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### Fighting Them There - Chapter 16 ###
Chaeryn traced her gracile coal-black finger along the silver sigil of the chest. "The dungeon never provides chests that cannot be opened. Sometimes it provides chests that we choose to bring back to share with others, but opening them is always an option. Always. Sometimes a party suffers casualties and chests that could have been opened must be given to future generations to open, but not once in nearly two hundred generations has the dungeon given a chest that no one who came into the dungeon could open." It was a stark reminder of how much longer the elves had been doing all this. The humans of Earth could count their generations of dungeon raiding hunters on their fingers and have fingers left over. Some of the first human hunters were still alive. "Max has the authority to change our class, that must be the answer to this problem." Chloe choked on her own surprise and had a bit of a coughing fit, but the others were only mildly less taken aback by the Shadow Elf's declaration.
When eyes turned to Max, he shook his head. "Yes, all your classes are green, so I can probably eventually upgrade them to something. But it's really expensive, we're nowhere near that." He opened up Ulzhari's status and gestured at her physically. "So like, Ulzhari's class is Berserker. That's green. But when I select it to look at the advancement there's just a really big bar to fill with Capitulation. It's bigger than the ones for advancing her call of battle, her scent of blood, and her resilience of courage combined." Even as he said it, something tickled at the back of his brain, but he carried on to change his attentions to Sophie. "And yes, even Sophie's Valkyrie class is green, maybe that turns into something even more absurd. But we're not going to find out any time soon, because when I open that up, the bar to fill with Capitulation actually goes out of the interface. I can't see how much that actually is, because the Ancients didn't design our status windows with the idea that anything would cost so much." He sighed. "And yeah, I'm guessing that advancing Valkyrie probably does a lot, and maybe it's actually correct to avoid advancing any of her ten remaining skills until enough Capitulation develops that we can do that. But we do need to survive, so we've been spending the Capitulation as we get it for the most part." He shrugged.
"Wait," Fiona began thinking out loud, "if the lower tiers are cheaper to advance, maybe we should recruit an E-tier to experiment on? Like, Rosalita could probably be enticed back on a temporary basis. Just train her seals until you can advance her class. If advancing classes is just a small boost, then it's something for years in the future after we run out of things to buy. If it's bigger than everything else, then maybe we all start saving." Max didn't think Rosalita could be enticed back into the party, but the idea was sound.
Sophie made a cutting motion with her hand. "All of that doesn't matter right now. The only real question is whether Chaeryn is close enough to advance. Assassin is a C-tier artillery class, if anyone is going to advance into that, it's our D-tier artillery. Max just spent a bunch of her Capitulation, but she also probably gained a bunch from her participation in the dungeon riddle that dug up these chests in the first place." The description brought a wince from Miriam, but went unchallenged. She hadn't called it an ass riddle, though of course that had been implied. "If she's close enough that we can put her over with a training session, then she starts insulting herself right here, right now. And if she's not, we stop talking about it and haul these to the exit." The powerful Valkyrie looked at each of her team mates in turn. "OK?" Everyone else agreed, though some were a bit grudging about it.
With a sigh, Max opened up Chaeryn's status, intent on figuring out how close she actually was to having a progressable class. She had indeed picked up some Capitulation from when he suspended her from the ceiling and fucked her in front of the rest of their party. It was interesting to him that the submissive urge came in from him spending the Capitulation but that acting out the things the slaves begged for when their submissive urges kicked in generally generated Capitulation. Perhaps he was supposed to bind and molest the slaves first, and then activate their submissive urges afterward? That sounded pretty awful to him, even though he suspected that Chloe at least would thank him for it. The class name was green, as all of them had always been in his status window, but something different happened when he focused in on it: he was offered the choice to advance it. "Um guys... Chaeryn's class is cheaper to advance now. Like, a lot cheaper." Properly speaking, it was good news, but it also felt like someone was reading over his shoulder. Not for the first time, his entire life seemed to be a playing piece in someone else's game. Part of him wanted to throw burning trash at the Fates, leave the dungeon entirely, go work on an alpaca farm. Fucking anything except allow his choices to be taken away from him by a series of carefully arranged incentives. He gritted his teeth in frustration.
A familiar set of lips kissed him, knocking him out of his spiral of doubt and opposition. "What's wrong?" Sophie asked, concern creeping into her voice.
All at once, he felt absolutely silly, but he still felt jerked around. He kissed Sophie back. "Chaeryn's class advancement is on ridiculous discount, so we can advance it right now." The blond Valkyrie looked at him with a questioning expression that challenged him to tell her what the problem was.
It was fairly hard to articulate what his problem was, and that made him feel foolish. After all, it seemed that things were lining up well. Possibly too well. "It's just... Chaeryn's class advancement is on discount because that's the one I'm supposed to advance right now." He waved his arm vaguely at the chests. "The choice is obvious, so there's no real choice. Whoever chose Chaeryn's discount has just made all my choices for me. I'm on a path that's a candy trail and I don't know where it leads." Fiona looked like she was about to say something and Miriam waved her off.
Miriam had also considered talking about how his class gave everyone in the party a series of positive incentives and reinforcements that seemed to gradually turn them all into his sex slaves, but she decided against it. They were in a dungeon, and arguments about whether Max was being hypocritical or not could absolutely wait until none of them were in mortal danger. "Are you sure that the discount is just for Chaeryn? Have you checked Fiona? Maybe Chloe got the discount too, she was part of the... riddle." She still had a hard time believing that they were calling the periodic sex dungeons that they'd been finding in the regular dungeons as riddles, but Fiona had been correct that there wasn't anything else to call them.
Her suggestion seemed reasonable and Max checked the other status windows. Then he checked them again. Then he held his sword out so he could see it as a straight line through the status windows he was looking at. "They aren't quite the same," he mused, "it's close, but Ulzhari's cost is a bit less than Chloe's and Fiona's is a bit more." Something he'd said earlier came back to him. "Oh. Right. The cost is just a little bit more than the cost of advancing all the remaining skills. Scent of blood is cheaper to advance than eyes of night, and so the cost of the whole class is less." He looked a bit embarrassed. "So I guess Chaeryn's class is cheaper to advance because she doesn't have any unadvanced skills. The chests probably came as a reward because I had literally just unlocked her class advancement. I made this happen, sorry to get all weird on you guys." It would have been a lot easier to walk back if he hadn't voiced his frustration, and now there was nothing to do but apologize and move forward.
There was a general murmur and several rolled eyes, but no one was terribly hard on him. Miriam, however, had concerns. "So we're all on the bandwagon that Chaeryn's class is about to change from Sniper to Assassin, right? Leaving aside how insane it is that we're all treating it as normal that a hunter is going to stop being D-tier and start being C-tier, can we not take a moment to gawk at how strange it is that a new hunter's rune is going to appear, and we all know what class it's going to show. Like, she's not going to get Sharpshooter or Trapper, is she?" To the best of their knowledge, no hunter had ever known what class they were going to get when their rune matured, and so on reflection it was indeed very strange that all of them had a fairly high certainty as to what it was going to show. Some of the party members gulped deeply or shuddered when the enormity weighed on them.
"Well Chaeryn," Sophie said brightly, "I guess it's time for you to get naked." She was the recipient of gazes that ranged from puzzled to offended, and she felt the need to justify herself. "We all want to see her hunter's mark change, of course. More importantly, what happens to us when Max spends our Capitulation to advance a skill?" She looked from face to face. Miriam blushed. Chloe looked away. Ulzhari nodded. "Chaeryn is probably about to have the biggest submissive urge we've ever seen. Once Max changes her class, she is going to need him to give her a good hard fucking. We should help her with that." This declaration was met with a general nodding of heads. The tall blond Valkyrie bent down to place her lips next to the elf's white hair and black pointy ear. "This going to be such an important breakthrough," she whispered to the white-haired elvish woman, "it will be the first of its kind. There's no going back, you're going to remember this for the rest of your life. We all are. How are you going to want to celebrate our Master owning you?"
