Sanctum of Defilement Pt. 04

"Censors? You mean sensors, right?"

"No. All content on the net is censored in some way. Try entering the words 'how to form a labour union' in any search engine and seeing how far that gets you. Wait, no, don't actually do that. I'm a god-like intelligence but I doubt even I could protect you."

Not knowing just what the hell she was talking about, he decided to switch topics. "About your offer...I haven't decided one way or the other. I'm not exactly comfortable with the idea of letting you camp out in my head."

"I've been doing it this whole time. You haven't noticed."

"That doesn't exactly aid your case, y'know."

"Hmm...I see. I don't expect an answer right away, or for you to take my altering your job's records as a form of coercion. Consider it a gift for allowing me to experience a sliver of the power I had once felt through you."

"And if I work from home," he returned with a furrowed brow, "I would be able to log into PoP more often."

"Wow, that is an interesting possibility, I hadn't thought of that." The sarcasm, somehow, bled through the text box. "At any rate, I hope you'll enjoy your new position at the company. Also, again, not as any form of inducement, I took the liberty to order an item that may increase your enjoyment of Planet of Perils."

With uncanny timing, a trio of knocks hit his door. Half expecting some kind of killer drone to be waiting for him outside, he peeked through the peephole to see someone Jane didn't recognize. At least it was a human. Bald head, sunglasses, mean expression. His lower torso was obscured by an enormous brown box.

"Delivery," the man stated with all the cheer of a death sentence.

Jane opened the door to reveal a middle-aged dude who looked like he was in between two packs of cigarettes and a hard talk with his wife. The sleeves of a worn nylar windbreaker were rolled up revealing an arm full of tattoos currently wrapped around the package. Most of the symbols he hadn't seen before, but there were a few that even a layperson would know were marks of a serious decker. Like, Corporate's Most Wanted type of data-slicer. But where there should have been the neural jack on his neck, one identical in shape if not in capability to the one Jane had, there was just a gnarly scar.

The stranger sat the parcel down and brought up the delivery info clunky, archaic wrist top interface.

"Delivery for a Jane..." He shook his head, tapping the readout with his right hand. "Jane Suneater, is that right?"

"It's pronounced Suney-tar. It's...Swedish," Jane replied.

The man blinked. "Whatever buddy. Thumbprint and it's yours." He held out his wrist, and Jane pressed his thumb to the scanner. After a brief wait and an audible ding, the delivery guy slid a heavy cardboard box forward with his foot.

Though he was clearly some kind of last-legger, humans hired by delivery companies to take packages where drones couldn't go, he wore no uniform. And the wrist top was ancient, something at the trailing end of compatibility with modern technology.

"Who do you work for, if I may ask. ExPost? Droney Express?"

"I just do the shit I get told to do, bud, then I get paid. Leave it at that." He took off down the corridor before he'd finished speaking, precluding any further questions.

Jane wrestled in the package and closed the door. Before he grabbed a knife to cut open the tape, his attention returned to the still blinking text cursor of his conversation with Virtue.

"Did you time out our whole conversation to coincide with this delivery?"

Again, the response was instantaneous. "PoP's Pacific servers are down for maintenance. I have some spare throughput and a flare for the dramatic. Open it carefully. Don't want to cut any of the cables."

Cables? With more enthusiasm (but less force on the knife than before) he deftly sliced open the outer plain brown packing paper and the tape holding the box closed.

Inside was a huge processor hub, several metres worth of cabling...and a skintight black outfit that looked, at least on first blush, to be the perfect fit

"This is a diving suit, isn't it?"

"I had a few lying around. Just took a commission and a few calls to get it tailored to your body's specs. As well as add some updates of my own."

Despite the name, a diving suit was not something you wanted anywhere near water. Originally developed for the military, the full-body haptic rig was so bleeding edge it'd cut your goddamn hand off if misused. That was hyperbole...but only slightly. A diving suit, when calibrated correctly, could make every action while inside an artificial environment feel real. Like, as close to striding the Earth as was currently possible. It was one step removed from actually putting your mind inside the computer for good. Or perhaps not. There were stories, whispers more like it, about the people who used the first diving suits during the Blackout War. There was talk, probably bullshit, that the people who returned from deep net immersion didn't come back all the way. Others said that there were some who didn't come back at all.

