Fighting Them There Ch 03

"The worst thing about this armor," Sophie demonstrated by lifting the metal slats of her skirt, "is that it doesn't come with any underwear." As the edge of the plated skirt came up, the hemline revealed more and more of her thigh until the cleft of her butt was visible. The red filigree of her claiming seal was already visible in the bare space between her chainmail top and her plated skirt, and then the silvery spiderweb of the binding seal came into view as the bottom of the skirt flared out. She bent over slightly, and her naked rear spread itself just enough that her pussy lips peaked through. "Do you think it looks OK?" She looked over her shoulder and winked.

Of course it looked OK. It looked more than OK. Sophie looked like a porn parody of a front line hunter, and the pie chart of Max's mind increasingly looked like Pac Man where the yellow represented his desire to flip her skirt up the rest of the way and slide his dick deep into her tantalizingly available hole. Still, he had spent a lot of time learning about the dungeons, and regurgitating facts came easily to him. Even when his brain was being increasingly taken over by visions of taking his girlfriend in ever more unlikely positions. "Underwear only comes from higher tier chests." It was a boring but true fact that in the logic of dungeon chests, light clothing and accessories were considered more powerful.

This was theorized to be because of the weight issue: that a magic bonus was simply

better

if it came from a nearly weightless ring or a pair of boxer shorts than if it came on a heavier jacket or helmet. Armor might be useful as armor, but a hunter could wear a lot more necklaces than suits of chainmail. The magic bonuses from Max's equipment were mostly pretty forgettable, but they had come from lead-marked chests. The marks came in brass, iron, silver, gold, and white, which were all progressively more potent. The bonuses on the items from higher tiered chests were absolutely worth chasing after, and they were objectively better if they came on clothing and jewelry that could be worn

with

a hunter's current armor instead of

replacing

it.

They'd been given a bit over an hour before they were supposed to report to the mess hall for dinner. Plenty of time to get in some training to progress Sophie's seals or just collect semen from Max. She wasn't even sure which was more important to her, and when she realized that she smiled at how in-love she was. "This is our first opportunity to have sex in our dungeon armor. We absolutely need to do this." They had only the most minimal dungeon equipment, and that meant a path could be easily made to connect their genitals to the outside. Or to connect their genitals to each other.

Max's dungeon pants had to be tucked under the belt to close the front flap. And if the ends of the flaps weren't pulled over each other when tucked under the belt, the fly would hang open. It took hardly any adjustment at all for his turgid manhood to poke free, and the revelation was met by an appreciative smile from Sophie. The Valkyrie armor that Sophie had been given covered very little to begin with, what with the top leaving her abs and lower back free to the eyes. Her armored pteruges was simply a skirt with metal plating on the outside, on the inside there were no shorts or panties. Just by pulling up the edges, she could reveal her pussy and hips. As she did, Max was treated to the small tuft of blond hair she had above her mound and the wet smooth lips of her pussy. The armor had hardly been moved at all, and was still nominally providing its protective function, but Sophie could sink herself onto his lap and take his fleshy sword into her fleshy sheath.

She was strong. Very strong. Strong enough to bend metal bars. Strong enough to lift a motorcycle. And when when she gripped his shoulders, it was strong enough to be painful even through his leather jacket of dungeon armor. The strength of her vaginal muscles also squeezed his cock, but while her vice-like grip made it difficult for him to move within her, or out from her, he felt that grasp as pleasure rather than pain. "Please. Sophie. My Shoulders." He gasped out.

It took a moment for her to realize what he was saying. She stared at him in lust addled confusion before realization broke through. "Oh! I'm so sorry!" She released his shoulders and almost would have fallen backwards off his lap if not for Max's arms embracing her. "I think you need to be in control. Move me on you. Max, you need to fuck me like a doll." While Max wasn't convinced this was necessary, it was appealing. He moved his hands from her back to her waist and then started furiously pulling her up and down. Max didn't have nearly the magically increased strength that his lover did, but he was pretty strong even before he acquired his magical enhancements. And while Sophie had quite a bit of magical strength, she didn't have any magical increases to her weight. The result was that despite their differences in physical power, he really could toss her around like a pillow if she allowed him to do so. Impaled as she was on his dick, she was more than happy to let him fling her about. "Thank you," blubbered from the sex-crazed Valkyrie, "thank you for making me your fuck doll. I'm sorry I hurt you. I just need you so much. I need you in me. I need your cum! Fill me Max! Mark me as your slut!"

