Fighting Them There Ch. 12

The skills of the party members are listed at the end of the chapter.

### Begin Chapter 12 ###

They weren't alone. Team Six was going into the gate next, and so they were milling about, watching Max's party line up to their columns. Despite Kaitlin's presence, everyone definitely thought of it as Max's party. Thelenia was in Team Six, and she studiously avoided looking at him. Max knew his presence was making her feel uncomfortable, and that made him feel terrible. But there was nothing he could do about it. Chloe was in that team as well, and she was watching him intently. Wearing her Corinthian helmet, he couldn't read her expression at all. Team Two was on hand, all five members other than Kaitlin. While Danny seemed like he was there to cheer on his team mate, Lupe seemed like she was there to scowl at Max. He couldn't blame her. Glyffildir, Alice, and Merkarri all seemed curious. Max couldn't blame them either. Yalena and Alex from Team One were also watching. They didn't have a team member on the platform, Max assumed they were just there to observe the competition. Alex wasn't exactly watching, because he was wearing his blindfold while frowning. Yalena was observing everything with a critical expression on her face, which didn't distinguish it from any other day that Yalena looked at things.

Standing before the columns of the gate, it seemed almost like starting a dungeon raid in a normal way. It was strange to think of traveling through a portal to fight monsters in a dungeon as a thing that could be normal, but Max was genuinely almost at that point. If it had been Chaeryn on the platform instead of Kaitlin, it would have felt positively domestic. He was worried that Chaeryn would not survive the journey, that she would be left behind in some extra-dimensional slave storage space without anyone to get her out. Everyone else seemed so sanguine about the possibility that attempting to cheat the limits of hunter roles with his class' insane subsystems might turn out badly, might literally kill Chaeryn. But for Max it was causing him anxiety to the point of nausea.

A part of him was angry at Kaitlin, he wanted to blame her for the dangerous test her presence was putting on Chaeryn. It was unfair, and intellectually he understood that. The other hunters stood next to their columns because they were ordered to. Because that's just how things worked. Hunters didn't activate the gates or dial in the target dungeons, that was done by skilled technicians. And while hunters submitted their own party rosters, it was ultimately up to the Space Force to approve parties or not. It wouldn't make sense to blame Kaitlin for the current party lineup demanded by the officers any more than it would make sense to blame Danny or Miriam for the previous party lineup. Obviously the Space Force wanted to test his limits in field conditions, and he couldn't say they were wrong to want to do that.

The real blame had to fall on himself. Ultimately, Max had agreed to put Chaeryn in storage, even without knowing that she would survive the experience. He had followed orders, despite knowing that it put his party member in danger. The Space Force, and apparently the Queen's Council, wanted to know what the limits of his powers were, and they were willing to risk Chaeryn's life to find those answers. And Max had agreed to help them.

Chaeryn had agreed as well, because she believed in him. Rather, she believed in a mythical hero that she associated with him. Remembering the absolute trust she placed in him made him feel guilty. There were few things he was more certain of than that he did not deserve that kind of faith. He wanted her to arrive in the dungeon OK, and thinking about her made him anxious to the point of nausea.

"We all risk our lives, Max." Sophie had detected his distress, and was attempting to talk his anxiety away. She was holding the chain that attached to her gorget, the tether of restrained rage. She gave it a light rattle and it reminded him that he had responsibilities to all the women in his party. "When we go into the dungeons, it is to fight monsters. They fight back, they'll try to kill us. And if we don't go, they'll invade our homes and try to kill us anyway. Chaeryn is doing what she can to fight the monsters. So are you. Our job is dangerous, and it's not your fault." She smiled at him, and he felt much better. He was still worried, but how could he not go forward when such a vision of loveliness believed in him?

He smiled back at his girlfriend, but he did not have time to formulate a reply. There were a lot of things that wanted to come out of his mouth, but none of them did. And then it was time. The gate opened. The world turned blue. Then it was much darker.

####

As his eyes adjusted to the lower light levels of the dungeon, the first thing he did was to spin all around, looking for active threats in every direction. He wouldn't be able to do anything for anyone if a monster bit his head off. Long ago, experiments with magnetizing iron dungeon equipment had proved that dungeons did have a magnetic field, and so there was such a thing as North, but that paled in comparison to the fact the more often than not a hunter entered the dungeon facing the exit. It meant that the real guidestar wasn't north, but forward. And in the forward direction, there was a hedge-lined path. Below him was a mossy brick patio. Above him was... a dark night sky? To the right was a hedge. To the left, a different hedge. Behind him, a fountain, depth indeterminate. The fountain was an obvious ambush location, the hedges weren't nearly as solid as they appeared and monsters could burst through any of them. Sources of danger were everywhere, but nothing was literally attacking him in the immediate sense.

His first task checked off, Max checked his inventory and withdrew Chaeryn from storage. "I knew you could do it, Master Max!" Before even checking her surroundings, the elf's eyes fixed on Max and twinkled in the faint blue light of the will-o-wisps. He was so relieved when she appeared, he actually felt lighter. A smile was on his face, but he didn't think he could bring himself to say anything but apologize for risking her existence. He heard some of his party members release their breaths, and he wondered if they'd even noticed they were holding them. Sophie, Fiona, and Miriam all came and laid their hands on Chaeryn while murmuring affirmations; both to reaffirm their social bonds and to confirm that she was physically real. Ulzhari hung back and waved timidly.

Kaitlin pshawed with exasperation. "Seriously? That's it? You're able to double up on hunter roles? Do you even have a maximum party size?" Her snarky question had a flippant answer, which was obviously that since he currently only had a slave storage limit of one, his maximum party size was seven. But the real answer was that while he could see that his slave storage was upgradeable, he had no idea what limits there might be if he were to accumulate enough Mastery. The truth was that he did not know what the maximum party size might be in the future. When he had assumed that he was still limited to one hunter per role, it had seemed obvious that the second slave storage slot was the last. That would have been fine, but now he was no longer sure. There were still only eight roles, but now that he knew they could double-dip, he might eventually be allowed nine or more hunters in his party. It was a daunting prospect.

"Is that, is that the sky?" Miriam was looking upward. Beyond the hedge-tops, beyond the will-o-wisps, there was a blackness that her eyes could not penetrate. It was a strange question to ask, as dungeons all seemed to be contained. Regardless of what kind of place they seemed to be, they were all buried in stone. The only exit from a dungeon was, well, the exit.

"No," Fiona replied, her voice carrying the certainty of someone who literally did not need light to see, "there's a ceiling, it's just like three hundred meters up." There was a roof of stone that was far enough away from the will-o-wisps as to be invisible to the others, but it was there. Fiona's eyes of night skill showed her that the darkness above wasn't actually night in the traditional sense.

The most critical tasks completed, and Chaeryn's continued existence assured, Max's checklist proceeded to trying to identify less immediate sources of danger. And there were a lot of them. He wasn't familiar enough with plants to say whether the hedges had any Earthly equivalents, and might not have been able to tell even if knew about such things. The leaves and flowers of the hedges appeared black in the blue light cast by the will-o-wisps, which made him think they were green leaves and red flowers, but it could just as easily be the opposite. Regardless of what kind of plant they were, or where they came from, he was reasonably sure that a hunter or monster with magical augmentation to physical strength and tenacity could push through them with ease. The area they had appeared in looked secluded, but in reality it was exposed: the hedges were curtains, not walls.

"Sophie," Max dictated, his confident and assertive tone grabbing the attentions of his party members, "take Chaeryn and Fiona up to have a look around." Sophie and Fiona were wearing leashes, and Max wasn't ecstatic about sending them both away to a place he couldn't reach their tethers. However, the reality remained that Fiona and Chaeryn had the sharpest eyes, and Sophie could lift them to a decent vantage point for much less mana than Miriam could. His command carried risks, and it left him personally helpless to assist them, but it made sense. The three of them were happy to obey his orders.

