The guy was, first, an orc. Thick with corded muscles, he towered over the women by a good foot and a half, with prominent tusks. Like the orc female, he had reddish gray skin that seemed a bit demonic. The goat-like woman also had maroon skin and black sclera to her eyes. And man, while the first couple of women under this guy's control didn't seem completely evil, these three sure fit the bill real well.
"The two females you sensed are mine," I told this guy, and slowly reached back for my shotgun. I also readied that teleport spell if he did anything insane, like summon a giant beast out of his chest. "You go back to where you came from, and nobody gets—"
He did end up being blindingly fast, but I was ready. I teleported behind him, just in time to see him dart forward, scream out, and blast a hail of shrapnel or tiny darts into the space where I'd been.
I touched off the shotgun at a range of about eight feet, which took him full in the back and launched him several feet forward, into the trunk of a large tree. He flipped sideways and landed
hard
. All four members of his female fighting force froze and stared at me.
I readied the teleport spell again, just in case he was very friggin tough from one of the mark powers.
"I told you once," I repeated. "Leave my females alone and go back—"
He was nothing if not persistent. He sprang to his feet and swung around in a wide arc. This sent a shockwave of wind out of his axe toward me, but I'd already teleported aside, to his three o'clock direction. His air slash sent all four of his women on their asses. My teleport allowed me to blindside him again, meaning he'd have to reset his axe in order to wind slash me a second time.
Your mana is getting low!
The UI reported.
Without time to recharge, you have only mana for one more teleport.
Great.
He was tougher, stronger, faster, with more abilities, and he'd just spurned my offer twice, so fuck him. I shot him again, point blank. He might not be down for the count, so I racked the chamber, and loaded the first of the shells before his spinning body hit the ground another ten feet away.
This time he didn't immediately get up. He also obviously wasn't dead. Amazing that a guy with these marks could take two shotgun blasts to the face and keep going. He twitched and got up on one arm, but he was a bloodied mess. It looked like I'd shredded half the marks on his chest right off. Although it probably didn't work like that, it'd be nice if it did.
I cast an eye toward the female folk, and only the orc still held her weapon.
Jerry, take down that lady orc with the red skin if she moves to attack me. Or, hell, protect me while I go do something stupid.
I had time to load the second shell into the twelve gauge, but then remembered I had less than a dozen shells left. This world wouldn't give me any additional ammunition, so that meant it was bat time.
He'd just begun to pick himself off the ground when I gave him a full force swing directly in the elbow. I heard and saw the bone shatter, sounding like I'd just hit a home run on a baseball made of glass. He slumped back to the ground. The next swing took him in the skull, and when I saw he was still moving, gave that same spot another hard fucking swing. To hell with this guy.
What kind of opponent didn't even open with some witty banter? Or negotiate at all? The kind that needed a few extra to the head, apparently.
Now splattered with blood and maybe some bits of bone and brain, I turned to the ladies. "Okay, that's over with! What happens now?"
***
The orc woman snarled, roared, and threw herself forward, only to be intercepted by Jerry. He chomped onto her leg and hip and immediately let go on my order. In response she froze, collapsed onto her ass, and backed away in utter horror, crab style. She was bleeding from about a zillion new wounds, and stuck with a bunch of Jerry's teeth, which were embedded in her in all kinds of places.
I had Jerry stay where he was, and let her go.
Faced with a striped jiddara, mouth a good two feet wide, almost all of them ran. One of them fainted, and one prostrated herself before me. This last was the horned one with the goat hooves and the maroon skin.
While I began to sort out the loot (that axe was one hundred percent mine), I also took stock of the system messages I'd been ignoring.
Fierce had flown up in experience and was now nearly at three stars. I just needed a nudge to get it to Bronze. Sly was now also shy of Bronze with two stars and most of the third, and Tough had gained a third star in Normal. It would tip over to Bronze very soon.
As for skills, I'd gained Blunt Melee Weapons at 1, but curiously hadn't gained a Ranged Weapons skill for using the shotgun. The UI probably knew I was on borrowed time with firearms, so by the time I used up that little advantage, I'd better be in a much better place powers-wise, stats-wise, and skills-wise. It was literally a clock running down that I hadn't really considered before.
