Ch 11: If you want to throw away your life, you should live for me instead.

Now in not-quite-his-yet home, Noah carried her to his room and laid her on the bed.

He had started adding furniture to the house, using his carpentry proficiency. As his level was still very low, he was limited only to the most basic models of furniture. Like this bed, and rough tables and chairs.

The bed somehow came with a mattress, sheets and a pillow, which Noah was happy about. It was made of heavy wood, with four thick corners.

Taking care not to wake her, he lowered the hood shadowing her face, revealing very attractive features, and long locks of chestnut brown hairs. As expected of the fiction's main heroine, Asuna truly was gorgeous.

Opening his item storage, he took from it the Slave Collar. A wide piece of black leather, two inches wide, using a buckle with two prongs. Noah delicately put it around her neck, fed the prongs in their corresponding holes, and the end tip in the belt loop.

It was done. Asuna was now his slave. And his responsibility. Now he only needed to convince her not simply to accept it, but to revel in it. Only.

Seeing that no Yang points were coming, the System seemed to want the enslavement process to be completed as well.

Noah opened his interface and noticed that another tab had appeared near the one labeled with his name. Tapping Asuna’s interface open, he first went into her settings and deactivated the Adult Content Protection. In SAO, that option was activated by default, giving them the option to exile to prison anyone touching them without their consent. That this option didn’t exist for male players was blatant sexism, but Noah didn’t really care.

Next, he unequipped her rapier and transferred it into his own item storage. Searching her inventory, he saw nothing that could be used as a weapon. She actually didn’t have much of anything. Not that she would be able to take anything from her inventory in the first place, as long as she wore the Collar.

He looked into her friends list, and there was only one name on it. Mito.

Noah knew about her. She was a scythe-using character exclusive to the movie version of Sword Art Online: Progressive. One of Asuna’s classmates, and the very person who had gotten her interested in video games. In the movie, they both teamed up to go hunt Nepenthes in the forest, but Asuna accidentally struck one that had a fruit atop its head, and in the ensuing chaos, they had been separated. Mito, believing Asuna to be doomed as a result of her own actions, because she hadn’t warned her about the fruit nepenthes, had fled the scene in tears, not wanting to watch her fiend die.

Asuna had just barely managed to survive, thanks to the power of Plot Armor and one guy named Kirito just happening to be near, but had taken being abandoned by her friend… not very well, and had not tried to contact Mito later. The movie ended with the defeat of the first-floor’s boss, during which Asuna' hood was destroyed during the boss fight and her identity was revealed, as they both hugged each other in tears and made up.

Realistically speaking, there was no way Asuna would have accepted her new position in time to participate in the boss raid. So, she and Mito would have to make up at a later point.

Noah took a chair and waited beside the bed. Too bad he didn’t have a book to pass the time. He contented himself by going over his plans and chatting with Lisbeth and Argo. He looked at Asuna status, and saw that she was lv 9, and had invested the vast majority of her points in Agility, rivaling Noah in that stat. After a while, he eventually figured out that she would be hungry and went to the kitchen to make some Chick… Nepenthes Skewers and a few sandwiches.

As if the smell coming from the kitchen reached her. Asuna stirred and opened her eyes. She was confused, as she didn’t recognize her surroundings. And she heard noises coming from beyond the open door. As she stood, she got a glimpse of what was outside the window, and she got closer to get a good view. She was charmed by the view of the lake and its many miniature islands and stared for a while, forgetting about her situation for a moment.

“It’s a nice view, right?” Said Noah from the doorway, as he watched her watch through the window.

She whirled to face him.

“You collapsed from exhaustion in the labyrinth. I saved you, and brought you to my home. Well, not quite my home yet, but it will be, one day. Come with me, I just cooked some food.”

“Who are you?” Asuna asked warily.

“I’m Noah. It’s nice to meet you, Asuna.”

“How do you know my name?” Her wariness increased, and by reflex, her right hand sought the pommel of her rapier… only to find nothing.

Noah didn’t answer and left the doorway. Having no other option, Asuna followed him.