Chaeryn's purple eyes blinked. Her nostrils flared. She cast a furtive glance at Max's crotch. She took a deep breath. "I want... I'd like to wear it all. Can I do that? Fiona and Ulzhari can have it back after, but just for this... I would like to be tethered and Essence locked both ways. Can we do that?" Sophie and Chaeryn looked to the Night Caller and Berserker for confirmation. Sophie gave them an encouraging and conspiratorial nod.
The Essence lock prevented Ulzhari from saying anything, but she signaled her agreement. Fiona fingered the mana tether at her own neck. "It's a good idea," she conceded, "it's the most important advancement, so we should make it special."
"Great," Sophie clapped her hands in wrap-up and excitement, "and we can do this every time. When one of us progresses our class, we can wear every kind of Max's equipment and he can dominate us in every hole." There was a general nodding of heads from the women in the party.
Max put his hands on Chaeryn's shoulders. "OK. But remember that like Ulzhari, once I put the Essence lock of Silence into your mouth, you won't be able to say anything." She looked up at him with excitement. "We need to give you a way out if you're feeling hurt or want to stop. Since won't be able to speak, the rest of us need to be able to speak for you. If you hold up three fingers or wink your left eye like this," he demonstrated a cartoonish pirate's wink, "I'll stop and release you. OK? And all the rest of our teammates are going to watch you, so if you need to tap out they can tell me right away."
The Shadow Elf sighed. "Yes, Master Max. I am going to give myself to you completely. You're going to bind me and claim me, completely. I will be completely bound and completely claimed. And all of our part members will watch in envy." There was a general nodding of heads among the women of the party.
####
Humans, even dark-skinned humans, have a tendency to have tan lines. This is because the pigment-producing cells in the skin respond to exposure to sunlight by producing more pigment, and that by extension the areas more frequently protected from the sun would have less pigment produced. Neither Max nor any of the human women in his party could explain how a melanocyte functioned on a chemical level, but every one of them was intimately familiar with how skin looked when they were present and active to varying degrees. And it was precisely this familiarity that made Chaeryn's naked body appear as unearthly as it technically was. The dark pigment of the Shadow Elves was chemically the same as soot, and the long absence of sunlight from the lives of elves served to neither promote nor discourage its secretion under the skin. Especially thick portions of Chaeryn's exterior, such as the heels of her feet and the nails of her fingers, took on lighter tints of black like black olives or charcoal.
One feature of her skin was receiving more attention than any of the rest. It wasn't the tiny spots on her right shoulder blade where her black pigment inexplicably never came in that was as pale as any Sea Elf from the Washlands, it was the mark on her chest. It was just a little bit to the left of her sternum, and it marked her as a hunter. It marked her as a Sniper. D-tier. It elevated her to the august list of those whose magic allowed them to raid dungeons and fight the monsters there, and it also relegated her to a dusty and rarely mentioned part of the list. The ordinary among the extraordinary. That's what that mark had always meant, and what it would always mean. Forever. Until that moment.
"You ready?" Max asked, although of course everyone felt like they'd been ready since before they'd taken breath. The anticipation was gnawing to the point of pain, though Max still had to ask. Who would wish to be one who had to tell their family that they'd missed such an event to scratch an itch or blow their nose? He opened her status, and agreed to the expenditure of Capitulation.
The actual change was in a way anticlimactic. The Sniper's rune was the same size and shape as the Assassin's, just slightly more austere. The symbol simply changed, and Chaeryn's class was Assassin. C-tier. There were several gasps. Fiona started crying. Max checked her status and noted that even Assassin was still green, but a casual glance showed that further advancement was too expensive to even properly estimate. The new skills were tucked into the list like they'd always been there: waylay and poison blade. Thelenia and Oscar had waylay as well, so Max was familiar with it - a damage increasing skill that triggered when attacking from behind or in some other advantageous situations. Thelenia had mostly used her stutter step to stab enemies in the back, but he supposed Chaeryn would still usually be shooting enemies with her crossbow. He didn't have the patience to translate the effects of poison blade from the Ancient runes it was described in, but he figured that the title probably gave away the whole show. Her stats had increased substantially, especially physical strength and tenacity, reminding him that Assassin was an artillery class with crossover front line capabilities. It was the reason why it had been a class that had once captured his imagination as one he might have himself just a few months prior.
"Are you OK?" Max asked with sincerity. No one had ever changed from one class to another, and he would have believed any kind of side effects from nausea to blood loss. Fortunately, she seemed to have gotten through it without any unforeseen suffering.
Chaeryn's eyes got a far away look that indicated that she was looking at her own status window. Her eyes bulged in surprise. "Master Max, it worked. Please... I need you to bind me, to claim me. I'm... I need it." She bounced in anticipation, her B-cup breasts being firm enough to only twitch a little with each bounce.
She offered to fall to her knees and suck his dick immediately, but Max was disquieted by the terrain. "If we were on a bed or a carpet, or even a clean tile floor, absolutely." He gestured at the grit and grime that was strewn about on the dungeon ground even where there were undisturbed tiles. Sophie had a proposed solution, which was basically that Chaeryn would be held up by Ulzhari or herself, so that her naked flesh didn't get on the floor. Max's first inclination was to dismiss the idea as absurd, but after a moment's reflection it sank in that the two of them actually did have the strength and endurance to hold the petite Chaeryn off the floor for an entire session of vigorous sex. "OK," he conceded, "so first we're giving you the Essence lock in the mouth." He unleashed his turgid manhood. "This goes in your mouth." Chaeryn looked so excited.
Sophie had a suggestion. "We have to get the Essence lock in you. Now, we usually see that Essence lock in Ulzhari's mouth, so when our master puts it into you, it'll be kind of like you're kissing Ulzhari." There was a general nodding of heads, the logic seemed sound. "So we should put some of Ulzhari's pussy juice on it to make that kiss extra special." Both Max and Chloe seemed a bit taken aback by this declaration, but both the elf and orc agreed that it made perfect sense.
Having just acquired new armor, it wasn't entirely obvious how vaginal secretions could be extracted from the Berserker. Sophie was delighted to discover that the black material of the bodysuit was stretchy enough that she could snake her hand between the straps at the hip and then over and down to the orcish woman's slit. It was hard to see what the Valkyrie's hand was doing in Ulzhari's crotch, but the orc obligingly pushed her hips into the invading hand and sighed while squelching sounds were made. The blond snaked her hand back out of Ulzhari's bodysuit and it thwapped back into place. Her glistening fingers smeared their treasure syrup onto the ball of the gag, and Sophie presented it as ready for use once Chaeryn had some Essence to lock.
There was a brief discussion of how Max wanted the Shadow Elf to suck his cock. Some suggestions were more helpful than others, but Max decided to have Ulzhari hold Chaeryn upside down so that she cloud run her tongue along the top of his shaft. Gluk. Gluk. Gluk. The smallest member of their party was really into it, pushing her mouth onto his rod until it poked the back of her throat. Again and again, and she certainly would have been willing to continue until he filled her stomach with white sauce, but Max pulled her off once he'd gotten some precum into her mouth. It was all prelude, and he wanted to get the rest of it in place to get to the main event. He had her flipped back upright while he put the Essence lock into her mouth. Her voice vanished entirely, her throaty groan transformed into a pall of silence the moment he latched the strap. However, even without sound he enthusiasm rang through. "Remember, three winks or three fingers if you don't think this is going where you want it to. Otherwise, I'm laid claim to your mouth, now I'm going to collar you as my slave." He paused to give her a chance to back out, and when she did nothing resembling the sort, he took a mana tether from Fiona's hands and wrapped it around Chaeryn's neck. "Mine." He said simply, and she silently nodded her agreement.