The axe itself was magic, but I didn't check the stats yet. I needed to deal with two unconscious women, one prostrating goat woman, and one elf woman who'd fainted and was just now waking up.
I also now knew that using the empathy power and the teleport about five times was my current mana limit. This was useful information, even though it wasn't great for future fights. I needed Bronze, and then to increase my Attuned so I had more mana. Hopefully there were mana potions to be made or bought somewhere. I was going to reach Bronze very soon, unless… unless those ladies ran back to wherever they'd come from and brought hell down upon me.
It was probably better to move locations.
"Ladies first," I said, mostly to myself, but also to Jerry.
With Jerry's help, I was able to sling the two unconscious, scantily-clad females over his back, heft one of them over my shoulder, and keep the last one in front of me by ordering her to march.
The catgirl wasn't heavy to carry, even over a hundred yards or so back to Mack. It had to be on account of my increased everything: better senses, better toughness, and now more strength.
The trailer was filling a lot of roles right now, but prison wasn't going to be one of them. I set Jerry to watch the two who were now conscious, the goat girl and the elf, while I climbed into the trailer after some rope. Thank the gods we had some of that. I began tying the unconscious ones up by the hands and feet, before calling out.
"Auralla? Avya?"
The door opened and the two of them peered out.
"You… you're, you're alive," Avya stammered.
"I told you!" Auralla declared, and hopped out. She headed over and surveyed the goings on. "What're you doing?"
"I don't want them going anywhere until we've had a little talk."
Auralla sneered at them. "These are just stupid chattel," she said with a shrug. "You just dominate them, and put them in their place, and they submit to your will."
"Oh do they?" I asked Auralla, before turning to the goat girl. "What's your species called, if I may?"
The goat girl looked at Auralla, then back at me. "Tiefling."
"And what's your name, Miz tiefling?"
"Fayeen."
Relationship at Normal tier, zero stars secured. I almost chuckled at that. This Fayeen might very well hate me, but that was also a relationship in its own way.
"Well, Fayeen, are you thrilled at the idea of being dominated, put in your place, and submitting to my will?"
She stared at me in silence, with occasional glances at Auralla. Avya still hadn't gotten out of the cab, but was peering out at the scene. I needed to address her as well, first because I'd been a bit of a dick, and second because the empath power was incredible. If the jump from Normal to Bronze with the beastmaster power was stat bonuses becoming a summoned jiddara, I wondered what a power with telepathy at Normal tier could give me. Sure the telepathy might be great, but what about at Bronze? What about at… Silver?
I was getting ahead of myself.
"She's not really keen on submitting to my will, just like you weren't. You asked me not to dominate you, and that's got to be the baseline."
"They're mindless fools, no better than doluss, only good for milking," Auralla insisted.
"You and I both know that's not true, now stop repeating what you've heard in the village and face reality. She's a female, same as you, she probably had magic once, same as you, and now she's been serving some douchebag who just grabbed up her power and used it until he met a face full of buckshot."
"What is a douchebag?"
"A male who dominates others."
Auralla seemed to like this word, and repeated it several times. "Douchebag. Douchebag… He was a douchebag… And buckshot?"
"The fire that came out of my shotgun." I turned to my first, uh, conquest. "Now, Fayeen, you bowed down before me, and showed me the back of your neck. I assume that means you surrendered and you're mine to do with as I please. Is that correct?"
She lowered her eyes, and mumbled, "Spare my life is all I ask. I have kids."
Oh, now that was a good one. I resisted the urge to bust out laughing. "Done. Your life is spared. Now, after that… you're mine?"
"You are my master," she said, and got down on her knees. "I serve as my master wishes."
Brainwashing, sure. That orc douchebag had done a number on these people. "Then you're going to answer my questions."
"As my master commands."
"First command, you'll stop saying 'as my master commands' and just say 'Yes, sir' or 'Yes, Evan.' Are we clear on that?"
"Yes… sir."
So far so good. "Now, first question: did that red orc male dominate you and steal your magic?"
