A month had passed since Milly cunningly roped him into an engagement and Marlin had finally gotten into a routine.

one month of hunting got him a 100 personal XP piss poor, he had gotten spoiled with his first battle.

Thing is, if you hunt/kill stuff that doesn’t really pose a threat it doesn’t really get you lots of XP. He started craving the thrill again. His inner warrior screamed at him.

Marlin could see why it would take so long to gain experience. The stronger you became the less a threat something posed. Bradford had informed him that killing those 4 bandits had netted him roughly 50 xp in total.

in a vacuum, you needed 30 of those bandits to put Bradford, his dad down.

he sighed. “The road is long”.

”there is no road my lord”, Billy bleated.

Him and Billy were bonafide Freebooters. Marlin had sobered quite a bit since he started.

At first he was riding his high of having a sultry and cunning T’jut as his lover and everyone so much nicer then what he remembered from earth. But reality had a way of kicking you in the teeth.

Turned out, all those people weren’t as genuinely happy to see him as he first thought. They loved to flirt or banter but that was par for the course in this culture.

slightly different body tells, had put him off track and add to the fact that A LOT of people had persuade skill, it made a whole lot of people rather difficult to read at first.

but the silver lining was that, since it offered him an actual challenge it started netting him actual XP. 50 personal xp for just looking and analyzing people something he did instinctively.

as a level 1, it was common practice to group up with others. A minimum of 3 was recommended 1 martial, 1 specialist and 1 caster. Which is also what everyone stuck to. The larger the group the lower the XP gain.

Warrior, at this level were not very desired, not yet settled properly into their role and no one wanted a loose cannon.

some of the other warriors Marlin had met were temperamental to put it mildly. They flew of the handle at the slightest provocation. Part of the problem was that many of the warriors took rage AND frenzy. Combined with Heart of fury that you got by picking warrior, and you had a big lovable suicidal bomb.

It made for very interesting characters, that bounced of the walls with too much energy, no patience and very VERY loud.

in comparison Marlin had looked like a serene Sage, but people were more wary of him, his presence, made a duo reconsider a warrior they had previously rejected and walked off with said warrior.

His tyrant/dom/overlord. Was a big unknown quantity, other warriors were emotionally volatile, but it was known.

Marlin added the SCARY, which made people wary of him. In town they felt safe, no one started a fight when you had powerful guards.

They accepted him, not trust him.

out in the forest? Accidents happened. and he couldn’t really fault them.

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Sipping his beer in the guild has made him aware that the guild did business with the bandits.

If bandits had something the town needed, it would be a freebooter that would walk towards a bandit to make the trade. This meant the Guild had a somewhat more loose policy on what they considered a betrayal or breach of trust. Not a lot but enough pragmatic wiggle room.

Lots of women still flirted with him which he felt was odd considering he made no secret who he was engaged with.

”Hey Milly, why do they keep flirting with me? They are much more drawn back with other guys whom i know are engaged”

”They are testing you my love”, her voice had been ice, not directed at him but it still felt awkward.

he figured they did it for the novelty. Milly’s reaction made him cool to the flirtatious socialization quite a bit, Milly took immediate notice and asked why the sudden change? When Marlin had explained, he saw relief in her eyes.

From that point on, whenever he was town to run errands or pick up requests. He tried to do them with Milly whenever he could.

The flirting toned down a bit but not much, this started agitating Marlin more and more, the dark emotional undertones of what these women were after, became more clear the more he was exposed to it. Some of the gay dudes were doing the same thing.

he found out about quirks of Milly, adter a week of all of this.

she hated not being in control and she had a case of the Yandere.

He knew this sort of possessive obsession could become a big problem but he wanted it. He selfishly wanted someone to be obsessed with him like this. In hindsight it hadn’t been very difficult to figure out.

Every single time he had been a bit more then cordially polite, or smiled a bit too wide at another woman, she had squeezed his arm tightly. It took him a lot of prodding and actually telling her, he would not kiss her until she told him. She had a tearful admission, how it drove her nuts that i might be thinking of other women.

”man talk about a hear wrenching look” Marlin still felt an ache in his chest, remembering her face.

super sultry confident Milly was ashamed of it, ‘yandere’ behavior was a bit of a taboo in this culture, which is why it took Marlin so long.

He had pushed her in a corner with his observations.

She admitted that other men wouldn’t want her, feel insulted by her behavior.

Marlin started to dislike people a bit even though he tried not to.

”Yea well, you fell head over heels for a moron, who secretly likes you, the way you are”. he smiled. Milly was still hesitant so he decided to make a game out it.

“Hey Milly every time I do anything that is considered… me flirting, count and when you reach ten, you may ask me to do something for you”. Was this dangerous? Yes. Was he really, really curious to see what Milly would do with this? Also yes.

Milly had looked at him for a couple of seconds. “Anything?”

“of course”.

With Milly this meant she basically asked for more intimacy and allowing her to use magic to spice things up.

She had been purring like a kitten ever since.

How on the gods green earth this culture hadn’t devolved into abhorrent sexual deviancy was beyond Marlin’s comprehension.

After she showcased what she could do with it, his dark twisted mind came up with some very freaky shit the bdsm cult would have killed over.

“to the fucking grave will i take those thoughts, to the fucking grave” Marlin muttered.

“The secrets of your sexual deviancy are safe with me, my lord”, Billy bleated.

Marlin sighed, “Billy those thoughts are like a waking nightmare for me. I can’t help it that i have an active imagination dialed up to 11, with my Domination or overlord amping it up for good measure.”

“whatever you say my lord.” Billy bleated.

“Billy. I think it is time to expand our numbers” Marlin muttered.

The only work that was available to him had been geared to specialists or people with survival or herbalism. As such his progress and money making was going slow. He wasn’t someone who could properly skin animals, often a requirement, he could do it but just took him forever.

He was thinking of getting himself a minion that would naturally come with a survival skill. He had his mind set on a demi gnoll. There was a Gnoll tribe calling the woods 2 days away, their home. demi gnolls were basically dwarf sized gnolls.

In a culture where strength was everything demi gnolls often ended up being outcasts.

Apparently each litter would usually have one or two. And he had stalked the wood periodically over a week daring to go deeper and deeper. This time he had gone for 2 days worth of traveling into the woods, with Billy as his mount it meant only 6 hours,

The goat was fast, nimble and perfectly suited with his size to run through the forest.

And just when he was about to give up for the day.

y~iip! yyy~ipp!