My offer of stopping inside the village for one night and to restock on food is rejected by Aelynthi. After a sparring session she convinces me thoroughly that we will ignore the village and start our quest. It will take us a few days to exit the elven kingdoms territory, then we will head into the mountains that are a week or so away, to set up a long term base. The princess agrees with the idea of a secluded base for obvious reasons.

Setting up camp just before nightfall, I leave her to set up the sleeping place and start setting up my security perimeter with a radius of 50 meters. As we are in a fairly clear area the visibility for the cameras will be excellent, I am sure the cameras will pick up threats from a distance of 50m if not more. I am quite assured to sleep soundly tonight. I return to see a stone rectangle as our sleeping spot. The walls of this home are thick as my thighs, with the entrance being a seperate part so you can not directly see within but enter without a problem.

"Who will take first watch?"

My answer is simple and direct: "I will sleep the whole night."

"What? I am not your slave, you are obliged to keep watch the same as I am."

"Good night." I lay down and promptly fall asleep ignoring the sounds of an elven woman from outside.

*6 hours pass*

I am hit in the groin, good thing my armor is extra thick there.

"Wake up, it is your turn to keep watch."

"No watch just sleep."

I get kicked again in the same spot, I decide to sleep outside.

"Alright, you can sleep here."

After exiting the rectangle tent, I lay against it and try to fall asleep.

*2 minutes pass*

I am kicked in my upper leg.

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"Bastard, keep watch, this is serious, a predator may sneak up on us, no mana will make a difference."

I look up at her with a sleepy expression and consider researching a sleeping spell.

"Damn it, I want to sleep too, so keep watch or we both may end up as food."

At this moment my security alarm goes off, I jump up in fright, pull up my goggles and look at the screen on my left forearm. which shows the image of the intruder and a direction towards the camera that saw the intruder. I unholster my pistol and turn around towards the intruder. I spot the target visually so there is no need to change position, I take aim, exhale, fire. I put down my gun and return to my previous position in which I was attempting to fall asleep.

Aelynthi only reacts now, "What was that?" I think she is referring to many things all at once.

"The dangerous predator that could have sneaked up on us and eaten us."

Aelynthi frowns, I think she does not believe me. She continues: "I will go take a look." and walks off into the dark forest, I hope she does not trigger my seismic sensors as I implemented a personal shock system to the alarm as I am a deep sleeper and I value my life so it was logical at the time, now I am reconsidering. I decide to return into the rectangle to sleep.

*4 hours pass*

I wake up and find something heavy on me. Oh great, this too damn predictable! An elven princess is sleeping soundly on my chest. Wait, why is she on me? There is not that much room but not to this extent, did she pass out from exhaustion? Now I feel guilty for not explaining the security system and letting her have a 6 hour night watch... Aaah, damn it, I guess I can sleep some more.

*3 hours pass*

My left leg is numb and I finished mentally designing a target triangulation system that I will add onto my security system.

"You could have woken me up."

"I was enjoying it too much."

Aelynthi scoffs and proceeds to somehow repeatedly painfully pinch my right leg, the CNTW armor offers no protection. How can she pinch me through the armor?

"That is for killing an innocent frog."

"For making me take a night shift we will have double training for a month."

"That is for... being mean."

She has stopped pinching me and is now looking at me strangely. Why is she still on me?

"Shouldn't you get off me? You are a princess and of the opposite gender..."

Aelynthi feigns surprise: "You know that I am female?" She stands up, of course using my body as support in the most painful way possible.

I just realised something painfully obvious, Aelynthi can force me to do what she wants as all my means of resistance are only lethal artifacts. She is for some unknown reason physically stronger than me while being more than a head shorter than me with a skinny but athletic body and is more adept at magic be it spells or 'will' magic. I do not want to kill her... I can either force her to leave or develop an effective non lethal way to protect myself from her. We continue on with our journey.

Our exit out of the elven territory was uneventful. Four days after exiting the territory I spot something through my goggles.