Conquest

by Felix von Falkenlust

One by one the diners at the table began to strip off their robes. I turned back toward Anna, but she was already being heaved onto the marble table by a big warrior. My gaze moved over to a woman across the table from me, one of the few merchants at the castle and perhaps an Eight, who sat alone between two pairs of revelers. Our eyes met and we immediately tore off our robes and climbed onto the table to meet each other halfway.

  Within minutes, what had been a festive dinner became an orgy to rival the scenes carved onto the great hall’s frieze. Bodies writhed and weaved like a tapestry of human skin. Moans echoed through the dining hall. Muscles flexed and breasts bounced and the musicians played their enchanting melodies as the merrymakers provided a passion-filled chorus.

  As I moved into the merchant, a warrior, perhaps a Seven, turned my face to hers so that she could kiss my lips. The next thing I knew I was kissing much lower, eliciting cries of delight that rose above the noise around us. I let loose inside the merchant and then, my desire still alive, plunged into the willing warrior. I pressed against her body in a savage frenzy along to the equally savage and frenzied beat of the drums, but before I was done another warrior yanked her away. No sooner was she gone than an archer took her place, her body slender and her muscles tight, the primal rhythm of the drums growing louder and faster as I pounded harder into the archer with a crazed lust, all my senses on fire, bodies twisted in passion all around me, the flutes and strings a blur of tones merging with the moans, and as the strange music reached a loud climax, so did I.

  The music having ended, and the echo of the last moan fading away, the hall was filled with the heavy breaths of a hundred or more bacchanalians, strewn naked over the table and benches and floor like a hurricane had blown through a nudist camp. The sound was like a great machine with a hundred steam-hissing pistons, every last diner sated by more than mere food.

  * * *

  The party over, Anna and I headed to the bath, where we shared the steaming water with a dozen other guests from the dinner-slash-orgy.

  I let the hot water caress my muscles as I checked my palm.

  Experience: 13850

  Attraction: 22800

  Stamina: 123

  Health: 290

  Gold: 2461

  Magic: 254

  I grinned as it dawned on me I need not continue with my level-eight Body. As awesome as it was, I had the EP and AP to make it even better.

  I put 12,800 EP on Strength first, and my muscles swelled with added girth. Leveling up Strength always added quite a bit of fat to my body—or Karl’s body, I should say. It was like a bodybuilder in the bulking phase, and now it was time to switch to cutting: I put 12,800 AP on Body. As the fat shrank around my newly enlarged muscles, defining them in tightly chiseled chunks, Anna’s amber eyes stayed locked on my transforming torso.

  I looked down to see my chest swell out from under the water. I subtly flexed a bicep the size of a softball.

  I was huge.

  All my short life I had dreamed of a body like this, and now I was living inside it, even though I was no longer living. I felt powerful. I felt attractive. I felt confident.

  I rose up out of the bath, the water gleaming on my new body, further defining the bumps of my six-pack. I gazed down at Anna.

  “Come you, archer woman. I have waited far too long for that body, and I want it now.”

  * * *

  Anna followed me up the white spiral of stairs, both of us draped in our gossamer white robes. My heart beat with more than just the exertion of scaling the steps.

  I led her down the white hall and I flung open the door to the white room and the second the door shut behind us I took hold of Anna’s robe at the collar and ripped it right down the middle.

  She gave a shiver of excitement and a hint of a smile, and I stared at her gorgeous golden-brown body. Her skin looked rich against the backdrop of white marble. Her body baited me with maddening curves.

  I threw aside my own robe and pulled her in. I pressed her tight against me as I kissed her with a savageness that matched my wild long hair and ruggedly handsome new face. I felt her big soft breasts against my big hard chest as I crushed her against me with anaconda arms. Then I lifted her off the marble floor and tossed her on the bed.

  I jumped in after her like I was jumping into battle, my mouth and hands and fingers and tongue manipulating her body with a frenzied artistry. That wuss Ace Singleton was a million miles away now, truly dead, replaced by the barbaric portrait of masculinity known as Karl, ninth-level warrior.

