Dark Fate, Chapter 68 (Patreon)

Chapter 68 – Warning

I spent a bit more gold outfitting my new minions appropriately for their classes, as well as getting some actual clothes for them to wear. After all, their former owners had stripped them naked before putting them up on the marketplace, so if I wanted them to do anything but be a warm hole, I needed to outfit them appropriately. Final cost for all that was four hundred platinum coins.

Once they were all dressed, I took a moment to take a look at them. They were, as said, two knelfi and a succubus. The knelfi looked, for all the world, like space elves. Less Tolkien and more World of Warcraft, though. Really, they were dead ringers for the high elves or blood elves of that game. Which was great, since I always loved the way the female blood elves moved when running through Eversong Woods.

Maylin Gennala, the ‘war heroine’, stood straight, hands clasped behind her, uncaring of the fact that she was now sporting a collar. Her body was well-toned and muscular, to the point that one needed only look at her to know that she was an athlete or soldier of some kind. Which was not to say that she was disproportionate or grotesque, but she was clearly someone who worked out, and pushed herself to the limit regularly, keeping in the best condition she could.

Ciliren Fanorin, on the other hand, was the opposite. Oh, not to say that she was fat, since she surely wasn’t. Instead, it would be better to say that she had the reedy thinness of someone who spent so much time with their nose in a book that they forgot to eat half the time, and certainly never got any exercise to build their stamina. Unlike Maylin, she shifted foot to foot, uncomfortably, tugging at her collar. I had a sneaking suspicion that Courtesan wasn’t her original profession, and that the change, along with her gaining the Carnal Arts skill, was not something of her choosing.

That was completely different from the succubus, Aezrelle. The succubus was actually kneeling, legs spread and head held high (though her eyes were downcast), back arched and chest out, with her hands resting, palms up, on her thighs. I recognized the position as one called Nadu. I knew that she was not a new slave, but she was clearly well trained, probably more well trained as a courtesan than any other part of her skills. The fact that she had picked up other skills was impressive, since most masters wouldn’t allow that, but I had no doubt that a succubus could be very persuasive in getting most men to give them what they wanted.

Looking the three of them over, I smiled. “Well, ladies, I am your new Master, Zayn Greene, and I have chosen you all for a specific reason, your skills with satellite systems.” It was interesting to see the flash of disgruntlement go across Maylin’s face, or the dismay on Aezrelle’s, and compare it to the look of hope on Ciliren’s. “Oh, I am certain you have other skills that I will be making use of, as well, but your primary purpose is to watch over a trap I have laid, and inform me when someone comes to take the bait.”

“However, I won’t take up any more of my friend’s time, so we will discuss the particulars in your new home and place of operations.”

The three slave girls were suitably impressed when they found they were going to be living in a mansion. I’m sure that they all thought I’d be storing them in a kennel or something, or heading out to the field and living in campers. The first was more common with Slave Masters, and the second with adventurers.

At any rate, once I got them settled in, I introduced them to the surviving werewolves who would be their guards, and explained the situation. About how they were now on Earth, the world that had been cut off from the System for so long. About what werewolves were, and how the System made them come to be. And so on. The aliens were as eager to learn about Earth as the werewolves were to learn about aliens.

I clapped my hands, getting their attention. “Now, what I am about to tell you cannot be spread to anyone who isn’t already under my collar. The truth is, I have some advance warning of what will happen. In the next few weeks, a ship full of raiders will come to Earth, exploring a potential new market for slaves and plunder.”

Aezrelle frowned, “Pardon this slave, Master, but how can you know this? Even divination magics would have a difficult time projecting the future when those involved are in different star systems. Unless it were a vision granted by the gods, or a Prophecy, then how could you know?”

I chuckled at her. “Well, that’s because it is neither a divination nor a vision. I lived for years in an alternate timeline, before the combination of multiple artifacts sent my spirit back, to a point just before the Apocalypse happened, allowing me to choose a different path than the one I walked before. Now, obviously things have changed, but the changes should not have spread so far as to influence the decisions of the raiders in other star systems, not yet.”

Ciliren’s eyes went wide. “Of course! That’s why you needed slaves who had experience with satellites, isn’t it? You have some kind of warning system you got from the System Shop, but didn’t have the people with the skills to run it!”

I nodded. “Exactly, my dear. The satellites are in place, but I do not have the trained personnel to use them properly. But that is not all. In the field outside, I have some bait, designed to draw in the raiders, and hopefully make them easy kills. A ‘buried’ space ship with a fake emergency beacon that will conveniently imply the crew is dead.”

Maylin nodded at that. “And, when they come in, fat and happy, you strike, and take them down?”

“Glad to see you all three have your brains intact. Yes, the ship is a corvette, a warship, so any small-time raider will think it a great addition to their forces, and try to claim it. I intend to be here, when they land, and force them to give me their ship instead, and do it again, and again, until my fleet is big enough that I can begin striking them in space, without risking everything.”

