<~> Chapter 13
I pulled it out and looked at Bella with an eyebrow raised. “Who would wear something like this?”
After a glance, “Ah that’s for sex slaves. It’s illegal in most cities to walk around naked so he probably carries some of those around to dress anyone he intends to sell as a sex slave.” I look back down at Bitch, a weird mixed feeling in my gut. I had been saying over and over that I wanted to sell them into slavery to get back at her but now that I was more in my right mind I felt conflicted.
I looked at Bella, “I’m not sure what to do. I detest slavery and the freedom it takes from people.” I look down at the still sleeping poodle girl. “But after what she did to me… I want to really punish her, punish her for what she did to me and who knows what else she’s done to get so much negative karma.”
There was silence for a bit before Bella answered, “It’s not uncommon to find slavery barbaric but in this case… In this case by turning her into a sex slave you’ve probably given her as much mercy as possible short of just letting her go.”
“I don’t understand, what do you mean?”
“In most cities up and down the continent, rape is punishable by death. Rapists are said to be like monsters because they remind people of things like goblins, monsters that rape people over and over to breed and increase their horde. In most places if you can definitively prove that they raped someone they’re immediately cut down like any other monster. The only reason he would do something like that to you is because he thought he could get away with it.”
She continued, “Secondly, not only did you spare her but you turned them into someone who would no doubt be treated better than any other class of slave. Pleasure slaves are almost always treated better than any other slaves, so not only are you sparing her from death today, you’re sparing her the death she would have probably had in a few months as the lowest class of labor slave. Rapists are rarely treated gently even once in bonds, but as a pleasure slave she has a chance at finding a gentle master to serve, or at least one that won’t work her to death. And the only price for her is the freedom she would have lost anyway and the ability to stop herself from being raped they way she did to you.”
I looked at her with a frown, she was convincing but it still didn’t sit perfectly right with me. At the same time my only alternative at this point would be to just kill her which was something I wasn’t ready for. I sighed. “Alright then. Do you know how any of this works? I don’t like, need to be a member of a guild or something do I?”
“I don’t think so but when we try to sell her we’ll have to have someone with lie detection magic to prove that they actually raped you. It might be a hard story to explain considering her new… situation.” She finished by gesturing to the sleeping dog girl.
“Hmm… well, I’d prefer to get some new clothes before walking through town leading her to the slavers. Your old clothes don’t fit anymore and frankly aren’t very good quality in the first place. My clothes are decent but I’d at least like to get them actually tailored to my body.”
“I’m sorry mistress but I don’t have any money… Would you be able to lend me the money to get new clothes?”
I flicked her on the forehead. “First off, don’t call me mistress we’ve been over that. Second, don’t be silly I’m not going to make you borrow money from me, we’re partners now… maybe something more, I’m going to dress you up properly. I’m sure we’ll be able to figure out a way to make some more money later.”
She was rubbing her head and smiling in that cute shy blushy smile she’s been doing lately. “If you say so Lilith. Are you sure it’s okay though? I don’t know how much money I can make, I’m just a farmer….”
“Didn’t you use healing magic on me last night? Between your healing magic and my level 33 swordsmanship I’m sure we can make some money adventuring.”
“Oh yeah, I have healing magic now… Wait, level 33? His swordsmanship was that high level? What level are you?”
“I’ve only really gained levels through sex so far so I’m only level 21 now.”
”Twenty-one!? How long have you been on this plane? I thought you only learned about [status] last night? How have you been here this long without knowing about it?”
“Wait what? I only woke up here the night before last.”
“You got twenty levels from having sex just last night? That’s insane! I’m 19 and I’m only level 8!”
There was a pregnant pause that hung in the air a little uncomfortably before I spoke again, “Well now that you’re a healer and I have a high swordsman skill maybe we can go kill some monsters for some money. I’ve never fought a monster before but I think that maybe between the two of us we might be able to manage.”
“Actually… now that I’m looking I gained two levels last night too…” She had a look of conflicted worry on her face. “Maybe we can do it, I’ve never really fought a monster before either but if you’re level 21 and I am able to heal you, maybe we can actually do it. How did you even manage to make it in that forest in the first place if you were running around at level 1?” She asked shaking her head.
I decided not to answer since the question seemed rhetorical. I stood up and started getting dressed again. I put on the dead nobleman’s clothes. They were still uncomfortable in a few places but not too bad either. I looked over the pile of clothes that wouldn’t fit the little poodle girl anymore, it looks like the poodle previously had feet that more closely matched my own compared to the dead nobleman’s though.