Max didn't have a lot of sexual experience, but he didn't think that he was one for dirty talk during sex. He had grown up with a bedroom right next to his sister's, and it had taught him how to masturbate very quietly indeed. He was a little weirded out by Sophie's newfound love of self deprecation, and it didn't really occur to him to shout dirty talk of his own. As he neared his own orgasm, he stared directly into Sophie's face. "I love you, Sophie. You're not a slut. You're my wonderful girlfriend, and I'm about to..."

He never got a chance to say what he was about to do, because Sophie pulled herself closer and kissed him full on the mouth. Then he came inside her and she had a full body shiver as she orgasmed in turn. "Thank you so much, Max. I don't deserve you. I'm so glad you're willing to cum in me even though I..." She never got a chance to complete her disparagement of herself, because Max cut her off with another kiss.

They clung to each other for some time, just bask in each other's touch. Eventually deciding that they needed to get ready for dinner. They might be on a military base on a distant world, but being late for dinner meant the same thing everywhere. Cold food and cold stares. "Do you think we should go in regular clothes or dungeon equipment?" Max had never been as socially adept as Sophie, and he relied on her for etiquette decisions.

She chuckled. "Oh dungeon armor,

for sure.

Tomorrow we can go to breakfast in civvies, but the first dinner everyone is going to want to see and be seen in our hunter cosplay outfits." She gave him a wink "I know it's all lead-marked trash, and we'll be giving it all back to the government in a few months, but

right now

it's all new and special. We need to bring all the stuff and show it off." From the wince that appeared on Max's face, Sophie knew something was up. "OK. You got something weird, didn't you?"

With a sigh, Max produced the collar and leash. "It's exactly what it looks like. The collar goes on a slave and gives her increased mana regeneration. And while I'm holding the leash the collar gives increased magical strength." He shrugged helplessly.

Eyeing the collar, Sophie reached over and put it on. When she latched it in place, nothing overtly happened. "Well, wearing this thing very slowly progresses the binding seal, at least while in your presence. So that's good to know. We should probably get collars for all your slaves. For efficiency." She closed her eyes and floated up. "I can't see my mana regeneration rate until I've spent some mana, so just hovering here a bit should drain my reserves enough to see how good this thing is. In the meantime, grab the leash end, let's see how much magical strength this gives." He dutifully took the leash in hand from his hovering girlfriend. "Huh. That's pretty good. Now, tug on the leash."

"OK." He looked up at her dubiously and gave the leash a small yank. At her encouragement, he pulled a bit harder. She smiled and gave him a thumb's up. "Did tugging on the leash increase the magic bonuses?"

"No," Sophie smiled, "the boost to mana regen and magical strength stayed the same, but tugging on the collar progressed the binding seal. More than a spank. So from

that

perspective, that was a really successful test." Alighting on the floor, Sophie didn't looked at Max's outstretched and expectant hand and made no move to remove the collar. "This thing is obviously for a mage, but we need to get something like this for me. Not necessarily a collar, maybe wrist cuffs or something. Something where I can be passively bound while we're just hanging out. I can't ask you to spank me out in public, but wearing something like this would be fine."

Max did not, in fact, think it would be fine. Sophie grudgingly agreed to let Max hide the collar rather than have her wear it to dinner. As they cleaned up, Max thought she looked puzzled. "Is something wrong? You look lost in thought."

She ran her hand down her smooth leg. "I haven't had to shave since your class reveal party. I shaved my undergrowth all cute for you, and it's just stayed that way." She grinned at him. "Did I make a good enough impression to set your

aesthetic preference?

" She giggled, and he blushed, then she giggled again.