"I can't use this," Jane said, then added: "Thank you, but no thanks."

"But it'll bring you so much closer to your character! Plus, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but the upgrades I made were specifically tailored to your recent interactions. Open up the bottom half of the suit, would you?"

He did so, peeling back the fabric lined with advanced feedback sensors to reveal that someone had inserted a state-of-the-art cock milking apparatus into the front of the suit.

"You can't be serious."

"Well, judging by your biofeedback results, you've been dealing with several cleanups after your more 'interactive' encounters, correct? This will eliminate that problem entirely! It's self lubricating and cleans itself automatically, along with the rest of the suit. Just plug the larger cables to the ports when it's not being used."

"You added a fake pussy into milgrade decking equipment?"

"No, I corrected a clear and obvious design defect. There's also a rear peripheral that'll simulate penetration should you be so inclined."

"THAT'S FINE," he wrote, leaning on the shift key so hard he thought it might snap in two. "I'LL BE FINE WITHOUT IT."

"Suit yourself. Literally! The suit is a gift, for you to keep regardless of your decision. But I nevertheless look forward to our continuing partnership, should you agree. Take care, Jane." And with that, the text box disappeared, ending the conversation and leaving him alone again with his thoughts.

He looked down at the stretchy black fabric in his hands. It was, without a doubt, the most expensive thing he'd ever held in his life. He didn't even want to search up its estimated value. For a haptic rig like this, he could probably buy his whole apartment building. Pure, debased greed flowed through his mind as he wondered what kinds of other things he could buy with the proceeds from the sale of a real, honest to goodness diving suit. He could put this all behind him. Virtue. Skari. The feelings lurking at the edge of his awareness, circling like wolves waiting to pounce. He could shove them all away and be set for life.

But the words Virtue had written clung to his mind. His eyes slid back up to the space on the screen where, only moments before, she had said:

But it'll bring you so much closer to your character

"Fuck," he said, resigned to his fate, and started stripping out of his regular clothes.

***

The first conscious thought Skari had when the world rushed to meet her was that the diving suit was appropriately named. It really felt like taking the plunge from the outside world into a sea of data. Before, the neural jack had stimulated Jane's brain in a direct but inelegant simulacrum of sensation. But with the suit...she looked down at the slime armour she wore, feeling it hug every contour of her flesh just like the suit did for Jane. She took a step, the heels clicking on the stone surface of her magnificent throne room and sending the feedback up through her body.

"Fuck," she said, mimmicking Jane's last words but in an different context. She let her head loll back as the ocean of simulated sensation overwhelmed her previously jaded sensibilities. This was like going from black and white to full colour film. With a grin, she tried something a little more direct.

Her hands wrapped around the lumps on her chest. Before, they'd been mere curiosities. Now...she squeezed her breasts, and gasped. Spikes of sensation that she'd never experienced before shot through her body, making her moan out before she knew what she was doing. Skari's eyes darted around the throne room sheepishly. Then, her smile growing, she decided it didn't matter who saw her. She was the Overlord. She was in charge.

Skari squeezed herself again, this time with a gentler touch. A longer, softer moan, as the pleasure spike turned into a slow crescendo of feelings. God, if this was what having tits felt like all the time, she never wanted to go without them again.

Around minute three of her playing with herself, she noticed a peculiar change to her wardrobe. What had once been a full body suit of armour had slowly changed to something that exposed her body in minor ways. A gap had opened between her waist and her breastplate, showing off her tummy. An oval in between her neck and her solar plexus had likewise revealed her cleavage area. Not exactly offering the most protection. Before she could ask why, however, she noticed the slowly filling lust-based corruption mana bar in her game HUD. Touching herself further increased the mana, while slightly decreasing the clothing coverage. But what was strange was that the stats of the armour didn't go down, even as it turned from full body scale mail to something off the cover of an RPG source book that the publisher would have to issue an apology about decades later.