The sodomy was more difficult to arrange, and what they ended up with was Ulzhari getting on all fours to act as a table and then Chaeryn draping herself over the orc's muscular back to present her bare ass for her master. Max grabbed her leash in one hand and her narrow hip in the other, and proceeded to impale her.
Chloe was alarmed. "Why does she have to be humiliated like that?" The Hoplite blushed in second hand embarrassment.
It was Fiona who corrected her. "Look at Chaeryn's face, I mean really look at her while Max is fucking her. And not just because it will progress your envy seal to do so." She gestured at the unfolding scene. The elf silently flopped across Ulzhari's back while Max entered her tiny butt with his massive cock. She was collared. Gagged. Sodomized. And she looked radiantly happy. "She isn't humiliated at all. Max is proud of her, and he's proudly displaying her. And she is proud of what she has accomplished, and is proud to be displayed." The complete silence of that display meant that it was difficult to tell when an orgasm began or ended, but it was clear that the elf was getting something out of her extreme treatment.
There was a murmur of agreement from Miriam and Sophie. "This is something you can look forward to for yourself," Sophie speculated, "when you become C-tier, Max will reward you just like this. Master Max already owns your ass, and we can celebrate your advancement by watching our master bind you, dominate you, and own you completely. You'll be proud to be his helpless fucktoy, and we'll all be proud of you for submitting to Master Max." The Valkyrie brushed her gauntleted fingers against the naked arm skin between Chloe's breastplate and arm guards. Despite her great strength, it was a very light touch, almost tickling. "You're so lucky Chloe. You said No, but our Master fucked your virgin ass anyway, didn't he? You refused him, but then you submitted. You submitted and came so hard. You came and became a slave. That was your reward for submission, for letting your master take control of your ass. Now you can't refuse Master Max, because you are a slave. So lucky. Soon you can be just like Chaeryn. Such a lucky slave." Both Sophie and Chloe moaned. Chaeryn said nothing at all.
When Max finally ejaculated into her rectum, she collapsed on her orcish support. Max's penis withdrew in eerie silence, the magic of the Essence lock applying as much to the wearer's butthole as it did to their foot falls. "I'm going to put the last Essence lock into you." It was the one with the green gem, the one she was going to keep wearing after she game the rest of the stuff back. It went into her anus like it belonged there, and in Chaeryn's opinion it certainly did.
Underneath the silently panting elf woman, Ulzhari turned her head to look up hopefully at Max. "You'll do this with all of us, right Master?"
He nodded. "Of course Ulzhari. If any of you wan to opt out, you can. But if you want to... then yes of course." The Berserker seemed pleased with the answer.
When Chaeryn was finished, Ulzhari had the opportunity to clean Max's deck with her mouth and have the Essence lock reapplied. This pleased her even more.
####
"OK, open them." Miriam encouraged.
"She's not dressed yet," Chloe protested, "the chests might not see her equipment."
The redhead shrugged. "These are silver-sigil chests, it doesn't matter if they see her equipment. Everything Chaeryn is wearing is iron or worse, so the silver chests are going to replace anything they want to replace."
Making no move to get dressed, the Shadow Elf contemplated the boxes. "My new class uses a blade, not just a bow. One of these chests will almost certainly provide a melee weapon if we open them now. If we take them back to Camp Acheron, we may be able to get an additional silver-tier melee weapon for me before opening them." That brought them up short. A weapon from the armory wouldn't be free exactly, it would be a loan and she'd eventually have to give it back. And the number of silver-tiered items in existence would be exactly the same. But if they got through the entire dungeon without opening any of the chests, she'd have a whole other item to work with when they went into the next dungeon.
All eyes went to Max, six women looking for his wisdom and ready to defer to his decision. "Uh... I think our first priority is that we have to live. If we leave them unopened, we're down five silver-sigil items for this dungeon, and we're only up one silver-sigil item in the next dungeon. That only pays off after we go through six more dungeons, and I think by that point we will be on to other things." As he talked through it, the logic crystallized in his mind and he became more certain. "So yeah, I guess it's right to open all of them right now." It certainly wouldn't make any sense to open just some of the chests. Chaeryn looked at him expectantly, and he realized what she wanted. "Chaeryn, open the chests."
"Yes, Master!" The dark skinned elf jumped to the first box and opened it. Once opened, it contained a ninety centimeter side-sword. It had a straight blade, mottled black and dark gray, with sharp edges and a narrow point. None of the hunters knew enough metallurgy to speculate as to what it was made of in a physical sense. Regardless of its composition, the weapon would be effective both as a thrusting weapon and as a cutting weapon. The pommel and hilt were black as well, as was the sword guard. The guard was shaped as two five-hooded cobras coiling around and chasing each other, and it enclosed the blade's ricasso. It was an intricate piece of work, one that lent itself to several different grips, with one, two, or zero fingers moved up the guard on the ricasso.
Max was happy to demonstrate some of them, as apparently Chaeryn defaulted to hammer grip when handling a sword. He walked her through thumb grip, forward grip, and reverse grip. They were still in a dungeon, so they didn't have a great deal of time for fencing lessons, but Chaeryn found that she appreciated the forward grip leaving her index finger locked around the ricasso. "Well," Max said, "we're pot committed. So Chaeryn, open the rest of the chests." The idiom was literally alien to the elf, but she took to the command well enough. Ulzhari and Chloe were similarly baffled by the idiom, but were happy enough to let the action continue without needing to understand that part of Max's statement.
The second box had a pair of shorts. They had a drawstring and a total of five pockets. The silk-like cloth was colored in dozens of shades of gray with a complex fractal pattern. The overall effect was much like multi-scale camouflage on a Space Force combat utility uniform, or the actual scales on a five-hooded cobra for that matter. Notably the shorts left much of the thigh uncovered, having an inseam of just twelve centimeters. There was absolutely no question of whether she was going to wear them over the pants she had before, in addition to the pockets they also provided magical benefits to her running speed, jumping ability, and stamina. They fit her snugly, and left the curve of her butt and the thigh gap beneath her crotch very visible. She presented her rear to Max, who found that he could feel the outline of her Essence lock through the new shorts.
A similar clothing experience awaited her with the opening of the third chest. It was a shirt. Max found it a bit surreal to get excited about opening a gift box and finding a shirt inside, but it was a magic shirt and such enthusiasm was probably justified. Just wearing it increased mettle, tenacity, and durability, making it mostly better than Chloe's breastplate simply as armor. It also gave the wearer resistance to poison, leading Max to wonder if perhaps it would allow her to enjoy medium salsa or perhaps even eggnog. The shirt itself was a similar gray fractal camouflage as the shorts, having tight long sleeves but a crop top that left her onyx abdomen on display.
When the second to last chest was opened, it seemed on first look to be empty. Max's class had made them question many aspects of their world, but even that seemed too weird to be true, and on further inspection it turned out not to be. What it contained was a hooded cloak that looked very much like the inside of the chest. When it was brought out, it looked very much like the marble columned enclosure that they had found it in. The status window identified it as a mirror cat cloak, and it seemed to reflect and transmit light in a way that its coloration and patterning was a pretty good approximation of what was around it. When Chaeryn put her head in the hood and draped the rest of the cloak over her shoulders, she became a lot harder to see. Most mirrors have a bit of silvery shine, because the way they reflect light makes them look a bit metallic even if they are made of glass or water. The mirror cats of Patala had no such glitteriness, always appearing as if they'd been painted with a matte paint that happened to be an image of the colors and shapes that surrounded them. Chaeryn's cloak had a similar effect. Only once it was on did it become apparent that the hood had two triangular protrusions on top, which perhaps were intended to invoke the ears of a mirror cat.
The final box Chaeryn raided contained a pair of boots. They came almost to her knees and legitimately covered more of her leg than the shorts did. They were dark gray and laced up to be form fitting to her athletic calves. They provided enough slip resistance that the wearer could walk on water. Impressive, but the kind of thing one could expect from a silver chest.
