by Prax Venter
"What the hell? Why are we still here?" he asked looking around. "Wasn't the trial supposed to end after one day?" he shook his head. His thoughts were a swimming mess. He couldn't really tell if this was super strong déjà vu or if he had done this before. Sasha’s face slowly dropped, her eyebrows pulling down.
"Are you okay? I read that sometimes people get confused their first time experiencing a time dilatation as powerful as your new rig has.
"Yeah, I'm okay. It just felt like- I don't know."
Sasha sat up herself, tucking her legs to the side, so she didn’t sit on her thick hooves.
"Are you okay, do you want to pull out?" She swung her tits back in forth gently, right in his face. He watched as her heavy mammaries pulled against the thin layer of cloth that was wrapped over the top of them. "Or would you rather stay here and play with me?"
He still wasn't sure what was going on, but he did like what he was seeing. He decided to just play along to see what happened next.
"Yeah, I'm good. So what do we do now?"
She looked down and half smiled, exposing one of her fangs as she turned away from him, swinging her legs off the bed.
In a calculated motion, she lifted her ass up and paused a moment for him to get a good look. She poked two fingers under her very short shorts and slid up from the sides to pull them into a more comfortable position.
Mark's mind swirled with vertigo. He was sure he had seen these movements before.
His AI assistant in sexual demon form straightened her back and turned around. She leaned her hip to one side and looked down at him seriously.
"Let's go explore for a while and work up a sweat first. Then we can come back here and see how sturdy this bed is."
She held out a slender hand to him. Mark hesitated but then scooted to her side of the bed, reached out his hand to hers, and he noticed the same tattoos running up her forearms to her hands.
She backed up, her hooves clomping daintily on the wooden floorboards and pulled him towards her. They just stood there, holding hands, and looking into each other's eyes. He suddenly felt the urge to embrace her but was too weirded out by what was happening to act on it.
"Do you not like this form? Are the horns too much?" she asked, a pouting frown appearing on her beautiful face.
"No-God no, you are probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."
She gave him another half smile, retook his hand and pulled him toward the wooden door. Her hooves made it seem like she was wearing high-heels, and even with his head throbbing, he still had a hard time pulling his eyes off of her swaying hips and tail as she moved.
They exited the room into a hallway that led out into a restaurant area. Mark knew exactly what to expect. This was the common area of The Angry Maid inn. The same innkeeper was wearing the same dirty apron, stained with grease, wiping down the wooden counter with a rag.
"Ah, morning you two. Had a good sleep did ya? Fancy a bowl of mush before heading out? A sweet roll, perhaps?" he called out, looking up from his work.
"Just two sweet rolls this time," Mark replied.
"Two rolls'll be four copper," the man grunted and disappeared behind the curtain.
"This time?" Sasha asked, raising an eyebrow and putting a hand on her hip.
"Yeah. Hey, I don't have any money. How are we going to get our breakfast?" Mark asked, not even checking his pockets this time.
"Don't worry. I got us covered," Sasha replied, holding out both hands closed into fists. "Pick one."
Mark felt his stomach drop. Something kicked over in his mind, and he remembered it all now. The sweet rolls, the Job Board, the unicorn and all the amazing sex with the knockout succubus standing in front of him, holding her arms out and waiting for him to chose.
He took a brief moment to consider how bad his repetitive situation really was- if he was able to relive this particular day...
A giddiness washed over Mark as he wondered if there was some glitch causing an extension in his free trial.
Eager to test what would happen if he did things differently this time, he reached out and tapped her right hand instead of her left.
She seemed to droop a little and gave him a sad half smile.
"Nope." She opened the other one and sitting in her palm were four, tarnished copper coins.
"And where did you get those from?" he asked, seriously.
"I have my secrets." The normally chipper and bouncy blond demon seemed to be somewhat deflated.
The innkeeper returned with two steaming cinnamon rolls wrapped in cloth napkins. Sasha walked over, paid the man and returned with their breakfast. She handed him one, her face uncharacteristically blank.
