“Yep. If you don’t mind? I would appreciate it.” I noticed that the game had updated her name under her life bar. I didn’t think I would ever get tired of that feature.
“I don’t mind at all. Did you eat dinner yet?” she asked as she pulled a long bunch of hair back around her pointed ear.
“I’m fine, but if you want to eat, then I can wait.”
“I snack while I work. The girls were just saying that you hadn’t eaten yet. Seems that a man as big, as strong, as muscular, and as handsome as you should be eating a lot of food.” She kind of panted the words, and she bit her lip when she had finished talking.
“Uhhhh.” I glanced over my shoulder at Tunni, but the woman was still sitting on the other side of the kitchen, and she didn’t seem to notice us. “I’m okay. That’s fine.”
“Oh. Maybe there is something else you want to eat besides food?” the elf girl asked as her eyes opened wide.
“I’m okay, really.” I chuckled and crossed my arms. I didn’t know if Allurie had meant the sexual innuendo, but I could already tell that this castle kitchen would become a hotspot for male players that wanted to get their elf girl fantasies going. Had Zarra made her AI study some of the Japanese video game female troupes? I hadn’t played a lot of those styles of games or seen many of their cartoons, but this fit perfectly with the theme.
“Maybe you’ll get hungry when we are alone in the castle? Let’s get going!” the slender girl grabbed my hand and pulled on my arm. She kind of gasped as soon as she tugged, and then she glanced back at me with her pretty mouth open. “Wow! You are really strong!”
I gave her a slight smile and then followed her out through the double doors of the kitchen. The hallways of the castle were as big as I expected, but while Tunni’s giant food workshop had been lit with a bunch of oil chandeliers and lanterns, the walls here held glowing torches.
But the brands didn’t burn.
“This is weird. What is it?” I asked as I reached the first torch. It looked like a piece of wood with glowing charcoal on the top half, but no smoke came out of it, and I couldn’t feel any heat on my face.
“Emberbrand? You’ve never seen one?” Allurie asked.
“No. Ahhh, I grew up on a farm,” I explained.
“They are imbued with Light magic,” she shrugged her shoulders, and I noticed that the top two buttons of her uniform blouse were unbuttoned.
“Do they have to be maintained or something? How are they enchanted?”
“Oh, some mages are really good at applying heat to rods.” The elf woman stroked my bicep, and I raised my eyebrow at her. What was the sexual rating on this game? This girl was definitely pushing on the PG-13 label.
“Uhhh, can you show me the castle?” I asked as I pulled my arm away from her hands. I’d heard rumors about guys getting really into the female NPCs of Astafar Unlimited, and I could actually see that becoming a problem in Ohlavar Quest. Allurie was very pretty, and had the stereotypical exotic elven ears and turquoise almond eyes.
“Yes! Silly me. What do you want to see first? Some of the empty guest bedrooms have really big beds, or there is a hot spring at the southwest corner of the bottom cellar. It’s a bathhouse now, and all sorts of fun stuff happens down there after dinner.”
“How about the dungeon?” I asked.
“Oh, by the Shadow. The dungeon?” she giggled. “My, you want to play with me that way, huh?”
“Uh, no. I… uh. Allurie, don’t take this the wrong way but, are you hitting on me?”
“What do you mean?” she asked as she tilted her head sideways.
“Nothing, I guess. It just seems like you are coming on to me. Sorry, I must be imagining it.”
“Coming onto you? I don’t know what that means,” she smiled a bit. “Can you explain it? I want you to teach me all about it.”
“See, like that. The way you said that sentence. You emphasized ‘teach.' It just seems kind of odd.”
“Hmmmm,” she purred and licked her lips. “What is odd about it?”
“Can you show me the dungeon?” I said as I shook my head. Maybe the AI was starting to go a bit crazy? I’d have to talk to Zarra about this. I was sure a bunch of guys would pay extra for their own harem of elf girls fawning over them, but this kind of stuff would alienate all of the female players.
