[Vol. 3 pt. 18]

Thera arrived at the dungeon before long. While the other messages she sent me made her seem a bit panicked, she looked calm and collected like always. She looked like nothing was wrong. Despite how she looked, though, she looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I made a mistake. My apologies, but we may be in trouble.”

“You know, hearing that from you really makes me think that we’re screwed,” I said.

“We may or may not be. To be honest, I am not sure. No matter how good I may be at PvP, I am only one woman, and there are only so many opponents I can handle at once.”

“You know, if you’d let me practice tentacles on you, you’d get even better at handling more at once.”

“Clever. Also, no.”

“Worth a shot. So, what’s wrong?”

“Let us wait for Lupir to get here first.”

“Who’s that?”

“It should be obvious soon—or rather,” Thera looked behind her, “obvious now.”

Walking into the dungeon was a girl with tanned skin, defined muscles all over her frame, and… a pair of fluffy wolf ears atop her head with an even fluffier looking tail following behind her. While her pants made me think of a monk, the rest of her only had bandage wrappings to cover her up. Bandages around her hands, a bandage wrap binding her modest breasts, and red tattoos in a tribal fashion on her torso and face.

She looked badass. Like a wolf girl brawler. She was also immediately recognizable as somebody who I saw Thera fight before in PvP tournaments.

The girl walked right up next to Thera and stopped, looking away with a hint of blush on her cheeks despite her otherwise badass look.

“Damian, meet Lupir. Lupir, meet Damian,” Thera said, introducing me and the muscular wolf girl next to her. “Ah, wait. We are missing one thing. Lupir, leash.”

Lupir’s cheeks turned red as she struggled to look up at Thera. “Re-really? Right now? In front of them?”

“I gave you a command. Are you disobeying your owner?”

“I…” Lupir looked down and mumbled before opening up her menu and equipping a very specific item. A leather collar around her neck with a leash hanging from it.

Thera grabbed the leash with a smile. “Good girl.”

Lupir’s tail wagged behind her as her ears twitched atop her head.

“This is extremely hot,” I said. “Thera, when do I get to put on a collar and have you hold my leash?”

“Nice try, darling. Your attempt aside, I am sure you can figure out who this girl is,” Thera answered.

“I think I’m smart enough to put together some context clues. Cani?”

Lupir looked down again and nodded her head. “Ye-yeah.”

“So, I’ve got to ask. Are you two in a—”

“Worry not, darling,” Thera was quick to answer before I could even finish my question. “While I do consider her my property, there is nothing more between us.”

“Damn. I wanted to imagine you dominating her. But I mean, maybe I’m just a degenerate, but I struggle to see the point of using a collar and leash on her if you’re not doing anything with it.”

“I simply find it satisfying to have the second strongest duelist in the game serving underneath me. Having her call me her mistress, wearing a collar and leash for me, obeying my every command—what is there not to enjoy about dominating somebody so powerful?”

Lupir’s tail wagged the more that Thera talked about it. Only knowing her as Cani before, I never expected her to be so into that.

Then again, that was probably a mistake on my end.

Cani was a dog girl. Of course she wanted to be treated like a pet and be owned.

Was that, basically, a racist stereotype? Was it technically racist to assume that all dog girls wanted to be submissive pets?

Maybe it was.

But it wasn’t wrong.

All real dog girls wanted to be pets. That was one of the best things about them. Even the most ferocious, intimidating, badass dog girls—and boys for that matter—just wanted to be called good girls, get belly rubs, and have their heads petted. A dog girl who didn’t want that wasn’t a true dog girl. She was a cat girl in disguise.

Racist stereotypes aside, I stared at the collar around Lupir’s neck and sighed. “I want to be collared and treated like a pet. Thera, if I change myself to be a dog or wolf boy, will you be my mommy dommy?”

“Absolutely not, nor will I ever be if you ask me to be your ‘mommy dommy’ again,” Thera answered.

“What if I got puppy ears and act like your little puppy brother?”

Thera froze.

I got her.

“Just imagine it, Thera.” I totally got her. “Me, your little puppy brother. Running up to you with my wagging tail, holding onto your leg telling you how much I’ve missed you. Then covering you in little, loving licks as I talk about how much I never want to be apart from you again. Then while I stand behind you to rub your shoulders, you feel a certain something accidentally poke against you and—”

“Darling,” Thera said.

“Yes? Big Sis Thera?”