With the new gear forming the centerpiece of her ensemble, she put on her old belt, gloves, and quivers. They'd already dallied too long in a dead end branch of the dungeon, and they had to retrace their steps all the way to the first room they had arrived in.
####
The walkway was slippery, and Max was glad that his boots provided magical stability. The reason for the slipperiness was that water gushed out from pipes on either side. Six pipes on the right, six pipes on the left, all pouring out in a frothy roar into channels on each side of the hall. Each channel had a grating that the water ran through continuously such that the water on each side was no more than a few centimeters deep, though it was constantly splashing much higher than that. It was that splashing, and the occasional errant spray of water from the ceiling pipes that sent water here and there along the stone pathway. It created a few tiny ponds, and there were places with a thin layer of slimy algae growth. Max and Chaeryn walked on it with magically enhanced stability, and Sophie walked on the air just slightly above, but it was treacherous ground for the others.
Miriam had offered to simply adjust the ground with her geomantic powers such that there would be a rough and dry walking surface, but everyone else had thought that an extravagant waste of mana. They were halfway along the pathway when Fiona had second thoughts. "Walking on this sucks," she admitted, "we should have let Miriam firm it up. Well, at least there aren't going to be any mirror cats in here." It was true that the water spray would immediately reveal the presence of any mirror cats. A grumbling sound came from ahead as if her words had invoked it. It was the sound of stone scraping on stone followed by the galumphing noise of many feet scrabbling against stone both wet and dry.
Many grunts and bleats squealed out, the approaching monsters making no effort to hide or disguise their presence. The razor boars rounded the corner in a hog tide, the stampede building up steam as the boars charged onto the walkway. They didn't care a whit if they slipped, slid, or injured themselves, this was a reckless rush to battle, propelled by a mind greater than their own. Max could see the strategy: if everything could be reduced to a crush of momentum or constricted, slippery terrain, then the skills and powers of the hunters would mean nothing. Razor boars would die, but the hunters would be broken beneath their bodies and compressed into unbreathing slabs of meat.
The hog tide had to be turned. If the wave was to wash over the hunters, they'd falter. Ulzhari was stronger than a razor boar, but she wasn't bigger. "We need to shield rush. Chloe, get them from the front! Sophie, flank them and shield rush from the side!" Sophie had been standing a few centimeters over the walkway, but she quickly sidestepped to open space. The cascades of water rained down on her in a torrent, but she didn't pay it any mind. The drum of water against her winged helmet was barely a quaver note in the symphony of oncoming swine. But once the razor boars were committed, it was time for the hunters to commit their mages. "Miriam! Grasping mud! Fiona! Leeching darkness!" For the non-humans, he simply held up a staying hand, which both Chaeryn and Ulzhari heeded, though with obvious reluctance. Max felt ridiculous calling out the names of their skills like he was a hero from a dungeon adventure children's cartoon, and yet it was undeniably true that the coordination was helpful. And while it made him feel a little bit uneasy with the role he had been placed in, the women in his party really liked taking orders from him. It progressed their claiming seals. It was at that moment that he resolved to develop some plays that he could call out like the quarterback of a football team.
With Chloe knocking a boar stationary in the front, and Sophie bowling into their second line from the side, the charge of the heavy brigade was thrown into momentary disarray. The herd compacted into place and the stones under their feet became as tar. The leeching darkness began to siphon their life force into the hunters, leaving the monsters to squeal in agony and growing desperation. But strong as she was, Chloe could not hold back the weight of pork forever, and as the phantom durability her immovable guard granted began to ebb, her guard decidedly began to move. Ulzhari started to get antsy, and tugged on Max's sleeve. It was a surreal experience, seeing the powerful Berserker silently pleading for permission to be deployed.
"Yes, Ulzhari," he said warmly, "it's time. Kill." The orc silently sped off leaving a gust of wind in her wake. Her ax moved in a blur, the blood of the boars illuminating in the blue light of the will-o-wisps. Space created for Chloe allowed her to take a step back and then rush forward again into the fray.
Chaeryn stood alongside Max, stuck behind the rest of the team and well cut off from the battle on the bridge. "Master, is there any particular enemy you would like me to shoot?" She was puzzled and anxious.
Max surveyed the melee, satisfied that the boar stampede had become a buffalo jump. "Not really, no. The razor boars are being guided by one of the stronger ones. Anything that happens to the boars right now is going to be relayed immediately to mommy. So instead of revealing our hand right now, we'll have you ambush the boss when it shows up." And it would show up, he was certain of that. The swarm of boars was bottled up and ineffectual, their chance to inflict real harm on the hunters can come and gone. A commander who wasn't planning a rescue mission would order a retreat, try to salvage any resources they could. The fact that none of the boars had tried to crawl out of the grasping mud in the opposite direction meant that their leader wasn't hiding behind another wall. "Climb down to the water grate down there and make your way to the corner next to their entrance. Let ambusher's guile activate and just wait until the big one comes in. Then keep waiting until you can shoot them in the back."
"And then...?" Chaeryn asked, as if the answer was at all in doubt.
"... And then you unload everything," Max suggested, "as many magic missiles as you can. You're gonna find a weakness and you're going to trigger powerful shot and waylay, and we're just not going to even find out what this monster's bag of tricks contains." He gave her a lopsided grin. "Now, go. You'll do great." Behind him the rest of the team carved up the mud-stuck boars with wild abandon, some close and some far, Fiona still attached to his hand by the mana tether. Chaeryn climbed down off the walkway and and began jogging across the churning water above the grating. She took position in the corner, and it was not long before she faded from view. Beyond the protection of the adaptive camouflage of her cloak, her ambusher's guile skill deleted her from the perceptions of hunter and monster alike.
She didn't have long to wait before the sound of a different kind of stomping echoed through the room. It mixed clangs with thuds, and it did not take a great deal of familiarity with the war hosts of Patala to know that an iron bird was incoming. Its appearance was nonetheless a surprise when it came into view, because it was very large indeed. The great doorway through which the monsters had been disgorging was nearly five meters tall, and the great iron bird had to duck its head to pass. And still it scraped its metal feathers against the stone blocks of the door frame to a shower of sparks and cacophony of scraping noises.
There are no riding beasts in The Shelflands. No one who valued the continued attachment of their head to their shoulders would voluntarily place themselves on top of a moving animal with stone constantly over head. In ancient times, the warrior queens would give their blessings to cave lizards that pulled chariots behind them, but riding was never part of the history of the Shadow Elves. Nevertheless, Chaeryn was familiar with the concept, and so seeing the iron bird walking deliberately putting one taloned claw in front of the other reminded her of nothing so much as one of the riding raptors of the Fog Moors. It walked with the same head bobbing gait, its back kept straight and its neck drawing its head in as it moved forward to hold its eyes perfectly still except for a single moment of re-extension of the neck. It's beak opened and a noise both thunderous and screeching came forth, a sound that seemed like it came from one of the human-built machines rather than from a living animal. It walked onto the ground that Miriam had turned to grasping mud and its power was such that it scarcely slowed. It walked into the cloud of leeching darkness that Fiona had created and its resilience was such that its injury scarcely showed.
Once it had come out far enough that Chaeryn could see its whole back, it had also come out far enough that it could extend to peck or bite at Chloe or Ulzhari. It brought its head up and back, presumably to do exactly that. Chaeryn's find weakness ability showed her the iron bird as a spiderweb of weaknesses with nigh invulnerability in between. The iron feathers and iron skin being thick and heavy far beyond what had protected the merely large iron birds they had fought before, their protection was nonetheless incomplete. The wings, the legs, the neck all had to move, and the necessary articulations meant vulnerabilities. The neck had it worst of all, and that is where Chaeryn aimed her weapon. The magic missile appeared in her crossbow at the cost of mana, and she fired.