“Did you take my sword?”

“Yes, it is safe in my item storage. I’ll give it back to you later.” He said with a smile as he sat at the table and pointed to the seat opposite to him. He had put two wooden plates on it, each filled with a pair of Nepenthes skewers and a sandwich with butter, cheese and vegetables.

“It’s not much right now, as my cooking proficiency is low. But it will get better with time, and when I get access to better ingredients.”

“Give me my sword back, please.” She insisted. And blushed as her stomach growled loudly.

Noah didn’t answer her, focusing on eating, and after a few seconds, she sat down with resignation. She started eating, watching him warily. After the first mouthful, however, she brightened a little and ate more eagerly.

Noah suddenly remembered that in the novel, Asuna had only eaten the cheapest grade of bread for a month straight, somehow convinced that all foods must taste the same in this game, since they weren’t ‘real’, until she met the hero and he convinced her to try something different.

“It this really your house?” She asked after she finished the first skewer, and decided to try the sandwich.

“Yes and no. I got early access to it as a reward for a special quest. But I still have to pay for it, and at 42 million Cor, this house isn't exactly cheap. It’s going to take a while. We currently are on the 24th floor, and the houses here are going to become crazy popular, if only for the view alone, once we players reach it. Until I finish paying for it, the door and windows are locked, so we can’t go explore the floor.”

“How did you bring me here, all the way to the 24th floor?”

She tentatively bit into the sandwich, and liked it a lot, too.

“With the teleportation crystal I got from the quest. Unlike the normal crystals, this one can be used more than once. But it is bound to this house.”

They both ate in silence for a few minutes, each focusing on the food’s taste, before Asuna decided to ask again.

“Thank you for the food. And for saving me. But you still haven’t told me how you know my name.”

“Yeah, about that. Have you noticed that you wear a new accessory?

Asuna’s raised an eyebrow, as she looked at her hands. Now seeing anything different at a glance, she lifted her right hand to her neck, and her eyes widened as she felt leather under her fingers. She had somehow been oblivious to the feeling until now, thinking that she just had a slight persistent urge to clear her throat. But now, the awareness suddenly made the feeling of something snug on her throat unforgettable.

With her expression turning into anger, she tried with both hands to remove the collar, but her efforts were in vain. The pointed tip of the belt seemed glued to the collar’s body, and she couldn’t get a grip on it.

In shock, she opened her interface, read the visible part of the Slave Collar’s description. and looked at her interface in confusion as all the options were grayed out.

“You seemed determined to throw your life away in the dungeon. So, I decided to pick it up. Since you are a beautiful girl, I have made you my slave, Asuna. From now on, you will devote your life to me, and I will take care of you.” He said such terrible words in a gentle voice.

“Never!” She spat. “Get this off me, or I’ll send you to jail!”

“No.”

Asuna seized the wooden plate in front of her and adopted the pre-motion for Throwing. Expecting this, Noah simply protected his face with an arm, congratulating himself for not having put any knife or fork on the table. With his other hand, he opened his interface and tapped Asuna’s tab.

The impact of the plate on his arm stung quite a bit, and the plate broke into blue polygons. Before she could circle around the table and attack him with her fists, Noah tapped the leather cuffs he had placed in her item storage, and selected “equip”.

Instantly, Asuna’s arms were brought behind her back by an invisible force, and the black leather cuffs appeared around her wrists. She stared at them in shock and started struggling.

“I had hoped we could just talk it out, but… it’s a natural reaction, I guess, so I won’t punish you for that.”

If looks could kill, Noah would be a corpse right now.

“What you’re doing is a crime!”

Noah simply nodded. “I know. But I’ll do so anyway.”

“You can’t hold me captive forever. I have friends, they will look for me. And what will you do, if this game ends, and we all wake up in a hospital? I’ll scream for the police the moment I wake up.”

“There is still time, until then. I only need to convince you not to do so before it ends. After we beat this game, I will be your boyfriend, as far as your family and friends are concerned, I'll procure a house, and we’ll live together, with me as your dear master... As for the person on your fiend list, I have control of your interface due to the Collar, and if Mito contacts you, I’ll be the one answering.”

