Chapter 4.1 - The Dungeon 1

As I climb out of my captain's seat I turn to look at Nanaia, "So what can you tell me about the slave trade?"

She shrugs her shoulders, "It's not really all that bad. The rules of slavery are extremely strict and breaking any of them is a serious crime that will get the offender turned into a slave. All slaves are either debtors who sold themselves into slavery in hopes of paying their debts or criminals charged with serious crimes, just not serious enough to warrant the death penalty. Slavery is also a limited time gig, well mostly. Sometimes really high debt or really bad crimes necessitate lifetime slavery. There are also rules for when you own slaves, but the short of that is as long as you don't deliberately kill them or send them somewhere suicidal against their will you'll be fine legally speaking."

I nod as I listen to her explanation, "So we probably want a criminal with combat experience, like a mercenary or a pirate right?"

She nods, "True, but also court marshaled ex-military would work too."

I turn and walk into the interior of the ship, "Before we leave I want to check out the rest of the interior of the ship."

First I check out the crew quarters, there's nothing special about them. They're broken up into rooms for two, each room containing a single sized bunk bed, bathroom, desk and some storage space for personal items. Nothing impressive there, but it was functional. The impressive room was mine, the captain's quarters. It was a decent sized suite with all the amenities and a fair bit of space, it even included a double sized bed. "Looks like this is our room Celeste."

One of the holographic projectors in the room lights up and the life-sized version of Celeste appears. She immediately puts on a demure look and even makes the effort to appear to be blushing, "Why captain, how forward."

Was Celeste making a joke? Is she even capable of making jokes? Well, whatever, I give her a big playful grin and shrug my shoulders, "Life is short, I've only got another four hundred and fifty cycles or so left you know."

Celeste laughs and disappears as I leave the cabin and head to a different section of this ship. Up next I tour the Arcane Laboratory, picture your average alchemist's workshop, then make it high tech and you can kind of picture what I'm looking at. Instead of pestles and mortars, I've got high tech grinders, instead of balance scales and weights I've got digital scales. It's a lab geeks dream covered in arcane looking runes and sigils.

Up next is the Tech Workshop which consists of computers, a large table, and a couple of robotic arms. When I check the supplies in the lab I find a small library of schematics for weapons and armor ranging up to level fifteen, ship replacement parts, and cybernetic implants and replacements. I also find my promised supply of MCU's, ten cases of ten thousand each. That basically gives me one hundred thousand credits worth of gear I can make. I'm a little excited to get started, but first I'd like to get my new crew member and see what they would like. Flights also tend to take a while so I could do the crafting while we're in the dark of the corridor.

The remainder of the ship is essentially empty space where I could install additional modules or carry cargo for quests. The empty space alone was enough to store the My Little Pile and have room to spare. The length of this ship is no joke, I know five hundred and fifty feet is hard to imagine, just picture it as being the length of one and a half football fields.

With my inspection of the ship done I head back to the hatch with the ramp I entered from and exit the ship this time. Nania follows closely behind me in silence, I'm starting to notice that she doesn't really speak unless I ask her something directly. It occurs to me that she's probably not too thrilled to be babysitting someone less than a third of her level. She probably wanted to level up like everyone else and here she was stuck with me, even suggesting we go to a dungeon she can't participate in. I'll have to think of a way to thank her for what she's doing somehow.

Well, there's no time like the present, as we walk towards the exit of the dockyard I turn to look at Nania, "Listen, I want to thank you for coming along to help me learn the ropes and keep my ass out of trouble. But if you would rather be off getting experience and doing stuff more level appropriate I'm sure someone else could be roped into being my babysitter."

Nania looks a little taken aback at first, then lets out a soft chuckle, "Reginald was right. He said you would say something along those lines." She focuses her attention on me, "I volunteered for the job of 'babysitting' you so you don't need to worry about that. I'll still get experience for any quests we go on and any aliens, monsters, pirates, or anything else we run into and kill, negotiate with or trade with. So don't you worry your pretty little head about me. I'll be hitting level twenty long before you do."

I nod and turn to keep walking, "So level twenty really is the level cap?"