It was the first time Chaeryn had triggered waylay, and it was impressive in the amount of damage it inflicted. She had been worried that it might not stack with the damage boost from powerful shot, but that worry seemed wholly misplaced. The magic missile penetrated through the iron bird's durability to inflict injury, allowing the poison to take effect. Chaeryn conjured another bolt for her crossbow, and marveled at how much of what had just transpired was enhancements that had been granted by her master. Without Max's enhancements, she would have no business being part of such a dungeon raid. Her second shot struck true, another magic missile shattered only after puncturing a hole in the enemy's neck.
That was enough for the bird to change its threat assessment. Its neck coiled around like a serpent, its eyes searched while its break dripped liquid fire. Chaeryn's skill erased her from perception, but the cascading water made her position harder to obscure. The great iron bird had mental abilities that the Alliance did not fully understand, powerful enough to puppet all of the razor boars into a suicidal stampede. Almost certainly enough to find Chaeryn's position, given time.
Time that Sophie elected to not allow the iron bird to have. The Valkyrie came down like lightning from a stormy sky, her blade clanging into the bird's steel head with a deafening knell. The temporarily blinded enemy thrashed and dribbled flaming liquid everywhere, but the burning spray fell more than a meter away from Chaeryn's position. Clouds of steam rose from the places they landed, but the elf's ability to target the metallic colossus was unimpaired. Bolt after bolt plugged into the enemy leader, which quickly turned on Sophie's raven strike.
The two women had multiple damage increasers going concurrently, and the iron bird crumpled quickly despite its obvious power and resilience. They never did find out what its magical skills were supposed to do if properly deployed. That was going to make parts of their report less interesting and helpful, but none of the hunters thought the officers would find their reports from their current mission as being unworthy of the book club treatment.
####
It made sense in a way that an iron bird would have an iron nest. What was less clear, was where it had found an iron tree to grow the iron twigs to build the iron nest out of. The whole object was like a stereotypical cup nest, but all the twigs and branches it was woven out of seemed to be cast in iron rather than grown from wood. It was a puzzle, but not one they were likely to solve. The high-ceilinged space also boasted a glitter cloud and two chests, both with silver sigils.
Max had a moment of anxiety as he questioned what he would do if they again had symbols that did not obviously conform to the members of their party, but the symbols turned out to be familiar. Master and Hoplite. It wasn't long passed that the inclusion of Hoplite would have brought surprise and disbelief - Chloe had entered the dungeon through slave storage, not the dungeon gate - but everyone in the party had moved beyond being astonished at such things.
Chloe poked her spear at the nest, and it scraped and clanged as befitted the materials of its construction. "Do you think this nest is a riddle?" She looked back at the rest of the party. "What do you think Max would have to do to us in this?" From her voice, it seemed that she was both afraid and eager to find out the answer.
Fiona shook her head. "I don't think so. We've only solved two riddles, and seen just one or two more that we didn't solve. But all the riddles we've identified have places to imprison us next to them." She could see that the Hoplite wanted to ask why, and skipped to the part where she answered. "I think all the riddles are two sided, that if we are defeated that the monsters get to solve them. With our bodies." It was a pretty horrible supposition, but it was also the best explanation they had.
"What if they put us in the boar pens?" Chloe asked. On their way to the nest, they'd passed the pens that the boar stampede had been released from.
The suggestion provoked a dismissive gesture from the Night Caller. "The cages and manacles and such that we've seen at riddle sites would be capable of actually holding us. So like the Riddle of Miriam's Ass had some cells, and this latest riddle with the hanging chains also had hanging cages." She shrugged. "Those boar pens are open topped, so we could just climb out."
It looked like Chloe was going to ask some more questions, and Miriam interjected. "You should really open your present. We all want to see what you got." The redheaded Geomancer was absolutely firm on that point.
When Chloe's chest was opened, she had a new set of pteruges. It was similar to the ones she already had, save that the leather portions were black, and the metal portions were vibrantly red and gold. It was amazing as armor, and allowed her to use her skills more quickly after using them. The Space Force called such an ability "cooldown reduction," but the runes in Ancient literally translated as "approaching dawn." The most interesting facet of the new armor was how it attached in the back, allowing the hanging strips to open like curtains right in the middle of the back coverage.
The first reaction Chloe had upon realizing that her butt crack could so easily be put on display was to die of embarrassment. Metaphorically. She wasn't literally dead, although on some level she wished that something comparably drastic would happen to wipe away the shame that she felt. Sophie, on the other hand, would have none of it. "This is great! It'll be so much easier for Master Max to express his ownership of your ass this way. I'm so jealous, hopefully when I eventually get an upgrade to my own pteruges they open up for our Master like that." Chloe was wavering, part of her admitting that Sophie made a good point. "Max, Honey!" she shouted over to the party's Master, "show Chloe how lucky she is that she can open her new armor to allow you to dominate her!"
Max walked up, slightly confused. "Chloe, are you unhappy with your new armor?"
She started to turn toward Max, but Sophie intervened. The Valkyrie put her arm around the Hoplite's shoulder and turned her back toward Max. "The fact that this part of the armor opens up is embarrassing her. She doesn't yet understand how useful that will be. You need to show her, Max. Show her how good it is for her that you can do whatever you want with her ass. With her ass that you own." She smiled encouragingly at Max, silently willing him to ravage their party member.
For his part, Max tried to see things from Chloe's point of view. He reached down below the ends of her luxurious braids and parted the straps of her skirt, revealing the tightness of her muscular behind. He placed his hand on her butt, thumb on one cheek, pinky on the other, and middle finding it's way just a little bit into her crack. She responded with a sharp intake of breath. "Chloe, do you like it that I own your ass?" He spoke quietly, but she had no trouble hearing him despite her helmet.
The answer was obvious. She felt herself pressing her naked flesh into her master's hand. Yet despite that truth, it was an admission that took many heartbeats to psyche herself up for. "Yessss..." She hissed out in shame.
"You have a wonderful ass," he breathed cheerily, "and you have nothing to be embarrassed about. You're a good girl, Chloe, and you're a good slave. None of the people in the party are going to judge you or laugh at you, because they're all good girls too." He pressed his finger into her crease and gently moved it up and down. "Now Chloe, do you like being a good girl?"
"Yesss Master," she panted, "I like it so much."
"Good. You're such a good girl, Chloe," he murmured seductively, "now you never have to be ashamed." He looked out to the rest of the party. "Everyone! Chloe's being a good girl, letting her master play with her ass. Now, I want you all to give her a nice thumb's up to show that you approve. Show her that there's nothing to be ashamed of. Show that you all want to be good girls too!" Thumbs shot up right away, backed by genuine smiles. Chaeryn and Ulzhari had to check with Fiona and Miriam about how to do the hand gesture properly, but they joined in with no less enthusiasm.
Chloe's breathing came faster and faster. Her butt pressing against his fingers became a wriggling, and her wriggling became twerking. "What? Oh. Everyone's looking! I'm going to cum. I'm going to cum because Master owns my ass! Everyone's going to see me cum with my slave ass! Aaaah!" There were so many smiles, and everyone made sure she saw that they still had their thumbs up. As Chloe gasped for breath, Sophie started clapping, and soon everyone joined in, even Max. In Ulzhari's case, she just went through the motions, her claps didn't actually make any noise.
When the applause died down, Sophie came up and hugged the party's Hoplite with the kind of strength only a hunter could have. "I'm so proud of you, Chloe." To Max she said. "Thank you for sorting Chloe out, Master. But you still have a present to open." She indicated the other chest with a head tilt.
