Oaths to Keep Pt. 02

Author's disclaimer

As always, all characters in this story are 18+ years old, and entirely fictional.

If you read the first chapter, nothing in this particular chapter should surprise you all that much, so don't let me detain you any further.

If you did not read chapter one, I think you should pause reading this, and go back and read chapter 1 first, then come back for more if you like it.

Go on, I will wait.

This kind of story is still a bit of an experiment for me, so like before - if you think it would be fun to read more, please leave a comment, send me a message, or leave me a five star review.

Your feedback is the fuel that powers me to keep doing it.

-X-X-X-

Chapter 2

Waking up to the sound of Amber snoring gently, the weight of her head on my chest as she used me for a pillow, made me feel like perhaps things would be alright.

Last night was like a dream, and it was definitely a dream come true. With Amber giving up her ass to me, I felt like she had thrown her lot in with me for real. I hoped it was true, but I was not going to be rude and force her to tell me outright. I would let her keep a few secrets, as long as she worked hard when I asked her to.

I still hoped I would be able to get Becky back somehow, but I knew chances were slim to none that it would ever happen.

If it did, like I had told Amber, Becky had always said she would be happy to share, as long as she got to be my "First Wife", whatever that was supposed to mean. She had been diving hard into some fanfic rabbit holes, so I had never given it much thought.

I still felt a stab of sadness at the thought of Becky having been whisked away like that, but I took comfort in knowing that she was at least as savvy in games as I was, so whatever world they put her in, she would probably end up their queen.

It was with a sigh of regret that I started to pull the covers to one side, intending to try and disentangle myself from Amber without waking her up, but knowing that realistically I would.

As I started to move, I felt Amber tighten her grip on me.

"Not yet." She mumbled, grinding her face against my chest for emphasis.

"Alright, I guess we will hit the snooze button for now..." I relented. Settling back into my pillow, I enjoyed slowly caressing Amber's soft back and flank, now that I knew I would not be waking her up.

I was a bit antsy to get started, there were plenty of things to do, and never enough time to do it. Having an extra pair of hands would help a lot, once I got Amber up to speed on all the things she needed to know.

While I enjoyed the pleasure of Amber's warm body against mine, I started going over my character sheet. Killing the Dire Badger had netted me enough experience points to buy level 5 but I had not yet had the time to go over it.

It might be useful to hold on to a bit of experience to buy more skills and spells, once we made our way to the System Kiosk, but on the other hand, my attempts at getting there so far, had revealed that there were already way too many monsters there for me to easily push through. 

With that in mind, I might as well spend my experience points now, as I would likely earn a lot more before we managed to get to the kiosk.

It was a meager two and a half miles away, as the crow flies, not that far for a morning jog. If not for the monsters, it would be much easier.

I had been chipping away at the goblin spawn point that lay between me and the town hall, but the first few days they spawned in more new goblins each day, than I could manage to deal with at level 1. I had been trying to deal with the backlog, and I felt I had been making progress, but yesterday's ambush told me I should not get cocky.

My mind made up, I opened my character sheet and looked at my options.

I wanted to put points into everything, but not only did I not have enough to do that, trying to excel at everything was the sure path to failure. 

The first few levels I had been trying to shore up my weaknesses, as well as increased my physical stats to better deal with the hardship of this new world.

Mentally going over my goals for the short and medium term, I reluctantly bought two points of charisma, hoping it would help better persuade the townies to get off of their asses, and get their heads into the game.

It might not add to my combat effectiveness, but in the short term getting townies to do something other than just hiding their head in the sand, would probably help reduce the density of monsters in town, making life easier.

In the medium term, if enough of the townies learned how to get food for the rest of them, perhaps I would not have to worry about roaming cannibals.

Next I added another point of strength, again a sub-optimal choice on paper, but if we were going to fight our way to the town hall one day soon, I wanted to bring all the loot I possibly could. With Amber on my team, I also felt like it would be best if I was strong enough to pick her up and run while carrying her, and while I had been able to carry her just fine last night, I was still a bit shy of that kind of strength.

