A level 9 Guard blocked their way, and a level 13 Guard sprinted towards them from the street.

Taking on them both would be suicide… but there was still one way out.

Jake switched to Ayla and had her pull out the Miasma grenade, run towards where the level 13 Guard was coming from, then chuck it right in front of him.

It burst, turning the street where it landed — and ten yards around in any direction — into a swampy, toxic sludge. Movement decreased to 20%, and a slow DOT took effect.

They had 15 seconds.

He ran over to the Paladin, who was still in shock. She backed away from him as he approached, tripping, then continuing to scramble while on the ground.

“I’ll free you after this battle, if you want,” he said. He didn’t want to force his way, but he needed her if any of them were to get out of this alive, so he pounced on her and touched the collar. The clasp had loosened, since her Master had died. “I bind you to myself.”

He jumped to her head, used Blessing to raise everyone’s stats by 10%, then jumped back to himself.

“Everyone, to the gate as fast as you can!” he yelled.

Emily broke stealth and joined the stampede.

The level 9 stood there, sword in hand.

Would the new girl have Convict ready again yet? He jumped to her head and found that switching Masters had not reset the usual 30-second cool-down. They’d have to get past the level 9 without tricks. They couldn’t even use Ayla’s ice bolt because it took her almost as long to cast as the slow-down effect lasted.

So they rushed him and hoped for the best.

He stood there stoically, in their path, sword raised. “I’ll kill you evil chaos people!” he yelled while they ran around him. He swung wildly, not even getting close. His second swing took the Paladin girl right in the thickest part of her armor. “How dare you defy Xerxes!”

Jake realized, belatedly, that the Guard was letting them through in the only way that wouldn’t get him punished.

They got past the gate, into the woods, and ran for their lives. When the level 13 Guard showed himself, the new girl cast Convict on him, which gave them enough distance to lose sight of the man.

Still, it was over half an hour until they felt comfortable enough to sit down and rest, and that was only because Ayla threw herself down on a patch of grass and refused to move. “If he shows up, we kill him… but I’m tired.”

Her Chi bar was full; actual exhaustion must be tracked differently.

He could command her to keep going, but he didn’t want to force her to do anything unless it was absolutely necessary. From a pure power-level perspective, it might lower their Connection Rating if he stopped respecting her wishes, but he also just didn’t want to be a jerk.

Clawdia sighed and crouched on the grass, while Emily found a rock to sit on. The new girl curled up by a tree and stared off into space. That probably wasn’t good.

“Master, come lay with me,” said Ayla. “We didn’t get to relax at the inn as we were promised.”

“Oh, so this is why we stopped,” complained Clawdia. “We’re all going to die because you’re horny.”

“In a moment,” said Jake. He needed to take care of the new girl first. He walked over to her, put out his hand. “I’m Jake. Thank you for helping us escape. I can free you now if you like.”

She backed up and pressed herself against the tree, clutching her legs tight as if trying to make herself disappear.

Apparently she wasn’t going to talk, so he checked her stats himself.

Phoebe

Race: Human

Height: 5’8”

Weight: 141lbs

Level: 6

EXP to next level: 48

Connection Rating: 0

Connection Multiplier: 1.5

Current Job: Paladin

Top Jobs: Paladin

Base stat changes:

-- Elemental x0.9

-- Dex-Counter: x0.9

-- Power-Special-Holy: x1.2

Special Equipment: None

Paladin Skills

Holy Strike

Grace of the Heavens

Blessings

Long Light of Justice

Convict

Connection Rating of zero. Considering he’d just killed her old master and kidnapped her, that made sense. She’d just spent almost an hour running by his command, going long past when she would have stopped on her own. The courtesy that he’d extended Ayla hadn’t reached her… perhaps the Connection Rating reflected his own feelings as much as it did the girl’s.

“Hey, how do I free her?” he asked. “Do I touch the collar and say something?”

Emily clucked her tongue. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Having a Paladin on our team will be valuable.”

“Uh, but that would be enslaving her against her will.”

“So? If you uncollar her, she’ll get captured again within a week. Even if she turns herself in, and thus is not treated as a runaway, her chances of getting a Master as kind as you are slim to none. By releasing her, you condemn her to a life of misery and pain. And the bad kind of pain, not the kind that I’m into.”

“She has to make the decision,” said Jake. “I give you three choices. First choice, you can be my slave. I won’t force myself on you sexually, but I will command you in battle. Second, I can free you and you go your own way.”

She clenched her fists when he said that and buried her face in her knees.

“Third choice, you can travel with us as a free woman, like Clawdia.”

Her head shot up and her eyes got big as she stared at the cat-girl.

“Oh, right,” said Clawdia. She grabbed the un-activated collar on her neck and removed it.

“This is a mistake,” said Emily. “You not taking control when you needed to is what got me poisoned, and letting Clawdia stay free is what got us into our first battle together — the one where you got knocked out — and what prolonged our most recent battle. Every single mistake so far has been because you allow too much freedom. Keep her as a slave. Stay away from her sexually until she is prepared, that is restraint that I can respect, but her abilities are too valuable to not keep her with us.”

