surge of energy shot through me.
I gasped as all the pain vanished. The lingering ache from my two wounds faded. The martial energy, my TP, flooded through me. I felt stronger. Invigorated. I laughed as I instinctively knew that I had hit Level 3.
I completed the quest and the XP put me over the edge. I grinned down at the woman as she sat up, pulling at the ropes bound at her wrists, gratitude shining on her blue face. She looked young, eighteen or nineteen. Her white hair whipped around her, affected by a breeze that didn't caress me. Iris zipped around, clapping and celebrating my victory.
I sheathed my ax and attacked the knots at the bound woman's dainty feet. Her toes wiggled as she came free. Before I could say anything, she threw herself at me. She had her arms around me, her naked body pressed against my chainmail-clad body.
My shield fell from my left hand.
“My brave hero,” she said, her gray eyes dewy. They were as soft as clouds promising a light rain. “You have my eternal gratitude!”
Her lips seized mine in a hot kiss that erased thought. I groaned as I stumbled back from the altar. The cultists' bodies had melted away. The signs of battle gone. No blood marred the floor. Was that natural?
I didn't care. My dick throbbed in my leather pants. My hands grabbed the shapely ass of the Sylph. I clutched hard to her. I held her, my fingers digging into her delicious rump. All thought flew out my mind as her tongue played with mine. Her hair danced around her face, brushing my cheeks, swirled this way and that by the breeze only she could experience.
She broke the kiss and moaned, “You said you were Marcus, yes?”
“Marcus Aurelius,” I said, grinning at her. My fingers dug into her shapely ass. “At your service, lady...?”
“Haîcze,” she said. “I'm a Sylph explorer.”
She leaned in and kissed me again. Her tongue darted around inside of my mouth. I loved the feel of her. She tasted so delicious. Iris was a beautiful pixie, but she was only a few inches tall. This was a woman; my reward for the side-quest.
She grabbed at my belt around my waist, fumbling at it. With deft skill, she had it off and dropped it to the ground. My chainmail hung only from my shoulders. It clinked as she drew it up, dragging the heavy metal with eagerness. Our kiss broke as she exposed my muscular chest.
“Oh, my,” she gushed at the sight of sculpted pecs and rippling abs. I had bulging biceps, muscled like a maiden's fantasy. She quivered, her hips wiggling from side to side. Her moans echoed through the room. “You are a powerful fighter.” Her eyes flicked down to my leather pants. “Does your cock match the rest of your prowess?”
“Only one way for you to find out,” I said, grinning at her.
Her hair gusted around her head, whipped up by a cyclone. Sylphs were an air elemental, right? Explained the air.
Haîcze fell to her knees and attacked the lacings. Iris buzzed over her head, wings humming with excited delight. The Sylph ripped down my leather pants. My cock popped out, thick and hard, thrusting from my black bush.
“Oh, my,” she gasped, one blue hand grabbing my cock and the other cupping my balls. She gave them a gentle squeeze. “Such prowess. We might breed a changeling today.”
I grinned, remembering all the races in this... world. One of them was half-fey. Changelings. “I bet we can. I got the fertility to knock up an entire village.”
She gave a wicked laugh. “Wouldn't that be something to witness.”
Haîcze engulfed my cock in her hungry mouth. She sucked it past her lips. I groaned at the naughty slide of her tongue over the crown. Iris had felt great, but this was a proper blowjob. How long had it been since the ex gave me one?
Fifteen years? Longer?
“Yes,” I groaned, my nuts twitching in her massaging fingers. She kneaded them, teasing them. She coaxed the pressure to rise towards the tip of my cock. My chest rose and fell, the pleasure already building.
She sucked with hunger. Her gray eyes stared up at me, brimming with desire.
Her lips sealed about me, sucking and bobbing. She twisted her head. Her tongue caressed around me. She made such wicked slurping sounds while her hair danced in a gentle breeze.
I savored her warm mouth around me. Iris grinned at me as she hovered in the air. She played with her hairless twat while Haîcze worked that mouth up and down my cock. She twisted her head, rubbing my spongy crown across her tongue, the roof of her mouth, the inside of her cheeks.
She knew how to please a man.
“Damn, Haîcze,” I said, surprised I managed to get that name out. “You got a mouth on you.”
She popped off and said, “Mmm, my people have a reputation to maintain, don't we?”
“Yeah,” I said then groaned as she blew on my cock.
The air gusting out of her mouth caressed over the tip and spilled down the shaft in wild eddies. My sensitive tip drank it in. I groaned, reveling in the pleasure. Her saliva evaporating off made the air feel cool, a welcome contrast from her hot mouth. My dick throbbed while her other hand massaged my nuts.
Then she engulfed it again, sucking hard. My entire body twitched. My cock's head felt more sensitive after being blown on. The pleasure was more intense as she worked her mouth up and down my cock.
She must have the Fellatio trait, popped through my mind at that moment. It was a heavenly blowjob.
When she popped off a second time, I let out a long, slow groan as she blew over my cock. She could exhale and exhale and exhale, caressing my dick's spongy tip with these wonderful currents of air. They drifted down to my balls, massaging them amid her fingers' lithe grip.
She sucked my dick back into her mouth with hungry passion.
The pressure swelled to the tip of my cock. I groaned, my dick throbbing and dancing in her mouth. I couldn't take much more of this. It was ecstatic. A wonderful joy to experience. My heart pounded in my chest. The pleasure swelled towards a feverish peak. A wild explosion of rapture that would fire my cum into the depths of her mouth.
“Fuck, yes, Haîcze!” I grunted.
“Cum in her, Marcus!” cheered Iris. Her wings fluttered, her fingers plunging into her little cunt. “Just give her all that seed!”