“Yes. It is actually down in the cellar on the other side of the hot springs. Can I show you the bath house on the way?”
“Let’s just look at the dungeon first,” I said with a sigh. I hadn’t seen it during the conversation, but she had unbuttoned more of her blouse.
“I think that is actually a better idea. We can get all dirty, and then we can clean up,” she giggled and beckoned with a fingertip for me to follow her.
We walked together through the magically lit halls, and the silver-haired elf woman asked me all sorts of questions about my farming work, what Arnicoal was like, and how I liked their small city of Cutno. Every time I gave a reply, Allurie made some sort of double-sided comment that could be taken as sexual. It was actually starting to get pretty funny, and I wondered how the AI had come up with this character personality.
“You know, you don’t have to try so hard,” I said as we reached a set of stairs.
“What do you mean?” she asked, and her pretty face actually looked concerned.
“With all the innuendo. You are pretty enough. If you want to get a man you just have to be real.”
“Real? What does that mean?”
“Just be yourself,” I shrugged. “You don’t have to drop so many hints. Just let a relationship happen naturally.”
“That isn’t what my friends told me,” she pouted a bit as we walked down the stairs.
“What did they tell you?” I almost regretted asking, but I did anyway.
“If you like a man, you can’t tell him you like him. Instead, you have to be coy about it, but not too coy, because men are pretty dense. Especially men with a lot of muscles.”
“Okay, they have given you a lot of bad advice. Just because a guy has muscles, it doesn’t mean he is stupid,” I groaned.
“But Leo, I’ve been dropping all these hints, and you still haven’t taken me yet. So, aren’t they right about you?” She turned her head as she walked down the stairs and fluttered her silver eyelashes at me.
“Oh, for the love of--” I stopped mid-sentence as we came upon two guards at the bottom of the stairs. Each of them wore polished leather armor and had short swords on their hips.
“What are you doing down here, elf?” one of the men asked.
“I was showing Leo the dungeon,” the girl said before I could stop her.
The two guards looked up me, then at Allurie, and then back at me.
I almost had to laugh at the way the AI displayed the two men’s faces when they puzzled through the link between my name “Leo” and the word “dungeon.” It was three whole seconds of puzzlement, confusion, realization of who I was, and then finally anger as they reached for their short swords.
Their green health bars turned red.
I was a few feet above them on the stairs, and I jumped passed Allurie with my foot outstretched. I hit the guard on the left in the stomach, and the man staggered backward as if a horse had kicked him. As he smacked into the wall, I turned to the man on the right, and reached for his sword hand with my left. My fingers closed around his wrist, and I slammed the palm of my right hand into his nose.
There was the snap of cartilage breaking, and the man let out a surprised gasp as his head tilted back. He might have flown across the room like the other guard, but I held onto his hand, and I just pulled him back toward me with another palm strike to his face. I worried that I might break the man’s skull like I had accidentally done with Kimmel’s guard, so I pulled the power of my strike a bunch. It actually felt like I was barely tapping the man, but his eyes rolled back into his head, and I knew he was unconscious.
I spun back to the man that I had kicked a sec
ond before. His sword was halfway out of its sheath, so I stepped toward him with a front kick. My toe hit him right on his hip below the sword sheath, and his body spun sideways with the impact.
The twist of his hips turned his chest to face the stairwell, and the step of my kick had covered the distance between us. I swung my left arm over his throat, and then shuffled my left hip against his back. This was one of the first judo style throws I had learned, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to pull it off if the man had been less worried about his sword and more worried about being off balance.
He spun over backward, and his helmeted head collided with the stone floor. I kind of cringed when I heard a snapping sound, and I noticed that the guard’s life bar had disappeared.
Shit.
I hadn’t meant to kill either of them, but it felt like I was fighting porcelain soldiers. Was I really that strong? It didn’t seem like my strength rating on my stats screen was that crazy high. I really need to talk it through with Zarra when I logged out. I could understand what she had said before about making me start at the same strength I was in real life, but these were supposed to be trained soldiers.