As Sophie took to the air, Max was reminded that while she had panties as part of her dungeon equipment, Fiona definitely did not. Chaeryn was also going commando, of course, but she was also wearing pants and wasn't flashing the grounded portion of the team the way the Vietnamese American and her very short dress were doing. Sophie's plated skirt and magical white panties were a practically indecent joy to watch from below, Fiona's creamy skin and bare genitals were simply pornographic. Taken about five meters above the ground, Sophie slowly twirled in order to allow the women she carried to scout in all directions. Whatever they saw, Chaeryn decided she needed to use her crossbow on it. Three times she loaded a dummy arrow into her crossbow and three times she let her projectile fly. Each time, Sophie was pushed noticeably by the recoil, maintaining her grip on her party members only through literally super human tenacity and physical strength. It was a reminder both of how much force Chaeryn's crossbow exerted on its bolts, and how little friction Sophie had while she was flying with her rainbow step skill.

The three arrows seemed to be enough, and their Sniper relaxed her weapon. Sophie slowly spun again, and both of the women she carried seemed satisfied. After a quick survey, she returned them to the ground.

"We're in a maze made of flowers," Chaeryn reported, "outside there is a field with a tree lined path leading to a mansion. Architecturally, it looks like something from the Mist Moors. Queen's palace, lower residencies, barn for livestock, and industry all together. Each part of the economy and social order within a single set of walls." None of the other members of the party had ever been to the Mist Moors, so the comparison produced more questions than answers. Fiona got more traction by describing it as a "Jane Austen building." Kaitlin and Miriam nodded with immediate understanding. Ulzhari, of course, maintained her silence.

Max's brow furrowed, having never visited either the Mist Moors nor Regency England. "Um... sure. I think you might be leaving off a bit of important information. What were you shooting at?"

Adopting a facial expression that would be consistent with blushing if her skin was not already pigmented to blackness, Chaeryn both looked and sounded embarrassed. "There were two visible guards. Walking corpses, so we're up against Mictlan." Almost everything from Mictlan didn't need to breathe, and thus was fully capable of staying underwater essentially indefinitely. Water like...

"Ulzhari, go smash the monsters in the fountain." He hadn't literally seen any monsters in the fountain, but no one in the party was surprised when her silent approach gave her the jump on two submerged skeletal warriors. Her ax came down upon them with equal parts brutality and finality. "We're not here to get to the end quickly," his simple statements of fact sounded bold and leaderly, "we've come to fight them here. To completely destroy all the monsters. We'll have to explore the whole hedge maze, see if there are any more of these lurking around."

As it happened, there were some. When the scythe-armed bone construct crashed through the thorny hedge it was a surprise, but it wasn't unexpected. Pushing through Miriam's hands of stone proved more difficult for it than the plants had been. Its struggles took time it didn't have in the face of Sophie's sword and Ulzhari's ax.

####

With a total lack of first floor windows, the manor had been designed with defense in mind. But with large glass windows just five meters off the ground, concessions to the luxury of the inhabitants had obviously been made. Twinkling yellow light from within gave the impression of a candlelit residence against the blue night of the will-o-wisps, but really just proved that the mansion contained glitter clouds. Stairs led up to the great double doors that featured as the main entrance, but there was also what looked like a barn door on the side and a small ground level door on the back that Fiona said would be a servant's entrance in a period drama. Dungeons never quite seemed to have an exact correspondence to any historical culture from any of the home worlds, so which period that drama might be set in was anyone's guess.

"Obviously," Fiona speculated, "we don't want to go through any of the doors. The forces of Mictlan will ambush whoever opens Door Number One. But the same is true for Doors Two and Three."

Kaitlin shrugged. "If there's an ambush, it doesn't really matter. We have to fight them there anyway. We might as well just get on with it before we get hungry and Max needs to feed us all cum or whatever." The blond woman was actually freaked out a bit when the other women in the party didn't act as if she had told a joke. She was expecting a mix of chuckles and groans, with maybe some confusion or denial from the aliens. Instead, everyone just carried on. As if suggesting that they all eat Max's cum was a normal suggestion.

"Just because we have to fight them there," Miriam mused dismissively, "doesn't mean we have to fight on their terms. We'll have to take out the monsters who are behind that door, but we don't need to subject ourselves to the traps on the doorway."

Studying the building, Max came to a revelation. "It's wider than it is tall, but it's three floors. Functionally, it's a tower. So the final room and the exit are going to be on the third floor. That scratches the third floor windows, so we're going to enter one of the second floor windows." He pointed to one chosen decisively but arbitrarily. "We'll go in there. We'll backtrack to the main entrance, hopefully flank the welcoming committee." Five party members verbally affirmed their intentions to follow his orders, and Kaitlin felt peer pressured into going along with it. She realized that Max was the party leader, but she hadn't voted for him. Kaitlin was the only one who hadn't.

Miriam created a simple earthen ramp up to the window he had selected, and the invasion was on. Sophie used shield rush to go through the window, and several hunters thought that it would have been an action right at home in an action movie.

The room inside seemed like a child's room. The twinkling golden light of the glitter cloud illuminated something not unlike a rocking horse, several dolls, and a tiny bed. Max's bed needs had recently grown massively, but even alone he didn't think he'd have been able to fit in the bed he was looking at any time in the last seven years. Upon affirming that they weren't actually in combat, he took hold of Sophie's chain. She needed to be leashed to get the benefits of being unleashed, so he needed to hold the rage tether when she wasn't fighting, but might be soon.

"Who do you think slept in that bed?" Sophie literally asked the question, but all of them were thinking it. Mictlan corpse constructs didn't sleep at all as far as any of them knew, and the forces of Mictlan were generally built from the bodies of adults. Presumably to have died as adults, they must have lived as children, but no one knew where or when they had done so.

Pointedly ignoring the connecting chain between Max and Sophie, Kaitlin ran her hand on the bed. Just one hundred and twenty centimeters of mattress length. "This bed has never been slept in." She said it confidently enough that the others accepted her verdict. It raised the question of whether that made the story of such a place more tragic or less.

Fiona looked at the bare corners of the room. "Fireplaces. There aren't any fireplaces. There's no source for light or heat." She pointed accusingly at the blank walls.

"Light comes from glitter clouds and will-o-wisps," Chaeryn reminded her, "we're in a dungeon." The Night Caller had difficulty formulating a reply. She really felt like the point she had made was self-evidently important, and the alien's apparent inability to follow her proposed train of thought had put her in the uncanny valley of conversations. Obviously the dungeon didn't need fireplaces or candle fixtures, but it didn't need a child's bed either. Chaeryn was willing to simply accept that discrepancy, but the contradiction weighed heavily on Fiona's mind.

Ignoring the developing discussion of dungeon furniture, Max dragged Sophie to look at dolls. There were five of them, with various styles and levels of detail. Studying the dolls, Max noticed that one of them had the quilted patchwork of skin tones that he associated with orcs, and one had the triangular ears he associated with elves. The other three he was inclined to classify as human, but he was aware that the arrogance of species was probably influencing him. The chibi proportions of the dolls couldn't truly be said to be accurate scale models of humans or any aliens he was familiar with, but such artistic license was common for children's toys. For three of the five, he saw no markings that would cause him to classify them as non-human and his mind made his own default assumption. He wondered how many would be classified as elves to Chaeryn's purple eyes.

He had only started to ponder the nature of the rocking horse and the spiral horns on its head when a sound from outside the door put them back on a conflict clock. There was no longer time to ponder the artistic intentions of representative art. As always, it was a shame such items couldn't be brought out of the dungeon. Archeologists and anthropologists from Earth would just faint from excitement if they were to actually get their hands on such items. Many hunters lamented that they weren't able to haul back gold and gems, but to Max it was obvious that the real treasures were things like the dolls. Objects that might hold clues to humanity's past, and the origins of elves and orcs as well. Yet even those treasures were not as valuable to him as the lives of his party members, and so he made a decision. "Let's get through the door to the hallway, we'll fight them there." He hadn't actually seen a hallway, but it was intuitively obvious that a building of this shape would have one. The moment he saw the room they had entered did not extend to the other end of the manor, he'd known that the lone doorway opened into a hall rather than another room. A hallway with doors wasn't necessarily the best place to have a fight, but he didn't fancy letting the forces of Mictlan lay siege to them in a child's bedroom.

