Slowly, I backed towards the exit of the bathroom and sent Isabella a party message. “Iz, we have to get the hell out of here. Don’t hug me. Don’t let her get right near me. There’s another one of those stupid ass system windows here and I don’t want to say a word or close it until I’ve had a chance to ponder on it a bit. This one is some heavy shit!” Normally, I try to control my language, but right now I was just too worried to care.

“What’s wrong?” She party asked.

“I’ll explain it all later, but let’s skedaddle back to our home for now. I know we probably have a few hours left until the Jello-Muncher finishes his meal, but I need time to sit and think and sort out what the hell this means.” A true slave-sworn? What the hell did that mean. And why her? All Brandr had did was offer me her sword, but Isabella had sworn to do anything I asked. Shouldn’t she be the slave-sworn if there was such a thing?

My head hurt from dying and being reborn, and hunger was once again gnawing at my stomach. Added in the worry that I didn’t know what to do with the floating window in front of me, I just wanted to get back someplace nice and quiet and sit and ponder for a while.

“You’ll need to speak to her for me.” I told Isabella. “She’s not part of our party yet, and I’d prefer if we waited just a bit before we try and see if she can join us. Just see if she can grab our stuff and guard us as we get the hell out of here. She managed to keep this area clear from the goblins, so she should be able to keep them away from us until we pass that barricade. I’m just worried this stupid window will close if I bump something wiggling past the barricade, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

“Got it. This sounds serious, so fill me in when you can.” Isabella answered back.

I was already out in the darkened hallway, and was slowly starting to work my way back towards the main hall when Isabella and Brandr came out of the bathroom. Isabella made a second lifeflame to help illuminate the area and Brandr dashed back into the classroom we were all in just a little while ago. I figured she could catch up easily enough, and we knew from coming down this hall that the immediate area here was safe – the scattered corpses of the decaying goblins was testimony that they didn’t want to be in this corridor which Brandr sometimes roamed.

I was moving slowly, walking backwards so that I didn’t walk into the window “Do you want to name or brand your blah, blah, blah…”, when Brandr caught up to us. I was happily surprised to see that she’d taken the time to get dressed once again. I suppose after dealing with a naked Isabella, and then seeing her strip, somehow my brain had jumped to the conclusion that she would always be running around naked too. I’m actually glad to see I was wrong.

Brandr moved lightly, gracefully, on down the hall past me and I could see that she had my clothes and weapons tucked under her left arm and her sword drawn and ready in her right. I couldn’t see how far down the hallway she went, but Isabella moved herself from in front of me to a little ways behind me and floated her two flames around us.

“We’re not going back through the classroom or other hallway,” I told Isabella. “We’ll take the direct route down this hall back to the main hallway and get on out of here.” To be honest, I really didn’t want to go back into those dark rooms again. Even now, some primal part of my brain was unnaturally frightened of the idea, and normally I’m not one who’s scared of the dark. Something was off with that other hall and the classrooms adjoining it, but now wasn’t the time to try to sort out whatever it might be.

It was a slow journey down the hall with me walking backwards the whole way, but we never encountered any issues. I think Isabella was right: if any of the monsters here saw Brandr, they probably turned tail and ran instead of trying to confront her! For them, she might have been even more feared than the Jello-Muncher: she was harder to outrun if she decided to give chase!

I was a little anxious on our trip down the main hall, but we were only two hallways up the passage from the barricade and didn’t have any problems there either. Wiggling through the barricade however, that was a truly nerve shattering experience. Where I’d wiggled through in half a minute the first time, I spent ten minutes this time around. One inch at a time, on my back, with my arms up and to the side of the precious popup window to protect it, I slowly wormed my way out of the tunnel and back to our own more familiar halls.

The trip back to the teacher’s lounge was slow, but much easier to be honest. The air here had a stronger stench of death than the first tunnel to the left past the barricade had, but there was more light also coming in from the classrooms on the side of the hall, and there wasn’t that same oppressive feeling in the air that weighed so heavily on a person. And compared to the second hall, where Brandr had been staying, the floor here was clear and clean thanks to Jello-Muncher and I didn’t have to worry about tripping over corpses.

By the time I’d backed all the way into the teacher’s lounge and over to my chair, I just plopped backwards into it. I was exhausted and mentally drained. “No snuggles!” I mentally warned Isabella. I didn’t want her to forget and plop in my lap as she often did and then ruin all my effort and somehow make that window close.

Taking a moment to close my eyes and clear my thoughts, I told Isabella, “Do me a favor and send Brandr to grab the two corpses in the room where they tried to ‘rape’ you. And ask her if she would mind running back and grabbing that minotaur’s horns for me. I want them for a souvenir.