Nania follows behind me as we step onto some public transport heading in the direction of the slave market, I spend two credits for the both of us to get on board. As we sit down Nania begins to explain a little more, "Yes, and no. When you reach level twenty you're presented with a new option called 'Ascension'. Ascension is a complicated thing, there's lots of rules and stuff for what you get to keep when you ascend, and what you lose. When you ascend you lose your class, your levels, your experience points, your skill ranks, as well as any kind of spellcasting your class granted. It's harsh, but in exchange, you get to keep all of your stats where they were. Health, Mana, Stamina, Might and so on stay at the amounts you earned and set when leveling up. Aside from the all-important stats you also keep any abilities you earned from your class. After that, you get to pick a new theme and class like you're making a new character, though a much more powerful one."

That... that was one hell of an infodump. I sit back and think about what she said about ascension. It definitely seemed complicated, but it also seemed like it was a good way to rack up a huge number of abilities and stats to grow in strength. Still, the loss of all skill ranks seemed devastating, but that gives me a question, "When you are regaining your skills after ascending do you get the bonus stats again?"

Nania nods, "Yeah, it's one of the main methods people are using to get stronger and increase their overall power. Right now there are two schools of thought on ascension. The first school is that you should ascend as soon as possible after reaching level twenty to pick a new class that compliments your previous class so you can grow in power. For example, someone with spellcasting would pick another spellcasting class to get more abilities related to magic. The other school of thought is that you should spend all your time after hitting level twenty to gain as many skill ranks as possible, every skill you get to rank one hundred gives you plus twenty to a stat and if you max out a bunch of skills, then ascend and max them again you get the most stats possible."

I sit back again and think over the new info, both methods seemed pretty good in their own way, it basically came down to getting more special abilities or getting more stats. I guess it just depends on how much time you want to spend skill grinding to get the most stats. One last question, "Can you only ascend once?"

Nania shakes her head, "You can ascend more than once, but so far only a couple of people have done so, no one knows exactly how many times you can ascend before you're not allowed to again. I've not ascended yet so I don't know all the details on it myself, just what a couple of guild members have said."

Celeste chimes up in my earpiece, "We get off at the next stop Captain."

The slave market is... well it's not what I was expecting. I don't really know exactly what I was expecting but definitely not a place that looked like a strip mall with a bunch of small stores in it. Each store represented a different slave trading company and had different ways of displaying their wares. The first store we looked in wasn't a place we wanted to buy anything from. All the slaves for sale were alien women trained to be servants, maids, caregivers and so on. And no, no sex slaves, according to Nania sex with an unwilling slave was still rape and if discovered could get you in deep shit. They might be slaves, but the society was still civilized so they had some rights, just not many.

We checked several shops and found a few promising candidates to be a heavy for the dungeon, unfortunately, all of them were over level five and couldn't join me in the dungeon. Turns out finding a low-level slave is actually a bit of a pain in the ass. We visited over a dozen slave dealers until we found one that specialized in low-level slaves. If there was some sort of goddamn directory for this place we would have found it sooner.

When we step into the store a human looking man approaches us with a slimy looking smile, instinctively I do not like this guy. I don't know what it is but something about him just rubs me the wrong way, "Welcome to Haravat's, I'm the proprietor of this branch. How can I help you today?"

I gesture to some of the slaves on display, there is an array of different alien races, but also quite a few that look like humans, "I'm looking for a slave at or below level five that is capable of using heavy armor and heavy weapons. Someone who can act as a guard for my ship and can handle themselves in a heavy combat situation without losing their mind to fear."

The man ponders for a few moments and nods, "I believe I have one or two that will meet your criteria."

He gestures for us to follow him, so naturally, we do. The inside of the store looks like many of the others. The slaves are kept in small rooms with a clear wall that we can see them through. Next to the wall is a datapad that lists all the information on the slave. He leads us to a display with a large Rexarian in it. The Rexarian is as large as the one that I met with Reginald, though this one has a reddish hue to his skin and scales. He's a massive wall of muscle that threatens to rip the stitching on his clothing if he moves wrong. I hadn't noticed before because of the power armor Reginald's friend wore, but his hands and feet ended in clawed appendages that looked pretty deadly in their own right.

"This one is Prexire, a Rexarian Grunt with basic military training. He was court marshaled and enslaved for attacking a superior officer and damn near killing the officer. He won't give more details about it and the records are sealed, but my guess is it had something to do with his honor. Rexarian's are all about their honor.", the proprietor shrugs his shoulders like it's no real concern of his.

