Chapter 100

I’m definitely going to ask that Jensen human how he made such good bread later. I’ll wait until Pops finishes talking to Hunter. “So tell me Derrick, have you been able to deal with the zombie spawners in your area?” Hunter asks, but Pops sighs after putting down some meat and says “We haven’t yet, my camp just doesn’t have enough people to take them on. Have you dealt with yours?” Hunter leans back in his chair and grins, answering “We have cleared them out to five miles, and we haven’t been hit by a horde in days.” Clearing out that many zombies sounds impressive, but not getting attacked for days is normal isn’t it?

I don’t ask since I’m not supposed to talk yet, and Pops doesn’t mention it either. He instead asks “How did you manage that? Do they come back like we’ve seen some monster dens do?” I didn’t even know monster dens could come back. Strange, but I guess I don’t do a lot of quests since the monsters are usually too weak, and dungeons just end up giving more experience. “They haven’t come back yet, but we’re keeping an eye on the locations.” Hunter says, lean forward again and putting his elbows on the table. He continues “We could help you and the other survivor camps in your area do the same. We’re looking to expand our network in that direction, but lost hope when our messengers didn’t return.”

Pops rubs his beard and asks “That’s sounds mighty helpful, what’s in it for you?” Hunter laughs again and says “I could say we’d be doing it to help out the other survivors, but we both know that would be too good to be true. We want to expand, and take back this region from the monsters.” He then looks at me and adds “We also want more of her. We help provide you with peace of mind and you send us a few of them every once in a while.” He want’s me, what does he mean more of me? Pops grunts and asks “What do you mean you want her?” with an angry tone. Humans are pretty easy to read now, since I’ve met quite a few.

That’s definitely an angry tone, but Hunter just points to his own neck and says “Slaves, you think we didn’t notice she was a slave? I suppose it’s an interesting way for the slave tattoo to manifest, but I’ve seen stranger. We’ll even take a few male slaves, I know a few guys who are into that here.” Pop’s face is still angry. So they want people with the Slave class? I wonder what they need them for, but thinking back to the things I saw in the Slave class, I doubt it’s anything fun for them. Hunter sighs and says “Listen, we won’t actually take Opal here from you, even though she is pretty tempting. Just send us any of your slave men or women, it’s an easy way for you to make your area safe. Your inhabitants will thank you for it.”

Jensen then comes in with a couple cups, and hands one to Pops who still looks angry. Pops looks at the cup and quickly drinks it before saying “I don’t think we’ll take you up on your offer, do you have any others or should we leave?” Jensen then hands me the other cup and I look at it. It’s brown colored and has little bubbles that rise to the top before disappearing. I wouldn’t say it look good tasting, but neither did the bread. The bubbles look fun though, and Pops did seem to like his soda. I think that’s what they called it. So I drink it as Hunter responds to Pops “No, if you aren’t interested in doing it easy, we’ll have to make you give us the land and we’ll go get them ourselves.” That doesn’t sound good, and I hear a chime, so I check the screen

Ding!

You are immune to (Control) and have resisted (Potion of Control)

I don’t know what that is, I thought they said this was soda? Pops stands up and Hunter commands “Stop.” and Pops stops moving. I think I know what a potion of control is now, and I’m glad my Mother class skill resisted it. I need to think, but unlike most times when I need to think about and react to something, I have a lot of time. I use my body in the dungeon to push the Lop off of me, and run over to Jessica’s shielded area. “I ran into a problem with Pops at the city, and I want some help in figuring out what to do.” Jessica gets a serious face and asks “What’s going on?” The other two seem to get serious as well so I start explaining the current situation. I leave out all the stuff that happened before getting to the city, and mostly focus on what’s happening now.

It’s takes a little while, but we have come up with a few plans. I’m going to go with one of them, and if things need to be changed I’ll keep the women here updated and they can help me figure out solutions. I’m really glad I have so many smart people with me in the instance right now. I don’t think I would have thought of all this. Hunter is still saying something about how it would have been easier, and now he’s going to take me too. One thing that I realized yesterday when I was getting used to the time difference was, skills only need you to think to use them.

With my thoughts being much faster than normal, I can also use skills much faster.

We all think it’s a bit unfortunate that I’m not a mage and can’t just blast Hunter with a ton of lightning bolts, but what we planned will have to do. Jessica pointed out that if we did that we’d still have to fight our way out of the building and city, but it was brought up during the planning. Pops is still frozen but Hunter has started walking towards our side of the table. So I cast Flash four times, hoping at least one of them blinds Hunter and Jensen. I then start standing up and grabbing Pops, while casting Dark Tendrils all over the room.

I use Charm and Fertility Charm on both Hunter and Jensen. Charm fails on both of them, since I don’t get that nice tingle when it works, but Fertility Charm works on Jensen. Hopefully he can cover us a bit, but I doubt he’s anywhere near strong enough to take out Hunter. I cast a couple Winged Sentry, but from what I saw when fighting zombies, they’ll barely slow anyone down and are extremely expensive. If it was night time and I could cast Gloaming Call I still wouldn’t, Sapphire pointed out how long they take to come out of the ground shadow.