Ayla’s arms wrapped around him. She pulled herself tight, her breasts pressing against his back and her warm breath tickling his ear. “I’ll accept whatever my Master decides… but I’d feel safer if she was around.”

Chills went down his spine, both from her touch and the level of trust she displayed. Her life was in his hands, and she placed it there willingly, without caveats or limits. His dick responded, shooting straight up and creating a distinct bulge in his pants. Who knew that trust could be such a turn-on?

Ayla disentangled herself and sat beside him.

Phoebe stared at his bulge, then flicked her eyes to Ayla, and then to Clawdia, who was lounging collar-less in the grass.

“I will stay with you,” she whispered. Her voice was barely audible. “I will be your slave, if it— if it please my Master. I cannot survive on my own without you. If… if I request to be freed in the future, may I…”

She cringed as she said it, as if preparing to be hit.

He put his hand on her shoulder gently. She flinched, panicked, then slowly forced her breathing to come back to normal.

“Look at me,” he said.

Her eyes did anything but, going from Clawdia to Emily to Ayla to his feet.

“Look me in the eyes, so you know I’m speaking the truth.”

It wasn’t a command, so she continued to circle his face, coming closer, closer. She glanced at him briefly before staring at the treetops.

Finally she could stand to look at him.

She trembled as she did so.

He stared straight into her eyes and spoke as gently as he could. “The second you request to be freed, I will release you.”

She burst into tears.

What? Why tears? What had he said?

He’d tried to be nice and then this happened?

“No, silly,” whispered Ayla. “This is good. This is probably the first time since leaving her family that a man with power has spoken kindly to her.”

He jumped into Ayla’s head to speak silently.

Then why is she crying? Shouldn’t she be happy?

** She is happy. These are tears of relief.

Women are weird.

** You don’t need to understand us, Master. Just keep doing what you’re doing and I will serve you for as long as you live. Now put your hand back on her shoulder, and if she hugs you, hug her back.

He did so, and as if in response the girl sprung up and threw her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. He hugged her back, shocked, as her hot tears flowed onto his shoulder.

Phoebe’s Connection Rating was at 24. Just from saying right words and letting her cry on him. How many times had he spanked Emily to get hers that high?

She continued to sob with great, gasping breaths.

He patted her back, whispering “there, there,” in her ear.

Soon she quieted and there was peace.

“Well,” said Clawdia, “that was awkward.”

“Hush,” said Ayla.

“A strategic necessity,” insisted Emily.

Phoebe lifted her face. It was splotched from crying. “I’m sorry I’m a mess,” she said. “Please don’t hate me. I’ll serve you however you want.”

“I know,” said Jake as gently as he could. “We need to move for now. We seem to have lost that Guard, but we need to get somewhere safe. Somewhere we can train without being attacked by people or monsters too far above our level.”

“We should take sanctuary among my people,” said Clawdia. “It is a mere ten days travel by foot. Then you can all be freed and happy.”

“Would they accept humans living among them?” asked Emily. “Especially a male human?”

Clawdia looked away briefly, then straight at Emily. “You would be safe there. Jake would be cast out. It is fine.”

“I’m not going there, then,” said Ayla. “What about the east? They are fighting against Xerxes already, so they would welcome us. Besides, my village is near the border.”

“The east would be strategically preferable,” said Emily. “If Jake can get over his hesitance about commanding his forces like a proper Master, he has the potential to be a top general. We could recruit more women by allying with other houses, then destroy Xerxes in that manner.”

Recruiting more women? He’d trained commanding three for the last year. Sure, he’d had eight soldiers under his command when playing online with Todd and the others, but that had been almost too much — most of them he set to play things out according to their customized AI patterns.

But commanding eight real women? And keeping up with the sexual demands of all of them?

“Stop overwhelming him,” said Ayla. “Getting safe is the most important part. If he decides to spread himself too thin after that, that is his decision.”

Spread himself too thin. She didn’t want him to do it, but she wouldn’t contradict him. She was clever, and kind, and one hundred percent behind him.

His dick stiffened.

How had that made him hard?

Forget women, he didn’t even understand himself sometimes.

Ayla giggled.

“They’ll search for us,” said Phoebe. She’d finally composed herself and was able to speak solemnly. “You are the three runaways. Xerxes wants you… he’ll send word to the major cities, and things will spread from there.”

“Can we run ahead of it?” asked Jake.

“No,” said Clawdia. “He has a Master with women in each major city in his kingdom. Important messages can pass almost instantaneously through their connection. Then in many of the major cities, there is another Master who has women in the minor outlying cities. That’s how a town as small as the one we just escaped had already heard of our status.”

“Then we’ll be chased everywhere we go.”

“There’s one thing we can do,” said Phoebe. “One way we can disappear.”

Before she even finished her sentence, Jake knew what she was talking about. Of course this world would have them — FTO was different in many ways, had removed some mechanics, but aside from tournament mode there didn’t seem to be any huge systems the game developers had added. “Dungeons.”

Phoebe smiled. “There’s one nearby. We’re slightly under-leveled, but Ayla says you’re a master tactician.”

Traveling to a dungeon under-leveled was practically a death sentence… but what choice did they have?

“Show us the way.”