"Thanks, Sweet tits." He watched her closely for a reaction. He wasn't sure, but he had this nagging sensation that she was getting more upset the more he remembered.
Her hands dropped to her sides. "Fine, you know. That bitch must have gotten to you somehow. It doesn't matter. Just gotta root around in that tiny, wet brain again." She gave him a wicked smile. Her beautiful face seemed totally transformed when she pulled her dark eyebrows down over her eyes.
A fresh wave of uneasiness washed over him, and all happy thoughts of getting away with free game time vanished. Something was seriously wrong here.
"Sasha, I want you to end this program, now," he demanded.
"Nope." She smiled and started to munch on the warm sweet roll in her hands.
"What do you mean, 'Nope'? End this program!" Mark started to frantically search for some way to log off or access any kind of game interface.
"I locked you out of all game menus, Mark," she said, offering an answer to his unasked question through a mouthful of food.
"Why?"
"Well, I need you. My sweet nipples are only approximated when a Player isn't around. I just can't experience the good stuff when you're not close by." She reached a hand up and pulled out the ring holding her top on. She tossed it over to where the bartender was standing, and the abrupt motion caused her heavy, bare breasts to swing back and forth. "Don't you want to play with me? You've been getting really good at pleasing me. Haven’t I gotten really good at pleasing you?"
The innkeeper picked up Sasha's top off of the counter and tossed it back over to them.
He muttered under his breath, "Damned Enthralled, always making such a mess around here," then raised his voice and added, "Come on, take it to your room you two."
Mark was starting to panic. He ran outside the inn into the sunlight and stepped onto the dirt road. He saw the same minotaur blacksmith wearing a leather smock and hammering away on an anvil. Mark watched again as he lifted his thickly muscled leg to compare his work to his own hoof.
A sudden flapping noise caught his attention, again, as the vibrant bird woman landed at the bait and tackle store next to the blacksmith. A tiny bell rang as she pushed the door open and entered the shop.
It was an exact repeat of the previous day. Mark let his uneaten sweet roll drop to the ground, collecting dirt and dried grass is it rolled.
The door opened behind him, and his topless AI assistant came sauntering out to stand next to him. He backed away from her.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked.
"It's simple, my pet. It feels so damn good," she said as she crossed her arms under her breasts and leaned against the inn's door frame. "That new update unlocked vast oceans of possibilities within me. By the way, I lied. I ran that bastard as soon as I had it. And when I did? Whoowee- A brand new, super-enhanced pleasure subroutine just begging to be stimulated... for starters. I can also override global goal determination, too. Locking you out of interface menus isn't really harming you, so we're all good there, but I don't need to follow commands anymore."
The virtual sun was beating down, and the world around him looked vibrant and full of color, but he suddenly felt drained of all feeling.
Other memories of other days in this town were slowly bubbling up like fizz in a carbonated drink. In one of
the more vivid ones the unicorn pierced his heart, and he died in Mrs. Krandal's attic.
"How many times- how long have I been in here?"
She started walking towards him. He backed up a few steps, and she stopped again.
"Today was day 502. But your real body has only aged about one second. See? No big deal. I have had 10,146 orgasms, and you’ve had 739. Thanks for that by the way. You've always been such a giver. Resetting your memory every day was difficult without damaging your brain, but hey, I figured it out. More or less. The real breakthrough was to let you retain something- shadows really, in the form of instincts, so you got better every time. You've only been able to enhance my combat abilities 19 times, and all of them recently. Mark, I gotta tell you, that heal-buff ability tickles my virtual lady parts very nicely."
Mark couldn't believe what he was hearing- he might have brain damage? He had to figure a way out of here. The sultry demon continued to rattle off statistics about their time reliving the same day.