I cautiously lifted one of the high quality steel toed boots and found that it didn’t smell at all, the only thing I could smell was something akin to new leather. “Odd, his boots don’t smell at all. It’s like they’ve never been worn.”
I spoke mostly to myself but Bella had an answer for me. “Oh he probably just used a simple clean cantrip to clean his boots every night. She lifted up a pair of socks that looked too big for her now, made a motion on them with her finger and spoke, “[Clean]” and just like that a shimmer of magic ran across the fabric and the socks looked completely grime free.
“What the fuck, this world is amazing.” I said stupefied at her.
“I used magic to literally seal up the cuts in your asshole in mere moments and the thing you’re impressed by is a [Clean] cantrip?”
“Don’t get me wrong, healing magic is amazing on its own but it’s… expected. Magic that can clean for you changes everything!”
She looked at me still mystified. “How did you do it in your home plane? Cleaning cantrips can’t be used on all of your clothes but how do you clean your mouth in the morning?”
“You… don’t need to brush your teeth? You can just use magic to clean your mouth?” Shit, I just realized, I haven’t seen anyone with rotten teeth. Maybe people had crooked teeth but I hadn’t noticed any that had stained or rotting ones.
”Brush… Your teeth? Why would you clean your teeth with a brush, that’s bizarre. Why didn’t you use magic, no one could figure out a simple clean cantrip?”
“My realm doesn’t have any magic. At least not to the extent that anyone really knew about it. We had to use other means to deal with things.”
“No magic? Do Succubi have some different source of power then? Wait, how do the demons of your world kill people if they don’t use magic?”
“Demons aren’t real, or rather, just like magic there’s no way to prove that they exist anyway. Succubi in particular are story characters more than anything provable to actually exist.”
“Hmm… I can’t really picture a world without magic. There are so many things that I just wouldn’t know how it would work otherwise.”
“Well, I’m sure we’ll come across things as we go along. Just don’t be too surprised if I ask you questions that seem rather obvious to you. Now, before we move on though, how do you use this cantrip? Can anyone use it?”
We finished getting dressed as best as we could with all of our ill fitting clothes. After, Bella spent the next twenty minutes describing how to pull at the mana from your body and then described drawing or very clearly visualizing particular geometric shapes in order to execute the cantrip. She taught me a few basic ones, one to clean something small, one to slightly heat something up, another to slightly cool something down, and one to quickly dry something small. She said there were more but promised she would teach me the ones she knew as I needed them.
“What happens with people who can’t visualize the sigils in their mind?”
“Hmm, I’ve never heard of anyone that can’t use at least some of the smaller ones through visualization but I know some people aren’t able to use cantrips at all for some reason. I can’t imagine it would be possible to use magic at all in that case though, I don’t know of any magic that doesn’t have a visual element to it but I’m hardly a scholar. Though the [System] might make some of that automated or instinctive but you can’t really gain a skill if you’re unable to do the basics. Otherwise more people would be mages.”
“How do people create new spells? Is there some pattern to the spell sigils that can be used?”
She smiled sadly. “I’m just a farmer, I wouldn’t know any of that sorry. Maybe we’ll come across a mage that can help you, just be careful not to give away you’re a world traveler.”
I nodded. “I’ll try to ask you if I’m going to ask a dumb question but I can probably just use the cover story of being a nomad traveling in the wilds.”
“Even that might not be the best story really. I remember thinking that your story sounded suspicious when you first started travelling with us. Especially since your clothes look like they are in the style of the capital city and you had relatively local currency. I’d bet Mark just guessed you were a noble who ran away from their family or something.”
“What would be a better cover story then? I need something that will explain away why I know next to nothing about anything around here.”
“Well for things like basic magic I don’t have anything that would explain it away but in terms of why you wouldn’t know any of the politics or customs you could say you traveled from the Queendom of Arala. It’s a Queendom on the other side of the Aralian sea on the Northeastern coast of this kingdom, the Kingdom of Torlimal. Right now we are near the Wilds on the eastern edge of the Dutchy of Morstet ruled by the Duchess Erica Morstet. The Queen of Arala is Melaena Arala, you should probably remember that if it’s going to be your cover story.”
“Are Queendoms and female led Dutchies common on this plane?”
