Fighting Them There Ch. 11

The last time that there were skill descriptions for Max's party members was chapter 8. There will be another bite at the apple at the end of chapter 12. I have ideas of how to format them so that they are legible on the site.

### BEGIN CHAPTER 11 ###

Fiona woke in darkness, drenched in sweat. Again. She'd woken three other times that night. She normally slept with a sheet rather than a blanket, and spending the night sandwiched between two tall hunters had her overheating. It was the work of a moment to use her darkness magic to chill herself to the point of comfort, but she needed to be awake for that to be an option. Her feelings about sharing the bed with Max and Sophie were complex: despite the severe thermostat problem, it was sexually fulfilling and even kind of romantic to be used by the couple. She woke up cuddled up into Max's side, with Sophie enveloping her from behind. The blond amazon had her arm over Fiona's breasts - breasts that had been made large by Max's class. If it wasn't for the heat problem, she could stay that way forever.

Max was her party's support, and she was designated as his slave for purposes of being a recipient for his boosting seals and other support abilities, and after the events of the preceding night, she felt that her designation as a slave had become rather more literal. Sophie was their party's vanguard, the strongest front liner in their crop. But perhaps more importantly, she was Max's girlfriend, the woman Max actually loved. Fiona didn't pretend to understand their relationship, Max's class was turning them into sex slaves, probably had already completed the process for Sophie. But while the Valkyrie would willingly, eagerly submit to any sexual demands Max might make, he insisted on deferring to her.

She nudged Max in the shoulder. "Max. Max!" she whisper-shouted into his ear. When he grunted and stirred, she pressed on. "Max, I'm your slave, right?" Even if she wasn't becoming addicted to his semen or however it worked, she would still have acknowledged that he was handsome. Tall for a human, and well muscled like a swimmer or a swordsman, he was someone who had trained to become a front liner. The supernatural strength he'd received from his class was much less than he'd expected, his trained abilities with a sword weren't used very much by their party. Up close and personal, his muscles felt nice in her hands, even the small amount of supernatural strength he had was more than plenty for her to feel overwhelmed in his arms.

He scrunched up his face. She was wrapped up enough with contemplating his body that she almost didn't notice he was awake enough to talk. "Wha- um, yeah. Of course. You can be my slave for as long as you want." The fundamentally nonsensical nature of that claim was not lost on Fiona, though Max did seem to genuinely mean it. It was of course the case that Max could revoke her status as his slave at any time and she had no power to resign from the position. He had a limited number of designated slaves, and it was ultimately his choice if he wanted to designate someone else in her place. Rosalita and Thelenia had asked him to let them go, and he had, but there was no obligation for him to do so. And Fiona thought it likely that she was rapidly reaching the point where she would be unable to ask him to end their contract. "Wait, what time is it?" He blinked in the darkness. She could see his confusion because her class' eyes of night skill let her see in darkness, but to him the room was drowned in darkness.

"It's three and a half hours after midnight." The planet they were on did not spin at the same rate as Earth, and so there were a lot of ways to describe the flow of time. Using seconds, minutes, and hours the same as they were done on Earth could be done, but only by resetting to zero in the middle of the local night every day. Max's expression betrayed that he was confused and a little bit annoyed that he had been woken up at such a time. "Can I be on the other side of you?" Max had been up front with his idea that Fiona should sleep in the middle. His class was Master, and the women of his party got literal power from swallowing his semen, but he didn't want to cheat on his girlfriend. Apparently he had convinced himself that a woman sleeping with him and also Sophie at the same time wasn't cheating. It was kind of adorable, in a crazy and stupid way.

The look that passed across Max's face was worried and sad. "Do you not like Sophie touching you?" Sophie looked like a comic character drawn by a skilled but horny teenager, easily the hottest woman in their crop, almost certainly the hottest woman at Camp Acheron, and very plausibly the hottest woman on the whole planet. Not that there were that many women on the planet, the entirety of North America only supplied two military bases, South America only one. The truth was that she liked Sophie touching her, she liked it a lot. "Was she too aggressive when she sucked my Essence out of your pussy?" Fiona's sex had been left entirely hairless and smooth by Max's class and the aesthetic preferences it imposed. The other women got to keep a landing strip or a cute shape of pubic hair, but for Fiona it was all soft and smooth. Sophie had rubbed her face all over it, and then stuck her tongue deep into her vault while pinching Fiona's clit to near pain. Sophie hadn't just drunk Max's cum out of her, but Fiona's as well. Even though Fiona had already been fucked into jelly by Max, had ecstatically babbled out a bunch of oaths of submission to Max, Sophie had promised to break her even more. And she had.

She shook her head, only belatedly realizing that Max couldn't see her as well as she could see him. "No, no. Sophie's great. I can see why she's the head girl in your harem." She sighed. It was surprisingly difficult to just tell him that she didn't want to go along with his plan. It made her worried what might happen if he upgraded her more. He'd enhanced just one of her skills, and she had begged him to dominate her sexually. She'd pledged herself as his slave, his property. Max had told her that he didn't think it counted, that it wasn't real. But it had certainly felt real when he was fucking her, and it still felt real while her pussy was empty. "No... um... I'm just used to sleeping alone, and you two are really warm. I think I need to hang an arm or leg off the side of the bed."

Max chuckled. He also blushed, but he didn't make any attempt to conceal that because it hadn't occurred to him that his rosy cheeks were plainly visible to her in the darkness. "I'm so sorry, Fiona. I'm trying to make sure that everyone is comfortable with everything we do, and her I think I've made you uncomfortable the old fashioned way by just making the bed physically uncomfortable." He closed his eyes and sighed. "Sorry, I'm not very good at this. Maybe it's better if Sophie gets the middle?"

"Surely not, Master!" It had escaped her lips without thought. Then it was her turn to blush. "Sorry, Max." There was a stirring on the other side. Fiona winced at the evidence that her outburst had woken the Valkyrie.

"What was that?" Sophie asked blearily. "What time is it?" On having the answer told to her, she became annoyed. "Fuck!" After a short pause, she spoke again, but her tone had changed. "That's it, isn't it? The insatiable Fiona wants more fucking, wants to be dominated more thoroughly. It's even... oh right, she wants to be dominated. So by waking you up at fuck-off-o'clock, she's requesting that you punish her. I read about this, it's called 'bratting.' The slave does purposefully annoying and disobedient things in order to get punished." She dramatically dropped herself back on the pillow. "Get it over with. Twenty lashes with a wet noodle or whatever."

The proposal was not accepted by Max. "We're absolutely not going to do anything like that. I know that the acts of chastisement give you pleasure and progression of your binding seal when I restrain or beat you, but I'm absolutely not doing any of that without knowing that you're onboard. If you want me to beat you, tell me that you want me to beat you, and choose what you want me to beat you with. Don't try to play head games where I try to guess whether and what kind of beatings you want. I'm not going to guess right very often, and I can't see that ending well." In the darkness, his expression was still completely sincere.

Perplexed with how serious everything had gotten, Fiona turned toward Sophie. "Nothing like that. I was just suggesting that we be on each side of Max. Because it's too warm for me in between you guys." Feeling like she needed to explain herself, she continued. "I usually sleep with a sheet and no blanket. So I was thinking I should hang off the edge of the bed." It sounded lame even to her own ears.