Max released the tether of restrained rage, temporarily super charging Sophie's already enviable physical strength and tenacity. Sophie opened the door to the hall.

####

The corpse constructs had fallen easily and their bones shattered under the heavy foot of the golem. It was heavier than most, because its body appeared to be made of large clay spheres that met at slotted joints. Sophie's sword and Ulzhari's ax bit deeply into the clay, but it didn't seem to slow it down at all. It meant, Sophie knew, that the clay spheres were an armored shell rather than a part of the golem itself. If the clay they were hacking on was part of the golem's actual body it would be losing durability instead of just crumbling terracotta everywhere. And so they were being pushed back, and the golem's heavy feet trampled through territory they had previously seized from the lurching bodies that had been prowling when they first entered the hallway.

It was not an ideal situation for their more powerful mages. Kaitlin's best attack only worked on enemies with minds to melt, and while her telekinetic crush was more than capable of ending a corpse construct, it was not an efficient use of her mana. Miriam had a substantially more limited repertoire when she was standing on carpet rather than stone, meaning that she simply wasn't at her best on the second floor. It wasn't ideal for their D-tier storm mage either, as the primary draws of Fiona's leeching darkness was the ability to hurt multiple enemies and heal allies, neither of which was helpful against the hallway-filling golem.

The doors were not wholly background. Max had taken it upon himself to keep some corpse constructs from flanking them. They were attempting to come out of a door behind them, and Max kicked it shut. He had super-human strength, but only barely. The corpse constructs were stronger than their lifeless bodies had any right to be, and they weren't much weaker than he was even one on one. As their shoves opened the door and his counter-shoves slammed it closed, arms, legs, and even heads pushed through the gap. Max found these to be opportunities to slash and stab the offending zombie parts. He might not have much in the way of class-granted superheroism, but his blade had come from a silver sigiled chest and was quite magical. The arming sword went through zombie flesh like butter. Pieces of zombie schlapped as they fell to the floor and ruined the carpet. Sophie thought it was great that he was finding a way to contribute during an actual battle. She knew he felt vestigial sometimes and she hoped that returning from the dungeon with a kill count would make him feel better about himself.

"The leg joints," Chaeryn called out to her, "take out its leg joints!" They trusted her because she was a member of the party, but they also had a high level of confidence in such a proclamation because the Sniper had the magical ability to see the weaknesses of things. Ulzhari and Sophie rushed in to begin hacking away at its supports. It was effective, but doing it lacked the satisfying jolt that came from following Max's orders. She wanted to be told what to do, but didn't just want to be told what to do by just anybody. She wanted to be told what to do by Max. Chaeryn was a friend and co-worker who had a good idea, Max was her master.

The leg spheres detached from the body sphere, and the whole thing crumpled to the ground. Despite their assured victory, it still took a while to hack into the clay shell and shatter the skull in the core. "Two corpse constructs," Max declared ruefully, "all of that, and I defeated two corpse constructs." He didn't sound nearly as pleased as Sophie had expected him to be. "How did you do with the golem?" He asked with an interest that was friendly and genuine.

"Poorly," Sophie admitted, "the golem had wrapped itself in inert clay, so we had a hard time getting through to it and reduce its durability."

Max looked at the shattered clay armor and the other shattered clay that was presumably the golem's actual body. "Um... if it was covered in lifeless clay, couldn't Miriam just shell it like a peanut?" Everyone looked at him with surprise and embarrassment. He looked at the faces of Sophie, Ulzhari, Chaeryn, and Miriam. Every one of them had the wheels turning in their heads.

The hall had six doors along it, three per side, and one door on either end. Recalling the outside, it implied two of the big windows per room. Three more of the additional rooms proved to be bedrooms, though two of them had larger beds that could have fit Chaeryn or Ulzhari with varying amounts of foot room. One of the rooms had a table with eight chairs and several platters that were heaped with bread, fruit, and meat. The fruit didn't look completely strange to Max's eyes, but he couldn't confidently name them. Some kind of figs, dates, and sliced citrus would be his best guess. The meat was cooked and oily, but the animal or animals it had come from weren't immediately obvious. Lamb and turkey, perhaps. There were, understandably, no volunteers to taste any of it.

One of the rooms had several couches. They were low and wide, as if they were to be used by many small children or the intention was for the users to recline. There was a raised area along one of the walls, like a stage to draw the attention of whoever was reclining on the couches. Of more interest was a chest that had a brass sigil marked for a Sniper. Chaeryn opened it and found a shirt that from a bonus standpoint gave more, but certainly covered less. It ended just above her navel and left the spiderweb pattern on the small of her back mostly visible.

Kaitlin couldn't hide her exasperation. "I know this kind of crap is old news to you guys, but how is there a chest for Chaeryn? She wasn't even with us when we came in!" She gestured at the elf, and gestured at the chest and pantomimed shock and disgust.

Sophie put her gauntleted hand on the Phantasmist's shoulder. "You keep acting jealous of us. If you became one of Max's slaves, that jealousy can progress your envy seal." Kaitlin recoiled from the larger blond as if burned by her hand.

Her face a mask of indignity, Kaitlin waggled her finger at the Valkyrie. "Look, I'm not like Fiona or Ulzhari, I don't need to be his fucking sex slave to do well in life. I'm a C-tier artillery, I'm going places. I'm going to kill monsters and get promoted and I'm going to retire and have kids. And my kids will have kids, and they're going to name one of my granddaughters after me and she's going to brag about me in school. I'm going to have a family, and that family is going to be proud of me. Because I'm a fucking hero and I'm not a fucking whore!" She was breathing heavily, red in the face, and near tears.

Fiona didn't seem inclined to let that slide. "Well excuse me for trying to make something of myself other than wife of the fucking year! When I got the hunter's mark, I dreamed of being a world changing hero. I could be like that Nigerian guy who makes shadow clones of every enemy he fights, or I could be like that Thai lady who can use any spell she's ever seen. And then the egg hatches and I don't get to be a swan." She was near tears of her own, though they were of a different sort. "Max lets me surpass my limits. He lets me achieve something of my own."

"It's not your own!" the Phantasmist angrily retorted. "Those are his accomplishments, not yours! He breaks the rules, you just suck his dick. Max gets to be Kalu the Mirror Maker, you just whore yourself for the privilege of watching him do it."

"Enough!" Max snarled. "Kaitlin, I know you didn't want to be here any more than I wanted you to be here." His statement made the blond woman flinch. "But we have our orders, and we're following them. You're an important part of this mission, and we'll support you. But Fiona is an important part of this mission too. And she is an important part of this team, while you are not. So I strongly suggest that you don't start any shit with Fiona because the rest of us are not going to be on your side." With nothing else to see or say, they proceeded to the room at the end of the hall.

The final room at the end simply had two chairs and a table upon which was a board with many squares. There were six bowls of stones, two yellow and one black on one side, red, green, and black on the other. Given the limits of the yellow light from the glitter cloud, Max suspected that one of the bowls that appeared yellow was actually white, and one that appeared black was actually blue. There were some red and yellow stones arranged on the board, placed at the corners like it was intended to be a game of Go or Vuhshahk. Max didn't know enough about about either game to know who was ahead. Ulzhari, still Essence locked into silence, studied the board carefully. After a while, she came to her decision and pointed to the red stones and gave a thumbs' up.

"You think the red stones are going to win?" The silenced orc nodded emphatically. She seemed fairly certain about that point.

####

The central room went all the way across the building, making it as long as two of the bedrooms plus the central hallway. At the back it featured stairs that went both up and down. The floor looked to be made of wood, but was lacquered and waxed to the point that it could be ice skated on. As expected, there was a substantial force readied to attack hunters that came in the front door, only slightly thrown out of kilter by the party having come from another direction. "Miriam, break those eggs." Max pointed to the four golems, protected as they were by the shells of clay, they were equally vulnerable to the Geomancer's earth moving skill. The joints sealed and the fronts opened, the golems immediately finding that their armor now bound rather than protected them.