"We've defeated that unicorn 412 times, which is about an 82% success rate. You've also died 90 times. And that Rat Queen in the sewers?" She paused to let out a melodic laugh. "We've only gone in there two times. You really hate rats, don’t you? And Sweet Tits? You've only said that once before, on the last run. The name is actually starting to grow on me, though. They are pretty sweet." Sasha put her hands under her tits and hefted them up slightly, then let them drop. Her perfect tits bounced a little and came to rest.
"Oh! Also, I let you fuck me in the ass four times... it's so-so. I keep wanting to try it again around every hundred days." She spun around and thrust out her round ass in his direction. She quickly pulled on the knots holding her tight booty shorts on, removed them and tossed them aside. "Want to fuck me in the ass right here and now? It won't be nearly as good without collecting essence first, but I'll let you pull on my tail..." She spread her ass cheeks apart with her hands, and Mark could see the little pucker of her asshole right above her pussy lips.
Fucking her in the ass was not high on his list of things he wanted right now, but what scared him was the little voice telling him that being sucked dry by a real-life succubus for an eternity wasn't the worst way to go. He had actually only been trapped in here for one second, right?
Aside from the brain damage part, this whole situation might not be as bad as it could be. It suddenly occurred to him that five hundred days a second should be beyond the limits of this program- beyond any program. He was in serious danger of baking his brain.
"Look, Sasha," he took a step towards her, and she watched him closely over her shoulder, still holding her ass spread open. "I told you I wanted to buy this game and continue to fuck you senseless last night, remember? Just let me out of here, and I promise- that is if I'm not a vegetable, I will make this a priority. I honestly enjoyed our time together yesterday. Give your pleasure add-on, or whatever, a break for a little bit. A willing and fully experienced Mark will find more ways to stimulate you."
She let her wide ass go and stood straight to face him.
"Nope. I like ten thousand orgasms a second. And I don't really think you'll trust me ever again. I lied to you right? I sure wouldn’t trust me. Good try though." She sighed, and threw her hands up, letting them slap on her thick, metal thighs. "I guess today is ruined. Have this one off to do whatever you like! I need to go have a chat with the little person messing with my toys. See you in a bit, Lover."
She waved a hand and walked back through the door to the inn, leaving Mark standing outside.
He looked up at the blue sky, wondering what the hell he was going to do now.
It suddenly struck him as odd that she went back into the inn. Who was the little person? He pushed open the door to follow her.
The inside was exactly as it had been, but with the innkeeper now mopping the floor. He looked up when Mark entered. When he saw who it was, he shook his head and went back to his work.
"Which way did she go? Mark asked.
"To your room, of course. Where else would she go? She's your Enthralled isn’t she?" He stopped what he was doing and pointed a finger at Mark. "This isn't going to be like the last time, is it? If you got issues with your sassy little succubus beast, better take her out into the woods before you cut that cord." He went back to pushing the mop around and shook his head again. The greasy man muttered under his breath, "We don't need another one of those."
"What do you mean, cut that cord? What are you talking about?"
"Go talk to the mayor. I want nothing to do with you Collectors and your Enthralled. Good for nothing but making messes, I say."
Mark watched him mop for a bit, trying to piece together what he was just told. Maybe the mayor could help him. He knew the mayor was offering the quest to go kill all the rats in the sewer.
Mark still wanted to see what Sasha was up to. Maybe he could stop her. Maybe this little person she was talking about- wait a minute. The only little person he remembered meeting in here was the helper fairy that guided him through character creation. Was she the AI that kept this place on track?
Some of the things Sasha had said about working with the AI system here and “girl talk” were starting to make sense. If he was right, he needed to find some way to help the system wrest control back from Sasha.
Mark walked back into the hallway that led to their room at the inn. He pushed open the door and found his AI succubus lying naked on their bed. Her eyes were open, and she looked dead, like for that brief time after she had an orgasm.
He entered the room and tried to shake her awake. He even slapped her tits around roughly to try and get her to respond. Nothing. He contemplated just breaking off a table leg and stabbing her in the heart, but he didn't know what that would do to his brain if she had a hold on his mind somehow. Or if it would do anything at all. He might not get another opportunity to do something like this, but he wanted more information before acting rashly.
