theninjagoose

  Shiloh did not have a good night. Alright, getting railed into mindless pleasure was fantastic, but not being able to finish that time had been literal torture. The irls had been going kind of easy on him siwil had locked him up, but Katerine had just kind of... lost trol. It had been wonderful, indescribable bliss as she hammered her way through his guts for what felt like half the night, but when she colpsed, grabbed him, and fell asleep within seds... Well, Shiloh was left in dire straits.

  You have Leveled Up!He ighe message until everyone was awake and tried to go to sleep. Curled up in the warm embrace of the tall hirl, practically using her obsely rge breasts as pillows, Shiloh would have been quite fortable. If it wasn't for the ag need deep in his core. If Mistress didn't let him out soon, he might actually have to give up and make her unlock him. He whined and keened softly, n to disturb anyone or call attention to himself, but simply because he o let something out. To gain some tiny measure of catharsis. To somehow alleviate the roiling in his loins.

  He eventually did fall into a fitful slumber, but it was filled with dreams of his lovers stuffing him silly and he woke up more than once keening and whining again, having so thhly aroused himself with his fantasies. Needless to say, it was a very good thing he had gotten the Feat of Persistence, as he didn't end up getting all that much sleep.

  When dawn broke, Shiloh was the first one up. He set about getting a fire going and cooking breakfast to distract himself from the frustrated longing threatening to overwhelm him. The first oo join him was Beck but, before she'd even sat down, Katerine crawled out of her tent and stretched. Beck grinned.

  "Really gave it to him st night, didn't you?"

  Katerine blushed furiously and chose not to respond, finishiretch before joining them by the campfire. Beck smirked, and turned her attention to the chef.

  "You think Mistress Twil is going to let you out today?"

  "She better." Shiloh muttered under his breath.

  Beck's grin widened. "I heard you st night, too. Sounded like you were seriously hurting for an asm. I thought you were going to storm our tent and rip the key from her neck yourself."

  Shiloh opened his mouth to reply, but Twil's voiterrupted him.

  "My Shiloh would never do that. He knows better, right?" The halfling was rubbing sleep from her eyes as she approached, but she'd had no trouble hearing Beck's teasing ents.

  "Yes, Mistress." Shiloh said with the smallest of sighs as he put the finishing touches omeal he was making for them. He was just about to tell them it was done when he felt Twil's hand on his arm. He froze up.

  "Look at me." She anded softly.

  Shiloh turned and looked down into her blue eyes. She searched his gaze for something, and gave a small smile. "You've learned your lesson, haven't you?"

  Shiloh gulped once. "Yes, Mistress." He murmured.

  "What is that lesson?"

  "Never, ever, ever pick you up."

  "Good boy."

  With that, she swiftly removed his pants. He yelped and almost tried to pull them back up, but a withering gre from his Mistress stilled his hands. She deftly unlocked his cage, then va and the key into her iory before pulling his pants back up and giving him a brief, chaste kiss. Shiloh melted into the kiss and growled when she pulled away too soon. Before he could voice his pin, she called back to the tent that Elnor and Ara had yet to leave.

  "Breakfast is ready!"

  "Fuck off!" Came Ara's eloquent, muffled respohen she shouted in shock. "Fine! I'm getting up, I'm getting up."

  Ohey had joihe others, Shiloh served the oatmeal and everyone dug in with thanks. It wasn't bad, but he definitely needed practice. Each of the others was quite profit with cooking over a fire, but Shiloh had never used anything but a stove or oven. Or microwave.

  "Oh, I leveled up st night." Shiloh mentioned iween bites. "We'll o look at my skill choices."

  Katerine choked. "Um... we will o look at the skill choices?"

  The other firls exged nervous gnces, but Shiloh saw no reason not to be totally up front with their new member. "Yeah, we. Everyone in our party knows the skills of everyone else in the party, yourself excluded, obviously. We don't expect you to just spill your secrets to us, but we have found it to be extremely beneficial for properly pnning fights."

  Katerine sidered what he'd said carefully. It made sense, but it was so far beyond anything she would have expected. Diving to the deepest, most dangerous parts of the dungeon? No problem. Traveling across deadly mountains, frozen for the st thousand years? Just another day in the life. Walking right into the heart of vampire territory, straight up to their castle? Piece of cake. But sharing her skills with five other people? That was going to take a leap of faith.

  Shiloh and the others allowed her to mull it over for a while, and she eventually heaved a sigh. "I think you're probably right, but I just don't know you all very well, you know?"

  Shiloh smiled, and her heart skipped a beat. "Of course. Like I said, we don't expect you to tell us yours. We would still appreciate your input on ours, though."

  With that, his eyes unfocused for a moment before a s dispying two skills popped up above his head.

  Might of Many

  Gain a ritual by whiay boost yourallies' primary skills. Boost is equal to 10%of your Divinity, multiplied by the number ofpartits, rounded up. Does not stack with itself.

  Strength of Will

  You may activate this skill te yourself ofall itive status effects.

  Cooldown: 1 day

  Katerine was absolutely shocked to see him do that. He didn't hint at it ive a vague description; he just btantly dispyed his css skills for all of them to read. The others, heedless of her amazement, began discussing the options.