"Oh, right." Max approached his own chest with a bit of trepidation. Sometimes he got a jacket or a ring or something, but all too often he was granted an item that seemed designed to be used to sexually torment the women in his party. And while he'd just given a rousing speech to Chloe about how she shouldn't be embarrassed by all the sex-adjacent training they were doing, that didn't do a lot for his own embarrassment. He genuinely believed that the women had nothing to be ashamed of, their seal progressions were literally defending the Home Worlds. When he stuck an Essence lock up their buttholes they received pleasure because his class ensured that they did, but it didn't provide anything for him. Some of it was genuinely extremely hot, to the point that he felt borderline guilty at times; but for some of the weirder stuff, he was just... glad to be of service. So as he flipped the latch, he imagined all the weird and ridiculous sex toys he might receive and have to explain. The lid popped open. "Oh, come on!" He blurted out with real exasperation.
Within the chest was a chain. It looked to be silver, and was about fifty centimeters long. In the middle was a link of chain that was much larger than the others, that was basically an O-ring in its own right. At both ends there were clips and through each clip ran a finger-tightenable screw. If the screw was tightened, the maximum opening of the clip would be reduced. They were clamps, and Max knew exactly what was supposed to be clamped with them. He almost walked away right there. With a heavy sigh, he picked it up. According to the Ancient runes, it was something to do with mana. He almost threw it across the room. Instead, he handed it to Chaeryn to read out.
Her purple eyes became vaguely unfocused as she turned her attention to reading the information in the status window provided only to her. "Wow." The Shadow Elf was impressed, and that made everyone else crowd in. "It's a mana conduit," Max groaned internally, but everyone else seemed very interested, "it increases magical strength and mana recovery, but only when it's attached by the Master to life points on the body of the Slave. Mana can also be stored in it and withdrawn later. While it's being worn, mana can be conduited from one part of a spell's effect to another, causing it to have less effect over part of its area and more effect on other parts of its area. The central ring can be used to attach tethers or other conduits to other life points, and the effects of the mana conduit are larger when the central ring is exposed." The elf's total innocence while describing the item was completely adorable in a way. She genuinely didn't know what the 'life points' that the Ancient runes talked about actually were, and had not developed a mental picture of what it would mean to attach a tether to the ring. Max facepalmed, because he knew.
"Fiona?" he inquired with just a hint of irony in his voice, he knew that she knew what was on the table, "you are the obvious person to wear this. That whole thing about moving mana around in the spells is mostly just useful to storm magic. Transfer mana out of parts of the spell effect where there are no enemies and transfer that mana in to the parts where the enemies are. It's like a damage buff to your leeching darkness that will bone us if there are enemies we don't know about." He pointed to the pelagic depth of her V-neck. "You're also the only one of us whose outfit leaves an area bare down the middle of the chest, so you'll get the bonus from having the O-ring hanging out. Miriam's apron would cover it." He gave her an apologetic smile. "But you know the drill by now. If you're not comfortable with it, I can put it on someone else; or even just leave it unused. I mean, I don't think it's going to be comfortable. The point is that I'm only screwing these clamps onto your nipples if you want me too." Chaeryn and Ulzhari looked aghast, having only at that moment realized what the 'life points' were.
The Vietnamese American chuckled. "Holy crap. I mean, I know I'm wearing a collar with a leash right now, but even so. That's just... it's just wow. It came out of a silver sigil chest, right? It's probably granting a much larger bonus than the dog collar." She rolled her eyes. "And the binding seal is going to make me like it, you know? If I let you put that on me, I'm going to become an actual painslut, like Slave Cat. It's going to condition me to like, then to crave pain that comes from Master's hand. I'll be corrupted and debased, but I guess it's for a good cause." Her shoulders sagged in resignation.
"I won't think you are corrupted or debased, Fiona." Max shook his head and then made sincere eye contact. "I know it's going to be uncomfortable, and I know it's a sacrifice, and never for a moment should you feel that any of us think less of you for it." She fumped her forehead directly into his chest, and he raised his hand up to gently pet her straight black hair. "I think... we all think that you're very brave. You're an important part of this team. We don't think less of you when you're wearing the collar, and if you decide to wear the nipple chain we won't think less of you for that either. But just as importantly, if you decide not to wear the nipple chain, either right now or later on, we won't think less of you. You'll still be someone we respect, whether you take the mana conduit or not."
She rested her head against his chest for a while. "Thank you for that. But we both know that I'm going to accept the... mana conduit. You're going to put it on me as a master binding his slave. And I'm going to love it." She sighed. "This is going to make me ridiculously horny, you know? Can you promise me that once you clamp these on me that you'll make me cum right away? I don't want to humiliate myself begging." She made no effort to move, leaving her head against his chest.
Max continued petting Fiona's head. He looked to Sophie with an uneasy expression, uncertain of how to proceed. The blond Valkyrie put her thumb way up and gave him a wink. She was grinning like a cat who had cornered a small rodent, and he decided that he'd have to ask her about that later. "Of course, Fiona. We're giving you the girlfriend experience, right? If you need to cum, I'll try to make that happen for you." There was a glint in his eye, betraying that he understood the ridiculousness of his statement.
"Oh yes," the sarcastic lilt in Fiona's voice a clear giveaway that she understood as well, "that crucial girlfriend experience of being placed into painful bondage and then stimulated to orgasm in public. I can't believe we haven't done that yet." Max and Fiona both had a laugh over their shared predicament. Sophie looked like she was reading a dinner menu after skipping lunch.
Getting Fiona's breasts to pop out of her black dress (or "robe" as its item description claimed it to be) was very easy to do. She didn't have any underwear that could come into the dungeon with her, and it took some care on her part to avoid wardrobe malfunctions and nip slips. Pushing her chest forward, her shoulders back, and her clothing out to the side, the sweater puppies were released into the wild. Max thought her Southeast Asian breasts were gorgeous, a fact that was somewhat unsurprising when he reflected that they had been altered slightly to conform to his aesthetic preferences. They were smaller than Sophie's and especially smaller than the mountains on Ulzhari's chest, but they were noticeably larger than Chaeryn's and perhaps most importantly they looked fantastic on Fiona.
"It's really a shame to hurt these things," Max mused, "you're beautiful unchained, you know that, right?" He breathed on the left nipple, and it stiffened and elongated. Not long enough to span a knuckle, but importantly it was long enough that the clip could trap it. The action of the screw was silent, and turned easily in his fingers. "Tell me when it's tight enough, and we can bind the other one. Remember that it's supposed to stay on for an entire battle, so it's not about what you can endure, it's about what you can endure for a long time while you're fighting monsters."
As the screw turned and the clamp pinched down upon her nipple she sensed her binding seal. Intuitively she knew that a harder compression would stimulate her binding seal more. "Oh. Yes, you can go harder. Please. Harder. Yes! That's it. The other one, Master." She had enticed him to turn the screw until the clamp dug deep into her nipple. It hurt, and she didn't care. She couldn't think of anything but her nipple and her master. The other nipple didn't even need to be blown on, it was already waiting to be captured. "That's it, Master. You can pinch it. Harder. Oh. Thank you, Master." She was panting like a dog in summer. He gave the O-ring a little tug, a tug that was evenly distributed through both of her nipples. "Oh wow! Master Max, you've got me! It's so good! I need... nnnngh." She wasn't able to articulate her needs, but Max had a pretty good guess.
With his hand still on the O-ring, the rest of his body dropped to one knee to bring his face level with her crotch. With how short her robe was, it wasn't difficult at all to reveal the smooth moistness of her pussy. He blew on the slit, starting at the bottom and bringing his gentle wind up to the top. There another nub demonstrated how aroused she was. "Are you ready for me to pinch another life point?" He gave her outer folds a few quick licks and honed in on his target.
"Ooooh. Yes, Master. Pinch it hard! I want it. I'm already a pain slave now!" Her hips involuntarily humped, and he needed his other hand to steady them. He did not bite her clit very hard. It was completely unnecessary to do so, as even a small nibble set her off. Then she bucked into his face and painted it with her girl cream. "Ungh! Ungh! Aaaaah!" Her eyes rolled up into her head as she had her first completely masochistic orgasm. She knew it wasn't going to be the last.