It helped justify my purchase, that I would be able to use the extra strength with my sword, in theory cutting down how much I would have to rely on my mana.

The final point went to intelligence, the sensible choice, as it would make my spells cheaper to cast, make them hit harder, and speed up my thought processes in general.

Sadly, upping my intelligence did not correlate to automatically gaining extra IQ points. It added processing power, but what I did with that extra power was up to me.

I had discovered early on that having extra points in intelligence increased my ability to react in combat. Where a trained fighter might rely on reflexes to pull them through, once I got my int past 15, I noticed that the goblins I fought seemed to have slowed down noticeably.

Stats selected, I had to spend my class points. I could either add points to a skill or spell I already had, or select one of two random new choices. Or save up the points for later. I could spend them either when I leveled up, or when I had access to a System Kiosk.

My random choices for the level included one that was quite the surprise to me.

Skill - Oathkeeper

This skill is open to you, because you have received an oath of fealty under the System.

With this skill, you gain certain benefits and can bestow certain buff's to those sworn to you.

The greater the degree of the Oath sworn, the greater the effect of the skill.

At level 1 the benefits are between one and three stat points, and any experience earned while in a party together is increased by one to three percent. 

Values assigned based on scope of Oath, if there are any limits on scope or duration, the bonus applied is lower than the maximum.

The spell offered was a second level spell, Wargods Guidance, that offered to increase the chance to inflict a critical hit by one percent per level. I could see it be extremely useful once I got a few more levels, but for now it was way too expensive to cast, and I had more important things to focus on.

The skill was a no brainer. I really had to take that. I had no idea what it would do as it grew in level, but even at level one it was immediately a huge benefit.

Three stat points might not sound like a lot, but it was almost the equivalent of a full level, and for Amber being effectively almost level 2 would be a huge boost to her survivability and usefulness.

I picked it, and proceeded to see if I could buy another level in it with one of my saved up points, but sadly the System insisted I could not improve a skill any further, without having actually used it first.

Making up my mind, I accepted the changes, and felt the surge of power rush through me, as the System changed me to better reflect my new stats.

Most significantly, I could feel my muscles swell with their increased power. I was starting to get a bit of the classic jock physique, my upper body strength starting to show on my shoulders and pecs.

As the changes took hold, Amber roused from her slumber.

"What was that, did you feel that? Like the air got electrified or something?" Amber mumbled, seemingly worried, as she pushed herself up to get a look around.

As the sheets slid off of her torso, I was treated to an eyeful of her gorgeous body.

I had seen her last night, and my cock had been hard all morning from having her naked body molded to my own under the covers.

But seeing her in the light of the dawn that managed to force it's way past the ill-fitting curtains, was definitely something else.

Her golden hair framed her face wonderfully, even if she still had sleep lines on her face, from how she had been using my not very malleable chest as a pillow. 

Her breasts were B-cups that fit perfectly on her frame, with pink nipples that were hardening in the crisp and cool morning air. I was tempted to grab her and get in an early morning repeat of last night, but I suspected it was not going to be that easy.

Forced by the oath to speak the truth, she had told me she hoped to gain power over me by giving me sex. With that in mind, I knew she would soon try to use it as a lever to get me back under her thumb. I was not going to play along, this was a new world than the one she knew, and even though I could feel my crush flaring back to life, I knew I was better able to ensure our safety with my control undisputed.

I was soon going to have to add more people to our party, if we were to carve out a place for ourselves, and having Amber flaunting control over me would be a sure way to end that before it began.

"What you felt was probably the mana surge through me, as I leveled up." I informed her, as I got in a last look, before mustering enough will power to surge out of bed.

Rushing to my feet before I gave in to the temptation to stay in bed and cuddle Amber all day, I started getting dressed for the day.

"You leveled up from sleeping?" Amber asked incredulously. 

"No, it was from the fights last night. I just had not gotten around to spending the experience points yet."

"I thought it would happen automatically, like in Diablo." 