“Woo!” Allurie tried to scream, but I closed my hand over her mouth and pulled her the rest of the way down the stairs. Her bright turquoise eyes were wide, and I sighed with frustration. Damn it. There went the idea of me doing this with a planned strategy. I was going to have to bust Artus out now, and then try to figure out a way to escape the castle without getting us killed.
Talk about a crazy escort quest.
“Where are the dungeons?” I asked the elf girl in my arms. “Point to them.”
She raised a trembling hand and gestured to the left of the stairs. I glanced that way, but the corridor extended down about eighty feet and I saw it hit a T intersection. Double damn it. I needed to get rid of these bodies. Then I also needed to figure out what to do about Allurie. If I let her go, she might tell the guards, which would make escaping with Artus next to impossible. But if I took the elf girl with me, she might hamper my escape plans. Even worse, she might get caught up in my escape. The pretty elf woman could get killed by a guard, or she might get executed for helping me.
Ugh. These were just NPCs. I needed to get a hold of my emotions.
“I’m going to let go of your mouth. I don’t want to hurt you. I really like you. Do you promise not to scream?” I asked her. This was probably a bad idea, but I needed to get my ass in gear if I wanted to save my friend.
The silver-haired woman nodded with wide eyes, and I pulled my hand away from her mouth.
“You like me?” Allurie asked with a big smile.
“What is wrong with you? I just beat one guard unconscious and killed another one.”
“Yes, but you also said you liked me. I really like you too. Can we mate now?”
“I, like-- Fucking don’t understand you.”
“Fucking?” Her smile got larger.
“I need to get to the dungeon and save my friend. Can you go back to the kitchen and not tell anyone I’m down here?” I sighed and shook my head.
“But--I’d really miss you.” Her face was suddenly sad.
“It is dangerous. Okay? I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Maybe I want you to hurt me. There is a specific spot that I really want you to poun--”
“Stop! Holy shit, are all elves like this?” I moved to the guard that I had knocked unconscious. At least, I thought he was unconscious. His life bar was still displayed over his body, but there wasn’t any red color inside of the bar. The other guard didn’t have any sort of bar over his head, and I guessed the neck cracking sound meant he was super dead.
“What do you mean?”
“You have a one track mind. I need to hide these bodies,” I said as I picked up the guard. The man hardly seemed to weigh anything.
“Oh. Okay. I will help you. Then we can find a spot in the dungeon for mating.”
“No, just…” I started to say, but the pretty elf girl had already picked up the dead guard in a fireman’s carry. The man looked like he was a good forty pounds heavier than her, and he wore thick leather armor, but Allurie didn’t seem to have a problem lifting him onto her shoulders.
“This way!” she whispered as she walked away from me.
I followed the silver-haired girl down the corridor to the T intersection. She made a right at the end and stopped before the first door I’d seen since we hit the lower level of the castle.
“You can keep the bodies in here,” she said with a happy smile.
“Thanks,” I said as I twisted the knob.
It looked like it was a storage room. There were bags of salt, ropes, open crates filled with soap, and a bunch of towels. I set the unconscious guard down, and then went to work on taking his sword belt off.
“Can you pull off his belt? Maybe search his pockets for keys?” I asked the elf woman as I rummaged through the guard’s pockets. He had a small coin purse, and I put it in my starter pants pocket without looking inside. There was a flash of light in the top right corner of my visual when I put the purse away, and I kind of wanted to open my inventory window to see how much money it was.
“Here is his sword belt, Leo,” Allurie said as she dangled the length of leather in front of me.
“Thanks. Did you find any-- Why are his clothes off?” The elf woman had somehow removed all of the dead guard's armor, clothes, and even his boots in the time it had taken to search the pockets of my own soldier. His garments were neatly folded and stacked on the ground next to his nude body, and she had set his boots on top of the clothes.