The blond woman laughed. "Oh dear. Actually, I think you might be on to something." Unlike Fiona and Max, whose second line classes gave very little in the way of supernatural strength, Sophie was a B-tier vanguard. On top of that, Max's claiming seal increased physical strength, and Sophie's claiming seal had progressed more than anyone's. She was very strong, like comic book superhero strong. Also, she could fly. And she used these two abilities to literally float herself over Fiona like the Tooth Fairy or a paralysis demon and then lift her out of her space. It was a surprisingly comforting thing, being held aloft by the Valkyrie. Sophie was powerful, but she was also gorgeous and soft in precisely the right manners and places. While Fiona was just being carried half a meter, she still felt like she was a damsel being rescued by the caped hero. It was romantic in a way she wouldn't have expected it to be.

It wasn't what Max had expected either. When Sofie had finished rearranging everyone, he felt womanly flesh on both sides and became concerned. "Are you sure about this, Sofie? We agreed to threesomes where the third was with me and you. If you're both just pleasuring me, that seems like a really big, really selfish escalation." His voice betrayed genuine concern. "That seems like a big step to take in the middle of the night."

A harrumph came from the Valkyrie. "Your seals dictate what is selfish and what is charitable. You don't have them, you don't feel what it is like. But for us, for your slaves, it is a simple fact of life that watching you get amorous with our sister-slaves is the act of..." She'd been on such a roll, and then she'd ruined it by forgetting the weird names of the progression acts. "Fuck, I'm such an idiot sometimes." Her shame was compounded when she realized that she'd triggered the self-disparagement progression of her envy seal on accident. The act of supplication, which for some reason her sleep-deprived brain was happy to provide her with.

Seeing the predicament of the Valkyrie, Fiona assisted. "Act of demonstration. We are rewarded for watching by the act of demonstration, but we get nothing for being watched. For us, exhibitionism is done for charity, voyeurism is for personal gain." She pressed her softness into Max for emphasis.

"Right," Sophie agreed so she could proceed, "so if we both get made love to by you, that's allowing us to be both selfish and charitable. Both in the lovemaking itself, and in our seals." She let that point sink in, which took a bit of time because of the horrendous hour. "But that is not the only way the seals dictate our behavior in bed. The binding seal has an act where we make pledges..."

"The act of austerity." Fiona supplied.

"Right. That one." Sophie acknowledged the Night Caller's contribution. "And it means that if we tell you what we're going to do before we do it, we get rewarded. It progresses our seal that boosts tenacity and vigor. So when I tell you that we're going to rub our tits all over your body from both directions until we get your flagstaff to bullhead city, that's just what we're going to do. And we're going to love it."

She made a powerful argument. And when Fiona joined in, the argument became even stronger.

Elsewhere in the building, Danny was awoken by sounds coming from Max's room. "Fuck, what time is it?" he asked the universe at large.

####

Daniel looked at the crude targets that Max had set up. "So why do you want me to watch you swing that thing?"

Max held the whip he had looted from a Tartarian corpse and they both looked at it. "It doesn't respond the way normal dungeon equipment does. It has a status window, but it won't fully open for me. It makes electric shocks when I crack it, but not when Sophie does. But mostly I want you here because of what happened when the Tartarian cracked it in the dungeon basement." A wave of dominating psychic energy had incapacitated Oscar and Kaitlin until Alex had slain the enemy rune-bearer with his sword.

Danny looked alarmed. "I was under the impression that your entire party was made out of women who want to suck your dick. I don't want to suck your dick." The Tartarian in question had waved around an engorged phallus of ridiculous proportions, and the psychic assault had been focused on that part of his body specifically.

"Exactly," Max grinned, "the domination pulse didn't affect you, and you aren't one of my party members. If I told any of them to get on their knees, they'd just do it." He shuddered. "The big problem is the act of fealty. If I tell them to do something and they do it, they progress their claiming seals. So I always have to be really careful that I don't tell them to do anything that they don't already want to do, or it becomes coercive."

Danny gave him a world of side eye. "Max, you genuinely have the most first world problems I've ever heard of." He seemed inclined to kvetch more. "I would be so happy to have just one beautiful woman who wanted my dick as much as any of your slaves want yours. She wouldn't even have to be a slave! I mean, the least hot woman in your party is like an LA seven." Danny didn't elaborate on which woman he thought was the least hot, and Max didn't ask.

Max gesticulated. "If you want a girlfriend, just go get a girlfriend. You're young, you're reasonably attractive, and you're a C-tier defender. You have super strength, super speed, and super endurance. The dating pool is small if you're limiting yourself to members of our crop, but there's a couple thousand support staff. Even the cooks and janitors on this planet are all guardians who've passed Space Force basic, there are plenty of attractive women. And I guarantee that you're a physically superior specimen to thousands of men on the base. Think of all those men who can't lift a Harley Davidson one handed. Pick any of the hot sergeants and ask them out. They'll say yes."

The Sentry face palmed, his thumb and middle finger massaging his epicanthal folds. "You were just saying how you felt uncomfortable being in a mismatched power relationship with your harem of super women. How do you think I would feel dating a woman who wasn't a hunter? Someone who didn't have any durability from their class? It would be like dating a porcelain doll." Then it was Danny's turn to shudder. "And while Camp Acheron does have other crops from last winter and last year, I don't think I have to tell you why I think dating a woman from an advanced crop is a bad idea when we're still in chest debt. That really does leave just the twenty-three women in our crop. Eight of them are aliens, three of the humans are in your harem already, and I don't think it's a great idea to date women in my own party, which scratches off Kaitlin, Alice, and Lupe."

Shaking his head, Max disagreed. "Ulzhari and Chaeryn were pretty naive when they joined, but they are enthusiastic to learn. There's no internet porn on the other home worlds, but the other Alliance races are... compatible. Completely. You don't have to swipe left on all the aliens." Max was reminded that he actually did have to spend Capitulation on Chaeryn and Ulzhari, even though he was concerned about how they would handle the submissive urge that would accompany that.

"Not all of us are as adventurous as you, Max," Danny confided, "personally I think think that wanting my hypothetical girlfriend to be a human woman is not an unreasonably high bar to set. But it doesn't leave a lot of options. Like, Chloe? Sandra? Yalena?"

Affecting a look of pretend puzzlement, Max retorted. "What's wrong with Yalena? I'm sure that if you submitted a ten point list outlying the pros and cons of sleeping with you, that she'd see reason and hop right in the sack." The two of them shared a laugh. It wasn't entirely fair, but it wasn't entirely unfair either.

Using the whip was different than Max had expected. One thing he'd noticed early on in his study was that movies that had whips tended to use computer animation to make the whips look cool on screen, but that those depictions weren't physically accurate. Older movies used real whips, but their poor resolution and crummy frame rates made it difficult for Max to identify what was being done. He'd been close to despair when he discovered Lash Larue. He was a cowboy action hero who had used a bullwhip to do movie stunts in the middle of the twentieth century. Max wasn't encouraged because the movies were any good or because anything could be gleaned out of the choppy cinematography of the techniques being used, but merely because of the life story involved. Larue had done his own stunts, but also his skills with the whip were self taught on the job. When he'd gotten the part in his first movie, Lash Larue had never held a whip in his life, and had needed to learn proficiency in time for shooting the scenes. Getting good enough with a whip to open bottles, cut newspapers, and grab people was something which factually took weeks, not years. And that was for someone who didn't have supernatural agility from a hunter's rune. Max's first attempts were embarrassing failures, but he persevered.