  I tasted every inch of the archer’s sexy brown body on the way to her tender pink center, and then I spent the next half-hour or longer racking up EP at such prodigious rates you would’ve thought I had learned the Spell of Neverending Bliss, an impression furthered by her wild moans of pleasure.

  At last I slid my Level Eight into the woman I had lusted after for so long. The pleasure of her body was heightened by the thrill of triumph, the glory of a successful conquest. I looked at her stunning face, and her amber eyes returned my gaze as long as they could before closing in submission to sensual delights.

  I changed positions again and again, wishing to see Anna’s curves from every angle. Her long pale blond curls whipped around wildly as I attacked her, my lengthy girth pummelling her in a skin-soft assault. I was big, bigger than I could ever have imagined, but I wanted to be even bigger for Anna.

  As I thrust into her I stole a glance at my left hand and saw I’d already earned the AP from the act in which I was now engaged. I did a quick calculation, never checking the motion of my hips, and smiled: I had enough to level up. Now.

  I did a quick swipe of EP to Attack and Weapon, and then put the AP on Size.

  I grew inside Anna, grew so abruptly and so much that she cried out in shocked pleasure-pain, my girth suddenly stretching her, causing her to call out unknown words with the voice and accent I loved so much. I felt the tightness as my flesh pushed out into hers, and then a new tightness as she squeezed down on my newly formed Nine with a wail of joy and a shaking of body, and I soon followed her into paradise and filled her with the fruit of my passion.

  I lay there on top of her for a long time, her body trembling and twitching under me. I looked at her face, grown even more beautiful with the flush of lovemaking. Tiny beads of sweat glistened above her blond brows.

  “You have conquered me, warrior, and of this I am glad.” Her lips were formed in a faint, but unquestionable smile.

  “This is the best day of my life,” I breathed out with a happy sigh, but quickly amended, “Afterlife.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  THE events of the day were so climactic, in every sense of the word, that I needed a little break, a dose of what passed for reality in this artificial existence. Anna agreed to wait for me at the castle while I spent a little time in Verterria.

  I called my mother, of course, and read a little Cybertronic Catgirl Killer while enjoying a bowl of better-than-Mom’s mac and cheese. I wondered if someone could make a CCK game for Digital Afterworld; I thought how fun it would be to become Mabel, taking out bounties with that big revolver or the short samurai sword she carried. I should point out, in case there’s any confusion, that Mabel was a cybertronic catgirl who killed people, not a cyborg who killed catgirls, though I’m sure Densha Mikimoto could have made that just as interesting.

  Then I thought, what if they made a game like Conquest, where instead of being Mabel I could—what? Look, just because she’s a cartoon catgirl doesn’t mean—okay, fine, never mind.

  Anyway, I finished the book, and thought it was time to get the next one and see if Anaksa was working, so I walked downtown to Comic Fucking Heaven.

  But she wasn’t there. Some dork was behind the counter, and the extent of my disappointment surprised me. I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised, though: with all my old friends literally in another world, the real one, the one where you have to go to school or go to work or take out the garbage or mow the law
n and all that other crap, Anaksa felt like my only real friend.

  The guy behind the counter wore a Mister Super shirt. I hated that comic, not to mention the dozens of crappy movies that had been made. I handed the guy the Catgirl Killer book and he gave it a little frown as he looked at it. Douchebag.

  Just as I headed to the door with the book, I heard, “Ace!” and turned to see Anaksa coming out from the back room.

  “Hey, you’re here!”

  “I just punched out. Want to stop by Osaka with me for a bite to eat?”

  Stop by Osaka. I had wanted to go to Japan for so long, and now I could just “stop by.”

  “Yeah, I’m up for that.” As we left the store I looked back and said, “I was so bummed when I saw that guy behind the counter instead of you.”

  “Yeah, that’s Fork. Total douchebag.”