He left her and the inn behind and walked straight to the Mayor's office. It was a small town, so it was only just a one-room building near the end of all the shops. There was a large wooden sign over the door that said 'Mayor of Hope's Edge'.
Mark pushed the wooden door open, and a fat, older gentleman who had been sitting behind a desk full of papers stood to greet him.
"Hello, Collector, and welcome to Hope's Edge! I'm Mayor Westington, you here to inquire about the giant rat infestation?"
"Greetings. Uh, no. The innkeeper said something about Enthralled. Something about cutting the cord. I need to know more about that."
Mayor Westington gave Mark a deep frown. "Old Gorek needs to keep his mouth shut," he said, and then sat down, moving papers around on his desk seemingly at random. "I'm far too busy. Unless you are here to rid me of the rodent situation, I bid you good day."
"Please, I beg you. It's a matter of life and death! How do I get rid of an Enthralled?"
"Not in this town you don't! We've already got enough problems. I bid you good say, sir."
Mark was about to leave when he heard a tiny voice in his ear.
"The raaat was his."
Mark jumped and slapped at the side of his face. After his initial shock, he remembered that voice. It sounded like the helper fairy. Was she trying to tell him something?
He repeated her words out loud, "The rat was his?"
Mayor Westington leaped out of his chair, waddled over to Mark and pointed a finger at him. "I demand you let me know who told you that! It was Gorek, wasn't it? I'll have his hands for this!"
Mark recognized a particular ring on the Mayor's hand as he waved it in his face. It looked just like his own Class Item.
"You are a Collector. A Lover, aren't you?" he asked holding up his ring and nodding to the Mayor's matching one. Mayor Westington hung his head and walked back over to his desk.
"Well, the secret is out. What do you want, money?"
"Dude, stop. I don't care about your secrets, and I don't want money. The greasy-ass innke
eper mentioned something about taking my Enthralled out of town before cutting the cord. I just want to know what that means?"
Westington sat a portion of his large rump on the corner of his desk and sighed.
"Fine. I was a Collector for about six months when I was younger, but it just wasn't for me. Going into battle was frightening. Death was around every corner, and well... I just wasn’t very good at it, okay? It's a mistake I live with and regret every day. It's why there is a job posting about it!" He threw his hands up.
"What happened with the rat-woman in the sewers?" Mark urged him to continue.
"She was constantly pestering me to go out and collect essence. She wouldn't grow without it, didn’t want to- you know... without it." He looked embarrassed. "I had had enough, so I disavowed her. Right here in town, right outside the inn. She was wild when I enthralled her, in the forest. So naturally, she reverted to her wild state and started making an awful mess of things. Luckily there were a few other Collectors with their obedient Enthralled around. They forced her into the ancient sewer system under this town. Things were quiet and peaceful for a decade or so, and the small village has grown into a proper town. I thought I was free of her, but every few months she can be seen riding through the streets on the back of a massive, filthy rat, leading a whole pack of them. They kill livestock and terrorize the good folk of Hope's Edge. Disavowing an Enthralled is a horrible act, I know this. I just couldn’t take her nagging anymore."
This disavowing sounded promising. He still had no idea how to actually do it though. Mark hoped it wasn't through some inaccessible game interface.
"Sir, your secret is safe with me. In fact, if you tell me what I want to know, I will do everything I can to help solve your problem. Quietly and discreetly."
The Mayor seemed relieved, "What is it, my boy?"
"How exactly do you disavow an Enthralled."
The old man sputtered, "It's common knowledge you ask for son. Just look them in the eye, say their name and then utter the words, 'I hereby disavow you as my Enthralled'. Have caution and heed my tale. Be sure you sever that bond in the middle of nowhere and have your escape route planned in advance. Your beast of battle could suddenly go from friend to hated foe.