With the largest enemies incapacitated rapidly and at a quite efficient cost in mana, they were free to consider the rest of the enemies. A dozen corpse constructs in various states of decay. Half with bows, the other half wielding blades of various shapes. If they were to make it to a populated area on the home worlds, they might massacre dozens of people, but in a battle against hunters they were a tertiary concern. There were two of the scythe-handed horrors that they had faced in the garden. As a solitary foe faced on open ground, it had been a simple matter for Sophie and Ulzhari to chop it to pieces while Miriam held it in place. Fighting alongside other Mictlanian forces, they were much more dangerous. But the biggest threats of all were three enemies that wore prominent blood gems. Those three were the real enemies from Mictlan.

The first of the blood gems was worn on an orcish corpse. Standing just over two meters tall, his patchwork skin colors was made even starker with a bloodless pallor that rendered pinks as grays and browns as blacks and further accentuated by metal plates that seemed sewn into his skin. In each hand he carried a club covered in vicious copper spikes.

The second of the blood gems was in the forehead of a human corpse. Emaciated to the point of being skeletal, she was still visibly female. She had an orb of shiny black stone in one hand, and it was safe to say she was some kind of mage. She wore sandals and a knee-length skirt, but no shirt at all.

The last of the blood gems hanging from the neck of an elf's body. Substantially shorter than the other two, but clad in armor of copper strips sewn to cloth, armed with a spear, and presumably just as deadly as the others. With the heavier armor, it wasn't possible for Max to determine whether the elf corpse was male or female, but he supposed it didn't really matter.

"Chaeryn," Max directed, "take out the scythe crawlers. Kaitlin, burn that mage. Sophie and Ulzhari, forward. Fiona, support the front by clearing the zombies." Everyone was enthusiastic about following his commands except Kaitlin. She locked the enemy mage in psychic combat as directed, but she wasn't happy about it. She didn't feel positive reinforcement from a claiming seal's progression when she followed orders from him. The Mictlan sorcereress made it difficult for her, but the outcome could only be one thing as long as none of the corpse constructed were able to deconstruct her body while she was concentrating. The liquid in the sorceress' blood gem began to simmer. Kaitlin was merely sweating and burning through mana like it was someone else's money.

Max held Fiona's mana tether and pointed to a spot. Bolstered by the power coming through her leash, the Night Caller's leeching darkness was able to cover most of the room. The rain of shadows siphoned vitality from the corpse constructs and golems into Ulzhari and Sophie as they dueled the enemy warriors. The warriors of Mictlan were fast and strong, but they didn't have the enhancement seals that were on the Valkyrie and Berserker. Were it not for the interference of the zombies and scythe-hand constructs, it would have been a very brief conflict. As the long-clawed horrors slithered up to flank Ulzhari and Sophie, Chaeryn's dummy arrows severed their braided spines before they had a chance to make the confrontation brief in a different manner.

Unable to make much progress against the living orc, the undead orc gave ground and then hurled one of his clubs. Not at Ulzhari, but at Max. The weapon had a yellow glow while in flight, leaving the impression of a glowing cometary trail. It struck him hard enough that it almost knocked him off his feet, erasing his durability and filling his abdomen with a rending pain. Between his leather armor and his magical durability the spikes did not literally penetrate his belly, but it certainly felt like they had. It had been bad for Max, but it had been worse for the warrior of Mictlan. Reduced to just one of his spiked clubs and his attention directed away from Ulzhari, the Berserker was able to step in and just industrially chop into him until his durability was expired and pieces of dried orc flesh began chipping off the collapsing body with every blow.

Sophie's opponent had an ability to thrust their spear many times in a short period. The spear storm forced Sophie on the defensive, as even she was not able to get attacks in without exposing herself to unacceptable numbers of impalements. Fortunately, the rapid-fire attacks didn't last very long, and seemed to be on a cool-down so Sophie could really push the elvish death knight around while the spear was moving at regular speed. They took turns being the aggressor, but Sophie's turns were more impactful, and it was not long before Sophie was able to take her opponent's head.

With the enemies dealt with, it would be a time for high fives and celebration, but Max was finding it difficult to breathe. Keeping his hand on Fiona's tether was surprisingly difficult as he noticed that he was becoming sweaty. "I don't feel good. Guys, this really hurts." He said it without much volume, but it commanded the attention of every member of the party.

Sophie flew over, her face filled with concern. "You're injured. Where does it hurt, love?" She pressed on him lightly on the arm, on the chest, and on the belly. With the third touch he jumped, recoiling from her fingers. Bringing her boyfriend to the ground, she opened his jacket. Max groaned, it was a different and much less sexy groan than what Sophie had been extracting from him of late. In the twinkling yellow light of the glitter cloud, his veins were invisible. His abdomen looked like it had red speckles on it, the blue portions of his bruising being wholly invisible with the limitations of the available light. She touched his belly, and it felt hard. Max worked out a lot even before he was being used as the primary source of sexual relief for five women with super-human stamina, but this was a different kind of hardness than what Sophie was used to. It felt like a water balloon that was about to explode rather than strong muscles under the skin. "We need to heal him!" It hadn't been very long, but he already looked much worse.

Their healer was, of course, Max. They all knew that he couldn't heal himself, but it took a moment for that to sink in. Eyes widened as various levels of panic began to set in to the other hunters. The only other healer was... "Fiona?" Sophie asked desperately, "Can you damage me to heal Max?" She exposed the undersides of her wrists, as if that might help in some way.

The Night Caller shook her head. "No. The magic knows you're an ally. I mean, I'm pretty pissed at Kaitlin, but leeching darkness still isn't going to damage her." She looked at their support with a frown. "We need to get real enemies next to him for the transfer. Maybe we can carry him into battle?" Even saying it out loud, it sounded like a terrible idea.

Everyone agreed that that was a bad idea. Miriam was the first to have a different one. "Do you think there's another clay covered golem in the house's other wing? I could turn its shell into a crucifix, and then Sophie and Ulzhari could carry it back." The audacity of the plan was such that agreement wasn't immediate.

"I'll cover you," Chaeryn said firmly, "there's probably some corpse constructs in there as well." The group decided, the four of them went off through the door at the other end of the room.

When the large door clanged shut, Kaitlin spoke softly to Fiona. "You know, you could escape from this. He's weak now, you don't have to be his slave any more."

The Vietnamese American woman's face darkened. "Can you stop being a bitch for five minutes? I'm not a smoker having a nic fit. Max's class conditions me into sexual submission through positive reinforcement. Whenever and however I submit to him sexually, it rewards me with power and pleasure. We aren't his bitches because he'll hurt us otherwise, we want him to hurt us. Getting him to do it is quite an uphill battle sometimes." Her glare softened. "So no, I'm not going to 'escape.' And it's not because I'm a battered spouse with nowhere to go. I want him to live through this so that I can keep wearing his collar to war and to bed." She looked at the Phantasmist as if she was daring her to speak again.

It looked like Kaitlin was going to say something, but the door clanged open again with Ulzhari and Sophie carrying a golem that was embedded in a clay plank. They struggled with the weight, but it was still a stark reminder of how inhumanly strong the two women were. The struggling golem surely weighed more than a ton, and Kaitlin wouldn't have been surprised if it weighed more than two.

When the golem was laid next to Max, Sophie hovered, vibrating with worry. "You have to step away," Miriam explained, "any one of us in the darkness is going to share the healing. We need all of it to go to Max." She was right, and the Valkyrie knew she was right. Yet despite the gravity of the situation, she could only bring herself to back away slowly from her boyfriend.

Once everyone was the requisite distance away, Fiona unloaded her leeching darkness. She was initially surprised and disappointed in it, having become used to the bonuses she received while Max held her mana tether. It was technically lead-marked dungeon equipment, but the bonuses were quite substantial. In any case, the area of effect elemental magic of a D-tier storm hunter was not an efficient means to kill a golem. Not in terms of time or in terms of mana. Fiona's batteries were nearly emptied when the golem finally shattered.