The whip itself was two and a half meters of braided, black, flexible material. Max wasn't sure if it was leather or licorice or what, but it was strong and it was supple. Like any whip, it could be made to make a cracking sound when part of it traveled faster than the speed of sound. The speed of sound was very slightly faster at Camp Acheron than it was on Earth, but getting the end of the whip to exceed that speed was still pretty easy. There was a lot of leverage and torque available on a two and a half meter string, and abruptly change the inclination of the handle would make the end move very quickly indeed when the wave had propagated along the length of the whip. Whenever Max made it crack, there was also an electric spark. Danny was actually much stronger and faster than Max because of the generous benefits of being a C-tier defender, but there were no electrical arcs despite the fact that he had no difficulties making the whip crack. That itself was a curiosity, but it left Danny fairly uninterested in holding the whip anymore.

Having full ownership of the whip, Max tried various tricks with it. Most of them didn't work very well, being more akin to flopping around than having an extended arm. A few times he was able to get the crack, and thus the lightning bolt, to happen right next to an intended target. The results were impressive, but it was unreliable enough that he was afraid that the shock had struck where he'd wanted it to on accident rather than by design.

When it was time to go to lunch, Max wasn't where he wanted to be, but he could see a road to get there. "It's not ready to take into a dungeon, but it seems like something that might be sooner rather than later." He turned a serious face to Danny Hu. "So, at any point during that did you feel..."

Danny glared at him. "... The almost unignorable urge to suck your dick?" He said it sarcastically, and Max blushed. He hadn't been intending to ask that, but he had kind of wanted to ask that. "No, man, I don't want to suck your dick. Why don't you ask your sex slaves if they want to suck your dick?"

Intended as gentle ribbing, it nonetheless hit a bit closer than had been intended. "My semen gives them functionally more mana, durability, and stamina. They kind of want to suck my dick all the time. So we can't get any information out of asking them. It's like if you were running an experiment where one of the options always came with twenty bucks. The participants would always want to take that option, right? So you wouldn't get any information asking them if they wanted to take the cash." He folded his hands. "I don't think I'm explaining it very well, but like, my class always blurs the line between voluntary and involuntary, it's structured as rewards for following my orders and for touching me or swallowing my Essence or whatever, but those rewards are their progression as hunters. If they don't do those things when I tell them to, they will literally lose out on their seal progression. Each day's seal progression can only happen during that day, so any day they don't do the training is like a permanent reduction in their seal progress."

Raising his eyebrow in his best Spock impersonation, Danny summarized. "So them being your sex harem is their job? And you're afraid that you can't get unbiased answers from them because they love their job too much?"

Max thought about it for a bit and then nodded. "Being the best hunter we can be is all of our jobs. If we could do something that we don't want to do in order to be better hunters, we'd do it. Because we want to fight them there more than we want to avoid doing stuff we don't want to do." Max thought that his thoughts needed to bake a bit more. The philosophical point he was making was more batter than cake at the moment.

"I get that denied rewards are kind of like coercive punishments," the Sentry conceded, "but I still don't want to suck your dick." They shared a laugh over it. But it left open the question of how the Tartarian had used that property of the whip. Or even if the domination wave was a property of the whip at all.

####

Kaitlin didn't look very good. She looked better than she had when Max and Miriam were smothering flames on her body, but even after being physically healed she looked exhausted and stressed. It was no wonder that she hadn't been out of the infirmary yet. Max, Miriam, and Sophie had come with cookies from the mess hall, having let Kaitlin's normal team mates have some time with her before they went in. "These are our 'sorry we couldn't protect you' cookies." Miriam explained.

The other five hunters from Team Two were all in attendance. Danny the Sentry, Lupe the Invoker, Glyffildir the Battle Mage, Merkarri the Shaman, and Alice the Ninja: it was a strong lineup, and it looked like Danny had a harem of his own. Or at least he might do, Max thought, if he stopped treating his party members as undateable. Lupe and Alice looked like they were angry at the newcomers, and Lupe spoke to prove that she definitely was. "You almost got our Phantasmist killed, you locas putas." She had a hard edge to her voice, and a hard set to her jaw, proving that she wasn't joking around.

Max was about to protest that he hadn't chosen the mission or the team, and that he had been just as endangered by the sudden team jumble as Kaitlin, when Miriam took the initiative with an effuse apology. "I'm so sorry about that. We're all so sorry about that. That whole mission was a shit show, and we almost lost party members. It never should have happened. The only thing I can do is apologize." She looked to be near tears, but held her gaze on Kaitlin with difficulty. By the time she had finished, Max had come around to her methods and simply spread his hands out in contrition and nodded.

Surprisingly, Kaitlin looked like she'd been slapped. Not just the ongoing frailty remaining from her brush with death, but a sudden look of surprise and contrition. "They know about the seventh party member." She mumbled, her eyes downcast.

"Oh, that makes things easier," Sophie said brightly, "it means exactly what it sounds like it means. Max is the most powerful hunter in recorded history and he's going to lead his party to do great things. Stuff of legends. Prophecies fulfilled. Saving the world. Slaying Calamity Lords. All that stuff. And if any of you bitches jump on his dick fast enough, you can be part of this unfolding saga. In a hundred years, there will be movies and musical theatrical productions where you will be played by beautiful and popular actresses who have yet to be born. All of this and more if, and only if, you learn to love the taste of Max's cum." She waved her arms at him like a magician's assistant or a presenter on a game show.

Everyone stared at Sophie like she had grown an additional head. Max was the first to regain the power of speech. "Sophie! What the hell?! Apologize!" He was mad.

Sophie wiggled in contrition. "I'm sorry Max. I'm sorry everyone. I'm a very naughty girl who deserves to be punished." She didn't look like she was sorry. She looked like she was savoring chocolates.

Her antics earned her a scathing look from Miriam. "Are you seriously supplication edging here? Now? What is wrong with you?" The Geomancer blushed, hiding her freckles in her second-hand embarrassment.

With a smile that could have hidden an entire stolen cookie, Sophie partially relented. "You're right, I'm pretty disgusting to do something like that." Leaning close to Miriam she whispered. "But it's actually pretty great, definitely more oomph when it feels genuinely humiliating."

"Please stop," Max said, his face filled with worry, "I already told you that we aren't going to do any punishment guessing games. Don't act out to try to make me guess what punishments you want." His voice rose in sorrow and intensity. "Don't humiliate yourself in front of our crop members. You're humiliating me. You're humiliating Miriam. Stop doing this to yourself. Stop doing this to us. Just fucking stop!" He was angry, he was sad. He was disappointed in his girlfriend.

The Valkyrie's smirk vanished as she realized that she had genuinely taken things too far. She reached out toward him, and Max continued to look back at her with incredulous scorn. He didn't take her hand. Neither of them said anything, but enough was conveyed that Sophie ran out of the room with tears in her eyes. Max didn't follow.