I looked the three new slave girls in the eye, and said, “And you three will help me do it. You will split yourselves into shifts. Four hours on, eight hours off, twenty-four hours a day, every day. You will be responsible for detecting when my prey has entered the system, as early as possible, so I can be prepared for them, with as much warning as I can get.”

They took the schedule and their duties well. Each were satisfied, for a variety of reasons. Maylin was pleased to have a purpose, something to work for, and a strong leader to follow. Ciliren couldn’t care about anything besides the fact that she was getting to play with satellites, and learn about how those in a System-less world viewed astronomy, hoping to add to her own knowledge.

And Aezrelle? Well, after I wore her out in bed, I tossed her to the werewolves, and those men and women used her until they couldn’t keep going any more. To say that the succubus was pleased with the arrangement would be like saying water was wet.

A month passed, as I began training in earnest with my team. All my slaves, in fact, took turns going through my pet dungeon. The dungeon’s level grew slowly, but it allowed my lower-leveled slaves to start catching up to the plateau I found myself on, metaphorically speaking. The simple fact was that there were few good places to train nearby, for someone of my level. Finding good hunting grounds was difficult, which forced me to build things up slowly, while waiting on the average level of monsters to grow.

Still, I managed to pick up enough experience that I was able to break through to level 26. I picked up the [Tracking] and [Contract Magic] skills, giving me the ability to instantly tell where any of my branded slaves were, as well as giving me a way to ensure that those I did business with didn’t betray me, without needing to go to the trouble of enslaving them. That was pretty important, because, as my advance plateaued, the police and other first responder types began catching up, and learning what I already knew about the System, meaning that they were going to have less and less need of my ‘consulting’ services in the future.

That wasn’t really a problem. I had always known that would happen, so I had been planning for it. In reality, once the local police were at a level that they didn’t need my power on a regular basis, that would actually free me up to range further from home, going to some of the areas where monster levels were higher, and I could actually work on my levels. But, while I was needed so frequently, I couldn’t just jaunt out to the Everglades, or to that infestation of undead that took over Disney World, and start grinding on that.

And, really, one of those ‘mass breakout’ areas were where I really wanted to be, if I was going to quickly raise my level. Sure, the individual monsters might not be worth much on their own, but when the supply was endlessly regenerating, that just meant I could keep killing and grinding as long as I wanted! Any gamer would be able to tell you that infinite grind spots may be boring, but they could be the quickest way to gain power, when you found them.

I was actually planning a trip to the Undead House of Mouse, as some were calling it, when I got a call from the bait house. It was my little space fanatic, Ciliren, and, from what I could tell, she was very excited. As in, I could feel her almost bouncing in her chair through the phone excited.

“Master! Master!”

“What is it, pet?”

“I’ve got our first raider ship! I found it!”

I blinked, and said, “Are you sure? I wasn’t expecting them for another month at the earliest.”

“Oh, yes, Master! They are actually just over one month away!”

“How did you detect them?”

“I had some of the instruments focused on the nearest star system, the trinary system you call Alpha Centauri. Since it is the closest star system to this one, any ship wanting to come to Earth that didn’t know the local chronospacial coordinates would need to travel in FTL. FTL drives for older ships are roughly fifty times the speed of light.

“That is incredibly fast, don’t get me wrong, but when compared to the size of the galaxy, it is nothing. There’s a reason why people only use them as a backup for wormhole drive failures, after all. The light from your star would take almost four and one-fourth of your years to reach Alpha Centauri. A normal ship would make the journey in a month.

“However, once they had made that first trip, and entered the chronospacial coordinates of Earth, including any local hazards that might throw off drives, then they can simply use wormhole drives to go back and forth to their base of operations, as they need to. That is why most systems have chronospacial coordinates on file, that navigation software can just plug in. Of course, it needs to get updated every time a star goes supernova, or a black hole forms, or things like that, but that is easy enough once you have the initial coordinates.”

Now it was becoming clearer, and it only re-emphasized how right I was to make sure that I had actual experts assigned to my warning program. I never studied different types of FTL, after all. I never even got off-world once, last time through. But hearing Ciliren’s words made it clear that I would have absolutely messed things up if I’d been in charge of actually doing the search. That was fine, though. I didn’t need to be the best at everything if I surrounded myself with good people.

“So, you caught their FTL on sensors?”

“Yes, Master! The gravity wave is causing distinct lensing on the light coming from Alpha Centauri. Not enough to be detectable by the technology your world has, due to the relative sizes involved, but for someone who knows how to read the data from the sensors you have on those satellites? I can confirm one ship, estimated to arrive in one Earth month’s time.”

“Very good, my pet. I will be sure to reward you well, when you’re off duty.”

“Thank you, Master!”