Before he could act or think anything more, he felt a warm hand move underneath the shitty bandit’s shirt he wore and slide upwards to squeeze his chest from underneath. Xander’s thoughts cut off as new sensations flooded through him. He had specifically avoided thinking about his new body much, and the feeling of being groped was different than anything he had felt before, which stunned him briefly. It wasn’t exactly bad, but neither was it an instantaneous burst of pleasure.
“Mmmmm, I guess I do have plans now,” Augustus whispered huskily into his ear, a hungry smile on his face, a face that leaned in closer for a kiss. The words broke Xander out of his passivity, and he did the only thing he could think of to get away. He smashed his forehead directly into Augustus’s nose with a resounding *CRACK*. Blood splurted out of the stunned warrior’s face from beneath crushed cartilage, though the impact probably did more damage to Xander. He forced himself to keep moving though, and even as the man’s hands instinctively went to his face, Xander drove his bone plated elbow into the guy's tented crotch with as much force as he could muster.
“GOD DAMNED MOTHER FUCKER,” he screamed as he rocketed up and away from the man who was now rolling on the ground groaning. “I fucking told you I was a dude!!” he cursed, and drove a kick into the prostrate Augustus’s gut. “NO… FUCKING… THANK… YOU…” he roared in a high pitched voice that he still hated, delivering another kick with each word, the last one right to the man’s head. It felt like kicking a fallen log, the man’s body so tough that he felt his own toes break during the assault. He hated fleeing like a horror film protagonist when he had the advantage, but it felt like he was doing more damage to himself than to the other man. So instead of staying, Xander turned and began to jog away with a slight limp, his minions following along behind him as fast as they could manage.
Thankfully it only took a minute or so for his high regeneration to heal enough damage that he could run properly, though he was still limited by the speed of the plants following him. His mind raced with fear and rage and disgust, taking random turns in the maze and getting himself thoroughly lost. He felt dirty and wrong, this body wasn’t the one he had been born with or wanted, but it was still his and what he had to deal with until he could figure out how to change it. He couldn’t decide if he had overreacted, or if he hadn’t gone far enough. Maybe he should have tried to kill the guy while he was down, but he wasn’t sure if he would have been able to, and not even from just a moral standpoint.
Xander shook his head, “What if’s aren’t going to help anything now… what’s done is done. Fucker shouldn’t have tried to rape me, and I’m not gay, damnit…” he muttered angrily, but somewhere in the back of his mind, the part replaying the whole encounter, he thought he was maybe at least partially to blame. Then he frowned and squashed that voice. Even if his word choice could have been better, the idiot had just frigging grabbed and groped him in less than a minute without even double checking. He deserved what he got.
It was of course right at this time that he turned a corner, and a lurking bramble wolf partially emerged from a nearby hedge to slash at him, its brambles trying to entangle him. Claws raked across his body, but his bone armor protected him from most of the worst of it. Worse was the bite that came down on his shoulder, the thorned maw of the beast tearing a chunk out of him. The pain was intense, but just like when he had been impaled by the gnoll it wasn’t totally debilitating somehow. Xander still screamed though, it did hurt like a bastard.
Stabitha and Swordthony were still a ways off, he had outpaced them somewhat while distracted with his own thoughts during his flight, and he knew that he would likely be killed before they could do much to help. The fear that started to bubble up was dwarfed by towering anger, as he was grabbed inappropriately for the second time that hour! He screamed into the bramble wolf’s face, defiance and rage expressed without the need for words, an unspoken command to back off. His core responded to his desire, and a connection that he hadn’t realized was there snapped into being as his mana poured out of him.
The entangling brambles released him, and the bramble wolf’s ears lay flat as it ducked its head submissively. Xander staggered back, holding his shoulder as amber blood oozed out thick and slow around his fingers. A system disk popped up.
Warning: Your mana regeneration has gone into the negative. If your regeneration remains in the negative when your mana pool is empty, severe backlash and/or death may occur.
“Well fuck, that’s bad…” Xander grimaced as he could already feel his mana pool draining. It was sort of like when he channeled it to fuel his growth and healing spell, but not quite as fast. Taking control of the wolf had cost him a huge chunk up front too, leaving his resources getting dangerously low quickly. He hadn’t even realized they were plants which could be controlled by his spell, he had just been furious and wanted it to stop. “Maybe I should keep it instead of Swordthony?”. He considered it for a moment, but the wolf was draining his mana significantly faster, and while it was more swift than his current minions, the briar wolves also couldn’t take much of a hit.
“End it…” he ordered with only a hint or reluctance, and his two minions descended on the monster, destroying it quickly.
You have killed a Bramble Wolf Stalker (Level 10). For defeating an enemy 3 levels higher than yourself you receive an experience multiplier.
New Achievement: Don’t Disappoint The Boss
You personally killed a person or monster that was under your direct control.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Reward: Malevolent Motivation (Passive)
Malevolent Motivation (Passive): When you execute a minion under your control, each other minion under your control receives a moderate increase to all ability scores for the next hour. This effect ends early if you are no longer in line of sight. This effect does not stack, and does not affect creatures immune to fear.