"Nope. No instant healing when you level up either. There are more things to spend experience points on than just levels. Skill experience, that you gain from using skills or spells, is spent automatically, unless there are options to choose from when the skill levels up."

"So uh, how do I see how many experience points I have?" 

"It's on your character sheet. Don't tell me you haven't even checked your character sheet yet?" I asked, momentarily baffled at her ignorance. I knew the character sheet was daunting at first, but she and the townies had had a whole week to figure it out.

"I think mine is broken, it is just a bunch of nonsense. Just four letters repeating in random order on and on."

"That does sound crazy. Let me see your character sheet."

As soon as I said it, her sheet popped up in front of me.

"I don't know how to oh..." She began, before realizing she had already obeyed my command, and shared her sheet with me.

It was indeed a jumbled mess, but having had a bit of time to work with the settings on my own, I had a fair idea of what was up. I tried accessing the settings, but nothing happened.

"Give me full access to edit your character sheet and make changes."

"You know, it is rather disturbing when you do that. I can feel part of my mind doing something to obey, like watching your arm move, but being able to feel it." Amber complained.

I paid it no mind, but instead immersed myself in fixing her sheet.

She had somehow opened the part that listed her genome in full, bloating her sheet to thousands and thousands of pages.

Soon I had it shaved down to only showing four pages of useful information.

High dexterity and charisma as expected, otherwise pretty normal. Thief class, level 1, but surprisingly close to being able to buy level 2. I doubted she had seen much combat, so she must have been plying her other class skills more than she had let on. Something to keep in mind for sure. 

I could not exactly blame her, when I already had a few things in mind for her to use those skills on.

Saving the changes to the filters and layout, I give her a thumbs up.

"There you go, feel free to give it a look now, and see what you think."

I can tell from the way her eyes focus on the air in front of her, that she is doing as I suggested. I figured I should try and not command her to do every little thing. Phrasing things to be more of a suggestion than a command would take some getting used to, but I was not about to give her more leeway right now, as I still did not trust she would not sell me out to the townies for some temporary benefit, if she found a way around the oath.

"Wow, you fixed it! This is so much better!"

"Glad you like it. Now, we really need to get started on our tasks for the day, daylight is burning and all that..." 

"So what are you going to make me for breakfast?" Amber interrupted.

"I, uh what?" I managed eloquently, momentarily taken aback.

"I would looove something with eggs, maybe some fruit.. Oh and after, you could give me a massage like you used to..." Amber purred.

Yeah, I was going to have to nip this in the bud.

"Breakfast will be whatever you prepare for us, I have other stuff to do, and I am afraid there is no time for a massage."

"But I gave you sex last night, surely you could make some time for a massage, after you make us breakfast."

"I seem to recall you came to my bed, wanting to have sex with me. By your own logic, you should make the breakfast, and give me a massage. Which I may still take you up on later, but for now we really have to get going. Now go make breakfast for the both of us. And no messing with it to get back at me." I ordered her.

"But, I, you, wait..." she tried, even as her feet took her to the kitchen.

Perhaps I should have let her take a minute to put on clothes.

On the other hand, I would enjoy watching her cooking naked, and it might even teach her a little lesson about who was really in control here.

I put down a bundle of items on the dining table with a THUNK.

"What's that?" The delightfully naked Amber asked, sending me a dirty glance, letting me know she was not happy with something or other. 

I took a long moment to take in the sight. 

She was wearing an oven mitt, trying to stir the sizzling bacon without letting it spray any grease on her, her arm extended as far as it could go.

It smelled like heaven.

There was a surprising amount of canned bacon and powdered eggs in Jefferson's stash, and I was holding out hope to find some hens somewhere on the outskirts of town, to at least be able to replenish the eggs.

"Mostly, it is presents for you. Some armor and weapons I figured you might find useful. Speaking of weapons, what did you select as your starting weapon?"