###

The entire crop was forty-six people. Thirty humans, eight elves, and eight orcs. Sex ratios were even overall, with the humans split fifteen and fifteen, the elves having five women and three men, and the orcs having three women and five men. Having forty-six people split twenty-three men and twenty-three women was the single most likely result, but there were so many other ways that could have split that it was mathematically unlikely. Max wondered if there was an effect that actively chose girls and boys in equal numbers.

The first surprise was that the mess hall had burgers and pizza. They were in a human made fortress on an alien world orbiting a distant star, and Max had expected to be eating gruel or local worms or something. Instead, everything seemed set up like he was in a summer camp. The appearance of the everyday from Earth made the strangeness of the alien stand out even more. He was in line next to an actual alien, because Khorog had elected to go with them. He found human food astounding, and needed to have all of it explained to him. Sophie and Max were quite familiar with burgers and pizza, and were happy to answer his questions.

"Humans have so many food. Many food, but I hear Earth has less than half the people work the land. So few farmer, but so many food. How you do it?" Khorog's first bite of burger might as well have come with a marriage proposal, he was in love. "This food so good. But half of you not even be farmer people. Where food come from?" For the

entire

Earth, less than one in four people worked in agriculture, and the pizza and burgers came from North America, where less than one person in ten worked in agriculture. Apparently such numbers were difficult for orcs to even imagine. Max wasn't sure if telling aliens about industrial farming counted as espionage or something, so he decided to demure rather than discuss what he knew about tractors and combine harvesters.

The second surprise was that they had been assigned parties to dungeon raid with. While they would be allowed to make their own parties for their second and subsequent raids, their first outings as hunters had assigned seating. There were eight parties assigned. Every party had exactly one orc and exactly one elf, and Max was pretty sure that was not the result of random happenstance. Forty-six didn't divide evenly into parties of six, so he wasn't extremely surprised to see that the eighth party was four E-tier hunters and two veteran hunters brought in to babysit. They wouldn't be going into the dungeon for three days so that their vaccines would all be fully functional before they got coughed on by hostile alien monsters, so there was a bit of time for hunters to meet and greet the members of their first assigned parties. Still, there was no time like the present, so Max and Sophie looked up their own assigned party members, and wandered around the mess hall identifying them.

The camp had arranged each team to have three front liners and three second liners. Sophie was sharing her first line with Oscar the Ranger and Mrowag the Deathwatcher, a pretty strong lineup that the Space Force probably hoped would gel into something permanent. Max was sharing his second line position with Rosalita the Thunder Mage and Gormag the Tree Singer. That was not a particularly strong lineup. E-tier storm, D-tier control, and whatever Max was. And worst of all, Max and Sophie weren't even in the same party! Sophie was in Team One, while Max was in Team Four. Sophie's back line was Fenniel the Doomspeaker, Yalena the Calculator, and Stephen the Weather Wizard. All C-tier, cementing the idea that someone thought this might be a team that could graduate directly into raiding stronger dungeons. Max was protected by the front line of Thelenia the Scout, James the Master Swordsman, and Alex the Executioner. Two D-tiers and a C-tier. Not exactly a lineup that would blow anyone's socks off.

"Ugh." Sophie said, looking at the lists. "Only four women total, one of them is me and another is Yalena who you can't work with. The only ones you even

could

put seals on are Thelenia and Rosalita. And they... aren't great." A D-tier flanker and an E-tier storm, it wasn't something that would have happened in their high-school imaginations of becoming dungeon fighting heroes.

"Still," Max countered, "I currently only have space for two slaves and there are just two women in my party. This way, I just have to convince Rosalita and Thelenia to accept seals, and I'll be contributing as much as I can." He wasn't sure how much that was going to be.

It turned out that the members of Team One were much more proactive about finding each other than Team Four's were. So Sophie's mandatory party members descended on her before Max had even figured out who Rosalita was. Not that Sophie was hard to find, she had lustrous blond hair, shiny armor, and wings on her helmet.

