Chapter 11: 11. Kerda’s Story

"What?" I try to squirm out from under her, but this Pooka is damn strong. In the struggle, I ask, "How can you be a player and work in a brothel?" I'm almost more embarrassed about how whiny I sound than about being molested. Almost.

 She giggles. "Why not work in a brothel?"

"Because... the stuff..." One of her hands has moved away from groping my ass and is sliding across my stomach, inching lower. "Will you stop that. Pleeease!"

"What's a matter? You were okay with this when you thought I was an NPC."

"Well, that's because... ah... ah..." It's seems kind of creepy to say that I was okay having sex with a mindless computer automaton but not a real person. But that is exactly the problem. Somewhere there's someone in a game-pod who is participating in this. And who will remember this. Will remember how Triste (oh God, why did I use my rel name?) hired them to have sex like some total perv.

All I can manage to say is: "With an NPC it's different. I don't want to degrade you—purchase you like you were nothing more than a piece of meat."

"I don't mind." She goes back to kissing me.

"Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait." I let out the words like a yappy dog whenever my mouth isn't otherwise occupied. Kerda finally sighs in exasperation and rolls over on her side.

"Can we just talk for a minute?"

She rolls her hand in the air. "So, talk."

 "Look, I'm sorry. Sorry, if I gave you the wrong impression." I sit up noticing she'd managed to work my dress up to practically my bust. I hasten to pull it down. "But I didn't realize you were a person. I mean, not computer generated. Can we like... get to know each other a bit first?"

"Sure." She doesn't sound very enthusiastic about it, but she repositions herself on the bed so she's sitting with a pillow between her back and the wall. "What do you want to know?"

"Well... Where do you live and what do you do? In real life, I mean?"

"Let's leave real life out of this," she says sternly. "I come into games like this to leave that behind. Besides it's too boring to talk about."

"Okay, fine. What about Feronia, then? Do you know about the crash?"

"Yeah, I know about it." She sounds a bit sulky when she says it, then she's quiet for a long while. When she starts to talk again, she tells me everything...

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Kerda had been in Feronia a little over two weeks and had nearly cleared the entire Dunnshire region. She was playing a Half-orc She-barian and had reached level 9. Her and her party were deep in the bowels of a dungeon facing tougher and tougher opposition, closing in on the boss. They were eight in all and together they formed a formidable crew.

They had a fire-mage (their leader), a Halfling burglar, an Elf priestess of Valoria, and five warriors. A knight, a battle-Dwarf, an Elf ranger,  a Worgman assassin, and Kerda. They were like a Swiss-army knife: a tool for every job. There greatest claim to fame was slaying the Great Wyrm of Caldor and saving the town from destruction. This dungeon, although challenging, was just supposed to be a loot run and a chance for a bit of grinding to get them up past level 10 and ready for the Tier 2 regions.

But then, the world around them stuttered out. The horde of fire-imps they were tearing through vanished. So did all the light, magical and mundane. The eight of them were left naked in the dark with a half mile of stone above their heads.

Not only was all their armor, weapons, and other equipment gone, so were their spells. And they had reverted to their real life forms.

Kerda remembered noticing immediately how her large incisors had disappeared from her lower jaw, letting her lips meet for the first time since entering Feronia. Her muscles were the next most apparent loss. She almost wept as she ran her hands over her weak body.

She wasn't sure how long they remained there. Time moved erratically in the pitch black, especially when fueled by panic. Not to mention the system refused to respond, so they couldn't see the official date/time reader.

Then, little by little things began to restore themselves. They had clothes, although rags that barely covered them. Then their avatars were restored, only changed and strange. And worse of all, they were all reverted back to level zero. 

Instead of being a Half-orc, Kerda was now a Pooka. Instead of a She-barian, she was a class called: Warrior-Wench. Her lean body of knotted muscle replaced by soft voluptuous curves. Although she was still strong, at least. Her character had lost its leather armor and now wore only skimpy clothes. The two-handed sword she wielded was now a rope-javelin—a short spear that stayed attached to her wrist with a leash. It could be used for short ranged attacks and melee stabbing, as well as slashing with the long sharp edges of the point.