I finish putting the unmoving Pops over my shoulder, and hear a yell from Hunter that sounds angry. I ignore him and cast Mother’s Touch on Pops, giving him some blood armor that will reduce damage. I cast all of my self buffing skills as I run towards the large window, using Power Attack right before smashing into and through it with a loud shattering sound.

Now we start falling and Cindy pointed out that I shouldn’t be holding Pops when we hit the ground. I didn’t understand what she explained about it, just that it would hurt Pops a lot because of my weight. So I go with the plan, which is going well so far, and cast a bunch of Dark Tendrils down the side of the building under us. I then toss him off of my shoulder and to the side, letting the tendrils slow his fall, while I smash into the street. I’m fine, but I see some people looking our way already, so I pick up Pops. He’s also fine it seems, so I throw him over my shoulder again and start running towards the nearest wall.

It only takes a minute to get to it, but it feels like a long time, probably since it is a long time in the dungeon. There are guards on the wall yelling for us to stop and identify ourselves, so I use Haunting Wail a couple times while running at them. I see a few of them run off or fall down to their knees. When I get close enough to the wall, I use a part of the plan that Sapphire came up with, and throw Pops as hard as I can over the wall. I remember how much she loved it when I’d do that to her, so I can see why she came up with it. He should be fine with his tiers and the blood armor, even if he can’t move.

I then jump up and grab the edge of the wall, my Angel Wings skill not quite getting me to the top. I pull myself up and cast Flash a few times on the guards that are still standing in my way. Dodging past them, I jump down from the wall and crash into the ground next to the frozen Pops. Picking him up again I run towards the woods. I would have just run in the direction of Onyx and Sapphire, who this body is married to, but Jessica said it would be harder for them to follow me if I went to the nearest trees first. I feel myself get hit in the back by things a few times, but nothing really hurts and we make it into the woods.

I of course keep running, but quickly change my direction towards Opal’s Home. One of the reasons I couldn’t just stay and fight was because Pops was under Hunter’s Control, and I couldn’t risk him ordering Pops to fight me. So I keep running, having gotten pretty good at dodging trees and roots with my increased time to react. Pop’s blood armor from my skill disappears and so do all of my ‘until end of combat’ buffs. That means that combat has ended, and I let the others in the instance know.

“So everything worked as we planned, that’s great news. Cindy, what do you think they’ll do now?” Jessica asks, and Cindy responds “I’m not sure, I’ll need time to think about it. If they’re collecting slaves though, they’ll probably attack us at some point to take some. It’s just a guess looking at our history though, so I could be wrong.” I decide to ask “Why would they need people with the Slave class?” Cindy shakes her head and answers “That’s not the kind of slave they’re looking for, not exactly. From what you told me he said, they’re probably collecting sex slaves. You told me what happened with the orcs in Liberation. That’s what they want people for.”

I shake my head and shiver a little. I thought Players were supposed to help each other. Isn’t it the monsters that do that? Sapphire speaks up and asks “Humans would do that to other humans?” Cindy shrugs and says “Humans can be pretty horrible to each other, I’m just surprised they can do it so soon with all the zombie hordes around.” The city was pretty big and I did see a lot of people. So they probably just had enough 5th tiers to deal with the ones nearby.

We need to do that ourselves soon, and it should only be a month before we have enough 5th tiers to do it comfortably. Jessica wants us to wait until we can outnumber the 5th tiers at the zombies Citadel. I ask “Should we abandon the instance here then so we can be ready if they attack?” Jessica shakes her head and says “I don’t think they’ll be able to attack right away, and this instance is giving us a huge advantage. We obviously need to increase our numbers and it’s giving us the opportunity to do so. The 4 of us here are also amassing large amounts of free points for our Special classes using your milk.” Sapphire adds “It would only be a waste to leave now. If they do attack before we finish, then we can leave.”

I nod since that makes sense, and they’re smart so I’ll trust that they know what’s best. I have bodies outside the dungeon, so I can inform them right away. I tell Amber, who’s currently sucking on one of my nipples at home, what happened with Pops at Canton. She pulls her lips off of me and says “This is a fun way to earn free points, but let’s head to the dungeon. I need to get to the 5th tier, in case Canton attacks, and for the zombies.” I give her a kiss on the lips and say “Okay sweetie, which dungeon do you want to do?” She looks thoughtful before answering “How about the goblin dungeon, it should be the quickest experience for our classes.” I nod, and we quickly get dressed for the dungeon.

“Is it just going to be the two of us this time?” I ask her and she gives me a kiss on the cheek and says “That sounds like fun wife, just the two of us. Let’s do that.” I agree, since I always like my alone time with Amber, and we head for the dungeon. I see Onyx at the entrance with her boyfriend and his brothers, so I give her a hug. She hugs me back and says “We’re about to head into the dungeon Opal-mom. Are you and Amber-sis going in too?” I say yes and tell her “You should all try to hit 5th tier soon, we’re hoping to deal with the zombies within a month. Also things didn’t go well with a nearby city so you should be prepared.”

Onyx and the others all agree to try and get stronger, and we head into the dungeon. Maybe Amber and I will get lucky and see the gentleman goblin when we get to the tenth floor.