  In five minutes we were at the train station. As a train slowed to a halt in front of us, I realized I had not once been on a train in real life. We boarded, and I looked around the compartment in wonder. A middle-aged Japanese man was reading a newspaper. A cute young Japanese woman fired off an eye-tracking text. A guy had the original-language version of Catgirl Killer.

  In ten minutes we reached Osaka, or at least the DA approximation of Osaka. Anaksa led the way to a little place with a sign I couldn’t read, and in a few minutes cabbage-stuffed pancakelike things sizzled in front of us on the griddle built into our table.

  “You can speak Japanese?”

  “Only a little.”

  “It was enough to order this, so it’s a lot more than me. So this is okonomiyaki. . . .” I took a bite. “Mm! It’s good.”

  “You sure you don’t want to try the one with squid?”

  “I am not eating squid.”

  “Where’s your sense of adventure,” she teased.

  I thought about the adventures I had playing Conquest and thought, If only you knew . . . Out loud, I said, “This is already a new experience. Speaking of experience, I feel like I’ve already gained more life experience after dying than I ever did while alive.”

  “It’s kinda weird, isn’t it? But we died young.”

  “Still, even if we had lived full lives . . . Like, when I died a ticket to Japan would’ve set me back about eight thousand dollars, and taken six hours to get there even with the hypersonic jets.”

  “Imagine fourteen hours on an older plane. My brother back home said tickets are over twelve thousand now.”

  “Damn. But here, we just walk around the block and hop on a train and here we are.”

  “It’s crazy, isn’t it? The only downside is that everyone can do it, so there’s a lot more gaijin than in the real-world Japan.”

  “So when did you learn Japanese?”

  “I’m really not good at all. I started learning a little in real life, then more here.”

  “I wish I could speak some.”

  “You know, if you want to speak it without learning, there’s a game called Sengoku Warriors where your words are instantly translated.”

  “Sweet!”

  “But it’s kind of an adult game, so I don’t know if you’d be interested in that. I believe the genre is ‘harem.’”

  “Oh, uh, yeah, I . . .” I didn’t know what to say, but my empty teacup saved me. “Oh, I’m out of tea, can you . . .”

  Anaksa smiled and called to the waitress, “Sumimasen. Ocha kudasai.”

  When we finished eating, we took the train back to town and stopped near the tunnel toward The Arcade. Anaksa said, “Well, I’m gonna go play some games. Hope to see you soon.”

  She gave me a hug, the big chest under her shirt pressing against me. It reminded me a little of the last time a pair of big breasts had pressed against me, when my body was massive with muscle. But it made me strangely happy, and I wondered what she thought of me, which was weird because she could hardly compete with the goddesses in the game.

  I started to walk in the direction of downtown, then I circled back and went straight toward Conquest.

  * * *

  The troll swung his club at my head, but I ducked and then swept my big mace up and smashed in his ugly jaw. The blow would’ve been enough to send even the strongest human into oblivion, but this was a troll we’re talking about, so it just stumbled back and came at me again.

  I sidestepped the club and slammed my weapon down onto my opponent’s skull and the thing fell to the marble floor to a roar from the gathered crowd. Even a troll can’t survive a cracked skull.

  A sack of gold fell from the sky and my palm showed an extra 12,800 EP. A level-nine opponent should have scored me 25,600 points, but in the castle arena there was no risk of death. Instead I had risked sixty-four hundred EP and a thousand pieces of gold.

  As I walked from the marble ring I started to go for a headbutt with Anna, but then realized she wouldn’t acknowledge anything from the real world. To avoid looking stupid I acted like I had a kink in my neck.

  Anna had won the archery tournament earlier in the day, and we were pretty much the man and woman of the hour at the castle. This impression was confirmed when an elf girl approached us and said, “Warrior. Archer. Ye have received royal summons from Her Highness the Queen. I beg you, follow my humble personage.”

  Anna and I exchanged a glance and we followed the elf to the great hall, where we kneeled in front of the throne.

  The marble queen sat on her marble throne in her marble hall. She raised a marble scepter in her stony white hand.