I step up to the datapad and read over it, Prexire was level four, proficient with small arms, heavy arms, heavy armor and power armor. I would definitely keep him in mind, but I would prefer someone less likely to try and kill me. "You mentioned you might have another?"

The man nods and leads me further inside the store to another display, inside of this one is a woman, though she's definitely not human. She's shorter than me, maybe around five and a half feet tall. Her skin is a dark grey and her eyes are solid black. Her hair is black streaked with grey and styled in a bob cut, from her hair grow two small antennae that twitch every now and then. She was well built, muscular without being a wall of meat, though her bust was oddly large for her frame. It made her look a bit unbalanced honestly.

"This is Jerilda, she's a Varaxian. Despite her shorter stature, her planet is known for it's crushing gravity, as such her species developed a unique musculature that is denser and more powerful than most sapient species. She could probably beat Prexire in hand to hand combat without breaking a sweat. Unfortunately for her she is extremely unlucky and ended up in debt from gambling, a bit cliche but it happens more than you would think.", the proprietor points to her datapad, "I should also point out that she is a level three Traveler, but don't worry, even if she should die in the line of her duties when she revives she will still be contracted to you if you purchase her."

I walk over to the datapad while I think about that, so some travelers really did get turned into slaves huh? That gives me pause though, depending on her difficulty setting it could end her slavery to me at a bad time. Then again, if I bought her and treated her well she might choose to stick around as a friend instead of a slave. I check the info on her, she's proficient in all the same things as Prexire so there are no problems there. She also wasn't enslaved for a violent act, which helps. I turn to the proprietor, "Can I speak with her?"

He nods and points to a button on the wall for a small intercom system that I hadn't noticed, "She and all the slaves here have been ordered to speak truthfully at all times."

That's helpful, I push the button and speak up, "Hello Jerilda, my name is Thomas. I'm a Traveller like yourself and I'm considering buying you as a slave. I had a few questions though. What's your difficulty setting?"

The proprietor looks utterly confused by this question, and I make no effort to enlighten him about it. Jerilda frowns and crosses her arms beneath her abundant bust, "Hard."

If I remember correctly hard was a maximum of one year, so even if she had become a slave on day one she would still have at least eight months before her slavery term would end. That would be long enough I think. After that, we'd just have to see what she would decide to do. "I'm looking for someone to act as my personal bodyguard and enforcer. I have a heavy freighter and intend to do things like trading, dungeon crawls, and anything else interesting we might come across in our travels. Does that sound interesting to you?"

She stares at me through the clear wall and stays silent for a moment before speaking up in a flat voice, "Does what I think really matter? I'm a slave, I have to do whatever my owner tells me to do."

I frown, that's not exactly what I was hoping she would say. We stare at each other for a few moments before she finally speaks again, "If you arm and armor me I'll do what you ask. If you treat me good we'll part on good terms later, but if you don't..."

She leaves the threat unsaid, but I get the gist of it. If I do something to her she doesn't like then when she is no longer a slave she'll do something unspeakable to me. I'm fine with that since I have no intention of abusing her anyways. I turn to look at the proprietor and smile, "I'll take her."

He gives me a smile that just makes me feel dirty and gestures for us to follow him further into the store where the sales are made, "A fine choice sir. Varaxian's make excellent soldiers thanks to their enhanced strength."

He leads us into a cramped office and sits down behind a desk. He pulls out a datapad and sets it on the desk before turning his attention back to me, "This is a standard contract for transferring the ownership of a slave. Once we complete the transaction her slavery implant key will be given to you and you will officially be her owner."

I pick up the datapad and begin to scroll through the lawyer speak to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Then pass the pad to Nania so she can do the same thing, she might spot something I missed. While she does that I turn to look at the weasley man, "How much is Jerilda anyways?"

I hadn't seen a price tag at her viewing room or in the contract, the man smiles at me again and I feel the urge to punch him in the face. Seriously, I don't know what it is about him that makes me feel like doing that. He looks perfectly normal and has been nothing but a good host, yet still, the urge to do violence to him is there. "Jerilda is currently marked as fifteen thousand credits."

I scoff, that was a huge price tag. Yeah, I'd made that much with just a few deliveries, but from what I'd experienced a single credit was a good bit of money, you could buy entire sets of clothing for it. Before making a counter offer though I ask him, "How long has she been a slave?"

He pulls up a holographic screen and pulls her data, "Looks like she was enslaved for debt three months ago. I've had her in my possession for two months."

