Chapter Twenty - Ruffians, thugs, poison ivy, quicksand, cannibals and snakes, the plague!

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Monster location announcement. Goblins have again taken camp near William Rathborne Memorial. Recommended group level: 5

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Monster location announcement. The old troll lair at Transporter Bridge has attracted ghouls. Recommended group level: 10

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Monster location announcement: The imps near Penny Lane have multiplied. Recommended group level: 10

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Monster location announcement. Giant rats have been spotted in the fields south of Hale. Recommended group level: 1

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Monster location announcement. Anfield Cemetery has attracted grave robbers. Recommended group level: 3

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Monster location announcement. A siren has taken a liking to Crosby Beach. Recommended group level: 5 (convincing her to leave) or 30 (killing her)

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Quest announcement. There are rumours about succubi and vampires hunting around city centre. A reward has been posted. Recommended group level: 20 (investigation), 80 (extermination)

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Quest announcement. Liverpool lacks an adventurer’s guild. Find a suitable central location and funding to establish one. (NPC staff is available for hire.) Recommended group level: n/a

“Hey, new quests!” Geri’s squealing woke me, and judging from the movement in bed, the others, too. “Check it out, there’re way more than yesterday. Cool.”

“The levels seem more reasonable,” Samantha said, her eyes still closed. “Should we do that level 20 one?”

“Another level 20? I’m not sure I’m fully healed from the last one,” I moaned, then opened my own notifications to look for the quests. “Oh, it’s just an investigation. That’s doable.”

Samantha started giggling uncontrollably. We all looked at her, trying to see what was so funny. Between giggles, she managed to force out the words, “read the text”.

I did. Oh, shit. Was that what my dream had warned about?

“That is…not funny,” Livia said. “Seems we are officially on the menu now.”

“This also looks like there are more players out there now,” I remarked. “More quests and really low levels at that. One, three, five, five…”

“What levels are you guys anyway?” Geri asked. “That troll was level 20, and it didn’t look like you had a long drawn-out fight there.”

Our group level had been 11 after the troll fight, but now that Alessandra had dropped out, we were down to 9. I threw an invitation at Geri, who accepted it nearly instantly, which brought our level up to 14. Oh, my. Starting bonus for vampires?

“Ignore those levels for a sec. Geri, what were you thinking engaging a level 20 target alone?” I said.

“Suicide by troll,” she said in a tone that was more casual than talking about the weather by several degrees. The room fell silent enough for me to hear heartbeats.

What do you say to someone who just attempted, no, succeeded in committing suicide? I wanted to ask all kinds of questions, but…

“Why?” Samantha broke the silence. “I mean, the underlying problem, not why you went through with it.”

“I wanted to show my ‘mother’ she had no control over my life,” Geri said. “Which is utterly bonkers, I see that now. I have no idea how I thought that would be a good idea, so I guess whatever was wrong with my head is fixed now?”

“So we don’t need to find you a therapist?” Livia asked. “I know a good one.”

Geri was quiet for a moment. “Keep me under observation,” she then said. “I’ve done some idiotic shit, but me seeing that it was idiotic is a good sign, isn’t it?”

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “I have not the slightest. My therapy is eating out Livia.”

“She’s good at therapy,” Livia said drily.

“I’m a bit peckish,” Geri said with a twinkle in her eyes. “Can I try that therapy?”

“Let’s see,” Livia said in a drawn-out way. “When you were still alive, do you remember what the very first thing you had to do in the morning after waking up was?”

“Rub one off?” Geri answered without pause, then backpedalled quickly as she saw Livia’s mood waver. “Ok, ok, go pee. I’m not that air-headed.”

Livia and Samantha took off, but I stayed behind. The bathroom was small, and my bladder didn’t need emptying yet since I did that earlier.

“I just do that,” Geri said in a low voice, “so mom sees a girly little thing and leaves me alone.“

“It’s ok,” I comforted her. “You’re still a teenager; you can sound like one if you want. Livia’s just concerned about turning you into what you are. We changed you in ways we can’t even see as we didn’t know you before, and we had no chance to ask you for permission.”

“Oh? Right. Was I a sex maniac before you made me one, or a nun? What’s your guess?”

“Mmmh, that’s hard.”

“Guess.”

“I would say you talked like the greatest whore this side of the Thames, but you had maybe two or three partners at most. How’s that?”

“Way off. I talked like the greatest whore this side of the Mersey, and I only had one partner, and that occasion only counts with some goodwill.”

“Only one? That makes me question what I assumed about that picture of you with Livia…”

“Yes, that was the one time. Isn’t it crazy?”

“It is. And considering when that was…” I stopped, the maths falling into place too easily. I remembered the earrings Livia had in that picture. They now sat safely in my cheap jewellery box since Livia had gifted them to me at the end of our first summer. ‘Remember me,’ she had said. That was five years ago, and Geri had turned eighteen last month.

“Don’t kill her,” Geri said, only half serious. “I started it.”