####

Downstairs to the first floor, the traps and monsters were stronger than they had been in the hallways of the second floor. But nothing was as difficult for them as the second floor central chamber had been. Even when they burst into the barn area, there was just eight skeletal corpse constructs and some horse-sized, spider-shaped monstrosities made from bones and hair. They were nightmarish in appearance, but nowhere near as deadly as enemies with blood gems. Max chuckled over the bone spider's shattered remains. As he recalled, one of those had escaped containment and murdered fifty people in Texas before being brought down, and his team destroyed three of them as part of an attempt at completionism.

More chests had been found. One for Ulzhari, one for Fiona, and one for Kaitlin. Mild upgrades to wardrobes, but not much else could be expected from brass-sigil chests. That made one on each wing of the first and second floor, and Max would have bet money that there was simply one on each wing of the third floor and a seventh in the final room, but then they found a door that led to a staircase down, and the existence of a basement threw everything off.

His belly didn't exactly hurt once Fiona's leeching had been completed. It was just heavy and he felt like he had eaten a big meal when he definitely had not. As soon as he'd been able to stand, Fiona and Miriam had both requested spankings to get their mana back. Miriam was satisfied to simply bend over and get a swat. Fiona wanted to pull up her dress and lay herself over Max's lap while vocally begging for hand to beat her and fondle her. "Master! I need you to finger me! Remind my pussy that you own it!" Not knowing what else to do, he'd pushed his fingers along and then into her drenched slit. "Thank you Master. It's soooo good when you train me as your slave. This pussy is your property, and it brings me such joy when you dominate it." She wiggled her naked rear at him, but he could've sworn she was looking at Kaitlin the whole time. It made for an odd memory, but at least none of the other party members chastised him for wasting time. It hadn't been a complete waste of time, Fiona had refilled her mana.

The basement had a store room, and a prison. Glitter clouds illuminated seven small cells with three on one side and four on the other. The way in was in the place the eighth cell would be if there was full symmetry. The end of the cell block opened up into a torture chamber, and it was there that a group of monsters lay waiting for them. On a black dais, the corpse of an orcish woman was naked save for black boots that came nearly to her knees, black gloves that came nearly to her elbows, and a blood gem that was tacked into her neck. She held a black wand that was about sixty centimeters in length and flexible like a bamboo cane. Beside her was a pillory made of wood and brass, and on her other side was a seven meter long snake made of many hundreds of tiny bones and teeth. It made a sound like heavy rain as it slithered, its fangs seemed to be sharpened ribs. In front of them were corpse constructs armed with blades and shields.

The end of the Mictlanian orc's wand glowed red and then Sophie glowed red. "Absolutely not, bitch!" the Valkyrie roared in response. She was thoroughly furious, and began charging toward the enemy at tremendous speed. Shield met shield, and the skeletal soldiers hindered her progress not at all.

Max had some difficulty reading the rictal facial expressions of aliens who were dead and reanimated by other aliens, but to him the enemy seemed surprised. He got a system message that appeared to say Slave Retained, and he thought his expression probably looked at least as shocked as his opponent's. "Sophie! The snake!" He shouted, not wanting to find out what might happen if the two glows met. Even with his girlfriend facing away from him, he could feel that the order frustrated her, yet she still followed it. The line of her charge turned abruptly toward the bone serpent, her speed accelerated just as much by moving toward the snake as it had been by moving toward the enemy leader.

The rest of the battle was a bit of a let down. There was a stone floor in the basement, and Miriam was able to lock down the leader long enough for Ulzhari to open her head like a pumpkin on Halloween. The snake turned out to be functionally immune to the Geomancer's magic, the tiny pieces of finger and toe flowed like water and paid no more heed to her magics than a river did to rocks thrown by children. Kaitlin and Sophie had more success. Crushing its parts seemed to drain its durability to an adequate degree. With some psychic crushes and some shield bashes, they were able to get it into raven strike territory, and then Sophie could hack it to bits. When its animating force left it, the teeth and bones fell to the floor, and then it sounded like heavy rain once again.

On instinct, Max picked up the black wand. "It's dungeon equipment," he declared after its status almost became visible to him, "it's like the whip." He gave it some experimental swishes in the air, but nothing glowed red. He felt a connection to it, similar to the whip. An item that was very nearly something he could make work. "Sophie, what happened?"

She had become very angry during the battle, and she had not fully calmed down. "When she shook that baton at me, I got a message. It said I was being acquired by a new master, and then there was a progress bar and the whole thing closed before the bar filled." She kicked the re-corpsified corpse. "Bitch was trying to take me from you." The implications of that were terrifying, but the enemy in question had been dealt with and Ulzhari had made sure the blood gem was dust. Max wasn't sure if he should take the stick, but the louder part of him said that he should. In his hand, it was just... a stick. But he thought that perhaps it would be more than that if he could figure out how it worked.

Kaitlin looked around the room. A raised dais upon which a pillory was now the sole remaining feature. Seven sets of brass manacles hanging from the wall. A rack of torture implements both simple and arcane. "I genuinely hate to bring this up, but this prison and this torture chamber are for us. Like, not just for hunters generally, but for us specifically. Those manacles aren't all at the same height, but I'll be you upwards of five dollars that they are our heights." Ulzhari walked over to the highest manacles and checked her wrists against them. It seemed plausible. Of course, hands could be manacled in a lot of different ways, so it wasn't dispositive. Chaeryn checked her wrists against the lowest set of manacles, and the idea seemed more likely. "The last dungeon I went into with you had one of these too. Maybe... maybe it's something you're supposed to use?" She looked like she was about to throw up.

Fiona shook her head. "I wasn't there for your shit storm, but when we went to that emergency dungeon with the Jotunheimers, there wasn't anything like that." She made a dismissive motion with her hand.

"Wait a minute," Miriam interjected, sounding as if she had just seen a ghost, "wasn't there? I mean, when we were in the ice tunnels, and there was that area with the altar and the sculptures and stuff. None of us knew what we were looking at, but what if those were things to bind us to and torture us with?" Her shuddering was infectious.

Shaking her head, Sophie returned to a level of calm. "Even if so, so what? The monsters are going to kill us if they can. They almost killed Max this go around. They almost killed Kaitlin the last time. That's the job. Even if some of them want to torture us before killing us, we're still dead in the end if we don't win. So there's a pillory. Does anyone want to get strapped in and have Max dominate them on it? Because otherwise..." She didn't finish the thought before she saw the ambivalence on the faces of several of her companions. "Are you horny bitches serious? Fine. But only one, and if nothing happens we put this whole silly notion to rest." The Valkyrie rolled her eyes. Kaitlin was somehow even more offended.

Chaeryn, Fiona, Miriam, and Ulzhari had a quick huddle. Miriam raised her hand. "OK, it should be me. Max hasn't spent my Capitulation yet, and we should see if this kind of thing has any effect on that."

Max was incredulous. "We're in a dungeon! If I spend your Capitulation, you're going to have a submissive urge. We need to do that in a safe environment where you have a chance to decide what, if anything, you want me to do with you when your submissive urge has taken over." He gestured at the pillory and the torture implements on the wall. "If we pillory you here, there's no telling what kind of messed up masochistic thing you might ask for. And that could mess you up. It could mess all of us up. Imagine what happens if you change your mind after the submissive urge wears off." He looked at the redhead as if he'd made a very strong point.

She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. "You're right. We need to agree about what's going to happen." She took a deep breath. "We've known for a while that there would be a time that you would fuck me in the ass. Now is the time. My Essence lock has run out because it's just using saliva rather than the higher quality Essence you locked into Ulzhari and Chaeryn. We're going upstairs to the exit, there is going to be something nasty up there, and I need to be running on Essence for that. You need to reset my Essence lock, we need to test the dungeon equipment to see if it does anything, and I don't think I'll be ready to be sodomized until that submissive urge makes me ready." She gestured at the pillory. "See? It all comes together. We need the bonuses from you taking ownership of my butt, and the dungeon is giving us something to help you do exactly that."