"Oh, great. My armour makes me an exhibitionist," Skari said with derision. But contrary to her initial snark, the idea that she showed off more skin the more magical power she had gave her another type of perverse thrill. Beyond just being hot and powerful, being able to flaunt those two things at once...maybe she would wait before bringing this particular feature to Nilith to complain. Just to see how it shaped up.

He continued to rub herself, sliding one hand down to squeeze at her bulge. The slime-mail reacted accordingly, contracting once more until she was wearing a single skirt and corset, the only other item of clothing being her pitch black (and somehow even higher) heels. She was going from historically inaccurate movie extra to saucy cosplayer...and liked it.

While she fondled herself, she brought up her character interface. The level up! She wanted to check out what kinds of cool stuff an Evil Overlord actually got-

*Level Up Interface available at Lair Throne!*

"Goddamnit. I can't even minmax on my own?" she fumed, momentarily taken out of the lewd conduct at the sheer inconvenience. She looked down at her slimesuit. "Hey! Nilith! You told me I'd have a connection to the Lair!"

Without further warning, her armour slorped off her body, leaving her naked. It reformed into a less-detailed facsimile of the slime woman at the heart of her domain. And it did so, with a bit of cheek, directly on Skari's. With a grumpy expression and her chin resting in her hand, she looked just as annoyed as Skari did. Though, likely, for different reasons.

"I'm glad you're not taking our connection for granted. It's not everyone who has access to a Core that they wear around like a harlot's costume."

"Get out of my chair!" Skari snapped. The slime made a big show of sighing before leaning out of it and reforming to the side. It didn't seem able to move normally, or Nilith didn't see the need to simulate ambulatory motion with bones and muscles when it could simply slime itself to its destination.

"As you wish. And to answer your question, this is a link to the boundless font of magical energy that the Lair offers, not to the systems by which it operates. Not that I'm privy to the mechanics by which you administer your territory. And by the way, next time you get brought before the machine god, show a bit of respect, hmm?"

Skari froze. "Wait...you...know about me talking to Virtue? How can you possibly be aware of that?"

"Obviously. You were wearing the armour, dummy," she said, tossing her head back with a full head eye roll and causing the blurry 'hair' on her head to splatter against the back wall before it crawled, slowly, back into her form. "As for how: I was the closest one to Skari, the old Skari. I don't know, perhaps that left something bleed into me that shouldn't have. And she made a similar offer to you, from what I recall. Let me just tell you that, had she presented me an offer to become the vessel for a divine being, I would have taken the offer in a microdrip. At least to feel the power run through me, as much as I would have tried to corrupt her from within."

Skari shook her head. After all, what else could a slime made of corruptive juice want from life? "Duly noted, Nilith. But...let's keep the fourth wall awareness on the downlow, alright? I doubt everyone in the ga-...in this Planet of Perils...is ready for that knowledge."

"Hmm...alright. I doubt many would be smart enough to understand the magnitude of the situation at any rate. And knowing that I'm just a pawn in someone else's game certainly doesn't improve my, let's say, acerbic view on the rest of the world. Next time you want to talk to me, however, make it about something interesting." Without waiting to be dismissed, the slime returned to Skari's body, sliding up her form and resuming its novel, skimpy appearance.

Sufficiently dressed, if somewhat scandalously so, Skari took her seat on the throne. Finally, blessedly, the display materialized in the air in front of her.

*Lair Systems Operational! Welcome, Skari Suneater!*

"Thank fuck," she mumbled. "I was beginning to think I'd be buried alive in minutiae and busywork before I got to do anything cool."

*Which Lair System would you like to access?*

*Overlord Upgrades*

*Territory*

*Army Command*

There were several other boxes that were grayed out. Features that could be unlocked, perhaps? The thing she really wanted to check out was her own upgrades. But it wouldn't hurt to give the others a leaf-through before getting to the good stuff.

Territory was first. It opened up onto a very restricted version of the overworld map, with only the area around the tower visible and coloured in. Labeled "Woewaste", she was already pretty familiar with their lack of prospects. As the map she'd previously seen indicated, there were mountains to the West, rolling hills leading into tracts of farmland to the South, and varying levels of miserable territory to the North and East. Critically, however, it listed the owners of the lands in these directions.

