CHAPTER 78 COOPERATION

I followed Gorlin out of the room and through the tunnel. Instead of meeting out in the commons room like we had last time, Gorlin started leading me down another set of tunnels, relatively close to the kitchen.

It took me a moment to realize that I was probably being taken to David's room. I armored up, tendrils slowly snaking up over my body, making creaking noises as we walked which got Gorlin’s attention for a moment.

He just ignored it after a moment though. Not a lot going through his head.

Once I got the armor fully up I spun up another couple minds and formed a sword that I left slung across my back. Using my other mind I turned on my passive skill [As Fast As Lightning]. It caused my steps to start sparking which once again caused Gorlin to stop walking to look and see what was happening.

Once again he realized it was just my skills being noisy and turned back around to keep walking down the hallway.

Something I had noticed that was kind of strange was that there were no flowers down this pathway that I could notice. I had been pretty sure that I had placed the lily flowers everywhere I could just so that I could have spatial awareness everywhere. And yet there were none through here.

Maybe David had someone go through and remove all of them from around his room. That’s what I’d do in his position anyways.

I kept an eye on everything around me using [One With Nature]. I didn’t see anyone moving suspiciously around the entrance to the tunnel we were in. I could somewhat see down the tunnel as well, but not well enough to see us now that we were a ways in.

I only belatedly thought that this may be a trap. I tried to form some flowers to get sight, but for whatever reason it didn’t work. I felt the mana draining out of me to create them, but they didn’t show up where I wanted them to. Or really show up at all that I could tell.

Very strange, possibly some strange interaction with a skill David has? I wasn’t sure, I guess I’d find out. It didn’t take terribly wrong to clear the rest of the distance to the door. It was a somewhat long and windy tunnel, but there was really only one you could go at the end of the day.

We approached the door and Gorlin knocked on it and waited for a response. After a moment I heard David’s voice call out from the other side.

“Enter.”

He was being quite pompous wasn’t he?

I followed Gorlin into the room, each step casting a cascade of violet sparks out and tendrils of lightning up my legs.

Damn, that looked cool. I was always a sucker for flashy effects like that. Unfortunately David’s room didn’t have a rug that I could ruin.

His room was much more lavishly designed than one would expect of a slave's room. I guess there was something to be said for his underground trading that he did. I still wasn’t sure how exactly he got the money to support this kind of operation.

Did he have people on the outside that helped him? That actually made a lot more sense.

While his room looked pretty nice, it reeked of drugs and sex. Almost potent enough to make me gag. He was currently sitting on the edge of his bed, shirtless. He looked slightly out of breath. Take a wild guess as to why.

The two women next to him wore nothing. I frowned slightly seeing their state of undress.

“You know, this conversation could have waited until you were in a much more presentable state, David.” I said making my displeasure known through my tone.

Why did he feel the need to flaunt like this? What was he getting out of it?

David just smirked, “Maybe, I felt it would be better to have it sooner rather than later, ya feel me?” He said with a slightly condescending tone.

I nearly blew a gasket at that. Sparks and tendrils of lightning erupted off the entirety of my body, causing the two girls to scream in shock. Both figuratively and literally.

I fixed my attention on both of them, “Out.”

My tone brooked no uncertainty on whether I’d be willing to even entertain them staying. They scurried out of the room, barely taking time to cover themselves up.

I watched them as they left before turning my attention back to David as he sat on the bed.

“Come on now,” He said in a slightly whining tone, “You don’t gotta be such a wet blanket, just a bit of fun man. You gotta learn to loosen up a little bit.”

I grit my teeth and barely managed to restrain myself from just trying to punch him.

“What. Do you want. David?” I spoke extremely slowly. My anger was building very quickly. If I had gotten pulled out of my room just for this I was going to be furious. Hell, I was furious already.

“Nothing much nothing much,” He said with a wave of his hands, “Just wanted to propose a trade of sorts.”

I frowned but gestured for him to continue.

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“Well I see all these flowers you’re making and the different produce you're delivering to Jolene and I had an idea. See the soldiers here don’t eat much better than we do, you see? It’s hard to keep a group like this fully stocked with food. Sure we’ve got Verdanst right next door, but they’re not an agricultural center, so they have to import a lot of their foodstuffs. And because they’re also a hotspot for activity they need a lot of what they import for the people coming in or through the city. As such we’re kind of left with the scraps.”

I nodded, I think I could already see where he was going with this.

“So, what? You want me to somehow produce enough for the entire camp and sell it to them. You know that’s not realistically possible.”

“What? Hell no!” He said with exasperation, “Absolutely not. I’m saying you make some extra we can sell to them at a huge mark up, and especially if you can make other things like sugars and what not. Hell, the commander of the camp himself might even want to buy from you if that were the case.”

I just gave him a pointed look.

“What? It’s a good plan, what do you have a problem with?”

