Chapter 11

Flipping through the forms I saw that it was some type of test along with a handful of forms. “What are these?” I couldn’t help asking.

“Those forms will help us determine what type of staff and servants best suit you. We have found it significantly speeds up the process if we screen the candidates first.” He explained.

I took a closer look at the questions. I couldn’t help but feel shocked at some of them. “What is up with these questions?”

The assembly master gave me a confused look. “There is an entire section about whether I plan to beat my servants and under what circumstances.” I said giving him an example.

“Do you?” The assembly master simply said.

“No way. Why would I ever do something like that?” I said a bit too loudly.

The assembly master shrugged. “Some swarm knights and lords do. It’s my duty to make sure they have a staff despite that. Wouldn’t it be better to pick their servants from among those that were willing to be put in such situations?”

“That doesn’t make it right. Even if it was, I can’t imagine that anyone would work their best in that situation.” I argued.

“True. But we have found that servants that apply for such positions do significantly better than servants who don’t. There are even a few servants that perform better.” The assembly master explained.

I frowned. “Who the hell performs better in those circumstances.”

“Masochists. Depending on the severity and exact circumstances.” He countered.

He did have a point. I couldn’t imagine wanting to be in that position. I knew that some people would though. From what Faye told me thousands of people applied to be servants. If they happened to enjoy pain they probably had a higher chance of being selected for a position.

“Just answer the questions truthfully. We mostly use them to eliminate candidates and have you interview prime candidates first. Either way you will end up with a full staff.” The assembly master said.

I was still uncomfortable with the questions and situation. Arguing about it wasn’t going to change anything though. The only thing I could realistically do was fill out the forms and treat my own servants well.

Suddenly I realized something odd. All the forms were in English. I knew that the assembly had a file about Earth. I still found it odd that they already had forms ready for me in English. More importantly it made me realize that I could communicate with everyone that I had met. There was no way that everyone was actually speaking English.

“I just realized something. How is it possible that we can understand each other? You aren’t actually speaking English right?” I asked.

The assembly master shook his head. “No. It’s one of the benefits of a swarm integrated world. The swarm automatically translates conversation. Although it doesn’t do the same for written language. Luckily English is one of the common languages from your world.”

“I suppose that makes sense. Where should I fill these out?” I asked, looking around for a desk. The assembly master motioned to one of the servants. “If you will follow me my lord.” The servant said.

A few seconds later I was sitting in an office right next door. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that it was set aside specifically for this purpose. Faye and the other servants had followed me of course.

Sitting down at the desk I started filling out the papers. After the part about how I planned to treat my servants there was a type of personality test. Filling both of those out was easy. Then I got to the last section.

Apparently they wanted to know my sexual preferences and kinks. Obviously they could pick the best members of my harem. I couldn’t help but be embarrassed by most of the questions. Although at the same time it was oddly arousing to know that there were women up for practically anything I could imagine, and a lot of things I had never imagined. Luckily I was able to indicate how interested I was in each kink. The levels were repulsive, uninterested, neutral, interested, and necessary.

Still there were a number of things that I felt like crossed a line. I instantly checked repulsive on anything involving injuring someone or that I considered disgusting or overly disturbing. Anything that was a slight turn off but I was willing to live with went as uninterested. After reading the description of neutral I ended up choosing it for many of the kinks. Basically it meant that if my partner was interested then I would also be interested. That left a handful that I marked as interested. I didn’t mark any of them as necessary. Marking something as necessary would be indicating that I literally couldn’t perform unless that kink was involved.

For half a second I thought about asking Faye for her opinion about some of the questions on the form. I stopped myself though. If I started even mentioning kinks to her it was likely she would insist on trying them out. I’d prefer if our bedroom antics progressed naturally. Besides, I cared more about her kinks than my own kinks.

Finishing the forms I headed back to the assembly masters office and handed them in. “Give us a couple hours and we will have the first round of interviews ready.” He said after glancing through the forms to make sure that they were completely filled out.

Seeing that he was fully engrossed in the forms I turned to Faye. “Looks like we have a couple of hours. What do you want to do?” I asked her.

Her blush nearly made me grin. “I had been thinking more along the lines of lunch.” I said teasingly. I nearly laughed as she blushed even more.

“Lunch sounds good.” She ended up saying. Which was fine with me. I looked forward to spending more time in bed with Faye. I also wanted to learn more about her though. We had plenty of time for the latter. Especially since technically I was now immortal and could make her immortal.

At that last thought my mind ground to a bit of a halt. I remembered it being mentioned a few times but not since I confirmed that I was going to be at least a swarm knight. Until that moment I hadn’t consciously thought about the fact that I personally would no longer die of old age. Not only that but I could also stop and even reverse the aging of those around me.

As we ate lunch Faye told me about what life was like in a swarm world. It wasn’t anything like what I had expected from a civilization based on magic. Just about everything on Earth had a magical equivalent. In some ways magic could even do things better. For instance a group of mages could create a skyscraper larger than anything on Earth in just a few weeks.

That didn’t mean that magic was better than technology in every way though. There wasn’t an Internet equivalent. In terms of communication and data transmission magic was equivalent to mid 1900’s technology. It was kind of funny how similar it was. Many mages were employed to operate the primitive communication network on many worlds. Their job was similar to the switchboard operators that were no longer needed on Earth.

The thing I found most disturbing was that magic was stagnant. Everything that could be done had been done. Nothing new had been invented in thousands if not millions of years. Sure sometimes mages on a world would forget how to do something and then rediscover it. But inevitably they would discover that it wasn’t any type of advancement.

The main reason for this was because the swarm limited the maximum power a mage could channel. In addition the swarm was what created the magic system. If the swarm couldn’t do something then magic definitely couldn’t accomplish it. There were also a number of things the swarm prohibited magic from doing. Such as anything that had an effect on an atomic level. Even manipulation on a cellular level was extremely limited.

At the same time it was very clear that the abilities swarm far exceeded both magic and Earth technology. In addition to being the basis of the entire magic system there were things only the swarm could do. I had already heard of some of these. For instance teleportation portals and reversing aging. From the testing I also knew that it could be used to heal and copy or create practically any object.

What I hadn’t known was that it could be used to terraform and even create planets. Higher levels could also grant people access to the swarm. Much like a swarm knight could turn someone into a mage. Although this was rarely done since only swarm kings had the ability. At that level there were better things for them to spend their time on. They already had hundreds of billions of swarm knights under them. One more was insignificant.

Most of the time the higher levels would spend their time creating core factories. For instance the nano core factory I used was created by a swarm baron. The baron would create these and either personally use them or gift them to their subordinate knights. Among those higher than a knight core factories were actually used as a form of currency. With enough core factories a swarm lord could actually purchase planets from other swarm lords.