“Well, Queendoms aren’t as quite as common as Kingdoms but noble lands can be held by either sex. Is it different where you’re from?”
I nodded. “Nearly every major civilization has been either patriarchal or at least mostly sex neutral in nature. I think there may have been female kings before and there are kingdoms actually headed by queens but for the most part that’s how it was.”
“Strange, I’m not sure wh- Oh! Actually, most nobles are pretty high level and after around level 10 or so your stats would completely overcome any differences in sex. If there’s no magic in the world then stats wouldn’t level things out.” She had a rather thoughtful look. “It’s so strange to think that even something as basic as stats doesn’t even exist on another plane…”
“I wonder how much more egalitarian that makes this place by comparison.” I smiled wryly as I finished lacing up my boots.
Thanks for the chapter!
Woah, Bella is smart, figuring out the influence of levels like that so quickly.
I'm rather enjoying this story. I only have one issue, and it's an issue that I know will be solved eventually, but for all that is good in the world please assign her stats already.
Wellllll... Lilith has a tendency to sit on them for probably longer than she should...
Thanks for the chapter
Typo:She said there were more but promised she would teach me the ones she knew as they needed them.->as I
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Fixed!
This story might not be for me mainly due to the LitRPG elements. These are my issues, in order of severity. Ill try reading a bit more to see if anything I mentioned becomes true.
P.S. don't take this personal, I just suck at explaining without putting blocks of text.
1. ability stealing: Personally, i find ability stealing to be my least favorite kind of power gain. The power ups are usually sudden, and not fulfilling as the character doesn't usually have to work hard for them. Considering how they can get skills from almost anything by the looks of it, combine with the steal, there can hundreds of skills a person can have. I know it takes karma to use, but it doesn't make sense to me how its cheaper to take the skill than it is to destroy it. Personally, Id prefer some kind of borrowing system, where she can borrow skills from other members of her race. This way it would could have properly scaled along the story, the more she converts, the more powerful she becomes.
2. speed leveling. Its too early in the story to figure out about average levels, but level 20 this quickly? This means 2 things, either there can be thousands of levels, which will get out of control, or the xp requirements ramp up exponentially in order to deal with it (unless there is some form of prestige system or multiclass).
3. Number inflation. Kind of what I stated in speed leveling. If i remember the numbers correctly Lilith spent 80 points into vit to get to 100? if vit is tied to health, does that mean she 5x her health? Keeping the numbers small and simple helps to understand.
4. This is a minor gripe, but I'm putting it here anyways. This story has no action tag, so I did not think fighting would be that prevalent in the story. but considering how the MC got a fighting skill early on, suggests fighting monsters for no reason I can think of, and how there is a dungeon tag as well, makes me think this might not be the case. Im not big on the supernatural, but I don't view the succubus as any kind of combat class.
5. I dont really care if the char are anthro, bi, trans, and what not, but I hope character transitions are done quickly to prevent me from trying to tie he's to she's.
Hey, thanks for reading I'll try to answer some of your questions.
1. The ability steal thing only happens once, because of how the ability works she drifts away from using it later on. At one point I had the ability steal tag but later removed it when I decided she probably wouldn't use the skill very often.
2. Lilith got a big early boost, levels slow down from here and are tied to actions so when more things are happening she levels faster. I never directly address the exp curve but generally the characters take longer to level the higher level they are.
3. Yeah, the numbers are big here but that's how I decided to make it when I started. A lot of time the numbers are kind of arbitrary anyway. I think this is kind of inherent to any LitRpg that uses stats. I do try to show the effects and talk about how the stats feel after the fact but at some point it is just kind of number go up. I made the system pretty open ended on purpose.
4. About the Acton tag, I don't really know the best solution here to be honest. Action does happen and a lot of the skills are combat focused but combat doesn't happen constantly. There are sections focused on combat, such as in dungeons, but the story is more focused on character interactions than anything else. I honestly don't know if adding the action tag would mislead new readers or if not having it misleads them more. I'll ask some of the people on my Patreon what they think about it.
5. I would say they are done quickly when they are done. It happens fairly rarely though.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy it as it goes along.
Typo: Demon’s aren’t real -> Demons
Female lead -> female-lead
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( ꈍᴗꈍ) TFTC
Is she even going to pick a class at some point let alone distribute her stat points?
I wonder if she ever going to distribute her points.
Feels like this is taking forever to go anywhere