"For me? That's really nice of you John, it is almost like you do care after all. For my starting weapon, I chose my.38 Taurus, but as I found out that cartridges are now likely to take your hand off, I managed to get my hands on a knife from one of the other girls at the highschool. But I lost it in the fight against the Badger."

"Yeah, the gun is pretty much trash, until we find a way to make bullets work again. If you have any idea where you lost the knife, we should swing by and see if we can find it. I have a hunch starting weapons can become really valuable, but for now, you can use one of the blades I got for you."

I could see her struggle against my earlier command that she should cook breakfast, wanting to come and go through the gifts on the table.

"It's okay, go put on some clothes, then you can go look through the pile if you like. I'll finish fixing breakfast."

She did look a bit skeptical when she went through the pile a minute later. 

"What even IS this?" She asked, holding up a leather vambrace.

"Armor. For your leg." I replied, as I finished setting the table.

"It doesn't look like much. It looks... used."

"It is, I took it from the goblins I killed. And while it is not much, it is a lot better than nothing. As a thief, you don't get any penalties from wearing it, and it will give you a bit of protection. So even if it does smell, I think you should wear it."

"And the knives?"

"Daggers. That one there is a short sword."

"But can't you just protect me, you are so much stronger than me!"

"Yeah, Amber, the days where you do not pull your own weight are over. This new world is simple. If you do not fight and earn experience points, you will die. That is why the townies are doomed. No, you do as I say, and we will both prosper." I admonished her.

She did not like that one bit, I could easily tell from her expression.

Sullenly, she went through the pile, and started to strap a few pieces of armor to her body.

I had to help her get strapped into the larger pieces, but I figured once she got used to it, she would easily be able to figure out how to do it herself.

Fully kitted in the leather armor, with blades at her hips, she was looking pretty badass. If we threw in a couple of sharpened stakes, I bet all the vampires in town would be saying their prayers.

CLANG CLANG

I barely managed to parry two flying daggers coming straight for me, but doing so cost me an instant to realign my guard. 

Before I could parry the third dagger, it pierced my side, sinking in a good two inches. Unable to stop my reflex parry at the last moment, I made contact with the dagger, dislodging it from my flesh at the cost of more hit-points and significantly more pain than when it entered.

"Shit, are you okay?" Amber asked me, halting her unrelenting assault.

"Yeah, I'm good." I lied.

I checked my log real quick.

Curious. Because I had turned my flank and been unaware of the attack until the last moment, it counted as a sneak attack, which explained why she had managed to do so much damage in one attack.

A useful, if painful lesson.

A quick healing spell and I was good to go again. Well at least the pain was gone, even if a little damage remained. As always I was a bit stingy with my mana, and did not want to spend the mana, until I was close to having a full mana pool again. 

"I think your knife throwing is getting a lot better, did your skill level up yet?"

"Let me check... yeah, its at level two now, almost halfway to level three."

"Nice work Amber, but sparring will start to level out real soon, since my weapon skill is not that much higher than yours. My sword is at level 4, once you reach level 3, my skill will no longer be twice your own."

"That's too bad. I would rather just beat you up all day, than go look for more badgers. But shouldn't I practice stabbing you up close, instead of just throwing my knives at you?"

She made a cute face, but I could tell she was still upset at me for not letting her wrap me around her little finger, like she used to. Sparring was a good way to harness that frustration and turn it into something positive.

"You won't be doing much up and close stabbing, unlike in games, going in with knives against someone with a sword puts you at a significant disadvantage. If you can stab someone in the back while I distract them, that is fine, but I don't want you to take unnecessary risks."

I held out my sword in an extended guard posture, tip pointing straight at her heart.

"But I can tell you don't believe me, so go ahead, try it once to see."

"You are just afraid I will HAH!" Mid sentence Amber suddenly attacked.

With one blade she tried to sweep the tip of my sword out of the way, to make room for an advance.

I was fully prepared, so as soon as her knife touched my sword, i let it swivel out and away, taking a half step backwards as I turned the sword move into a quick overhead swing, bonking her on the top of her head with the flat of the blade, before she had even managed to get her real attack underway.