When she had crumpled into a a whimpering pile, Max twiddled with the clamp screws. "I'm going to have to loosen these clamps, aren't I?"
"Yes, Master." He was right, of course. She couldn't contribute to the party while she was being nipple-yanked to the point of masochistic orgasm. At least, not yet. Fiona had the feeling that it wouldn't take much more training until she could. As the screws were loosened, she wondered whether she should look forward to being trained and changed in that way.
####
The corridor ahead had many lines across it. Strands of fog spider silk, each likely to escape notice, but difficult to miss when they came in by the dozen. Tripwires, though some were high enough that one would run into them with their chest rather than their ankle. Were such things a tripwire? Views in the party differed on that point, with Ulzhari and Chaeryn acknowledging that they had actually no idea when it came to the minutiae of English word definitions. Some of the strings seemed like they'd just set off a rattle or wind chime if disturbed - basically an alarm. Some seemed like they'd set off a trap of some kind, with various blades and heavy objects under tension that would lash out in some direction should one of the strands be disturbed. Still others had no obvious function, their ends disappearing out of view.
Chloe looked at the gaps between the strands and measured them against her spear. "Do you think one of us could gymnastics her way through, like in the movies?" Such scenes almost invariably involved a female secret agent or thief dancing their way through lasers or strings, but the Hoplite had used female pronouns because she simply wasn't seriously entertaining the idea that anyone could do it except Chaeryn or Sophie.
Eyes turned to Chaeryn, and while her black skin did not change color, she did look embarrassed. "Probably not. It's true that with my class upgrade I am more agile, but I have not spent long in my new skin. I doubt my coordination would be up to maintaining a gymnastic dance that avoided every web of the spider." She shrugged apologetically. "I'm not sure what benefit there would be in me doing it though, it does not appear that there is any means to turn this all off on the other side. If there were, it would surely make more sense for Miriam to invoke it from afar with a hand of stone."
Eyes turned to Miriam, and she looked vaguely annoyed. "I mean, yes. If there was a big lever that turned off all the traps on the other side, I could have the stone pull itself. But I don't see one of those." She remained the center of attention. "Best I could do is make a doll and have it rush through all the strands so we could go through after all the traps had been set off." She made little walk-walk-walks with her fingers to demonstrate how it would work.
"No," Max said, "we can do better than that. We don't know what will happen if we set off all the traps, but some of them might make the hall difficult or impossible for us to get through. That previous one was set up to collapse part of the ceiling, and we have to assume these ones are worse." He looked at the corridor again. Its floor. Its walls. Its ceiling. "Miriam, you've made a platform to carry the whole party before, right? So if you make a platform up there," he pointed toward the ceiling, above where any of the strands bothered to run, "there'd still be enough room for all of us to crawl, right? We can all go through, but do it at the top. I mean, I assume that's where the spiders are supposed to come when hunters get stuck in..." he waved vaguely at the spider silk tripwires "all this shit." He shrugged. "So the top part should be safe for us to crawl in, just so long as Miriam creates a second floor for us to use."
The plan worked, at least in the sense that all of the party members were able to get from one end to the other without anything springing out, ringing out, lashing out, splashing out, falling down, locking down, cracking down, or gassing down. The tripwires remained untripped, and the hunters crawled over, putting their bodies through the space provided. It was cramped and a bit on the slow side, and the whole experience was terribly claustrophobic and dark, because none of the will-o-wisps elected to float into the crawl space that Miriam had created.
Getting down on the other side was comparatively a dream. Sophie could float on down to the ground, and had no problem catching each of her teammates in turn. Even Ulzhari and Chloe.
####
The battle had been noisy enough that any monsters on the other side of the door would presumably know they had arrived. Since the guard beasts in the antechamber had moved with precision tactics rather than bleating instinct, the certainty that their presence had been detected was essentially one hundred percent. One of the big ones... at least one of the big ones had been watching the entire combat. One bird, one cat, and two boars. It had been a coordinated attack from multiple directions, and would have been a lot more threatening if Fiona's shadow puppets hadn't flushed out the mirror cat.
"They didn't come out through those doors," Max surmised, "so the guards were just a way to evaluate our capabilities. Whatever they have in there, they think they have a defensive advantage." It was an odd thing to contemplate, because the beasts of Patala were, after all was said and done, beasts. They didn't have archers, or even spears. They were alone among all the Home Worlds and Nemesis Worlds to go into battle with only their own teeth and claws for protection. Theirs was a set of troops whose natural weaponry was good enough at close quarters but substantially worse as maneuvers and tactics allowed the thumb-having races to leverage the advantages of their science and weaponry. Back on Earth a razor boar or a scythe weasel could cause tremendous havoc if they got loose in a crowded marketplace, but in an open field they were nothing but target practice for a kill squad. That the Patalans wanted to be besieged rather than to come out and play even when the hunters were crawling through a confined space certainly said something. He just wasn't sure what it was.
The doors themselves were big stone things that, judging from the scrape marks along the top had once been operated by winches and now weren't operated at all. It would take enormous strength to open them or break them down, but their party had plenty to meet that particular challenge. Of more interest was the images embossed upon the doors. The left had what appeared to be half a dozen orcs, while the right had six monsters of Patala: a chicken lizard, a scythe weasel, a razor boar, a five-hooded cobra, an iron bird, and a dragon. The two groups were facing each other, and appeared to be able to clash in battle. Max wondered a bit at why the monsters had left this particular artwork alone without defacing it. It seemed to him that when he'd seen statues of people from the Alliance in heroic poses in other contexts, that the monsters had smashed them long ago. Perhaps the fact that Patala's own troops were given an equally prominent display had something to do with it. A darker thought came to him that perhaps this was the recounting of a specific event that the enemy wanted to commemorate. If that were true, he could hardly expect any orcs to recognize the event in question. It certainly didn't mean anything to Ulzhari.
Fortunately the floor, the walls, and of course the door itself were made of cut stone. This was fortunate because Miriam could stomp and get a picture of what was on the other side. "It's a round room, large, sandy floors. There's a door, no the door, on the other side and some chests. I can't feel any monsters in there, just some silk attachments in the wall. The ceiling is very high. I can't even see it... oh right, it's a tower."
The pieces were coming together, Max nodded. "So the monsters are up high, and they want us to run across some loose ground toward chests and an exit while they get the drop on us. Like, literally the drop on us. Probably dropping bladed feathers and shit." He contemplated his response. Giving the enemy what they wanted was probably off the table. The monsters of Patala knew their own capabilities better than he did, so if they thought they could drop enough to make the hunters suffer in a straight crossing, they were probably right. "So we're going to need to go up and fight them, but we're also going to need to convince them to start dropping shit so we know what their capabilities are." He looked at Fiona. "Miriam can open the doors with the most impressive fanfare, but this part is mostly you." He brought everyone together and explained his plan. He was a little unnerved at how easily his party members accepted his plan. He thought it was pretty good, but it wasn't like, that good.
Depending on how hinges are set, a door can open inwards or outwards or even both directions. The doors to the final room were intended to open outward, but Miriam pulled them apart like elevator doors. At the end of Max's leash, Fiona waved her athame in the air and her shadow puppets extended across the sands. As expected, the hard black of the darkness outlined some mirror cats, and a substantially less visible Chaeryn was in a kneeling firing position to eliminate them. Something about mirror cats made it seem like they should shatter or tear like a window or projection screen, but instead each dummy arrow made the wet thunk of hammered meat.
The next part of the plan was to create an area of darkness with night fog and the sound of feet running across the sand. Maintaining both spells was difficult for Fiona, but it paid off when rocks started falling into the sand with resounding booms. Each was a boulder a meter or so in the shortest dimension, meaning that the total mass would be measured in tonnes, depending on the density and composition of the stones. Each was trailing strands of spider silk, which was enough explanation as Max needed. There were heavy objects suspended high above ground level, and the fog spider mastermind needed only to cut the threads in order to bombard the surface.