“We have more important matters to deal with. Are you ready to focus on what is actually important, or do you care so little about this dungeon that you will let others overrun it?” The way she talked honestly hurt a little. She was even more cold and snappy than usual. I felt like I was genuinely being scolded, and it was clear that Akorya and Lupir felt awkward, too.

Then I noticed something.

It was subtle, but Thera was breathing more heavily than normal. Not to mention that her legs occasionally twitched and her eyes looked to be hiding just a tiny bit of lust within them.

I realized what I was looking at.

I was looking at an incredibly aroused Thera doing her absolute best to hold back and to change the topic.

I looked up at her and smiled probably the most smug smile that I ever showed her.

Then I clapped my hands and said, “Alright! Thera’s right. We’ve got more important matters to deal with.”

Thera let out a relieved sigh and said, “Thank you.”

“So, Thera, give it to us. How bad is it?”

“Bad. Originally, she was supposed to come here looking for you and see the real you pampering Akorya. Then she was supposed to realize I was a fake who was simply playing with her. Well, I have apparently underestimated her fans. I knew they were obsessive… but I did not know how obsessive. I thought they were the types who would jump ship to somebody else instead as soon as she revealed she had no interest in them.”

“You can’t underestimate simps.”

“I discovered as much. Right before she was going to hand over control of her guild to me, one of the former officers who was suspicious of me revealed the truth. He apparently spent the last—well, he has spent his time gathering information on me and stalking me within the game ever since I joined the guild. He apparently did that to all members. Usually, such obsessive paranoia would result in nothing, but it did this time. He showed her undeniable truth linking my ‘Damian’ character to this character. Then he recorded video of us talking with one another. He must have come into the dungeon on an alt and recorded us together. At that point, I did not know what to do. I seem to have lost my touch when it comes to such matters. Every solution I could think of would have made you sound horrible and damaged your reputation, so I could not bring myself to do that. Even so… I may have already harmed it by making a mistake and getting caught. I’m sor—”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, being the one to interrupt her that time. “I’m the one who wanted to do this in the first place. Anything affecting me is entirely on me. If I wasn’t willing to take responsibility for something bad happening, I wouldn’t have given you my consent for the plan in the first place.”

“But… darling, this could directly affect your career and—”

“It won’t. Worst case scenario, there’s a bit of drama on social media or something and everybody forgets about it in a week. Actually, I think I might know what to do. Yeah. This might work out even better than your plan.”

“What?”

“Drama.”

“I thought you hated drama?”

“I do. I honestly, genuinely do. Drama is also exactly what she wants. There’s nothing like some good drama between two creators to boost numbers and get their names out there. If anything, she’s probably happy it’s turned out this way. I’m sure a part of her is disappointed since you said before that she genuinely seemed interested in me, but that won’t matter to somebody like her more than getting a bigger following does. All I have to do is use that drama against her.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?”

“Well, for starters, she has no idea who Akorya is. She has no idea that I know about how shitty she can be. I doubt she can get anywhere close to the real reason why I have a problem with her and am behind you.”

“True. An enemy you do not know the intent of can be dangerous.”

“Exactly. Since she has no idea that I know what I do, I can use that against her. Only problem is going to be her followers. When they get here, they’re going to be like rabid cultists who don’t surrender no matter what. They will fight their absolute hardest to put on a good show for her. You know, similar to how they’ll donate money to try and impress her, they’ll fight their hardest to impress her. It won’t surprise me if they really pull out every last possible stop to try and win. I’m thinking—”

“M-Master,” Akorya said.

“Yeah?”

“Is… is this really okay? This is all because of me. I don’t want you to get in trouble or anything, and like… this is being turned into a bigger deal than I thought. I… I feel bad about getting you pulled into this. Maybe I never should have said anything.”

I placed a hand on her head to pet her. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll be fine. But I am sorry that things are getting a bit beyond expectations. I know you didn’t want to make a huge deal out of it or anything.”

Akorya looked down and whined a little.

“Are you alright?”

She looked back up at me and nodded. “I’m… fine. I just feel bad, I guess.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded again. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Well, you have some ranged attacks with your tail, so that could help us out if we create a chokepoint at the back of the maze. Well, I call it a maze, but it’s just one twisting path full of traps.”

Akorya nodded and stepped away. “I’ll go wait back there.” Before I had a chance to say anything else, she flew off.

It wasn’t hard to figure out that something was wrong.

But I couldn’t go check on her. At least not right away.

“She will be here soon,” Thera said. “I have her stream open.”