Max looked around as if asking for help, but everyone seemed hopeful and supportive. Except Kaitlin, who seemed resigned and disgusted. "Um... OK. I guess we're doing this. Here." He sounded dubious, but he pressed on. "So, what skill do you want upgraded?"

The Geomancer began stripping out of her clothes. She wasn't making a great effort to be sexy about it, but she was still a beautiful woman. Watching her get naked for the express purpose of getting fucked by him was starting to have an effect on his nether regions. "Most of my powers aren't going to be hugely powerful up there. My stone skin skill will still work fine, so that's going to be my contribution for the final battle. I'll protect all of you with stone skin. An upgraded stone skin, whatever that does." Fully naked, she turned and shook her butt playfully at Max. Then she walked over to the pillory and bent over to stick her neck and wrists into the bottom halves of the holes. It seemed they were at a reasonable height for her. "It only counts for my binding seal if Max locks me in. So Max, lock me in."

A bent over and naked Miriam was an increasingly appealing prospect for Max, and his penis was beginning to ask for attention. He brought the upper arm of the pillory down on her, and the holes lined up nicely with her neck and wrists. "Are you OK in there?" he asked before flipping the latch. She smiled at him, and he flipped the metal down with an alarming ka-chunk. Miriam moaned as the spiderweb tattoo glistened on her butt cheek. His other slaves watched with rapt attention, their green serpents beginning to give them positive reinforcement for doing so. "Are you ready?" She tried to nod, but found that the pillory restricted movement enough that it did not get the point across. It wasn't uncomfortable, but her head couldn't move very much. Trying to move it was uncomfortable.

"I'm ready, Max." She said it to the floor. "I'm ready for you to be my master." She closed her eyes and waited for him to claim her. Max opened her status and incremented her stone skin skill. It now said that it increased physical strength and magic resistance while active. "Oooooh. Wow." The Geomancer cooed. "That's the submissive urge you guys were talking about. You're really going to take ownership of my ass. I mean... I saw you do it to Chaeryn but... wow. Please Master, fuck your slave's asshole. Fuck your slave in the ass until you own it." Having limited ability to move her head or hands, she still had the ability to shake her butt, and made full use of that ability. Max came up behind her and removed her Essence lock, slowly and with care. "Oooooh," she moaned, "my ass is so empty now! Fill me. Please fill me with your cock!" She strained against the pillory, trying in vain to push her backside into Max's hands.

As Max freed his staff, he was interrupted. "Wait," Sophie said, "we don't want to hurt our harem sister." He nodded, having no desire to hurt his party member in any real way.

The redhead shook her butt in frustration. "Yes he does, yes he does!"

Sophie removed her gauntlet from her right hand and reached under her skirt. "If we were at the base, we'd lube her up for this. We're in a dungeon, but we can still use our pussy juices." Withdrawing her now slick fingers, she held them up for Max's inspection. "Fiona, Ulzhari, and Chaeryn can help too. We can rub some of this on our Master's cock, and some of it on his Slave's butthole. It will make your domination easier for her to take." She reached down and rubbed a bit of her girl goo on Miriam's crack. Then she looked over her shoulder at the other blond. "Obviously, Kaitlin doesn't need to participate." She smiled at the Phantasmist, who in turn did not smile back.

Chaeryn and Ulzhari were wearing pants, but like Fiona they had yet to acquire any dungeon equipment that could be worn as panties. So the moment their pants started to peel down, the wetness of their arousal became apparent. Ulzhari's pussy was bordered by thick, muscular thighs and Chaeryn's was bordered by thin, athletic thighs, but both pussies were drooling with need. The Valkyrie showed them what to do by sticking two fingers into the Berserker's slit and than rubbing her hand along Max's shaft. Soon, all four of them were stroking their wetworks onto Max's peg or into Miriam's hole. Sophie kissed her boyfriend. "She's ready now." Max pushed his cock into the volcanic heat of the Geomancer's ass. Miriam screamed. The dais shook. A will-o-wisp appeared in the corner, adding its blue light to the glitter cloud and changing some of the light from yellow to white.

Max slid his cock deeper and deeper into her rectum. Miriam babbled at the floor. "Oh. Master! You're conquering me!" Another will-o-wisp appeared, and then another. He pulled his cock slightly out and then pushed it back in. "I've never felt anything there, and now you own it. You own me. Go harder. Please go harder. Dominate me! Dominate your slave's asshole!" Max obliged, pulling partially out and then slamming back in. Another will-o-wisp appeared. He began pounding her with real force. She screamed wordlessly. More of the light changed from yellow to white. Her own pussy became juicy and she went limp in the restraints. More will-o-wisps appeared. Max kept his piledriving and she did nothing but grunt and gasp. Finally, he grabbed her hips and pulled himself in as deep as he could go and with a strangled growl he unloaded further than anything had ever been unloaded into Miriam before. More will-o-wisps, and there were over a dozen in the room.

A message appeared before him. It told him that he had gained Mastery. That surprised him. He wasn't surprised that he had gained Mastery, because after all he had just progressed a bunch of seals, but he didn't normally get messages about it. He checked his status. "Uh, guys? I just got a lot of Mastery. Like, a lot of Mastery." He looked confused and worried, like he'd just accidentally walked out of a store without paying. As soon as he pulled out of Miriam, Ulzhari took her Essence lock out of her mouth and got down on her knees to clean him with her mouth. Watching her do it without hesitation, Max was suddenly extremely thankful that Miriam had been completely cleaned out by the trip through the dungeon gate.

Fiona pressed her enticing chest into his arm. "How much Mastery are we talking about? Enough to open your sixth slave slot?"

Doing his best to compare the sizes of bars on his status, he nodded. "Easily. So much more than that. I think I could advance almost all the green text. Hunter slaves, non-hunter slaves, willing targets, alliance races, kissing to claim, all of it. It's a lot."

"That's great!" Sophie exclaimed, and the others agreed. "You should do it. Spend it all, see what's behind door number eleventy-seven!" Max definitely did not agree.

He gestured wildly at the cum-drunk Miriam. Then he remembered to put her Essence lock back in and release the latch on the pillory. "Did you not see how... how like this she got from the submissive urge? There's no telling what I'd do if I spent all that Mastery. We've never seen me with a dominant urge that strong. I'd probably rape and enslave Kaitlin. No one wants that." Fiona shrugged. Miriam cooed unintelligibly.

"It's not black anymore!" Chaeryn shouted and pointed her own black finger at the dais, terminating that part of the conversation. In the changed light, it seemed that some of the surface was blue rather than black. It was a shape. No, it was a rune. It was the ancient rune for push. "What do you think it pushes?"

Max pulled his dick out of Ulzhari's mouth, and gave the very satisfied looking orc a pat on the head that left her looking even more satisfied. Then he put her Essence lock back in her mouth. "I think," he mused, "that we're supposed to push it. Sophie, Ulzhari? Can you... I mean... Slaves, push this dais out of the way." Sophie smiled at the corrected choice of phrasing.

Everyone got off of it and the two strongest party members pushed the whole dais across the room. It was very heavy, but not beyond their abilities. Underneath was a small hole, barely large enough for the chest it contained. A chest that had a white sigil that was keyed to Max's Master class specifically.

That was the last straw for Kaitlin. "What. The. Fuck?!" She shook her finger at Max. "That's a white sigil. We have good light, I can tell that's not iron or silver. It's white! Those things don't happen in the dungeons they send first years into. They contain priceless artifacts of unbelievable power. What the fucking hell is wrong with you!?" She'd held her tongue through the weird sex acts, but she could hold it no longer.

"I don't know," he admitted, "I think there's probably a lot of hunters that are better candidates to open a white sigiled chest, but I'm probably literally the only hunter who can open this one." Without drawing it out anymore, he flipped the lid open. Inside, there was yellow cloth with some red lines on it. He reached in and realized that it was folded, but before he unfolded it, he checked its status. "It says that it's a Sun Banner of the Master. And um, raising it on the Master's Domain adds Dominion for every day it flies." Everyone looked at him like he'd switched languages. He handed it to Chaeryn.