Max pulled back on Fiona's leash and explained the new plan. Chaeryn could stay faded from view so long as she walked slowly and Sophie could fly up. They needed the spider to be distracted when Sophie broke cover, and that's where Miriam final got to make her earth doll and send it charging into its own certain death. Only once it started bombarding the doll did Sophie run out into the air to fight the giant spider that was above them, and only once it was engaged in battle with the Valkyrie did Chaeryn start putting her crossbow bolts into the giant arachnid. Technically it wasn't an arachnid, because it was a completely different evolution of life that came from another planet and did not code for the same amino acids with its DNA, but it was spider shaped and it seemed appropriate to call it an arachnid.
"Fiona," Max asked as they looked up at the battle in the air, "can you see the spider's shadow up there well enough to shadow anchor it?"
She grinned. "Yes, Master." Low light had no effect on her vision at all, and she could easily see the spider's shadow. The spider had a lot of legs, and every movement required a lot of movement of its various body parts. Once it was anchored to its shadow, its movements were severely hampered. It wouldn't last long because the will-o-wisps up there were cavorting like leaves in a fast moving stream, but it didn't have to. Its delicate balancing act was disrupted, and then Sophie's arming sword disrupted it even more. Even after it came crashing down to the sand like one of its boulders the great spider beast began pulling itself back together, but by that point Ulzhari and Chloe were on hand to deliver additional beatings until Sophie called it as dead.
The chests were for Fiona and Miriam. Sophie hadn't gotten anything, but she didn't seem to mind. Fiona was thrilled to get some black panties, which fit with the theme of Miriam's red panties and Sophie's white panties by providing protection from darkness and cold. The Geomancer got a new set of red gloves that gave control over the temperature of constructs created.
"There's no way that we're going to be able to keep Chaeryn's class change under wraps, so we'll tell everyone as soon as we get back." It looked like some were part of the way through developing an alternate plan, but each scrapped it in turn. Max collected his gear from his compatriots, and opened the gate. Max was offered the ability to buy the dungeon, but he declined. He wasn't sure what he was looking for in a dungeon to become his own domain, but he knew he wanted the one he was leaving less than he had wanted the Mictlan occupied manor. That one had had bed rooms.
####
Camp Acheron wanted a lot of reports from them, and indeed they promised that they were going to create a new kind of documentation to fill out. The military absolutely would not allow a new capability like changing classes to exist without any documentation. But it obviously wasn't ready, so they were allowed to grab something to eat, go to the barracks, and sleep in. Actually starting on the paperwork would happen after they'd woken up.
They ate in silence and bewilderment. The realness of Chaeryn having a different class was at a much higher level once they were no longer in the dungeon. Various hunters came and asked to see Chaeryn's new hunter's mark, each just as shocked by the experience - despite that after the first couple every one of them had to have been pretty certain as to what they were going to see.
Sophie argued for a short group training session in Max's room before they actually went to sleep. While Max was tired, he acceded to majority rules and agreed to bring the whole party to his bedroom. At least for a little bit.
When they arrived at Max's lodging, Danny and Khorog were up in the common room. Peppa Grinda and Sidewinder Kait were there as well. "Yeah," Danny explained, "they wanted to see you guys once more before they left. Said they had something important to talk about." The Chinese American man shrugged.
Max looked at Sidewinder Kate. "So that's what it feels like when we aren't on the same planet. That's what happens to your seals when I'm not on the same planet as you. If you want out, I understand." He calmly looked at the pop country starlet and awaited her reply.
For her part, Sidewinder Kate pulled out a black riding crop. She got down on both knees and held the object out with both hands palm up as if in prayer. "I remember your commands. No brattiness. This is the tool of my punishment, and I have brought it to you so that I may be beaten with it." She looked studiously at the floor, but kept casting furtive glances up at Max and Ulzhari.
It was certainly an impressive display. "I take it that I am speaking to Slave Cat?"
"Yes Sir, you are." Cat's heavy breasts rose and fell as she breathed deeply. It was a means of pushing down her excitement so that she could hope to follow what commands he gave her.
Max reached down and closed his fingers around the handle of the riding crop.
### End Chapter 16 ###
RocketGrunt History Corner: Isekai!
So Fighting Them There is a Dungeon System Story, which is a subgenre of Isekai Fantasy that was originally popularized in South Korea, but "what is Isekai?" you might ask. Well to start off the idea of Fantasy and Science Fiction being genres of storytelling really came into its own in the 19th century. That isn't to say that there weren't stories that took place in the future or stories with magic in them before that, but that they were structured as prophecies and myths and such and it was different in a whole bunch of ways. I would argue that the first Science Fiction novel is Frankenstein, which came out in 1818 (and totally holds up, you should read it).
When fantasy was first rolling out as a genre it split up into High Fantasy and Low Fantasy. Very roughly, High Fantasy takes place in an imagined fantasy world (think Lord of the Rings or The Dark Crystal), while Low Fantasy takes place on Earth with added fantasy elements (think Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Dresden Files). Low and High Fantasy is not the same as Low and High Magic, merely an indication as to whether one might find London or New York in a reasonably recognizable state were one to turn their eyes away from the described action of the story. There are absolutely High Fantasy books where the magic stays largely out of sight (Game of Thrones is the obvious example), and Low Fantasy where the magic is completely gonzo over the top (Harry Potter is the obvious example).
There are lots of advantages and disadvantages to High and Low Fantasy from the standpoint of the reader and the writer. Low Fantasy classically has problems with suspension of disbelief because it's asking you to believe that Chicago and Tokyo are reasonably recognizable and yet the fantasy elements do whatever they do in the story - that's going to create some tension and depending on what the magic does, perhaps a lot of tension. That's why many Low Fantasy settings end up with formal or informal masquerades, where the fantasy elements take active measures to keep Seattle or Rome from looking drastically different to what a normal person would expect. High Fantasy, on the other hand, has a big problem with conveying setting information to the reader. When the author casually mentions a new place such as Gornak or Flethwyr, the reader knows actually nothing about it and it falls upon the author to then explain every relevant detail about the location lest the reader be utterly without frame of reference.
Isekai is a bridge between High and Low Fantasy. It takes characters from Earth and puts them into the invented fantasy world. This often means that the protagonist needs to know everything that the reader needs to know, and thus the reader can be given info dumps that are in-character because the Earthling protagonists are receiving the very same info dumps. You may notice that despite being an Isekai, Fighting Them There actually does not give all the info dumps diegetically, because the worlds have been connected for several generations, and thus it plays out a lot more like High Fantasy or Science Fiction would be expected to. But that's a different history rant altogether.
The first Isekai story is A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain in 1889. Others followed such as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum in 1900 and John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1911. And while it is certainly interesting that all of the earliest Isekai examples are American in origin, we use a Japanese word for the concept because Western literary critics literally did not notice that a genre had been created for nearly a century. It was recognized and named in Japan and it is notable that Isekai stories are massively massively more popular in East Asian countries than they are in the West collectively. Despite a many decades head start, there are many more Isekai stories penned in Korean, Japanese, or Chinese than there are in English. Indeed, I think it is literally true that Japan has made more Isekai stories in the last five years than have ever been penned in English, but I'm prepared to accept that I might be barely wrong on that.
Fighting Them There is specifically a Dungeon System Story, which is a sub-genre of Isekai stories that was popularized in South Korea. Because East Asia has so many Isekai stories that it has defined sub-genres and recurring tropes for Isekai stories. So many are based on reincarnation, for example, that the mythic archetype "Truck-kun" has formed as a shorthand explanation for why heroes might be in a position where they need to be reincarnated.
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