When she'd gone, Alice dipped her oar into the maelstrom for the first time. "Wait, were you literally serious when you said that Max's class broke all the rules through the medium of S and M sex magic?" She had directed her question to Kaitlin.

"Yes!" barked Max and Kaitlin at the same time, both equally close to the ends of their respective ropes. Alice and Lupe shared an alarmed look. Danny and Glyffildir seemed to take it in stride. Merkarri seemed genuinely and completely lost.

Kaitlin clapped her hands, and everyone fell silent. "Before..." she waved her hands around in an all encompassing fluster pattern, "all of this... I meant that the Space Force know about your ability to have an extra hunter with you in the dungeon." She looked at Max defiantly. "They asked me what happened, and I told them. So the brass know how ridiculous you are. How you're literally at the MVP threshold before you use any of your class' abilities." The MVP threshold for a support was the point where the benefits they provided to the other hunters in their party were equal in value to what a whole hunter could do on their own. It was a human concept, and was part of a set of analytical tools that had shaken up how hunters were evaluated once Earth had joined the alliance. But you didn't have to be a math wiz to figure out that a hunter who came with an entire extra hunter was a cut above the rest.

"Oh." There really wasn't a lot to say. The Space Force would attempt to use that information to bring the battle to the monsters. To fight them there. It's what this, all of this, was supposed to be about. Not about playing house with his girlfriend, not about cultivating his harem, it was about fighting monsters. And the people who decided how the Alliance was going to fight the monsters were not Max Mitchell of New Mexico.

Utterly deflated, Max walked out of the room.

Miriam followed, leaving Alice to ask what had happened. Danny tried to explain. "Max's party members get seals that are bigger the more they..." He ran out of words.

"Act like sluts." Lupe judgingly supplied.

"Masochistic sluts." Kaitlin clarified.

The Ninja looked between the faces of her party members, trying to find the crack in their expressions that would reveal that they'd been having her on. That this was all an elaborate prank on the lower tier members of the party. She didn't find it, and had no choice but to proceed as if she took them seriously. "Um... OK. How big are those bonuses, and how slutty?" Alice had been accused of being a slut so many times that the word had lost its sting for her.

Their orcish Shaman was still the most confused of all. "Humans all talk about sex. All the time. What does it mean to act like sluts?" She sucked in her lower lip in consternation, which made her tusks look larger.

Danny attempted to explain.

####

Rainbow step allowed her to fly. It was the first skill that Max had upgraded, the one that had ensured that she was his. Completely his. She had gone too far, he was mad at her and it was her fault. She ran across the camp. She ran across the lake. She could run over broken ground, she could run over open water, she could fly. Sometimes she would run through the air just for the joy of doing it, but now she was running from having to face Max, from having to face herself.

She picked a tree at random and ran towards it. Flew towards it. Fled towards it. Trees pretty much looked like trees from a distance, but as she got up close to one its alien nature became more apparent. It didn't really have leaves, so much as a mass of green cotton candy that puffed out from its branches. She'd been on a distant world for almost two months, but she was still capable of being surprised by the strangenesses from time to time. It was almost enough to make her forget her sorrows. Almost.

Everything was going wrong. Max was a man, a man who was going to own women as slaves. A man who already owned slaves, even if some of them were only partially aware of that. She'd been perusing sex slave materials from the internet and she wanted what she had seen. Wanted it for herself. Wanted it for the rest of their party. The internet in Camp Acheron was slow but powerful, she had to put in requests a day in advance and then it was all dumped into her computer at once. She'd put in for hundreds of hours of bondage and discipline. Humiliation and torture. She couldn't watch all of it, or most of it. Not in a week's time. But she could open up video after video, jump around to find the parts that would burn themselves into her mind. There were so many. She was looking for something that would be too hard, too far, too extreme. And she found it, of course, the internet was at times a literal cesspool. But what she also found was that there was a lot that she did not consider too far. A lot that she wanted.

She saw women publicly humiliated and subjected to bindings and beatings that straightforwardly met the definition of torture. And when she imagined Max doing it to her party members, doing it to her, she masturbated. She imagined that it was Fiona who was chained to the wall and whipped. She imagined that it was Ulzhari who was being led around by chains attached to her nipples. She imagined that is was Chaeryn who was tied to a table and spanked. She imagined it was Miriam who was writhing in agony while her pussy was flogged. And most of all, she imagined herself paraded on a leash, manacled, tied to a chair, forced to watch her boyfriend, her master fucking and dominating every one of her team members.

But everything had gone wrong. She had tried to present Fiona, to present herself as fucktoys that Max could punish and dominate, and he hadn't wanted it. He thought it was gross. He thought she was gross. Instead of provoking him into punishing her needy pussy... he'd just been hurt. She had hurt him. She had hurt Max's feelings. She had failed her master. And so she cried. She sat under the strange alien tree and just let tears fill her palms.

Everyone expected so much from her. She was a B-tier vanguard, already having participated in dungeon raids not normally inflicted on first tour hunters. People thought that she would be a great champion, fighting the monsters, protecting the home worlds. Taking the fight to them. From the moment he hunter's rune had revealed itself, everyone just dumped expectations on her. Everyone except Max. He loved her before anyone knew she was a Valkyrie, and he was the only one who was just as worried about peoples' expectations as she was. And now she'd found a way forward, a way out: she could become a sex slave. No one expected anything from a submissive piece of fuck meat tied up in her master's bedroom. She could throw all her crushing obligations away, and just be a hole for Max to fill with cum.

If he wanted her. Which he... didn't. Sophie sobbed into her knees as she crumpled up into a ball. Someone was sending her text messages, but she was too sad to bother checking her phone.

Maybe she should just quit?

####

"I think I should quit." Max's eyes looked red and puffy. He wasn't really bothering to hide the tears that he'd been crying. Maybe he was supposed to sound cool and brave and decisive or whatever, but he wasn't feeling any of those things. He sat on the ground with his back against a building, the redhead Geomancer standing over him.

She shook her head. "You know you can't do that." She gave him a light kick, which caused him to look up her short skirt. She was wearing her red dungeon panties. "None of us can. We have to go fight the monsters, that's why we have the hunter runes. We have the powers, we have the responsibilities. You know all this." She kicked him again, not very hard, but hard enough to make her displeasure known. "But you especially can't quit. You're too powerful. More power, more responsibility. You know that too."

Her kicks sparked no response. She might as well have been kicking a log. "Am I powerful?" Max's question was genuine, not rhetorical. "Sophie's falling apart! Rosalita and Thelenia quit in disgust! When Kaitlin burned, I couldn't do anything, because my class doesn't fucking do anything without a long commitment." His eyes poured rivulets of sorrow. "If I can't maintain the relationships for the long haul, it falls apart. My seals and heals only work on the slaves. But who would want to be one? You guys are talking like I'm an A-tier, but if the whole thing breaks the women, it's worse than E-tier. I'm causing psychological damage to promising hunters. I'm doing the monsters' work for them!"

Miriam grabbed his tear-moistened cheek, her claiming seal tingling at the contact. It reminded her that the seal gave a substantial boost to her physical strength. Without magic, she was still moderately athletic and reasonably strong - she'd spent her adolescent years training to be hunter just as every other hunter in their crop had. With the supernatural physical strength granted by her class, she was ridiculously strong by the standards of normal people and dismissably weak by the standards of hunters. With the addition of the red seal of claiming, her physical strength was well above what would normally be found in the hands of a second liner. It wasn't something that she thought about very much, but she discovered that lifting Max was very easy for her to do.