And I meant nude. I could see all the details of the man’s penis and pubic hair. I hadn’t seen any nudity visual settings in the menu earlier. It was something I’d have to tell Zarra about. No one needed to see naked man parts in a video game.
“Oh. Just in case.” She smiled at me.
“Uhhh. In case of what?”
“Well, some people like to have toys, or props, or stuff when they mate. I’m not sure what you prefer, so I thought I should get him ready in case you wanted to use him.”
I didn’t know what was creepier: that she had thought it would be okay to have a dead man participate, or that she said the words with a happy-cute smile on her elven face.
“No, Allurie, that is just like-- Fucking no. Okay?” I grabbed the sword belt from her hand, and I wrapped it around my waist.
“You said fucking again. Can we? Now?” She bit her lip as she asked.
“No! I have to save my friend.”
“Oh, that’s right. After that, we can mate. Let’s go to the dungeon!” She swung open the door and then jumped into the hallway.
“Shhh!” I whispered to her as I grabbed the other sword belt from the ground.
Allurie had already made it twenty feet down the hallway, and I caught up to her as soon as I finished putting on the second sword belt. I kind of wanted to pull out the weapons and examine their stats, but I was on borrowed time now. Eventually, that other guard was going to wake up, or people would notice that the pair was missing. Then the castle would get put on alert, and escape would be impossible.
“The dungeon is around this next corner.” She was humming and kind of skipping as she walked.
“Will there be guards at the door?” I reached down to my newly acquired short swords and got used to the angle at which I could draw them. I didn’t know if I’d be able to use both weapons at once without a special ability, but the game so far had seemed to let me use my natural fighting talents. The two weapons were about the size of escrima sticks, and I felt confident in my abilities to take out a guard or two with the weapons.
“Hmmm, I’m not sure. I guess they keep naughty people there? The ones that need to be punished? No one has ever taken me. I’m so glad we are going.” She giggled a bit when she spoke, and shot me a smoldering glance.
“Ugh,” I sighed.
“Something wrong, Leo? I want to make you happy.
” She fluttered her silver eyelashes at me.
“I asked earlier if all elves are like you,” I whispered since the hallway looked like it dead ended into a massive wooden door, and I didn’t want any guards on the other side to hear us.
“Oh yes. We really like to make people happy. I love cooking in the kitchen, and cleaning dishes. Some elves like doing gardening, or housecleaning jobs. It is so much fun to work!”
“So you are all slaves?” I brought the volume of my voice down a bit lower to see if she would get the hint about trying to be quiet. I probably shouldn’t have even been talking to her.
“Oh no! We get food and rooms in exchange for our work, and sometimes we get to mate. Although, I haven’t yet. I’m really looking forward to you being my first.” She gave me a smile of adoration that I ignored.
“But, can you leave the castle?”
“Why would I leave the castle?” she tilted her head with obvious confusion.
“So you could be your own person. See the world? Go on adventures? Maybe you could get a job at a restaurant where they would pay you to cook.”
“Oh Leo, you are so funny! That is why I love you. Ha!” She started to giggle. “Could you imagine me outside of the castle? Who would tell me what to do? I’d be really bored. Also, I don’t need money. I just want to make people happy. Happiness and pleasure are life!” she shouted, and I shushed her with a wave of my hand.
The door to the dungeon was thirty feet from us, and I convinced Allurie to creep there on tippy toe like I did. The silver-haired girl seemed to get a kick out of the exercise, and she stuck out her tongue to concentrate on her movements.
I grasped on the dungeon door handle and pressed down on the latch lever. I had actually expected it to be locked, but the workings spun inside of the door, and I was able to push on the metal. The door opened with a soft groan, and I peeked my head inside. There were more of the ember brands on the walls inside, but they were placed a bit farther apart than the hallways that the elf girl and I had just walked through.
“Be really quiet,” I whispered to Allurie.
“But what if I have to moan? My friends say mating feels really good.”
Lion's Quest: Undefeated: A LitRPG Saga Page 23