Mrowag was an absolute mountain of an orc. His skin was mostly splotches of pink and tan, but he had a splotch of nearly black skin over his right eye that kind of made him look like a pirate. His tusks were bigger than Max's house mate's, and Max was left wondering whether that signified anything on the world they were from. Max knew that there were Khagans and Khatuns that were owed the fealty of Khans who in turn ruled hordes that were divided into tribes. Max didn't even know how to ask an orc what their nationality was, that concept didn't seem to translate especially well. In any case, Mrowag absolutely insisted on having an arm wrestling match with Sophie, which was started, finished, and decided in Sophie's favor as quickly as Max had expected it to be. They were all excited to be on a team with Sophie, which was understandable because Camp Acheron got less than two B- or A- tiered hunters

per year

. A notable exception was Yalena, who simply watched with a calculating expression and displayed no excitement at all.

It took quite a while for Sophie to escape, and by that point, Alex had already gathered the rest of Team Four to tell them how awesome he was. He hadn't spent any particular effort to find Max, which didn't surprise Max at all. "We need to talk to Rosalita and Thelenia." Sophie interjected, cutting short speculation by Alex of how the rest of the party might be able to facilitate Alex getting a very high kill count.

"Sophie, you're on Team One," Alex said darkly, "why do you need to talk to Team Four's interns?"

Sophie crossed her arms. She looked imposing in the way a hero on a morning cartoon show would. "Max's class can only put seals on women at first level. And it requires touching. I'm his girlfriend, so I have to have a talk with Rosalita and Thelenia." She almost seemed to be done and then added. "Woman stuff."

Confused, Rosalita and Thelenia agreed to go with them. As they were leaving, Alex grabbed Max's arm. "You are so whipped, my dude. It's going to be mega-funny when she ditches your loser ass for a real man." He chuckled when Max pulled his arm away.

###

Sophie's room was exactly like Max's except the window faced west instead of north. The sun still moved through the sky, so even though it was a different sun and a different sky, the compass directions still applied. Apparently the orcs came from a world where the rotation of the planet was opposite to the magnetic poles of the planet as compared to Earth, and thus solar north and magnetic north were not the same. But fortunately for Max's sanity, the directions at Camp Acheron were the same as in Albuquerque. There wasn't a lot of space once the four of them had come in, but at least it was semi-private.

"OK," Sophie announced in her best school teacher voice, "Max's class is a bit different from most. It's a support class, but the seals last forever and they get bigger over time. While you're in a party with him, you'll need to do training rituals every day. That includes being outside the dungeon." She turned around and pointed to the visible portion of the red doodles above her butt cleft. "My seals have lasted more than a week and during that time the bonuses have gradually gotten bigger. It only makes sense for Max to put seals on you today, and train them every day until you go into the dungeon."

Rosalita was human, but practically the same height as Thelenia. Her dark brown skin and short stature marked her as coming from the Yucatan, but she'd gone to high-school in California. A hunter's rune fast tracking American citizenship for her entire immediate family. A courtesy that would have been rescinded immediately had the young woman refused conscription to fight the monsters over there. "Sounds reasonable," she agreed, "what do the seals do?" With her family's comfort dependent on her continued work as a hunter, she was quite motivated despite her E-tier class.

Sophie smiled. "So the first thing is that the seals don't hover over the hunter like those from White Mage or Calculator. They go into your skin, that's why they don't seem to end." She turned around and removed her armored skirt, displaying her wonderful ass. This also displayed all three seals in their entirety. Both the Scout and the Thunder Mage stared with rapidly changing emotions. Max also stared, taking in not only how much he loved looking at Sophie's exposed rear, but in how much the seals had visibly grown and become more intricate since they first appeared on her body. Sophie explained what the seals did and was met by incredulous outbursts from Rosalita and Thelenia. Then Sophie explained how the seals were put on and that provoked even more disbelief. "I know it's hard to believe," Sophie admitted, "but I'm dead serious. Let Max kiss you and claim you as one of his slaves. If nothing happens, I'll walk naked in the mess hall during tomorrow's breakfast. But one thing I do have to warn you about, is that it will make your tits bigger."

It was such an outlandish claim that Rosalita felt compelled to call her bluff. "I don't know what your aim is, but even if you

are

B-tier, I'm not letting you bully us! I'll do your stupid dare, and you're going to streak." She harrumphed, and walked over to Max and raised her chin to give him access to her lips.