With the Master brought up to the Geomancer's level, she began berating him. "Stop whining! Sophie still loves you, and you still have a responsibility to keep the rest of us sexually fulfilled. Obviously you two have stuff to work out, but the party is going to hold together. We are going to do it because we have to do it. Soon we'll be adding a seventh permanent member, and it's pretty much got to be Alice or Chloe." Chloe the D-tier Hopplite had turned down joining Max's harem earlier, but Miriam suspected that she could be won over. There was more power on offer than was known about when the D-tier defender had originally turned down the deal. Miriam didn't think they'd made the best possible impression on Alice the D-tier flanker, but again thought it likely that the woman could be won over. Everyone said that Alice was kind of a skank. "So you need to get your shit together. You talk all the time about making sure that we're comfortable with you dominating us, but you need to figure out what your own comfort limits are. And then tell us."

Despite the fact that the redhead was lifting him like a wandering kitten, Max was worried about hurting her. She had powerful magic as a C-tier controller, and his own seals enhanced her well beyond what could be expected at her level, but none of that frightened him. He knew that Miriam wasn't going to do anything to cause real damage. Even when she was kicking him, she was basically just tapping him to get attention. Any hunter could kick hard enough to take off durability, but she had chosen to not do that. He trusted that she always would. On the other hand, he recognized that she had hopes and dreams that were tied up with him. It wasn't just that she was now relying upon him to scratch her sexual itches, she had built her imagined future as a hunter around him and his abilities. He recognized that he had obligations, not just to Sophie, but to every member of his party. To Fiona, the Vietnamese American Night Caller who had so recently shared his bed and pledged herself as his plaything. To Ulzhari, the orcish Berserker who had literally given birth on another world and yet relied on him for all her sexual education. To Chaeryn, the Shadow Elf Sniper who thought he was some kind of prophesied champion and wished nothing more than to help him achieve the greatness she believed was his destiny. And of course, with Miriam, the red haired Geomancer who at that very moment was roughing him up.

He looked into her eyes, and he saw how aroused she was. It would be easy to fuck her, she wanted him to. "I need to talk to Sophie. I need to talk to all of you." Starting to pull himself together, he put all his weight through his own feet. Miriam let him stand.

She nodded. "You need to take full control of your five slaves before we get you a sixth." Bringing out her own Camp Acheron phone, she started sending texts.

####

Max had washed his face. It made it difficult to tell that he'd been crying. Sophie had done no such thing, and was sitting in the training room with her face crumpled in preparation to continue weeping. The other members of the party looked on in apprehension. They all knew how important Sophie was to Max, and thus how central she was to the continued functioning of their party. If the Valkyrie was falling apart, every one of them felt their position in the party imperiled. There was much nervous mumbling and looking around.

When all five women were settled, the emergency meeting could commence. "I've brought you here to discuss my feelings," Max said, just a hint of irony in his voice, "specifically about how I do not like humiliation. I don't like it when I'm humiliated, I don't like watching any of you get humiliated. I especially do not like being humiliated second hand by having any of you being humiliated in front of other people." His gaze went around the room like a searchlight, finally stopping to glare at Sophie. "Your shame hurts me. It feels bad for me. It's not sexy or provocative or whatever." There was an edge to his voice.

The powerful blond woman blubbered. "I'm sorry that I'm an embarrassing pervert!" There was sarcasm and rage, but also fear and sorrow. She sounded legitimately sorry.

Fiona started to say something. "But we-" it was as far as she got before Max cut her off.

"Stop." His voice commanded, and both Fiona and Sophie obeyed. Both had expressions as if they had suddenly felt better, which gave away that they had performed the act of fealty to progress their claiming seals. "I know that you need to progress your seals. I know that to do that efficiently, you're going to need to do all six of the progression acts. A lot of acts of chastisement could be pretty humiliating and I think all the acts of supplication literally require some degree of humiliation." He took a big breath. "I will accommodate those. You all need them to progress, I need to participate to make that happen." He held up a finger. "But! I don't like it. I'm not going to start liking it, and I'm not OK with having that shit sprung on me by surprise. We can have some time set aside for all of you to insult yourselves, and I will put up with it." He made a cutting motion with his hand.

After an awkward silence, Miriam raised her hand. "Um, Master," she started when he nodded in her direction, "what about spanking? We need you to use your motivating strikes to recharge our mana, and we need you to do this in dungeons. So while that's humiliating, it's something that has to be available on short notice." She held his gaze steadily, only the redness of her cheeks betraying how difficult she found that question to ask.

Max blushed. "Yes, well. I uh... I actually do like spanking you." He looked at each woman in turn, but his admission hadn't seemed to offend any of them. "I like spanking all of you. Every one of you is beautiful and your butts and breasts are... they're all very nice. I like touching them, I like playing with them, and I like giving them little spanks." It didn't take a body language expert to recognize his embarrassment. "But I don't like the punishment aspect. The motivating strikes hurt you, and that makes me feel terrible every time. But, I'll do it, because we need it. If you guys want to be spanked outside of that, it's going to be soft spankings. Basically more like gropings. I actually don't want to hurt any of you for real."

"We should calibrate spankings," Fiona suggested, "like, let's all get spanked, on the butt and on our tits, and really get a feel for how much spanking is too much." She thought about it for a bit before adding "... Or not enough." Max was dubious, but the other members of the party thought it was a good idea, and soon they were all naked. Presenting themselves like pinup girls from a bygone century.

The first spankings were very light indeed. Timid was the word used by Miriam. Max spent a lot more time just rubbing his hands over the fronts and backs of the slaves. It took quite a bit of encouragement before he was dishing out bumps to rumps that would make them jiggle substantially. It took a while for Max to work up to the comfort zone of even Chaeryn, whose appetite for being hided by her master was the least. Despite the extended duration of the meeting, none of the women wanted to end it. Discussing the blows beforehand caused them to count as both acts of fealty and austerity, the contacts themselves were both acts of claiming and chastisement. Watching it done to their compatriots was an act of demonstration, almost completing the progression acts. The last two to find their comfort limits were Sophie and Ulzhari, both of whom seemed to have a bottomless appetite for Max's hand to fall heavily on their bottoms. Or their breasts, which Ulzhari in particular seemed to enjoy even more.

"Master," Miriam said sweetly, "you know what we need to do, right?"

"Yes," Max conceded, "fine. You can all get together and disparage yourself for a bit." He sat in a chair, and by unspoken agreement the five women knelt in front of him in a semicircle. Sophie in the middle, with Chaeryn and Fiona on either side. Knowing what was coming, Max tensed up.

"I'm too weak."

"I'm not pretty enough."

"I'm disgusting."

"I'm worthless."

"I don't deserve to be touched."

The self deprecation came rapidly and became more and more intense. Max winced as the women roasted themselves with elevating levels of disrespect. They had all just completed all six of the progression acts and were riding high even as they dragged their own egos through the mud. "OK, OK, that's enough." When they didn't stop right away, he issued it as a command. "Stop." They stopped. "I want you all to know that you're very beautiful, and very powerful. You're all very important to me, and very important to the team. I know you have to talk yourselves down for the envy seal progression, but at the end of it, you're still great people and great hunters. The home worlds need you, and you're going to do very well and save a lot of lives."