“And if Jello-Muncher is still busy with the corpses on the roof, have her grab and drag those other three bodies in here after that. I’d like to be able to harvest them since it doesn’t seem like we’re going to be using them to keep Jello busy now. It can have them the next time we want to go out. It doesn’t care if they’re whole or wholly chopped up into chunks. Jello isn’t a very fussy Muncher.

“And then after she’s on the way to do her chores, fix us something to eat. I know we’re almost out, but I need something to fill this hunger in my stomach so it won’t annoy me while I’m thinking.”

Ha! If mother could just see her son now, she wouldn’t know what to think of me. I was sitting on my ass, giving orders to the girls to go fetch things and cook things for me. I guess it’s a case of, “give a man a fish and he eats for a day; give him a slave, and see him turn into a bossy asshole.” I was disappointed in my own bossiness, but both girls bounced to their chores without any complaints. Isabella signed to Brandr, so as to not even bother me by talking while giving her orders, and Brandr left with hardly a sound while Isabella quietly began frying up the last of the remaining rat.

Why the hell was Brandr a slave? All that had happened with her is I told her she could be my blade, and then I have her back her sword. How the hell did that make her a slave? If anyone was supposed to be a slave, shouldn’t that be Isabella since she was the one who promised to do anything? Heck, she’d even taken the name Oathbound!

And what the heck was I supposed to do with this stupid window? Name her? Brand her? Why would I want to do either of those things? I was tempted to just answer ‘No’ to the floating question, but I was scared to. Brandr couldn’t talk, so I doubt there was any way she could say a name for herself, and this “game-reality” required one from us if we wanted to invite someone into a party. What if I turned it down and then couldn’t get it to pop back up and it screwed her over forever? Me and this jackass system didn’t get along in the best of times. I certainly didn’t want to screw up something this important!

The more I tried to think about it, the more my brain hurt. Finally, I made a decision – heaven help me if it was the wrong one – but I finally said, “Yes.”

Ding!

Two windows popped up as the old one closed. One simply gave the “please chose a name… blah blah blah” crap. The other had an image of Brandr floating naked and slowly rotating in it, like you used to see some of the 3d models for video games and such do.

First, to deal with the name. I certainly wasn’t going to stick her with something like ‘Bloody Hell’. She needed something graceful and powerful sounding. If names were destinies, I wanted to give her a wonderful one. Her father had named her after a blade. Her family was named after a mountain stream. “Zephyr RoseHeart”, is the name I spoke aloud. I hoped it might help her find a soft and gentle future where her heart could open and bloom like a rose.

Then I looked over the image window of her floating there, and I simply pressed the ‘Cancel’ button on it. There was a bunch of little buttons and things by the side, but I’ll be damned if I was going to brand someone. I just wasn’t that type of guy! My mother had raised me better than that!

As the second window closed, there was a slight ping sound, and I noticed something new flickering at the corner of the edge of my right vision. Since I’d already trained my eyes to look at the far left of my peripheral vision for the party image of Isabella, it was easy enough for me to look over and see an image of Brandr now floating to the far right. Honestly, the window wasn’t much different than the one on the left, except this one had what looked like shackles wrapped around the edges of it, and the other one didn’t.

“Zephyr Roseheart, can you hear me?” I was kind of hoping that the window gave me some type of chat similar to the party chat, but the image in the window never stopped what it was doing or seemed to show any sign of being puzzled or confused by a sudden voice in its head. Since she didn’t answer, I didn’t suppose she could hear me.

Figuring it was now safe to try everything once, I reached out my hand to the side to try and touch the image to see how it responded. When I tried it with Isabella’s party image, nothing had happened. This time however, a ping went off and a set of windows appeared before me.

Stats

Skills

Spells

Effects

Advantages

Disadvantages

Bloody hell, that was a lot of options! And off to the side of that window was once again an image of Brandr floating naked in thin air and slowly rotating around.

I guess I’d start with the first thing I was curious about. “Stats!”

Name: Zephyr RoseheartAge: 16Class: NightbladeLevel: 4CP: 310STR: 12SYI: 12WIL: 12DEX: 18MYS: 10PRE: 2CON: 10SPR: 0LUC: 10STA: 110Status: Slave-SwornHP: 130MP: 130SP: 0PD: 1DR: 0MR: 0FR: 0CR: 0AR: 0DR: 25WR: 0OR: 0ER: 0LR: -25

What the hell?!