"He's right," she said, as surprised as everyone else, "It's a bonus for holding a Domain. The Dominion is a currency, like his Mastery. Um... Master Max? Do you have a Domain?"

He shook his head. It was a thing that could be purchased with Mastery. But like heirs, it wasn't something he'd planned on purchasing any time soon. Unlike heirs, he didn't have much of an idea what buying it would do. He took the banner, but he had no idea when or if he'd be able to use it for anything.

####

Back outside, everything was blue again. "I can't imagine that going up the stairs is going to be something we want to be doing. So when we assault the third floor, we're going through the window. Same as floor two. You ready, Miriam?" The geomancer placed stone skin on each of her team mates, and then Max slapped her tits and then she sighed contentedly and put stone skin on herself. The Geomancer raised her cup and extended the earthen ramp to the base of a third floor window. The party raced up the ramp, Sophie easily taking the lead at the end of Max's chain.

When he released his grip on her leash, the Valkyrie smashed through the window. She was already enthusiastically chopping corpse constructs to pieces when the rest of the team began to jump through the hole she had made. The whole third floor was like a conservatory: paths of tiles and potted plants of various sizes and descriptions. Sheepishly, Max thought that there might be something for Miriam to work with after all.

Among the ferns and topiaries were many corpse constructs. The enemy also had several golems, though these were not covered in clay shells but instead lean and equipped with blades of shiny brass. There were bone spiders, their mismatched bone legs held together with threads of hair. There were the scythe-handed horrors, slithering on their braided spines. But most imposing of all, there were three Mictlanians with blood gems. One was a golem, larger and fancier than the others and inlaid with copper skull motifs, the red blood gem being the centerpiece of its chest. One was a bloated human, its scraggly hair and waxy skin looking like something dredged out of a river. And finally, there was a skull faced Mictlanian of non-obvious gender wearing a golden crown and carrying an obsidian bowl.

It was that last enemy that Max least wanted to be on the receiving end of their abilities. "Kaitlin, boil the crown." She followed his command, only looking annoyed that she'd done so after she'd started her mind melter magic. That task delegated adequately, Max considered the main challenges that remained. He held Fiona's leash, so her leeching darkness was powered up by the mana tether. The storm hunter was more than capable of clearing the riffraff, leaving the tougher enemies as the only ones that truly matered. "Chaeryn, take out the scythe slitherers." Her crossbow bolts made their braided spines snap like frayed rope. The webs of the spiders just weren't up to the task of restraining Sophie or Ulzhari. Hair threads might be strong enough to trip up Max or Kaitlin, but to the Valkyrie or the Berserker they might as well have been cobwebs. The golems were strong enough to be a threat, but they weren't fast enough to keep up with his front liners. Except for the golem with a blood gem, that one was a real threat. "Miriam, lock down the blood golem." The redheaded Geomancer nodded and waved her cup with a flourish as potted plants exploded for stone hands to burst forth and hobble the enemy golem champion.

Sophie and Ulzhari took their weaponry to the hobbled enemy. They didn't have much time, the blood gem powered up the golem body enough that it was able to smash through the stone hands almost as quickly as Miriam was able to make them. Further, while the two front liners were able to inflict tremendous damage with their great strength, the Mictlanian did not appear to feel pain. It's durability fell, but it continued its struggle without panic. Nor were the women completely free in their ability to do harm to the golem. Even as they thrashed the enemy golem champion, corpse constructs leapt on them with wicked blades. Protected as they were by the Geomancer's stone skin, they were able to soak those attacks long enough for Fiona to blast them away with shadow magic. Each blast restored their lost durability and to an untrained eye it might look like Sophie was literally invulnerable.

They were not, of course. The blows from the zombie troops took their toll, and when the bloated zombie champion joined in, its wet and heavy fist struck Ulzhari hard enough to knock her down. The golem champion was no stronger than Sophie, but neither was it any weaker, when it finally broke its blade-hands free of Miriam's stone it was able to strike back at the Valkyrie with incredible force. Sophie's entire tactic had to change, turning into a whirlwind of parries with just occasional ripostes. By this time, Chaeryn was able to place a dummy arrow into the Mictlanian zombie's elbow and another into its knee, severely impacting its ability to fight back. Another blast of the Night Caller's leeching darkness, and Ulzhari was healed enough to continue the fight.

A battle to exhaustion against the living dead wasn't ideal, and when Sophie finally stood victorious over the Mictlanian champions, both she and Ulzhari were ready to drop. Only then was Max able to run over and pull them into healing kisses. Technically, he thought it was his hand that was doing the soothing touch, but neither Valkyrie nor Berserker objected to being kissed. Ulzhari removed her Essence lock so that she could accept his tongue into her mouth, and then oinked happily when he actually did it. Sophie beamed with pride as he kissed the orcish woman, thrilled that her boyfriend inspired such lusts, and equally thrilled that he had chosen to kiss his Valkyrie first.

They scoured the room for chests and brought them over to the door. As Max approached it, he got a message. "Hey guys, it says I have enough Mastery to make this dungeon my domain. Um... that sounds very dangerous. But it also seems like it's what this banner is used for. Do you think I should do it?" He seemed uncertain because he was uncertain.

Greed and curiosity tempted interest, but ultimately caution prevailed. "No fucking way." Kaitlin decreed firmly. "I've put up with a lot of weird bullshit on this raid. Shit I can't unsee. But it's over now. We are going home." They weren't actually going home, they were returning to Camp Acheron, but Max didn't correct her. He had put her through an emotionally scarring experience, and he felt guilty about it.

When the gate opened, seven hunters appeared on the platform. It seemed that word had gotten out, because almost their entire crop was waiting for them to arrive, and there was a bit of pandemonium as more than thirty hunters had a bit of a freak out. Only Yalena and Alex remained silent. It also seemed that word had gone up the chain of command, because Colonel Pierce, the man in command of the entire Camp Acheron Delta, had been waiting for their arrival as well. He had a staff of technicians and other officers with him, most of whom went unrecognized by Max. First Lieutenant Cortes was there, looking excited and nervous. Colonel Pierce made a note on his own pad.

Sophie shouted out. "Max needs medical attention!" He thought about his belly, how heavy it still felt. He thought that maybe his girlfriend was right.

####

Max lay in the infirmary, staring at the ceiling. He felt like someone had stabbed him in the belly repeatedly with a knife. This was because someone had stabbed him repeatedly in the belly with a knife. The scan had shown that there was a large collection in his abdomen and it needed to be washed out, a process that turned out to involve literally chaining him to a table while an orcish Master Healer cut his belly open with a magic dagger. After he'd been cleaned out, healing magic had stuck his abdomen back together; but while he couldn't see a scar, he could still see the bloody jelly chunks that had come out of him whenever he closed his eyes. Even worse, his intestines apparently thought they were still perforated and wouldn't let anything through. He had a tube that ran through his nose into his stomach whose only purpose was to suck up all the green fluid that his digestive tract produced and then deemed too high risk to send down to get reabsorbed. The tube rattled in the back of his throat and he hated it, but it beat the alternative of having the same fluid come out explosively through his mouth.

"They say you're physically capable of walking," Sophie said encouragingly, "that there's not going to be any lasting damage."

He smiled at her and took another sip of sugar water before replying. The tube felt like it was disrupting his voice, but it really didn't make much difference. It was going into the food hole, and he spoke through the air hole next to it. "Yeah, I'm weak because of how little food I'm getting down, but the healing magic made sure everything is attached. Supposedly the internal organs will just start up again in the next few days after they've run all the diagnostics and determined that they won't pump bowel contents into my abdominal cavity." He could see the question she wanted to ask, and answered it for her. "It's a defense mechanism from the hundreds of thousands of years humans lived without antibiotics. It lasts a few days, but the exact number of days varies."

The Valkyrie ran her hand lovingly along his cheek. "Well, you'd better be ready to dance in a week, because Camp Acheron is getting a USO show." Her excitement was infectious. "Two shows, even. So everyone at the base can attend one or the other. All four crops, plus all the military staff. Live performances by Boomstikz, but importantly for you: Peppa Grinda and Sidewinder Kate."