The emotional whiplash brought tears to Sophie's eyes. "Can we have a group snuggle?" The proposition was seconded, thirded, fourthed, and fifthed. Soon, Max found himself on the ground, being stripped as well. The pile seemed more interested in kissing and licking his body than in snuggling per se, but being dog piled by five beautiful women was not something Max was much interested in fighting his way out of.

"I think we nearly got it," he said, while his girlfriend was rubbing the softness of her breasts against his chest, "a defined beginning and end to the self criticism sessions. That way it doesn't feel so emotionally traumatizing." He looked at his girlfriend. "Do you think you can do that? Keep the humiliating content confined?"

"Yes!" The Valkyrie gave him a crushing hug and planted a massive kiss on his lips. She looked like an enormous weight had been lifted from her, and the other women backed off so that she would have space for makeup sex. Sophie guided his cock into her famished pussy and began riding him cowgirl. Miriam and Fiona masturbated while they watched their vanguard enjoy the fruits of being back in Max's good graces. While Chaeryn and Ulzhari were aroused and enraptured by the hedonistic display, they didn't touch themselves. Neither had had access to internet pornography on their home world, and masturbating to others having sex was still a novel concept to them.

Sophie's strength was massive, and so she did not allow herself to pound her pelvis onto Max's with complete abandon. Instead, she held his penis within her and carefully raised her body up and even more carefully lowered it down. Again and again she slid her inner walls up and down his shaft. "I love you, Sophie!" Max gasped. She gasped as well, but there were no identifiable words. She held eye contact with him and gave him the barest of nods. When he started unloading his Essence into her, she pressed herself down to the base and just squeezed and rocked like she was riding a wooden horse. Sophie let out a moan of satisfaction as her own orgasm took hold.

A thwip sound was made as she pulled herself off of Max's softening manhood. "Thank you Max. I'll try to do better for you. For us." Then she gestured to the audience. "Does anyone want to suck Master's Essence out of my pussy?" She gestured at her own crotch. "Some of it is going to come out anyway, so it's no problem to share." It turned out that both Fiona and Chaeryn were very interested in acquiring Max's cum in that particular way, and soon Chaeryn's white haired head and Fiona's black haired head were taking turns between the Valkyrie's legs. The cum didn't cum out of Sophie's pussy all at once, and both Shadow Elf and Shadow Caller were able to get their share.

Ulzhari knelt next to Max, looking as demure as a one hundred and ninety-three centimeter mountain of orc muscle could manage. She vibrated with anticipation, and it made her gargantuan breasts rumble and shake. She oinked nervously. "Master? Is it still my responsibility to clean your... your cock after it goes in my harem sisters?" She bobbed her head and oinked earnestly while awaiting his answer. He smiled at her, and reached up to squeeze one of her breasts.

The orc's breasts were the stuff of wonders for Max. Round and firm, they were still perky and proud. In any other context, such breasts could only be the result of a plastic makes perfect approach to bimbofication surgery. On Ulzhari's tall and muscular frame, they were merely large and well supported. Max thoroughly enjoyed groping them, and it was no mystery to him why his aesthetic preferences decided to grace the orc's chest with such delightful fun bags. In his more sober moments, he appreciated that the less radical breast enlargement that had been inflicted on the other women was correct for their bodies; but there was a small and incorrigibly horny part of him that wanted to see such monuments to depravity on Sophie, or even Chaeryn.

Pawing her boobs had the intended effect, and Max's flag pole raised in preparation to do battle once again. Ulzhari leaned down, her breasts on his hip, her mouth on his mushroom head. She had taken to her fellatio duties with passion and fervor, his penis slotting into the space between her tusks like a key into a lock.

Watching the various oral endeavors with a knowing smile, Miriam brought her mouth to Max's ear. "Master?" she whispered, "this would be a perfect time to advance one of Ulzhari's skills." Excited by the stimulation of the Berserker's mouth on his rod, Max couldn't help but agree. He brought up her information and selected her growing fury. He spent some of her Capitulation, and the skill became a temporary increase to physical strength, agility, mettle, and tenacity when damaged by or damaging enemies. It was a substantial upgrade.

"Mmmmph!" Ulzhari attempted to shout around his dick as soon as the change went through. Her vagina leaked with arousal, and she pushed her face farther onto the rod. At nineteen centimeters, she couldn't fit it all into her mouth, and so she sucked and swallowed and pulled part of it into her throat. The orc's eyes watered as she fucked his cock with her throat, but she was strong and brave and she continued until his balls touched the side of her tusk. Then she pulled back slightly just to face plant herself back into his crotch. Again and again she swallowed him, until a creamy load of Essence made its way directly into her stomach. Only then did she come off his dick, gasping for air. "Oh wow. Master. I think you own my breasts and throat now." She oinked happily.

Sophie and Miriam shared a look. They both smiled.

####

"Do you know why you're here?" First Lieutenant Cortes looked over her pad at the hunter with a great intensity. Her blue uniform was crisp and the buttons were shiny, but her eyes looked like she hadn't slept much recently.

Max nodded. He knew exactly why. "Kaitlin told you about the fact that I was able to bring Sophie across into the dungeon even though we already had six hunters. And you want to evaluate whether I can make a perfect team for the special dungeon raiding forces." He said it with a glum resignation, neither the excitement nor the fear that normally went with the prospect of joining the most elite group of hunters. The SDRF got sent to dungeons that had been detected but not defeated by any of the bases, they protected the entire world. All the home worlds really, in their entirety. It was a high profile, dangerous line of work.

First Lieutenant Cortes did not like his attitude. "Don't get ahead of yourself, young man! You're definitely not ready for the SDRF." She shook her head like she was chastising a child.

"Of course not, I'm on my first tour." He shrugged. Hunters committed to one hundred and fifty Earth days as their tours, being allowed to return to their home world for one month in between. A hunter was tied to their base for the first four tours, and couldn't join the SDRF until they had completed two entire years. Even a shoe-in like Sophie still had to put in the work for another three and a half tours before the offer could possibly materialize."But also, the compatibility issues are a bigger problem than you'd think. I can't just put a seal on a hunter in the middle of a fight like Yalena can. It takes a lot of time to cultivate the connection and most hunters aren't compatible. I've found five compatible hunters in our crop, I don't know if there even is a sixth. I'm not going to be able to make your dream team happen, ever, because the best of the best aren't going to be compatible. Trying to bond Thelenia and Rosalita when they weren't compatible almost destroyed them." He felt guilty about that, and made no effort to hide that fact from the officer.

Her eyes narrowed. "If compatibility is such a problem, why haven't you identified your seventh party member already?" Her fingers moved on her pad rapidly, he could tell that the gears were spinning in her brain as plans were made, adapted, and discarded before his eyes.

Max sighed. It was a fair question. He didn't think he could give Miriam's answer. "It's only recently that we realized that my class could eventually bond a seventh party member. There are a few hunters in the crop whose compatibility haven't been tested because we got to six party members." He sighed again. "And the sixth slave slot isn't even open yet, I can just see that it will be, in the future. Right now, if we go into the dungeon with a seventh, they won't be bonded. I won't be giving them any seals. I can't heal them. Finding and bonding a compatible seventh party member is like a future thing. I need to go up in level before that's even possible."