“David, do you know what Lurks does? What her classes are?” I asked him like I was talking to a child, making sure to speak slowly and clearly enunciate each word.

He frowned slightly, annoyed with my tone but he didn’t mention it when he spoke.

“No, I mean. It’s probably come up at some point, but it’s never been particularly relevant. I know she likes to take people that catch her eyes, men or women, back to her room and that her brother does much the same. But I’ve never bothered to find out what her classes are.”

I sighed, “Alright, I’ll give you that the idea is mostly a good one. There’s no way I’m selling to Drikith, and not for the reason you think. It’s more that he would never buy from me when he can just take what he wants. Lurks classes are the ability to essentially brainwash you. She forcefully takes control of your mind and body and forces you to do whatever she wants. She quite literally controls every aspect of your body and mind while you’re stuck watching.”

My voice slowly slipped into a monotonous tone as I got flashes of memories. So far she hadn’t taken me back to her room again, and I hoped it would stay that way, if I could help it I never wanted to go back there ever again.

David’s mouth formed a silent ‘o’ as I explained.

“Ya know? I think I understand a little more why you’re so pissy now.”

I glared at him, causing him to hold up his hands in a placating gesture.

“Hey now! I didn’t mean anything by that. Listen, from my point of view it was you getting to go with an unarguably very hot woman. Maybe she did a couple things you wouldn’t like, but what most men wouldn’t give to have a few rounds with her and you had nearly two weeks with her. But I guess it’s a different story if you were brainwashed the entire time.” He finished with a shrug.

Two weeks? I hadn’t known how long I had been out of it, but I had thought it was only several days. Maybe a week at most, but two weeks? I felt sick to my stomach at that revelation.

I must’ve spoken out loud because David responded.

“Yeah, two weeks. Was wondering if you died or something after a while.”

One of my other minds managed to create a chair just in time for me to crash into it, while the rest tried to compartmentalize. After a few moments I managed to take a deep breath and tried to focus back on the conversation.

“David, we did not just have sex for the entire two weeks. A large portion of it was just her torturing me, or drugging me so heavily I couldn’t even remember my own name while forcing me to live out my worst nightmares from the depths of my mind.”

We sat there for a long moment before he responded.

“I see. That makes even more sense about how you’ve been acting this whole time.”

I didn’t even have the energy to really react anymore. This conversation had delved too far into my trauma for me to really want to talk anymore. I just wanted to go back to my room and sleep now, I felt mentally and physically exhausted. The smell of this room was just exacerbating the issue. It smelled way too much like Lurks’ room when I had come back into consciousness.

“Hey man, alright listen.” David started, grabbing my attention from where I was staring at the floor. “We’ve still got like, eight hours before our shift. Why don’t you go back to your room and try to relax for a bit. More than likely you’re going to be fighting again anyways.”

I nodded slowly standing up from where I was sitting and walked out the door. It didn’t take me long to make it to my room where I noticed the baskets still sitting on the floor. I hadn’t properly checked how many I had before I left with Gorlin, but I had twelve of these extremely large baskets just completely filled to the top.

I let out a sigh, ‘I should probably take these to Jolene before anything else.’

I slowly worked on getting the baskets onto barriers again, since that was still just the easiest way for me to transport them. From there I walked back down the hallway of my room to the commons area. Something I noticed with my local omniscience is that less and less people were taking deliberate notice of me.

People just were slowly not caring as much that I was around any more. Which I liked, I didn’t enjoy being the center of attention if I wasn’t prepared for it. Made me feel slightly uncomfortable. It didn’t take me long to make it up to the kitchen area where Jolene was yelling about something or other again.

I just started working on getting the baskets onto the counter from where they were on the ground. Something I noticed was that I couldn’t reposition the barriers myself, while they always stayed within a set range of me I couldn’t actually change where or how they were positioned. At least not without first getting rid of them and just completely replacing them from scratch.

Jolene turned to look as I started placing the baskets on the counter with an ever increasingly raised eyebrow.

“You certainly brought a lot this time didn’t you?” She said as I finished placing the eighth jumbo basket on the counter.

I just nodded as I reached down for the next one, picking it up and placing it on another spot on the counter. I was starting to run out of room.

Jolene looked over her shoulder, yelling, “Jeremy! Come over here and move these baskets! Go put it with everything else!”

“Aye, ma’am!” I heard the return yell from across the open area.

The man who I assumed would be Jeremy ran over and grabbed one of the baskets and took off with it. I placed another basket in the empty area.

With the room Jeremy created by moving baskets I was able to place the last two I had without much trouble. I was also starting to feel pretty worn out from that.

“You doing alright? You don’t look too good right now.” Jolene asked with a note of concern in her voice.

I just nodded, not trusting my voice to answer right now. I’d had too many reminders of Lurks right now to really feel comfortable talking to anyone at the moment. With everything out of the way I turned around and walked back to my room.

Hopefully this would be something I could sleep away.