“So what? With that age gap, ‘I started it’ doesn’t count for shit.”

“Oh, bull. How small must the gap be for you to be ok with it? Not everyone is months apart. It’s not like she was an adult either.”

“That’s the only reason I’m not storming off right now,” I said. “I still don’t like it—crossing the ‘teen’ border—but as you said, it’s your decision. I’m not your,” I nearly said ‘Mom’, “Dad.”

“Dad was fine with it,” Geri said.

“I doubt that.”

“After he read me the riot act and grilled me for three hours to see if there was even a tiny bit of coercion involved.”

“That’s not being fine; that’s not alienating one’s daughter. He is too smart to push you into rebelling. But kudos for telling him. That was a wise decision.”

“Nope. It was a rash one. I wanted to pit him against Mom’s decision not to let me visit him at work again. It had the opposite effect. He never argued for it again.”

“Decisions can be wise even when made for the wrong reason. Like the time, I was too lazy at work to make a new network cable. I instead used one that was way too long and bundled it up inside the rack.”

“What happened?”

“Two months later, we had to move that server, but to shut it down, someone would have had to come in on Sunday in the middle of the night. People were quite happy when we noticed the cable was long enough to move it without disconnecting it.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t network cables kinda, I mean, not an issue to unplug quickly?”

“Huh, you know your stuff. Yes, normally, you can simply pull the cable for a couple of seconds with nobody noticing. But not when there’s tamper protection active on it. The switch would have locked that port the instant the connection was dropped. Reconnecting would have taken at least 20, more like 30 seconds, even with someone on standby in the admin console. That’d been too long for that server.”

“No redundant connection?”

“Oh, our little arts major really is a bit wrangler? For the primary connection, it had that, and there we just unplugged them one after the other. But not on the management network, and there it would have interrupted the heartbeat and caused a failover to the secondary location. That’s a 3-minute process, and it can lead to data loss when both servers are active at the same time.”

“Sounds like a design error to me. When that heartbeat’s so important, why isn’t it redundant, too?”

“Oh, it is. Even triple redundant in a way, over both primaries and the management. But the same requirements that mandated the tamper-proof connection also said it had to fail over on the first loss. They sacrificed stability for safety.”

“Cheap, good, fast—pick any two?”

“Indeed.”

“Bathroom’s free,” Samantha announced, walking in naked. “Jane, can I borrow—“

“Sure, just grab anything that fits.”

“That’s not a restriction. We have the same size in everything.”

“Livia’s stuff is there too.”

“Touché. And thanks. I’ll head home later to pack some things. I get the feeling I won’t be using my own bed often for a while.”

“I won’t argue with that feeling. Ok, come on, Geri, I’ll show you the little girls’ shower.”

🙚⚜🙘

I had been concerned about what to do with Geri; she had a stature that wasn’t really compatible with neither me and Samantha nor Livia, but Greg again had shown he was at least as much brain as muscle and had dropped off a suitcase with her stuff earlier. It was a bit of a mixed bag, as what she had in her room at his place wasn’t a wide selection nor really up-to-date—he only had her one weekend a month, which meant she could easily bring that single change of clothes she needed—but it at least was something of her own.

“Want to head over to your mom’s place to grab something less, um, early-teen-ish?” I asked her during breakfast.

“No way,” she said. “I’ll not set foot into that place ever again if I can avoid it. And what’s wrong with these panties? They’re cute!”

“They are so old that I remember them,” Livia said. “Is it really the same pair? You have narrow hips, but you must have grown since then.”

“Wow, you do remember! Yes, it is. And yes, I’ve grown, but not much. They were a bit big back then and are a bit tight now. But to be fair, they wouldn’t have fit a day ago. I lost a couple of pounds to the troll’s stomach.”

Right, her remaining clothes had looked a bit loose on her. Seemed like regrowing a leg needed to pull mass from somewhere, even with plenty of magic doing the hard lifting. As if to concur, her stomach grumbled. Good that we were eating…food. Oops, that wouldn’t do anything for her.

I looked at her and saw a red shimmer in her eyes. That must be the first sign of vampire hunger, I thought. “Geri, what do you want for breakfast?” I asked.

She looked at me questioningly, lifting her bowl, as if to say, “Hey, I’m already eating?”

“Remember that that won’t do anything for you,” I said. “Blood, souls, sex, magic and life, only.”

“Oh, right. Then that’d be sex, I guess. No victims for the others here…”

I shrugged. May as well. “You can have a bit of my blood if you like. I have a pretty good regeneration.” I held out my wrist, just to demonstrate. Geri’s eyes lit up fully red, and she grabbed my arm with both hands, then sank her teeth into it without further ado.

It hurt for a moment, my skin being pierced with great force, but then a soothing warm spread from there. It was soooo nice…please don’t stop. My free hand found its way between my legs and started massaging, filling the warmness with pleasure. My breath got short, going ragged between jolts of pleasure. “Yes, yes! More!” I convulsed with an orgasm like I had never felt before, hoping it would never end.