  "Strength of Will is definitely useful to keep anything from messing with your head." Beented, her ears perked up. "However, I think it pales in parison to Might of Many."

  "I agree." Elnor nodded. "Strength of Will still requires you to activate it, so it won't be useful against any itive effects that are debilitating enough to keep you from using it would still be devastating. Whereas Might of Many looks like it would be a passive that we could turn on before bat."

  "Between his auras, Emp Pool, and Might of Many, Shiloh would be able to provide a one hundred and sixty-three point boost to one of our primary stats and a fifty-one point boost to all of the party's other stats." Twil calcuted. Katerine looked at her, open-mouthed.

  "He told you his stats, too?"

  "Oh, yeah, one sec." Shiloh trated again, then his status sheet showed above his head.

  Shiloh SuttonCss: Cleric of AphroditeHP: 150/150Level: 13MP: 150/150Lust: 1960 Strength: 8Ara: 0Finesse: 15Divine: 102Fortitude: 15Resistance: 15Endurance: 12Focus: 15 Katerine gaped at him, then it, then him again. "You 't just do that!" She excimed.

  Shiloh smiled and shrugged. "I just did. I know it's not the norm, but I have chosen to put my trust in my allies, and now that list includes you, too."

  "Shiloh, I could be anyone! I could be a spy from another natioo destabilize the empire! I could be an assassin!" Katerine said wildly.

  Shiloh ughed. "Are you an assassin? Are you a spy?"

  "Well, no, but... You 't expose yourself like this to everyone who joins you! What if I leave the party?" Katerine almost sounded like she leading with him as she gestured to his sheet.

  Shiloh looked at her seriously before responding quite calmly. "It's my choice, Katerine. I choose to open myself up to the possibility of being hurt. I'm sure iure, I probably will get hurt. Most likely more than once. However, I am trusting the rest of my allies, those who care about me, to protect me when that time es, as I will protect them in turn. Sharing our stats and our skills have allowed us to defeat enemies in one shot that would normally take a party of our size and level several mio kill. It makes us stroo be ho."

  Katerine opened her mouth, closed it again, and shook her head.

  "What do you think about these two skills?" Shiloh asked gently after a few moments.

  Katerihem again. "What did Twil mean about 'Emp Pool' and your auras?"

  So, for the half an hour, Katerine was overloaded with the stats and skills of five people who hadn't known her name before yesterday m. They certainly had a lot of skills that worked very well together. She mused for several minutes upon how they would even pliment some of her own skills. Then she blinked rapidly and looked back up at Shiloh's options.

  "I think Might of Many is better." She said fidently. "With a boost that rge, we likely wouldn't need your auras or Pool of Empowerment to handle pretty muything that's retively close to our level."

  With no dissent, Shiloh locked in Might of Many.

  "Well, we better get moving. Long day of walking ahead of us." Shiloh said as he closed the menu. The rest of them murmured agreement, and camp was quickly broken down.

  The assed fairly ufully. The terrain gradually got med while the mountains grew rger and rger. By the end of the sed day, the air had grown chilly with the winds sweeping down from the snow-covered peaks. They found surprisingly few creatures, peaceful or otherwise, as they moved through the wilderness.

  "Don't you think we should have seen something by now?" Shiloh asked when they set up the camp that night.

  "Yes." Twil replied steadily. "It is incredibly unusual for there to be so few signs of life, even if there are rge predators in the area. We should at least be seeing their sarkings of their territories, but these foothills seem to just be... dead."

  "It could be some kind of monster, escaped from a dungeon." Ara offered.

  "Does that happen often?" Shiloh sounded ed.

  "Well, some monsters in dungeons be found all over the world." Ara held her hands out towards the fire to warm them up. "Stuff like goblins and slimes and other weak things. The kinds of mohat could wipe out entire ecosystems, though, are really rare to see up here. Stronger monsters are held deeper in the dungeon and, as far as we know, they are pletely immobile until someoers.

  "There are some people wh monsters out to use them for bor, like trolls pulling caravans or some such. They usually have a high-level mind mage of some sort who o focus on trolling the creature, though. Then there are others wh monsters out to keep as pets or trophies. A sign of strength, you knoants to mess with the guy who's got a hydra ed up in his basement?"

  Shiloh's eyes went wide at this. Before he could ent, Elnor spoke.

  "Then there are the Zealots. A unity of people who believe that the pn of the gods is for the duo grow and grow until it es the world. They think that civilizations are standing in the way, so they make it their life's work to delve deep ahe stro mohey find up to the surface to kill as many people as they ."

  "That's horrible." Shiloh gasped. "Why aren't they executed?"

  "They are." Beck said solemnly. "The problem is that it's very difficult to prove someone is a Zealot unless you have a fession or some kind of solid evidence. By the time they reveal their true selves, it's often too te."

  "That's how my parents died." Katerine whispered. All eyes turo her, and she realized she had just thought out loud.

  "Do you want to talk about it?" Shiloh asked quietly, kindly.

  Katerine shook her head, and he gave her a sad smile. Beck reached over and grasped her hand, squeezing it lightly. Katerine looked at her, then around the circle, and saw passion and protective fury in equal measures in all of them. She tried to smile, couldn't, and crawled into her tent.