章節 24: Time to get out of Town
4/27 afternoon.
I went ahead and bought us a large tent and some more travel rations. With my inventory full of unconscious abbey guards, I needed to actually carry the things I'd bought; such indignity, I know. I'll need to speak to reality's manager about that.
It also, importantly, burnt through most of my money. I picked through the possessions of the guards and got a modest pile of silver and copper coins, but I didn't want to start fencing their equipment this close to where they vanished. I did pick out a few pieces of equipment I thought Darcell and I could use effectively, and noted them in what I was already starting to think of as the harem discord channel.
After killing time that way, I put my Otto face back on and went to the inn to pack. None of us had too much baggage, extradimensional ICU notwithstanding, so I was back to waiting before long. I saw a popup that showed Keryn Silvius had been added to the retinue tab, which was good news. Neither Darcell nor Drusilla were hurt, either, so it seemed like very good news.
After looking over everyone and getting confirmation that Keryn had 72 hours of freedom left, I decided it was time to make a few calls. Good to keep in touch, you know?
I decided to start with Auffrey. I hadn't put any modifiers on her so far, and if I remembered correctly she'd be sitting alone at lunch right now. "Hello, my lady." I whispered into the necklace. I heard a quiet noise of surprise from the other end, followed by a whisper. "Didn't you swear me to secrecy about these things?"
"I don't think it's going to be a problem there, especially if you keep whispering. What are you still doing there anyway? What's your end goal?"
A huff. "I intend to return to Westfall and join the People's militia, obviously. Not all of us are as impatient as you, mister Bismark."
"Is it obvious though? What are you learning that will be useful fighting in Westfall? What you need is on the job training."
"I'm getting it. I'm helping to track down a group of Defias that vanished near here. They are slippery bastards, but there is no way we are aware of that they could have left the valley. If they somehow found a way, then we need to find it too."
Dammit.
"Trust me. That is just gonna be a waste of time. You will be a lot better off putting together a posse to hunt gnolls or something. They are a menace, you know, but they hardly bother hiding. That is how you get better at fighting, not running around in the woods chasing shadows."
"Ah yes. Well I must bow to the expert on this matter, of course." Such sarcasm seems unladylike to me, but she's the lady here. "Regardless, I have a patrol to attend to today."
"Just think about it." I chimed as I moved to set up her collar. I think I'll help clear her head and keep her acting a bit more heroic. A nice sense of shame when she makes a decision based on vengeance would be a good start. I'm in a bit too deep with the Defias already, and making her accept them as allies all at once might be bad for her mind. On the positive end, I think she would do well to start feeling affirmation whenever she pursues a goal I suggested. I don't want her to develop a specific hatred of gnolls, but I have a mission to take down Hogger. If Auffrey starts assembling an informal anti-gnoll task force, then I can swoop in and reinforce it once I wasn't on a strict timetable. A nice little swarm of fighters should be able to take him down.
After that I checked in with Big Tony to see if the goons were doing alright. Apparently they had mostly been put to work building some kind of fort on an island in the lake, but they were happy to do it for steady meals. Garrick had been put in charge of their work crew, so apparently he wasn't facing any consequences for the raid. Oh well.
Last up was Annetta. She was probably at the training field, so I wasn't going to have an extended chat. I just told her I missed her already and suggested that she look into finding a replacement priest, whatever the process for that was. She seemed a bit flustered at her amulet abruptly talking with my voice; I'm not sure if she really believed me deep down when I told her what it did. I thought about it and decided that Anetta really should continue her life of service; it seemed to make her happy. "Serving others in a way that advances Erich Bismark's interests" was paired with euphoria. I'm not sure exactly how that will pan out, but I'm sure it will.
The girls got back not too long after that, and the smug look on the outlaw's face was all I needed to know. "Magnificent. Just magnificent. You were sent to scout and you completed the whole mission in a few hours. I wanted to know what you were capable of, and I'm definitely pleased with what I see."
She was a bit flushed at that. I might need to change that setting on her necklace from sexual pleasure to euphoria; I had a timetable to keep and I couldn't have her distracted every time I told her she was doing well. When I went to change Darcell's compulsions though, I found that they were on cooldown. Apparently I needed to wait 24 hours between changes. That was just inconvenient. They were lucky I didn't actually want to use these for overly elaborate fetish play. Yet. The novelty of having a small harem hadn't even begun to fade enough to need spicing up.
I did decide to use one of Drusilla's bare encouragement slots for a bit of fun though. Since she was so chill with being my slave, I decided that being referred to by me with a demeaning nickname should have some effect. I decided to go with the highest setting of orgasm paired with being called slave by me specifically. I liked her as she was, but a fun little trigger appealed to me.
We ate an early dinner for a few coppers and left. The trip to Darkshire was a bit more than a full day's travel in total, and I wanted our camping excursion to be firmly still in Elwynn. When we stopped to camp, I pulled the leather armor off of two of the militia that most closely fit Otto and Darcell in build. If I wanted to wear armor as Erich, I was going to need to get it off of someone huge like Tony or get it made for me. For now, that meant I was still Otto.
The last thing I did was pull out a mace in a sling for Darcell. "Trust me, you're gonna need this if we run into things that don't bleed." She took it and hefted it. She wasn't going to be the most graceful with its use, but I'm sure she will get a lot of joy out of practicing with it.
It was dark. We were tired. We all bundled together in the tent and the idea of sex didn't really occur to me. A bit of cuddling was nice enough. As we fell asleep, Darcell's little malachite necklace flickered with energy. I was up to two. I went to bed with a smile.
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