I nod, "I'll give you ten thousand for her. She's a Traveller, no matter what happens she'll be free in another nine months. That significantly reduces her value as a slave."

He scoffs, "That's impossible. The amount of debt she had accrued made her slavery sentence six years."

I grin and gesture in the direction of Jerilda, "Go ask her yourself. I'll wait here."

Grumbling and looking at me like I'm wasting his time he leaves the room. Meanwhile, Nania hands the datapad with the contract on it back to me, "It's the standard. Nothing special or hidden in it."

I nod and we wait a couple of minutes until he returns and looks a little less confident than he had before, "She said she would be free in nine months just like you did. But that's impossible!"

I grin and nod, "So is coming back from the dead, but we Travellers have our ways. Every day she goes unsold is another day closer to her being free. You've had her for two months and haven't sold her yet, how much longer before she sells if I don't buy her now? Her value as a slave goes down day by day."

He groans and cradles his head in his hands, "Fine, thirteen thousand and she's yours."

I cross my arms over my chest, "Twelve. Not a credit more."

The proprietor lets out a deep sigh and nods, "Fine, twelve thousand credits and she's yours."

Negotiation +5

+1 Charisma

I dismiss the notification and take a minute to transfer the appropriate number of credits to a single stick that I hand to the man. Afterwards, we both authorize the contract and he hands me a small data chip, "Just use this with your personal computer to take control of her slavery implant. After that, she's all yours."

We all head back out the to display room where I slip the chip into my [Personal Computer]. Celeste pops up as a hologram and smiles, "I've got the data Captain, control of Jerilda's slavery implant has been transferred to you."

Notice! Ownership of the slave Jerilda Harotat has been transferred to Thomas Darkrose. All rights and responsibilities as an owner have been transferred to Thomas Darkrose. New Title Slave Owner You are the owner of one or more slaves. Slaves that are loyal to you receive +10% to any actions they perform while obeying your orders.

I dismiss the new title notice and nod, the door to Jerilda's exhibit is opened, she steps out and looks at me, she does not look very happy. Then again who would? I turn to the guy running the shop, "Does she have any belongings we need to get or anything?"

I honestly didn't expect she would, but better to ask than assume. Still, the man shakes his head so we leave with Jerilda in tow. I can feel Jerilda glaring hard at my back as we walk, she hasn't said a thing since I bought her. I honestly don't know what to say to a slave so I keep quiet myself. The three of us silently walk out of the slave market. I lift my arm and address my [Personal Computer], "Celeste, can you find a place selling schematics for small transport vehicles? Something that can seat up to four and won't take up much space in the CR Spectrum."

Celeste pops up and nods, "Sure, but you could just buy the plans and download them instead of getting a copy from a store."

Well shit, why didn't I think of that. I nod, "Do it Celeste."

She disappears and a holographic screen appears with thumbnail images of several kinds of small vehicles. You might be wondering why I want the schematics instead of dropping a few credits to buy one? Skill levels. I figured building one of these should get me a hefty amount of skill levels without being a complete waste of resources like building a bunch of crappy level one guns would be. I select two models from the display. The first is a small one, it looks like a motorcycle without wheels. The second looks like a small sports car with a swept back aggressive design. Combined they would take up less space than a single bulk of goods for transport so they would be perfect for getting around on planets without having to use public transport.

I pull out one of my credit sticks and slip it into a slot on the computer, I watch as four hundred and fifty credits are transferred and Celeste downloads the plans. From here it's a very long, very awkward, three credit trip back to the ship.

Back on board the ship, I lead Jerilda into one of the empty cabins, "This will be your bunk. You're free to explore the ship as much as you like, just don't do anything that could get us killed. I am the Captain, Nania is my first officer. You will obey her commands like you would mine. Once we're in the corridor I'll work on making you some gear if we don't already have some you can use. Do you have any preferences or requirements?"

Jerilda looks around the small bunk, it's still nicer than the display case she was locked in earlier. She turns to look at me and speaks in the same flat, deadpan voice she's used so far, "My class is called Mech-Warrior, my abilities all focus on enhancing the power, performance, and defensive capabilities of Power Armor while I use large weapons to deal damage. It's a literal tank class. I get the best use of my abilities from Power Armor so if I have a set of that I should be alright. I don't have many abilities since I was stuck in that fucking cage for so long, but if you take me out to get some experience I'll just become tougher and stronger."