I blinked while looking at the screen in front of me a few different times. It didn’t make any sense to me! Her level was 4, her CON was only 10, and yet her life was close to mine! And she had 310 cheat points?! If being a “slave-sworn” gave that type of bonuses, then sign me up!

No, no, no! There had to be a reasonable explanation.

Isabella came over and sat a plate of food down in front of me, and a small cup of water, and then she walked off without saying a word. I truly appreciated that she was giving me some time and space to sort things out at my own pace.

As I slowly ate, I tried to do some math in my head, finally I came up with what I felt was a reasonable explanation. Brandr must’ve leveled up several times, to level 7 or 8, and gained health and cheat points as she went up. Then, somehow, she acquired herself a class – “Nightblade” – and that reset her level to 0, but not her stats or cheat points. Four more levels as a nightblade, and her health and cheat points increased even more.

Slowly, I tapped the screen in front of me to see if I could spend the points. I figured her DEX was already quite high, so I’d see if she could get the bonus at 21, so I tapped it three times and had another couple of windows pop up.

Congratulations, your slave-sworn is the first to push past the normal limits of human dexterity!

They have gained the title: Rubber Maid

Their DEX increases by 5.

Their PD increases by 2.

Congratulations, your slave-sworn has achieved level 5!

They gain 10 HP, 10 MP, 0 SP!

They have been awarded 30 CP!

Wow! Spent 57 of her cheat points, got past the normal human level and she gained a title which leveled her up, and she got 30 of those points back! Basically, she just went from an 18 DEX to a 26, for only 27 cheat points! And she still had a boatload left over!

Name: Zephyr RoseheartTitle: Rubber MaidAge: 16Class: NightbladeLevel: 5CP: 283STR: 12SYI: 12WIL: 12DEX: 26MYS: 10PRE: 2CON: 10SPR: 0LUC: 10STA: 110Status: Slave-SwornHP: 140MP: 140SP: 0PD: 4DR: 0MR: 0FR: 0CR: 0AR: 0DR: 25WR: 0OR: 0ER: 0LR: -25

I wasn’t certain what other stats might be of use to her, so I wasn’t going to tap on any more buttons there. Instead, I decided to play around with the little window image and see what it might do that was floating to the side still. Tapping it once, it zoomed and enlarged itself to where it was nearly two feet tall as it floated in front of me. Gently, I tapped the center of the screen, and it zoomed in to where it displayed her bare chest and torso fully.

Staring for a moment, I tapped one of her breasts and had another window appear beside the floating one. It mentioned size, color, shape, all sorts of options! I tapped the size button and it changed into a window that had a simple plus and minus on it, and a blank beside those. I gently tapped the plus twice, and the blank changed to 0.1 and then 0.2, and a “Confirm” and “Cancel” window appeared. Slowly, I tapped “Confirm”, and the window went back to the simple plus, minus, and blank options.

Glancing over at the status window, I was shocked to see that I’d just spent another 0.2 cheat points!

Name: Zephyr RoseheartTitle: Rubber MaidAge: 16Class: NightbladeLevel: 5CP: 282.8STR: 12SYI: 12WIL: 12DEX: 26MYS: 10PRE: 2CON: 10SPR: 0LUC: 10STA: 110Status: Slave-SwornHP: 140MP: 140SP: 0PD: 4DR: 0MR: 0FR: 0CR: 0AR: 0DR: 25WR: 0OR: 0ER: 0LR: -25

I’d just learned two more amazing things about this world! Apparently, there were some things that only costed a fraction of a skill point, and apparently if one had better access to the system, they could alter even such things as their physical appearance. I think I just grew Brandr’s breasts two sizes! Or two clicks worth, however much that actually turned out to be!

I was going to have to share what I was learning with Isabella soon, but I was simply too fascinated to stop at the moment! Slowly, I started tapping on other spots and reading some of the different options for things. Some of the things that popped up seemed essentially useful in this new world. There was an option when I tapped lower on the stomach which could control food consumption. For 25 CP, I could use it to alter Brandr so she didn’t need to eat!

There were options to change skin tone, color, softness; hair color, length, natural style; eye color, face shape, features… Options to add night vision, or infravision, or enhanced smell, or enhanced hearing. I found that I could increase or decrease sensitivity with one option. There was even such odd options as to reduce sleep needs or eliminate it – I thought that might be useful just so she could stand watch at night over us while we slept – but it was another 25 points. There was an option to cure her Disadvantage: Mute, but that was a whopping 100 points!

I never actually accepted any more changes, but I spent hours looking over all the possible options. I felt like a kid locked in a toy store for the night! Advertisement Support "The 8th Day" PayPal Patreon Previous

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