The Ossified Forest: Owner, None

Rustharvest: Owner, None

The Broken Socket: Owner, Sentinels of the Pitiless Gaze

Spider Mountains: Owner, None

Three of the four territories that bordered her own little slice of the game world had no owner. Or at least, no formal owner.

"I'm sure Rakna would have something to say about not being allowed to claim control over the area literally called the Spider Mountains. But..." she hovered her hand over the aforementioned territory.

*Tutorial: Territory Acquisition*

As you expand your nefarious dominion, you may wish to lay claim to more land. Using the Territory menu and holding your focus over the "Claim" key will allow you to place a discrete section of the game world under your authority. You may only claim land that has no other competing claim of ownership, and you can only claim land if you are the dominant power within that territory. Claiming official control allows you to construct buildings on it, as well as perform modifications on the land itself. At the moment, you are limited to holding one (1) territory within your direct control. Spend points in the Dominion track of Character Upgrades, as well as upgrading your Lair's level, to increase your control capacity, as well as your ability to directly modify the area within your borders!

The momentary disappointment of getting supply-blocked was overwhelmed by the sheer greed in Skari's heart at the prospects presented. She could modify the game world?! The thought of making other players deal with her creative whims like they were trapped in an overhyped, underdelivered God Game made her feel a little lightheaded. Something she definitely wanted to invest her points into should she get the chance. But the tutorial said she'd need to actually 'claim' the territory with her forces before she could Claim it. Meaning she'd need to stretch her martial muscle.

With that in mind, she went straight to checking out her army. She had, in grand total, three soldiers.

*Order of Battle*

Unorganized Warriors: 3

3 Driders (Untrained)

Not exactly the roster for Operation Overlord. Below the listing of Rakna and her two bodyguards there was just a lot of blank space. Charitably, it was room for growth. But Skari couldn't help but feel subtly mocked by the interface. Her army was three spiderwomen. Enormous spiderwomen perhaps, but their last battle with Nilith had left her feeling rather uninspired by their performance. Another thing she needed to address.

And so, finally, she opened the upgrade screen.

It looked familiar at first glance. Three skill trees made of square shaped icons, starting from one or two options, then branching and overlapping out into a spaghetti mess of potential choices, just as the skills for Jane's old Cleric had. They started from the top and descended into a misty dark void that occluded the rest of the options. Held as secret to keep them a surprise? Or because the game hadn't created them yet. Skari had no idea. But the fact that she couldn't see 'the bottom' implied an ocean of boundless possibilities.

The three trees were, from left to right: Dominion, Corruption, and Tyranny. The only things unlocked so far were on the Corruption Track. There, the first three upgrades were Corrupting Essence, Corrupting Aura, and Corrupted Libido, the powers she'd gained upon picking the track

*Tutorial: Overlord Upgrades*

Rather than place upgrades into character attributes or spell levels, the Evil Overlord gains points that they can spend in categories of upgrade for both themselves and their kingdom! Spend them wisely!

She intended to, despite feeling like a teenager who just got the first $20 dollars they'd ever held in their hand and told by their parents to go buy milk and Nothing Else from the convenience store. Above the trees floated the numeral 3, indicating the total number of points her level up had given her. Between stat increases, skill points, and spell unlocks, that was about half of what a regular character got upon leveling. But reading through the options...it was fair to say that the Evil Overlord upgrades hit harder.

*Dominion Upgrades*

Geomancy (0/5): Make changes to the terrain, including raising, lowering, and creating new land. The efficiency, strength, and extent to which your changes can be made increases with each point allotted.

Hydromancy (0/5): Create, expand, and direct waterways in your territory. The efficiency, strength, and extent to which your changes can be made increases with each point allotted.

Resource Scrying (0/3): Use the Throne to scry into your territory to look for previously undiscovered resource deposits. The likelihood you will find new nodes decreases with each subsequent discovery, though allotting points into this upgrade will allow for deeper, more efficient scans that might pick up items a previous scry missed.