The officer smiled. She triumphantly made a few flourished swipes and handed the pad to Max. "Your next mission's lineup." There were six names, his own was at the top. It was his own team. Except...

He looked up from the pad. "I had assumed that Kaitlin would never work with me again. I can't boost her with my seals. She almost burned to death on our last mission and I couldn't heal her." He thought about it for a bit. "Is it your intention that I attempt to summon Chaeryn into the dungeon when we've entered with another artillery?" It was a general rule that two hunters from the same role couldn't enter the dungeon together. The gate would simply leave one of them behind, and the hunters would have to do battle as a team of five. Max was afraid of what might happen if Chaeryn was left behind when she was in his slave storage. "Do you have any reason to believe that's safe?"

"We have to do this experiment eventually," First Lieutenant Cortes said curtly, "and the Queen's Council has given us permission to use Chaeryn the Sniper as one of our guinea pigs. It's not like we were going to test this with Glyffildir and Sophie." Her gaze could have lit fires. "Will that be all, First Year Hunter Max Mitchell? Would you like to give that pad back to your superior officer?"

Despondent, he handed back the pad. The worst part was that he could see the logic. The order made sense. They were at war, and their capabilities needed to be tested at a time when a failed test wouldn't leave a city in ruins. He understood, and it was an order they'd have to follow. But he didn't have to like it, and he didn't.

####

"You will pass this test," Chaeryn declared, "because you are the Spider Herald." Small of frame and short of stature, the elf's purple eyes looked up as if in prayer when her eyes met his.

Max shook his head. "I don't think I understand or believe in the Spider Herald. No one has ever been able to take two artillery hunters into a dungeon before. You're an important member of the party, and I'm worried for you."

She made a hand gesture that was like she was pressing down with her fingers on an imaginary object in front of her chest. "No one has been able to bring two artillery at the same time, no. But I will not appear in the dungeon at the same time as Kaitlin, will I? When a rescue team assaults a dungeon after the gate reopens, they are not prevented from sharing hunter roles with the team they are coming to rescue, are they?" It was a good point. If a party didn't succeed in clearing a dungeon, the dungeon would become accessible again after two complete rotations of the planet they were on. And it was true that any survivors of the first party didn't prevent members of the second party from using the gate. "And the door at the end allows any number of hunters to escape, whether they have overlapping roles or not."

Max was forced to concede that that was another good point. There was a story about a truly fucked dungeon raid in which four separate parties went in over a period of a week and after a series of horrible trials, most of them got out alive. That was years before Max was even born, but it indicated that three or even four hunters from the same role could leave by the exit at the same time. But while she made several good arguments, he was certain that the one that had her convinced was her faith in him. That if it was someone else attempting to smuggle her past the gate, she wouldn't be nearly so sanguine.

"OK." he wasn't entirely OK with it, but he had to accept the resolution and determination of his party member. Even if she was his slave. "We should advance your skills, which do you want? When I spend your Capitulation, you're going to have a submissive urge. What are you going to want me to do with you?" The slaves became temporarily enthusiastic in their submissiveness to him when he improved their skills and he didn't want to do anything to them that they wouldn't have agreed to without being under the influence of powerful magic.

Chaeryn's night-black skin did not discolor noticeably when she was bashful or embarrassed, but her body language and facial expression definitely did. Max could tell that it took her a while to reply because she was working herself up to do so rather than that she didn't know what she wanted to say. "The Essence lock we use for me goes into my butt. It would... it would be more effective if you put higher quality Essence into my butt." She looked at him with pleading eyes, obviously hoping that he could fill in the blanks.

He could absolutely see where she was heading with her hints and innuendos, but he wanted explicit consent. The last thing he wanted was to do something drastic to Chaeryn that she was ambivalent about. If he was going to take her last virginity, he wanted her to be sure that was what she wanted. "Chaeryn, do you want me to stick my penis into your butthole?" He said it like he was asking if she wanted more fries, or if she needed help on a math test.

Her purple eyes closed and she nodded. "Yes Master, I want it so much. Sophie and Fiona have told me so much about the human practices of butt sex, and I can't wait until you make me into someone who can have sex with you in that way." She turned around and pulled her pants down. She had no tan lines, the darkness of her skin was independent of any sun. Max felt her backside with his hand, it was smooth and the muscle contained by very thin layers of skin and fat. Hers was the smallest backside in the party, only barely enough booty to feel feminine in his grip. But while it was scarcely more than a handful per cheek, it was a well formed butt for what it was. The skin of her buttocks was almost obsidian black except for the red claiming seal on one cheek and the green envy seal on the other. The contrast made the seals stand out dramatically, an effect reproduced by the silver spider webbing of the binding seal that was now intricately climbing her lower back.

"Ahem!" Kaitlin had had enough. "Is this really what you guys do during training?!" She gesticulated at the Sniper and their support who was openly groping her naked ass. "And you guys are going to do anal, like, right now?! We're not in a dungeon, she's seriously full of... you know. It's dirty." The platysma muscle of the human neck was used to nonverbally convey the concept of 'yikes,' and in Kaitlin's case it was putting in work.

Sophie gave the Phantasmist two thumbs up. "When Max uses his slave storage ability, it's like entering a dungeon. Dungeon equipment goes along for the ride, but everything else must go. So by storing and retrieving Chaeryn, her asshole is going to be completely empty when he starts fucking her. We just need to do something about the lubrication issue, because we want her to have a good time while Master Max is turning her into an anal slave." No part of what she said sounded sarcastic in the least.

Kaitlin was apoplectic. "You guys are insane!" She looked to the faces of each of the other women, looking in vain for one sympathetic hunter who would help her stop the madness and depravity. "We're supposed to be training. We're going on a raid in four days! How can you be wasting time on sick shit like this?"

Her complaint was answered by the Geomancer. "This is training," Miriam explained, "Chaeryn is about to permanently gain an upgrade to one of her class' core skills. And the rest of us are going to progress our envy seals by watching that happen. That advances Max toward being able to do more, but one of us might reach a threshold where we gain more agility and mettle. In this party, we spend a lot of time watching Max fuck. It's a really important part of our training." Even knowing it was true, it sounded like a ridiculous claim.

Chaeryn stripped naked, her B-cup breasts cheerful and scrumptious like a morning cup of coffee. Two sugars, no cream. Her breasts were smaller than those of any of Max's other slaves, but they were giant for an elf of her age. Before Max's aesthetic preferences had enlarged them, she'd had A-cup breasts that scarcely needed to be covered. She bashfully went into the bathroom with Max, ready to be stored.

"And that's it?" The room's smaller blond woman asked rhetorically. "We're all just going to watch Max break in one of your team mates to sodomy?" She seemed near to shedding tears of frustration and rage.

Fiona was positively serene in comparison. "I mean, we are going to do that, yes. Because that's how we support our team mates and also it progresses our seals in an important and permanent way. He's going to order us to watch, and also we're going to tell him that we're going to watch, but that's just so that we can progress all three seals at once. It's just... efficient. But you don't have to watch. You could like, go practice illusions or something." Kaitlin turned red with embarrassment and fury, but she didn't actually leave.