While it didn't sound like it was going to be exactly his kind of music, Max had to admit that the prospect of spending some time dancing with his girlfriend at a live musical performance sounded pretty great. "Why is that important for me? I mean, I don't know who Peppa Grinda or Sidewinder Kate even are." It wasn't completely true. He was aware that Peppa Grinda was a singer, but he was also aware that if he was forced at gunpoint to guess whether individual overproduced pop songs had been sung by Peppa Grinda or GiGi Garces, he would be unlikely to outperform a flipped coin.

Sophie looked at him critically. "Peppa Grinda did the doughnut song and Thirsty For Ya. Sidewinder Kate did Cover Yourself, but you're probably more familiar with her as the person who did the round up portion on Where My Socks."

"Wait. Isn't that just the thing where there's a fiddle break and then someone shouts 'Round Up!' a bunch of times?" Pop music had long ago figured out that having breaks in the middle of a song where a guest artist performed a completely different genre of music for a verse or two before going back to the original song produced the kind of cross genre appeal that created clicks on social media platforms. Having the featured performer's piece match the rest of the song tonally or in content didn't really seem to be necessary.

"Yeah," Sophie agreed, "if you watch the video, it's pretty clear she's talking about her curves." The pun was driven by the fact that a featured artist's section on a song was called a round up if it was a country style interpolation just as it was called a toaster if it was a rap style interpolation. Sidewinder Kate's round up included her literally just saying the words 'round up,' but then in the video she put her round parts up. Sophie thought it was moderately clever, but Max didn't seem to get it.

Max smiled to humor her. "Uh... sure. But why did you say Peppa Grinda or the round up lady are important for me? I don't think either of them exactly make the kind of music I listen to." He was more of a K-pop and light metal kind of guy.

"Well," she explained, "they're both really attractive. Famously so." She looked at him like that settled it. He stared back in a way that showed that it definitely did not. "So... you should add one of them to your harem!" Max coughed and gagged on the tube in his throat. Sophie looked to make sure he wasn't dying, and then continued. "You can increase the number of non-hunter slaves you can have past zero, and those slaves need to be useful to you even though they can't fight monsters. What could be more useful than being rich and famous? And slaves also have to be hot enough that you want to fuck them." She made a gesture to indicate that it was a no-brainer. "You'll also want a sexy maid at some point, maybe a sexy cook, but those are for when we have our own place. Right now, we can work on getting you a rich and famous slave to promote you."

He stared at his girlfriend. She seemed absolutely serious, and he didn't know how to react to that. "Sophie, I love you. But... what are you talking about? Famous singers might come to Camp Acheron for a USO gig, but they are coming here to get mentioned on gossip shows and shoot some video footage on an alien world. They aren't coming here to join a harem with a bunch of teenagers."

She shook her head, Peppa Grinda and Sidewinder Kate were almost the same age as Sophie and Max. "Agree to disagree, Master. Just... think about which one you'd prefer. And make sure you have a non-hunter slave slot available when we go to the show." Looking at the tube in his nose and the bag of green goo that it fed into, her expression softened. "I almost... you almost died. You need to buy up your vigor and mettle, get some more durability on you. You need to live, Max."

It was hard for Max to meet his girlfriend's gaze. Obviously, he didn't want to die, but he felt really guilty for making her worry. He had genuinely nearly died, and his own biggest reaction was that he was sorry his lover had to see that happen. "OK." He incremented some of his stats. As expected, his stamina and durability had increased as well. He checked the remaining Mastery, there was still a lot, but... "Wow, that's a really inefficient way to spend Mastery. When I think about how much it cost to literally be able to take an entire seventh party member into the dungeon, the cost to make myself slightly better seems positively obscene. I mean, even after increasing them my stats aren't high enough to matter." Sophie cut him off by putting her finger on his lips.

"None of this matters if you don't survive, my love." She stared at him intently until he nodded his head, only then did she take her finger off his lips. "Now, you just spent some Mastery, are you feeling dominant enough for the others to do a deprecation session?" She looked at him hopefully. Left unsaid was the hope that he was feeling dominant enough to do more than that.

He sighed. "You're right. I still have responsibilities to the party, even if my intestines are on strike. Their seals still need to be progressed. Send them in. I'll listen to you guys lie about yourselves for a bit." He grabbed Sophie's hand and clutched it with sincerity. "But when you're done, I'm going to remind you how wonderful you are."

### End Chapter 12 ###

These chapters just keep getting longer. I promise that Chapter 13 will be a bit shorter and come out in a bit more timely fashion. For those who don't read the Pocket Monster University series: my experiment with writing for the contests did not go well, and I won't be doing any more of that. The hope was that it would reach new audiences, drive engagement, and all that, but instead it appears to have reduced the expected engagement of the story by over eighty percent (seriously). There are various mechanisms that made that happen, but the bottom line is that my contest entry got less than half as many people rating it as the latest chapter of PMU, and less than a quarter of the ratings of the last chapter of Fighting Them There. Looking at that, all my plans to write things for the contests and events have been scrapped, permanently. There has, however, been a lot of responses asking for a sequel to Stop Enslaving My Friends! So I'm looking at making a sequel some time this month.

I've tried reformatting the skill lists to hopefully be more readable on the site.

The current party:

Chaeryn - Sniper (D-tier artillery), Shadow Elf from the Shelflands

Powerful Shot: Does additional damage {plus injury effects} with ranged weapons.

Find Weakness: Sees the weak points of creatures and objects.

Magic Missile: Creates an arrow out of mana.

Arrow Storage: Stores arrows.

Fiona - Night Caller (D-tier storm), Vietnamese American

Leeching Darkness: Area damage {plus mana and stamina drain} (shadow) to enemies, heals allies proportional to damage {plus mana and stamina loss} inflicted.

Night Fog: Minor area damage (shadow) to enemies, blocks light, muffles sound.

Shadow Puppets: Produce intangible shadows on any surface.

Eyes of Night: See without light.

Miriam - Geomancer (C-tier controller), Red Haired Irish German Italian Jewish American

Produce Earth: Make structures out of earth and stone.

Move Earth: Telekinesis of earth and stone.

Grasping Mud: Turns earth and stone surfaces sticky.

Hands of Stone: Restrain enemies with hands made of stone.

Echoing Stomp: Detect creatures and objects touching earth and stone with vibrations.

Stone Skin: Temporarily increases an ally's durability {plus physical strength and magic resistance}.

Earth Doll (Acquired at Level 3): Creates and controls a golem.

Sophie - Valyrie (B-tier vanguard) Blond American from New Mexico

Awesome Presence: Inspires allies, intimidates enemies.

Chooser of the Slain: See the remaining durability of allies and enemies.

Rainbow Step: Step off from the air itself.

Raven Strike: Massive damage to enemies that have half their base durability or less.

Humbler of the Great: All attacks do extra damage to larger opponents.

Shield of Swords: Parry attacks.

Sword of Shields: Attack with additional speed after an attack has been blocked.

Doom Seer: Alerted when attack is imminent to self or allies.

Shield Rush (Acquired at Level 2): Push through with shield.

Call of Battle (Acquired at Level 3): Increased movement speed if moving toward enemies.

Imposing Challenge (Acquired at Level 4): Enemies that turn their back are slowed.

Ulzhari - Berserker (D-tier slayer), Orc adopted into the Iron Claws

Reckless Strike: Increased damage attack, decreased defense until it is finished.

Growing Fury: Physical strength and tenacity {plus agility and mettle} temporarily increases when damaged by or when damaging enemies.

Call of Battle: Increased movement speed if moving toward enemies.

Scent of Blood: Track injured creatures by scent.

Kaitlin - Phantasmist (C-tier artillery), Blond Oregonian

Mind Melter: Severe damage to a single target's living nerves.

Psychic Crush: Telekinetic damage to one target.

Mental Image: Creates visual illusion.

Vanish: Target becomes invisible.

Emotional Barrier: Wall that is tangible to the living.

Memory of Place: See events of the past.