She nodded.
"And your magic refills occasionally, right? This is a constant process?"
"Yes, sir."
"My name is Evan. It's okay."
"I cannot call my master by his name," she protested in a harsh whisper. "It is against the laws."
Push past that and move on, I thought.
"How often does your master re-dominate you? Or suck your magic out or whatever?"
At the filling of the moon, was the answer. Every thirty-three days the moon went dark, and that was a time to begin refilling with mana. That gave me an idea that I tabled. Anyway, when the moon was full again, the female's power would be ready to suck out for another month.
"What happens if your master doesn't dominate you around the full moon?" I asked.
She just stared at me.
"None of you get away? Nobody ever runs off, never to be heard from again?"
"Master, I…" Her mouth worked open and closed. I activated the
Empath's Mark
to read her thoughts. She would be killed if she divulged the secret. The servants of the Masters had their hierarchy, with newcomers at the bottom, and the most capable at the top. The favored of the master would sell off secrets for better treatment, better food, better weapons, free time away from the others, control over the weaker ones… the list went on. The secret would get back to the Master—
"The Master is dead," I told her. "You won't be going back to him. You can tell me the secret."
The mark fades, she thought, but couldn't bring herself to say. Such an all-pervasive fear rose up to crush the words before reaching her throat. It would only last until the moon faded to black again, and disappeared from the sky, and its power would weaken after the full moon.
Deserters were usually chained up in the home of the master.
"Jesus Christ," I muttered. I had stumbled into a world lush with beautiful women and amazing surroundings and seemingly unlimited sex, but also slavery and debauchery and torture and murder. It was going to be a hell of a thing if I lasted a whole month in this place.
I peered up at the sky. "How's the moon doing?" I asked. "How much time do we have before you're all magic-ey again?"
"Three days," Auralla said.
Fayeen began to weep.
She ended up being inconsolable, so I didn't bother trying, but instead set Jerry to watch after them. I went back to where Avya had the door open and had been watching it all.
"What will you do with them?" she asked.
"Would your village accept them?" I asked.
Several confused blinks was the answer. "I… I do not… think so. They are property. They have a Master's brand on them. The males might come out in force to round them up, and make battle on the person who took them."
They had indeed all been branded, and that was bad news. "You mean there's no healing magic capable of erasing that?"
"There is," Auralla answered. "It is difficult magic, and taxing. The First Domi knows it. I have heard she can erase the brand with a ritual done, but…" She explained that she'd never seen it done, and the only rumor was that the First Domi had decreed she would not do it, to keep the village safe. Otherwise they would have runaways in Sunspire every day, and she could only perform it once per moon.
The one who had fainted regained consciousness in the middle of my interrogation of Fayeen, but had tried to hide it. I felt her thoughts on the edges of my mind when I'd been listening to Fayeen's surface thoughts. The other two were also showing signs of awakening.
This was the pointy-eared one with the soft blue skin and blue-blonde hair. Like the others she was dressed only in scraps of fur held together with crude leather strips. All this semi-nudity worked its magic on me, and I was in a great mood, despite all the danger I'd just been in.
"I'm Evan," I said, "And 'yes, sir' is just fine. None of this master stuff."
She just stared at me in shock.
"And your name is?"
"Velleth." Boom, relationship begun.
"I need to know how far you ranged away from the city, and what you were doing out here?"
"The master didn't state our purpose, but we knew. The master was always working to become tougher, more fearsome, stealthier. He would train out here, and train us. But he was always looking for any females of the outcast villages who wandered too far from their homes. Those were to be taken."
"And how long were you out? How far from the city?"
She thought this over. "About a hundred miles. We swung to and fro off course, but we were headed in the direction of Sunspire for over two weeks."
Thank the gods for the auto-translation power, which turned whatever distance they used into units I could use. It definitely wouldn't take the other seven or eight former slaves two weeks to head back to the city, more like three or four days if they kept up a good pace on foot heading directly back. If they stopped to sleep. Then anyone they sent out to deal with me would take only two days of constant marching to reach me. I probably had a little under a week.
It was time to get to work.