  “Karl, warrior. Thou hast defeated all comers. Anna, archer. Thy aim hath no equal in the castle. Ye have both earned much glory on this day. In honor of your heroic achievements, I present to you a quest.”

  Anna and I turned our bowed heads to each other for the briefest of seconds. The queen went on, “I give to you a map, which shall guide you to the Black Castle. Slay you the evil creature that lurks those unholy halls, and ye shall be given the reward of forty thousand pieces of gold!”

  My eyebrows shot toward my hairline, and when I met Anna’s eyes again I saw her blond brow too was raised. Did the queen just say forty thousand?

  “Ye shall not keep all to yourselves, however. Ye must take two others, of your choosing. I urge you to consider not less than one Wizard or Enchantress. Much magic be needed in that forlorn place. Rise.”

  We rose, and the queen urged us forward and then placed a parchment in my hand. I couldn’t help but notice it was sealed with white wax.

  “Takest thee this map, great warrior. Go then and find yourselves two companions, worthy of such a challenge. Ye shall leave at dawn.”

  * * *

  We discussed at length our choices, which was a pain in the ass what with Anna refusing to speak like a normal human. Archers had the advantage of range, but were allowed little armor and therefore more prone to damage. Plus Anna was easily the best archer in the castle at the moment, whereas a level-ten warrior had arrived at the castle that morning.

  We sought out the warrior, and when we found him I freaked out for a second because I thought it was Uncle Cylock. But it turned out the guy had just selected the same build and face as my uncle. He wielded a huge halberd, and I said to Anna, “That would be good for range, too.”

  “Aye, it is so. Let us approach him.” We went to him and Anna said, “Warrior of the tenth level. We ask you to join us in our quest to the black castle.”

  He set down a huge tankard of ale. “You dudes got the quest? What’re you guys, like Nines?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, somewhat stunned by his accent, that of a surfer from old movies.

  “Gnarly, bro. You dudes must be some sick gamers. Hell yeah, I’m amped!”

  Anna stared at him without blinking. I turned to her and said, “He’ll join us.”

  She gave a little nod and said, “We welcome you, warrior.”

  “What’s your name,” I asked.

  “Shawn, bro. Level Ten.” He gave me what I believe is referred to as a “hang loose” gesture
with his thumb and pinky.

  “Karl. This is Anna.”

  “Anna the archer,” intoned Shawn with a nod of approval. He stood up and slapped the table with his big hand. “Let’s do this! I’m totally stoked!”

  Anna looked at me with uncertainty. I think her confusion was real this time.

  I explained to Shawn, “We need to find one more for our little party. The Queen says we should choose a wizard.”

  The three of us went over the matter, no easy feat given Shawn’s beach-bum slang and Anna’s stoic this-is-not-a-game speech. I thought about the Sorceress I hooked up with in the bath, but she was only a Level Eight. We left the white room to go down a white hall, and went from one white room to another in search of a suitable wizard.

  It didn’t help that here everyone wore the same exact white robes, so it was difficult to guess a player’s class, apart from male wizards’ beards. Even then, we didn’t have the robe color to guide us, to tell us whether a wizard was a Wizard or just a Sorcerer or Conjurer. Again and again, we found ourselves inquiring into the status of white-robed guests, only to find ourselves talking to a seventh-level Conjuress or sometimes an archer.

  I said, half to myself, “Why is it ‘Sorceress’ sounds okay to me, but ‘Conjuress’ sounds so sexist?”

  “You’re overthinking it, brah. You just gotta chill and go with the flow. We’re here to get laid and get paid, not to be all politically correct.”

  “Right. . . . Well, what we really need to do is find someone before it gets too late. We’re supposed to leave at dawn, and we still don’t have any magic-users yet.”

  “It’s all good. We’ll find someone. This pad is filled to the max with wizards, witches, voodoo gurus, stage magicians—”

  I cut him off before he got any more ridiculous. “The thing is, we need at least a Level Nine, preferably a Ten.”