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Very last, their enemies appeared. Ten boggles, all higher level than them. Some as high as level 7.

The party killed most of the enemy but eventually had to retreat. Three of their members had fallen in the fight (including their healer) and the rest were near death and out of potions.

They retraced their steps as best they considering all the changes made to the dungeon. If they hadn't been so thorough with clearing every room, Kerda might not have made it out at all. As it was they only had to deal with random encounters and the reset traps. Their burglar had died back with the boggles and they now had no way of detecting the trap's triggers anymore.

Little by little, the party was decimated.

Gary the Gnome Ax-Maiden was carried off by a giant spider. Kwan, the Elenian Shaman, got poisoned by a dart trap. Bruce, the leader and now a female pyromancer, was slaughtered in a battle with a salamander.

There was only Kerda and the former knight, Pierre, left. He'd become a petite Felinoid Duelist. By sheer luck, the next chamber they reached was a shrine to Ayuleen, a goddess for women warriors. They pledged themselves to Ayuleen and received healing, blessings, and new skills. This was the only way they survived to make to out of the dungeon alive.

But it didn't make the two of them friends. In any group there's going to be conflicts, and they had never gotten along very well. Perhaps their rivalry was part of the reason they survived. Each one was trying to outdo the other and performing better than they would on their own. Still, with the others gone, it was only a matter of time before they parted ways.

That happened at the gates of Givinghead.

Having previously cleared the route through the dungeon, their escape wasn't as difficult as it might have been, but it also meant there was no treasure to fill their purses, so they arrived at the town penniless. The guards wouldn't let them pass, but Kerda was desperate to find a safe haven where she could build up her levels and find another party. She also knew that out in the wilderness, death would come for them swiftly.

The guards wouldn't let them in, but they called the brothel's madam to come take a look at the beggars at the gate. She offered the both of them jobs.

The former-knight flatly refused. But Kerda knew her class (the wench part) offered some advantages with this type of work as did her blessing from Ayuleen. And if she was to be honest, she'd had sex so rarely IRL that she sort of relished the idea of spending some time as this profession in a fantasy town.

Pierre sullenly walked away and what happened to him (now a her), Kerda might never know.

Kerda quickly learned that she could gain experience points from having sex, so life at the Horn and Hole wasn't all that terrible. She leveled-up without battle, got gold in her pocket, and lived out some of her wildest fantasies.

Not that she'd gotten to have as much sex as she would have liked in her two days at the brothel. Pookas weren't popular because they were seen as being intimidating. The women were beautiful but aggressive and the men were ugly and had pelvis splitting cocks. Although this seemed to mainly influence the NPC clients. Players didn't seem to know about these prejudices yet. But there weren't many players visiting Givinghead. This made things frustrating since she was anxious to level up, and also, her body had a libido that was off the charts. The more she had sex, the more she seemed to need it. 

It had been a while since anyone asked her for a tumble and rarely did women players want her, so she was super excite when the pale, ghostly beauty asked her to bed.

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I sat next to her, taking in her story with fascination, but when she got to the part about me, I got all blushy and awkward.

Still, I couldn't help wonder how many people she'd slept with if she'd only been here two days. "So, um... how many clients have you had?"

"You're my seventh. And my second woman. And the only one that didn't just want to get down to the dirty as fast as possible," she said pointedly. As an after thought, she added, "Although, the NPCs are the worst. Super fast and mechanical. I think the game just throws them in to make the place seem busy."

"So, you like both men and women?"

"Hey, call me open minded. I want to experience everything. Lord knows I haven't got to experience much in life." The last part she says quietly as if to herself.

She rises up from her seated position and puts a hand down on either side of me. "Now that we've got the chit-chat out of the way and you know more about me, why don't we get down to business?"

I hesitate and inch back, away from her.

"Don't worry," she whispers leaning in closer. "I get you. You're one of those people who needs to feel it's not their idea. That they aren't all lustful and needy like everyone else. You want a lover who will guide you into it. Take control. Make you feel powerless to resist. And I want to let you know, you've come to the right place." Kerda pushes me down.

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