I sighed and looked up at her. “Stream sniping is technically against the terms of service, I think.”

“It is only stream sniping if I am looking for her and killing her using said information. Also, I just closed it. It can no longer count as stream sniping if I kill her. Now, did you invite some friends over?”

“I invited who I could. It just so happened that there was only one person online who isn’t any of you and is available.”

“Well, I hope that they—”

“Hey! Thera!” the one player I invited over shouted, causing her to instantly place her face into her palm and sigh. “Long time no see! You too, Damian!”

“Hello, Jonathon,” Thera said.

Jonathon walked up, wearing a full suit of armor modified to look like a butler suit, and took his lance off his back. “So, what’s up?”

“We needed a floor tank,” I answered. “Didn’t know anybody better.”

“Alright. I’m out.”

“I’m kidding.”

Jonathon sighed. “Look, I can do more than tank the floor, alright? It’s not my fault my skills have stupid animation locks.”

Thera’s brow twitched. She was probably remembering all the times he very clearly made a mistake with nobody to blame but himself. “The problem is that you do not pay enough attention to fights and always use such attacks when you should know you are about to have to move.”

“Sounds like bad game mechanics if they punish players for using the skills they animated. Other classes don’t have all these animation-locking abilities. Why does mine have to have them?”

Jonathon looked at me and smiled, knowing how easily he was getting under Thera’s skin.

All I could do was sigh. Even I started to feel annoyed from his excuses, as funny as it was to watch him annoy Thera.

“But seriously,” I said. “We need all the help we can get. Basically, I pissed off a streamer and now her and her army of simps are coming over here.”

“Well, we’re screwed,” Jonathon said. “But if it means helping a brother potentially see the light by stabbing a spear through his face, I guess I can try and help out.”

“I’m not sure if killing them is going to help them see the light.”

“True. My little brother stole my dad’s card and put him into debt donating to some girl who bounced her titties for every hundred that was donated. He got a lot of bouncing before the card stopped working.”

“Did… did the charges get cancelled at least?”

“Yeah, but my little brother never got his laptop back. It’s been three years now. He actually got so bored he started reading and is a huge nerd now.”

“Sounds like effective parenting to me. Anyways, we’re going to make a chokepoint at the back of the dungeon.”

“I have a friend I could invite over. I think he’d love to help out with this. The dude is like… a roleplayer against streamers. Dude shouts about being on a holy crusade to free the minds of men from their titty overlords and all that.”

He sounded extremely annoying already. But also, potentially hilarious. “I’ll take him.” I turned to look at Thera and Lupir. “What are you two going to do? Join us at the chokepoint?”

Thera shook her head before tugging on Lupir’s leash, making her moan a little. “We will wait out here,” Thera answered. “Once they enter the dungeon, we will pincer them from behind and cut off their only route of escape. The tunnels are narrow, so the two of us should be able to handle them when considering that the back of their ranks will likely host their weakest and least confident players. I figure those who are the best of them will be at the front trying to impress. All you have to do is hold them off until we have a chance to break through to them. At least, that is the basic idea I am thinking of.”

“It’s going to have to do. Alright. Thera, Lupir, good luck. Me, Akorya, and Jonathon will handle the back. As long as I focus on defense and healing myself, I should be able to keep them back.”

“Do your best, darling.” With that, Thera hurried off with Lupir in tow. Being dragged away by Thera’s leash made Lupir’s tail wag the fastest I’d seen it yet.

I wished I was in her position.

Jonathon then poked my shoulder and said, “Hey, uh, while it’s just the two of us… is it gay if I make a girl character and let her get fucked by dudes?”

“There are a few different schools of thought on that, but no,” I answered.

“What if I suck their dick? Would that make it gay?”

“That one depends a bit more on context.”

“What if I go in a gloryhole and just suck dick like, all day.”

“You could do that without being on a girl character and nobody would know you’re a guy in there.”

“But wouldn’t that make it gay?”

“You can be gay, you know. It’s alright to be gay.”

“But I’m not gay.”

“You want to suck dick all day in a gloryhole.”

“But as a girl.”

I placed a hand on his shoulder and looked straight in his eyes to say, “There’s nothing even slightly gay about going on a girl character and sucking dick all day long. Even if you swallow every last drop of cum and thank them for the meal, it’s not gay.”

Jonathon smiled and nodded. “Hell yeah. I’m gonna have to do that sometime.”

I gave his shoulder a few pats before leading him to the back of the dungeon.