I nod, three months of playtime lost because she was stuck in a cage for gambling of all things, "If you don't mind me asking, how the hell did that happen anyways?"

She sighs and looks down at the decking of the ship, it's the most emotion I've seen from her since we met, "When I first arrived here I went to a bar to have a few drinks and celebrate getting my ship. I was drinking with this group of people and one of the guys kept eyeing me." She lifts her large chest and then lets it drop to indicate exactly what he was eyeing, "So I did a little harmless flirting for some free drinks. We both got pretty wasted and he told me about a fix he knew of for one of the local racing events. Now I'm not an idiot and I didn't just take him at his word. I dug into it a bit and it seemed like what he told me was true, so I placed a bet. I put up my ship as collateral, though I may have stretched the truth a bit on how good the ship was to get a bit more credit. During the race, it looked like the guy I bet on was going to win. Then, about three-quarters of the way through the race, the fucking moron gets hit by a tiny meteoroid and taken out of the race. One in a billion chance of that!"

She lets out a heavy sigh and goes to sit down on the lower bunk, still looking at the ground as she finishes her story, "So with him taken out of the race some other dickbag won and I was out all of my credits and my ship. But when they found out I lied about the value of my ship it got worse. I was legally turned into a debt slave. I'd barely gotten past the tutorial and ended up spending months of game time stuck in that goddamn box!"

She turns to look at me, "So you better make good on what you said about going out exploring, questing and hitting dungeons. If I don't get to do something soon I'm going to lose my fucking mind!"

This is the first time she's been so animated, so I nod and say, "We're going to leave shortly for a planet called Garbumont. When we get there we're heading into a dungeon that hasn't been conquered yet. The level cap on it is five, so you're lucky I was looking for a low-level slave to enter the dungeon with me or you would still be in the cage."

Her eyes are practically sparkling now, "So we'll be the first ones taking it on huh? I hear there are good rewards for the first clear of a dungeon so it would definitely be worth doing."

"I hear the same thing too. I'm going to head to the bridge and get us into the corridor and on our way to the planet. Feel free to explore the ship and check out the armory to see if there's anything you can use in it. If not I'll make you something in the Tech Workshop.", I turn and head for the bridge.

As I walk Jerilda calls out, "What should I call you? Sir? Master? Thomas? Captain?"

I've never had a slave before so I hadn't even considered what to tell her to address me as. My first instinct is 'Thomas' or 'Captain', but a little dark part of me speaks up, "Master will do."

Look, name one straight guy that doesn't want a rather attractive woman to call him 'Master' even a little bit and I will show you a liar. She looks slightly irked at that but nods, "I'll do as you suggest, Master."

We part ways here, I head to the bridge while Jerilda goes to explore and check the armory. On the bridge, Nania is waiting for me. I sit in the captain's chair, "Celeste, let the locals know we're taking off and get the computer running the calculations for a jump to Garbumont. Nania as soon as we're clear get us off this planet and on course for the jump."

Celeste manifests from one of the emitters on the bridge and gives me a playful salute, meanwhile Nania starts warming up the thrusters. I can hear a soft hum in the background that I'm sure is loud as fuck outside, I can also feel a slight vibration as the thrusters spin up. It takes no time at all before Celeste chimes up with, "We're cleared for takeoff Captain."

It takes a good five minutes for the thrusters on the ship to get up to power, but after that Nania easily pilots the ship with a level of skill I never even came close to having. She skillfully maneuvers this much larger hunk of metal, or whatever it's made of, off of the ground and into the sky. She carefully pilots the ship through the traffic in the sky and steadily gains altitude until we break through the atmosphere and enter space. I look over at her and give her a smile, "Hey Nania, think you could teach me how to fly this thing? Maybe teach Jerilda too so there's always someone around who knows how to drive it at least."

Nania nods, "Yeah I can do that. You'll gain skill levels a lot faster by having someone teach you instead of trying to figure it out on your own. A lot fewer explosions and painful deaths too."

She gets us onto the proper trajectory indicated by the navigation systems. The calculations for the jump had been completed in less than a minute thanks to the much more powerful computer in this ship versus the piece of crap I had before. Once we're lined up the Arcane Corridor Core is engaged and without preamble, we enter the pitch black emptiness of the corridor.