Xander just stood there for a bit, breathing heavily in pain as his shoulder slowly began to mend itself. The achievement made him feel even dirtier somehow. “Am I… actually the villain here?” he asked himself, but then snorted and tried to push all the negative feelings away. He could deal with those later. Closing his eyes, he examined the connection to his current two helpers, and decided that they hadn’t received any sort of boost. It was possible that they were immune to fear, or that the passive ability hadn’t triggered since he obtained it after killing the bramble wolf. “Doesn’t matter… I need to keep moving…” he decided. Looting the wolf for its coins, he hurried deeper into the dungeon as night fell and darkness descended.
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As he groaned on the ground, Augustus came to the conclusion that it just wasn’t his day. He had come to Crandor and the surrounding region to decompress from the life and death stress of being an adventurer, not to get a cheap shot to his face and another to his manhood by that bitch of a dryad. He tried to push the anger down, but it wasn’t easy. She had come on to him, and then launched a surprise attack. Even though the damage was hardly life threatening, it had the bonus of critical sneak attack damage to vulnerable areas. The dryad had screamed something at him, but he had been in far too much agony at the time to remember what it was.
It took a couple of minutes to recover enough to move since he hadn’t invested all that much in regeneration, giving him plenty of time to decide what to do. He closed his eyes and tried to find calm, telling himself that she could have killed him but hadn’t. Augustus didn’t know what her deal was, but she was clearly unstable and surprisingly powerful for such a low level being at the least. With a sigh, he hauled himself gingerly to his feet, grabbed his nose, and steeled his will. A sickening crunch echoed through the night air as he reset his smashed cartilage, trying not to whimper. Drawing his sword, he squared his shoulders and stomped off into the labyrinth after the woman.
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You have killed a Bramble Wolf Stalker (Level 11). For defeating an enemy 4 levels higher than yourself you receive an experience multiplier.
You have killed a Bramble Wolf (Level 13). For defeating an enemy 6 levels higher than yourself you receive an experience multiplier.
You have killed a Bramble Wolf Stalker (Level 12). For defeating an enemy 5 levels higher than yourself you receive an experience multiplier.
You have reached level 8. Two stat points awarded.
The three wolves had all been alone and had been taken down without too much hassle, a few scratches here and there which were easily recovered even with sparing use of his mana. The two stat points were also easy enough to distribute. One went to agility to get it to a nice round 5, and the other went to his mana pool again, finally bringing it up to 10, which produced another window.
Your Mana Pool has reached a milestone. Please choose one of the following advancements.
. Each ability point invested in your Mana Pool increases your maximum mana by an additional 2. This advancement is retroactive.
. Increase your ability to regenerate mana depending on the local ambient mana.
. You may transfer your mana to another with a touch.
Xander shook his head and automatically dismissed the last option. He wasn’t antisocial or anything, but he didn’t want to be a support mage, and already had his own mana problems, thank you very much. Picking the increase to his maximum would immediately give him an additional twenty mana, and more in the future, but with the recent encounter with the first bramble wolf stalker in mind, he thought that regeneration was probably the better way to go, even if it didn’t give him exact numbers.
That decided, he was about to set off again when he saw a dim light coming from around a curve in the maze up ahead. He felt himself tense up, assuming that Augustus had found him, but then he heard the voice of a young sounding woman. “Do you think it’s really okay to continue on in the night, Rheagan? We’re all tired and we’ve already got enough to feed ourselves for the week” she wheedled. “It’s fine,” a very confident sounding male voice responded, “We’re close to the heart of the Den, and then we can leave with a full haul.”
Xander thought about turning and running from this group too, not sure if they would react more positively than anyone else he had met in this world so far, but ultimately there really wasn’t enough time to get out of sight. He grimaced, but then called out “Uhhh, hey guys! I hadn’t expected anyone else to be in here, but can I get you to not freak out when you see me?”
Silence met his words for a few seconds, before the guy, assumedly this Rheagan called back “Why would we ‘freak out’? Are you some kind of dangerous entity trying to lure us to our deaths?” The guy’s voice sounded more sarcastic than afraid, which Xander took to be a good sign. “I’m not sure how to convince you of anything, but let me say that first and foremost, I am NOT a necromancer, whatever I and my two guards look like, okay?”
There was some hushed whispering between the two she had already heard, and a third person, though she couldn’t make out anything that was said. Rheagan finally spoke up again. “Okay, you know that sounds super suspicious right? Well whatever, having a conversation around a corner is stupid… so we’re just going to walk into the open. Don’t do anything stupid.” he said, a threatening edge to his voice. Xander wanted to make a good impression on someone who sounded like they might be willing to be reasonable, but he still was unwilling to just stand out in the open in case they attacked on sight.
Three people strode into view, each holding a torch in one hand and a weapon in the other. Rheagan turned out to be a curly haired red headed guy with an extreme amount of freckles in his early twenties, wearing light leather armor that was scratched up pretty badly and carrying a short sword. The girl was homely with short cropped brown hair and looked to still be in her teens, wearing simple clothing and clutching a large necklace that had some sort of silver medallion on it. The last of the three was wearing a cloak and had a stitched leather mask that reminded Xander of a plague doctor mask except that the nose wasn’t comically long.
That person had a long staff made from obsidian with flared fingers on top that wrapped around a crystal ball. When the cloaked figure saw Xander and his minions, the crystal ball glowed a fiery red-orange.Xander thought wearily .