Once everyone had told and been told what they were doing, Chaeryn lay face down on a mat. Sophie and Ulzhari knelt in front of Max and he unveiled his lower half. The two front line hunters protected their Sniper from damage by covering his penis with saliva. As their tongues roamed every centimeter of his rod, Kaitlin stared in slack jawed disbelief. Then Max nestled his mushroom head into the Shadow Elf's crack, sliding it up and down to get the area nice and wet.

The display came up for Chaeryn's class, and Max selected her powerful shot ability to be upgraded. The description amended to read that her ranged weaponry did additional damage and inflicted injury effects. It was quite similar to the upgrade he'd given to Thelenia's waylay skill, and he wondered if that was an elf thing or just a common upgrade for damage dealing abilities. He didn't have long to ponder the question, because Chaeryn had things she wanted to say. "Please take control of my butt, Master! Fill it with your penis, your Essence. Make it yours!" He couldn't say no to something like that, and he pushed himself into her sphincter. Empowered by magic, the physical strength of that sphincter was literally super-human, and if it weren't for her cooperation he couldn't have penetrated her at all. "Aaaaah! Oh Master, it hurts! It's so good, but it hurts. You're taking ownership of my butt. Aaaaaah! This is butt sex. I want to feel like this all the time. Oh yes! Master! Own me! Hurt me! You own my butt now, have all my butt sex! I love being your slave, Master! Aaaaah!" As her first orgasm overtook her, she became even less coherent, reduced to grunts and sighs.

For his part, Max went as gently as he could. His very size and position meant that her tiny ass was completely dominated by his cock without him having to be aggressive or forceful. He just enveloped the dark-skinned elf with his body, his broad chest covering the entirety of her slim back. He kissed the top of her head while he inexorably pushed himself into her rectum again and again. After her second orgasm, Max filled her spasming asshole with his own cum. They groaned together. "How did you like that, Chaeryn?" He kissed her on the top of her head again, further mussing up her moon-white hair.

She deflated under him, happily accepting his crushing weight atop her body. "Ooooh. Thank you, Master. I feel a true sense of purpose now that you've taken ownership of my butthole. Please butt sex me as you desire, Master." She cooed and made no move to extricate herself from under him.

Satisfied, Max pulled his cock out of Chaeryn's butthole. It made a funny sound, but he was too contented to care. When his dick was open to the air, an orc whose breasts were as large as Chaeryn's were small came to clean his cock with her mouth. "Ulzhari clean Master's cock." Ulzhari said it like it wasn't a question, but a narration. She oinked happily as she brought her face to his crotch and began licking up traces of Max's Essence and Chaeryn's girl-cum.

Sophie sidled up to Miriam and whispered: "You're gonna love it when he does that to you." The redhead shuddered, but said nothing in response.

Fiona turned to Kaitlin. "So, now that that's out of the way, do you want to practice some formations?"

####

"I still can't believe you're really doing this." Kaitlin looked with alarm as Max fucked his manhood energetically through Ulzhari's tits. Sophie placed her hand possessively on the back of the Berserker's head and firmly encouraged her to open her mouth to take his cockhead between her tusks and between her lips. Max merely grunted as he released his Essence into her hungry mouth. Then she reared up so that he could put the ball of the oral Essence lock into her mouth.

Fiona explained. Again. "We have three Essence locks and two tethers. The mana tether goes on me, the rage tether goes on Sophie. The perception lock goes into Chaeryn's ass. The spell area lock goes into Miriam's ass. And the silence lock goes into Ulzhari's mouth." She shrugged. Ulzhari couldn't talk with her lock in place, and was silently putting her breast plate back on. "It's just efficient. When we get more equipment, we'll rethink these assignments. On this mission, Chaeryn gets the high quality Essence up her ass before she gets locked, and Ulzhari gets the high quality Essence into her mouth before she gets locked. Miriam isn't an anal slave, so she just gets spit in her butt locked in."

Sophie fingered the chain that had been attached to her gorget. "Miriam isn't an anal slave yet." The Geomancer blushed, but didn't contradict the Valkyrie.

"It's show time." The redhead opened the door and proceeded to ignore her party members as she began walking toward the gate. Max stored Chaeryn and followed.

### END CHAPTER 11 ###

History corner! So there's been a question raised about why the Shadow Elves in Fighting Them There revere spiders. Is that just a D&Dism sneaking in? The full answer is very complicated, but the simple answer is: yes.

Elves in the modern sense come to be in the twentieth century and by far the two most influential authors in codifying them are Tolkien and Gygax. Prior to Lord of the Rings, the word "elf" was used fairly interchangeably for various dwarves, fairies, spirits, and demons from many stories and pieces of folklore. Tolkien based his elves on the Ljosalfar of the Scandinavian legend the Prose Edda, where those elves are pretty close to angels. Tolkien based his Dwarves on the Svartalfar from the same source, where they were deep dwelling miners and smiths of great skill.

Flash forward to the 1970s and Gary Gygax noted that there was a third alfar attested in the Prose Edda: the Dokkalfar. Presented as a black skinned underground counterpart to the Ljosalfar, Gygax adapted them as the loveable dark elves we know today. The word "drow" is from the Norn language, which was spoken by the Scandinavian peoples of what is now the Scottish islands of Shetland and Orkney, and has a bunch of other spellings because it's a word from folklore and was an overlapping concept with the dokkalfar and svartalfar. In any case, drow, and duegar, and derro are probably all words for the same concept, but in the process of Gygaxification they were separated into different kinds of elves and dwarves after being run through the Tolkienian filter of those having been declared to be different things and then run through the Gygaxian filter of these things being nailed down into specific and distinct things.

There are magic spiders in the Prose Edda, ones that weave fates and tie the tangled webs of interpersonal connections together. The spiders that are revered by Gygax's drow are almost certainly not related to that at all, and are instead a callback to Lord of the Rings. Which is to say that the black skinned elves we know and love were brought to English fantasy in the 1970s by Gary Gygax by applying his own D&D filter to Tolkien's elves and using some pieces from Tolkien's own Norse source material to make a new kind of elf, and labeling it with a Norse name that was obscure enough to be unknown to English speakers in the 1970s. And then giving them a spider demon goddess because Shelob was cool.

Anyway, the connection between spiders and dark elves has existed in English fantasy for as long as dark elves have been in English fantasy, which is to say: since 1978 or so. The Shadow Elves of Fighting Them There necessarily share many commonalities with Gary Gygax's drow, but they are not gratuitously evil having neither human sacrifice nor slavery as core cultural institutions. These elements were brought into the original presentation to justify the heroes' actions in sacking their city in the original adventure they were written for. The original Gygax writings had pseudo-scientific reasons for why the underground elves had black skin, and the 21st century mostly forgets that, which is fine. The elves from Fighting Them There have spent hundreds of thousands of years living on a world where the sun is never seen, so the fact that some of them have skin that is nearly white and others have skin that is nearly black like gorilla skin has absolutely nothing to do with ultraviolet radiation. And that's all for this edition of Rocket Grunt's History Corner.

The next chapter will be submitted near the end of March, and it will feature some dungeon raiding. Also it will have the new formatted Team Skills.