“I’ll never be your slave! … If you release me now, I… I won’t tell anyone, I promise.” Seeing that her anger didn’t move him, she tried to sound more reasonable to appeal to his sense of preservation.

“Asuna, do you like coffee?”

She blinked at his sudden change of topic.

“What?”

“It’s not a trap question. Do you like coffee?”

“…Yes? Like most people?”

“Sure. But my point is that you didn’t like coffee, the first time you tasted it. You likely found it too bitter. You probably added milk or sugar to it, and maybe still do. Am I wrong?”

“No, but I don’t see…”

“This will be the same for you being a slave. You will hate it, at first. But you will grow to love it. I promise you that. Being a slave doesn’t mean your life has to be an unhappy one.”

He lifted his hand in a hurry to interrupt her as he saw her face twist in rage.

“And yes, I know, it sounds like self-serving BS. But I wouldn’t have decided to make you my slave if I was not convinced that you will find happiness in it, eventually. I have other reasons, but I won’t talk about them at this point.”

Noah took from his storage his teleportation crystal.

“Asuna, you are held in a place you can’t escape from, no one knows you’re here aside from me, and it’s going to be months, at least, before other players reach this floor. And when they do, they won’t even see you, since the island this house is built on is private and elevated way above the surrounding ones. That is the reality of your situation. I am going to give you some time to cool off, and then we’ll talk again. You have two options, Asuna. You can resign yourself to your fate, and I will go easy on you. We will even discuss your limits, the things you might accept doing and others you absolutely refuse to do, and I might compromise on a few of them. Or, you can try to fight me, and I will subject you to slave training. That will involve a lot more restraints than just a pair of leather cuffs, 24/7. It will be harder for you. But you’ll still end up liking it, in the end.”

Asuna was too speechless to retort when he teleported away.

She immediately renewed her efforts to get out of the cuffs, but they proved unyielding. She walked to the door of the house and tried to open it. The windows were locked as well, and her awkward attempts to break them by using the chairs proved futile. Her interface was completely locked, and she couldn’t even try to send a message to Mito. She explored the whole house, but there was nothing that could help her.

With a resigned sigh, she returned to the one room that had a bed and sat on it. She really was stuck here, at the mercy of a pervert. She carefully considered her options. Since that monster could restrain her with a few hand gestures, her chances of successfully incapacitating him were very low. Killing him… was not an option. As far as she knew, dead players didn’t leave any loot behind, and without the teleporting crystal, she would be stuck here until the lack of water and food drained her HP bar and killed her.

She… wasn’t apathetic to death anymore. She wasn’t sure if it was the beauty of the scenery outside the windows, or the simple but delicious food, or… maybe that guy’s confidence that they would get out of this game alive, but her earlier depression was dissipating like mist under the sun. Now she was worried about something else besides dying!

Asuna kept pondering her options. That left only two real possibilities for recovering her freedom. Enduring until he paid for the house, and escape once the door and windows would be unlocked. Or, pretending to fall for him, until he would drop his guard let her out. He had said he would give her weapon back at some point. This implied that he didn’t intend to leave her captive in this house forever.

Enduring defiantly, or enduring while faking her submission to him. What a bleak choice…

As she moved her arms around her back to try to get out of the cuffs, more to keep busy than in any real hope of freeing herself, she started trying to imagine what being his slave would be like. What kind of things he would do to her.

And after a few minutes, her eyes widened in incredulous shock. She could NOT be getting off on it... could she? Before she noticed, she had been rubbing her legs together as she imagined herself naked and bound on the bed, with him towering above her… Treated like a plaything… Walking around on all four, a leash connected to her collar… Toyed with and kept in bondage…

Asuna groaned in deep shame, her body heating up as her imagination ran wild. She tried to think of something else, anything else, but could only last half a minute at most before her thoughts came back to scenes of sexual slavery, with herself in the starring role. And those scenes made her horny.

Unbeknownst to her, due to the pernicious, hidden effect of the collar, her training had already started.