Then it stopped as Geri pulled her teeth out of my yellow skin. Yellow? Had I lost control over my glamour? I tried reengaging it, but couldn’t find the energy inside me. But I wanted more, so I leaned over, grabbed her head and kissed her deeply. The coppery taste of blood, my own blood, filled my mouth and soothed my desire.

A gentle pull at my shoulder dragged me off of Geri. “That’s enough,” Samantha said into my ear. I turned my head and smiled at her. “But it’s so good…”

“High like a kite, if you ask me,” Livia said. Who was she talking about? Sam had such pretty eyes, and her mouth, how did it taste? I needed to find out, so I kissed her, too.

“Let her, it’s fine,” Livia said. Of course, it’s fine. She’s mine, just like the others. I could taste her any time I wanted. I could grab her down there, at the nice place, if I wanted. So I did.

That made her melt into me, like a piece of butter melts into toast. I pushed a finger in, making her gasp. She was so cute when she was gasping, so I added a second one and spread that good feeling to her.

“Fuck, they’re so sexy that way,” Livia said. My Livia! I liked it when she liked me, So I kissed Sam harder. I felt hands sneak up onto my body from behind—yes, my ladies, pleasure me!—and saw Livia taking position behind Sam. Her hands showed up under Sam’s shirt, caressing her breasts like Geri’s hands were doing to mine. Sam moaned into my mouth, sending tendrils of pleasure through me.

Those tendrils combined with more tendrils coming up through my arms and my lips, twisting together into a strong rope. Then, that rope wanted to flow out of me through my breasts. No! It’s mine! I grabbed it, willing it to stay with me. You’re mine, all mine. The rope bent and frayed, but I grabbed harder. Come here, my tasty, come into me. I sucked at it, its heavenly taste flowing into me.

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Skill gained. “Sexual energy absorption (reality altering)” Level 1.

I wiped away the annoying notification and concentrated on making Sam produce more and more of those tasty tendrils. They now flowed easier together, but that tugging in my breasts was still there. My Geri wanted some table scraps. She was a good girl, so I let her have some morsels, I was sated anyway, filled up to the top. Oh, that was nice, too. The rope flowing out my nipples and into her hands was such a nice, ahh, I’m coming!

🙚⚜🙘

I’d say I didn’t know how long it was until my mind cleared and I came to again, but there was a clock in the kitchen. Our little “let’s get Geri a quick breakfast” session had taken—if you count the time we slept in a huddle afterwards—a bit over two and a half hours.

I wasn’t the only one stirring, so I asked into the room, “Everyone’s ok?”

“Fine,” Livia.

“Sore for days,” Samantha.

“That was great,” Geri.

“I’m scarred for life from seeing that,” Gamma.

I looked up to see Gamma standing in the doorway in a crop top and a mini skirt, showing off her scarred body. “Hi Ga…Cindy, how was your night?”

“Boring, to be honest. You tired out my poor Lessie so much, I had to carry her to bed after just two romps. But we went shopping this morning,” she swirled, which showed off her barely existing panties. “Isn’t it cute?”

“More indecent than cute, if I had to be honest,” Samantha remarked. “Suits you.”

“I like it,” Geri said. “Hi, I’m Geri.” She waved.

“Hi, I’m Cindy, but I go by Gamma, like that Greek letter, with my friends. I’m these guys’ backend support. You know, sorting character sheets, calling in the healer when needed, such stuff. Just don’t expect me on the frontlines, otherwise, I probably can help.”

“Huh! Why does it say I can’t add a ‘system AI’ to my friend list?”

Gamma froze, and a second later time joined her as I opened my menu. That was bad. What to…Oh, actually, this was easy. I exited again.

“Because whoever designed this slow start has messed up. They dropped us a couple of AI NPCs to help along but never integrated them into the system properly. Just don’t talk about it where she can hear it; her brain fogs up then,” I bullshitted. Gamma standing there with her mouth open helped my story, but it still had holes without end.

“Makes sense. Sorry for blabbing,” Geri said.

“Nothing to be sorry about, we didn’t warn you—“

“—such stuff. Just don’t expect me on the frontlines, otherwise, I probably can help.”

“Um, ok, thank you.”

“Happy to help. And by the way, this flat has two perfectly serviceable beds, although one is mine. You don’t need to use the kitchen floor. Aren’t those tiles a bit hard and cold to fuck on?”

“It’s borderline for me,” Samantha said. “And I’m the squishiest one. So no, this is fine.”

“That wasn’t a real question, Sam. It was a subtle hint for y’all to get your asses in gear and tackle a quest. You don’t want to fall behind on your second day, do you?” Gamma really leaned into her AI support role with that one, now that we had a cover story for that.

“Good idea,” I said. “Is there a reward for finding the vampire?”

“Let me see,” Gamma said. “No. Being able to advance the quest into extermination is the whole reward. But I can accept the quest for you and take it off the board if you want?”

“Do it,” we said together.

“Done.”