A low moan escaped her lips as rough hands roamed all over her naked body. Up and down her legs and hips, then down to the insides of her thighs, across her flat toned stomach, and up to her full breasts. Somebody behind her ran his hands down her back to her buttocks. She gasped when the man behind her slid his hand to her crotch. His hands stayed there for a moment before going down her legs.

Melinda felt good. This procedure always made her feel good even though it wasn’t a prelude to sex—at least not always. Another moan escaped her throat as the man in front of her moved his hands to her breasts again, cupping and massaging them. She couldn’t help but feel horny. However, she tried not to think about it. Maybe later she would have sex with her slaves, but right now she had to concentrate on a more pressing business. While the hands of her slaves continued to roam all over her body, rubbing magical oil into her skin, she decided to distract herself from being horny by thinking back to the last two months that she’d spent in this alien forest.

Or was it more than two months already?

She couldn’t tell for sure, but she remembered that she’d awakened in a cave without any memories about herself or how she ended up here. She’d quickly learned that the place she found herself in was extremely dangerous. The alien forest she discovered after exiting the cave was populated by all kinds of scary, bloodthirsty creatures. However, against all odds, she managed to survive in this hostile environment. She became a skillful sorceress with plenty of powerful spells under her belt. She became a force to be reckoned with.

Every day she spent in this spooky world she learned or found something new and exciting. For instance, at some point, she stumbled across a magical staff of epic rarity. This staff allowed her to crush the will of any persons—at least those whose resistance to magic wasn’t too advanced—turning them into her slaves. The description of the staff also told her that it was cursed, but it didn’t explain what it meant or what kind of threat it posed to her. Anyway, at first, she was disgusted by the magical properties of the cursed staff and swore to never use it on anybody. She even wanted to get rid of it, but something stopped her. The cursed staff seemed to whisper in her mind, telling her that sooner or later, it could save her life. In the end, she decided to keep it just in case. Later on, she couldn’t even remember if the staff actually talked to her or if it’d just been her imagination.

Later on, the magical staff actually saved her life when she was attacked by a group of several men. They fought her, but at the same time, they seemed to be unwilling to kill her, trying to take her alive instead. Melinda had a pretty good idea of what they had on their minds. Thanks to them going easy on her so as not to accidentally kill her, she was able to get to her staff. She immediately used it on them, turning her attackers into her obedient slaves.

At first, she thought that the staff hypnotized a person she used it on, turning them into some kind of brainless zombie. However, as she learned later, it wasn’t the case. Instead, the staff made a person carry out her commands, and if they didn’t obey, the staff inflicted severe physical pain on them. Her slaves also had to always be nearby. If they walked too far away from her, they experienced insufferable headaches that could even kill them unless they returned to her. The same would happen to any of them who’d try to hurt her.

While Melinda couldn’t remember anything about herself, at some point, she seemed to come to the conclusion that she hated men, all men. She didn’t know why, though. Maybe something happened in her past life? Having no memories about herself, she couldn’t tell for sure. But even though she had no recollection of her past life at all, her strong feeling of hatred toward all men remained.

What she didn’t know, though, was that the cursed staff was whispering in her mind every night when she slept, putting ideas in her mind about how much she hated men. She was quickly losing her mind but was completely unaware of that. At some point, she decided that she had to turn every man she met in the alien forest into her slave. She enjoyed the power over them that the staff gave to her. As long as men were her slaves and did everything she told them to, she could tolerate them.

There was a catch, of course. In order to keep her slaves under her heel, the staff had to always be in contact with her body. As soon as she let go of the staff, its magical effects stopped working on her slaves. Melinda read about it in the description of the staff, so she never let go of it. She made sure to hold the staff in her hands even when she turned in. Sometimes, she put it atop herself and hugged it tightly. The other times, she pressed it to her side or even lay on top of it when she went to sleep.

While her slaves had no choice but to obey her, they maintained their wits. She took away their free will and did whatever she wanted with them, and they hated her for that. There was one time when one of her slaves even tried to kill her in her sleep. Melinda woke up when he sat on her hips, straddling her. He could just try to wrench the staff from her grip, but he didn’t know that it would stop its effect on him. So he tried to kill her instead. From the pained expression on his face, she realized he was in agony. The moment the staff she held in her hands had sensed that he wanted to hurt her, it’d inflicted a terrible headache on him. However, it didn’t stop the man from what he was doing. He was going to see his murder attempt through no matter what. Fighting through the pain, he reached for her throat.

But as soon as his fingers touched her skin, he screamed loudly as a way more extreme pain lanced through him. He fell over, and when Melinda looked at him, she saw that he was now profusely bleeding from every opening in his head, mouth, ears, nose, and even from his eyes. He continued to scream, begging for the pain to stop, but it didn’t. Even though he no longer tried to kill her, the staff continued to take his life away. He died a horrible death. It was the first and the only time when one of her slaves tried to kill her. They learned the lesson.

At some point, she learned that the staff could control only thirteen people at a time. Unfortunately, the description of the staff failed to mention this important detail, and one time it almost cost Melinda her life. She didn’t know there was a limit to how many slaves she could have. Such a thought crossed her mind, though. She initially thought that when she reached the limit, the staff simply wouldn’t let her take another person under her control.

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However, something else happened instead. When she and her gang of thirteen slaves met another man, she used the staff on him, taking him under her control. The moment she did so the very first man she’d enslaved stopped being under the spell of her staff. As soon as he realized that, he did a very stupid thing. He could’ve pretended to be still under her control to try to kill her in her sleep. But he didn’t do that. Probably he thought that she knew he was free now. So as soon as he realized the staff no longer affected him, he charged at Melinda. He almost managed to make it to her when she noticed him run at her with a sword in his hand. She killed him with a powerful electricity spell, burning his body to a crisp. That’s how she learned that her enslaving staff could control only thirteen people at a time.

Melinda was not only a strong sorceress but a talented alchemist as well, and at some point, she learned to create magical body oil that greatly increased the effectiveness of all her spells. The more parts of her body were covered with the magic oil, the more effective it was. Along with the magical effect it gave her, the oil made her body shimmer and emit a soft golden glow, and its effects lasted for a few hours before disappearing by itself.

There was a catch, though. For the magical properties of the oil applied to her body to work, her skin needed to be exposed. The more skin was exposed, the better the effects of the magical oil were. Being a mage, Melinda didn’t need to wear armor. Her spells protected her better than any armor could. Before learning to craft the magical oil, she wore short tunics or robes, but after discovering the oil, she decided not to wear any clothes at all. At first, she felt embarrassed by it even though there wasn’t anybody around her at the time, but she quickly got used to being naked all the time. It no longer bothered her at all even when she met other people or was surrounded by her slaves.

The cursed staff was quickly turning her into an altogether different person. She wasn’t burdened by any ethical considerations anymore. She no longer cared about such things as her modesty or other people’s lives.

A few weeks ago, Melinda completed an epic quest, for which she was rewarded with a rare reward—she learned how to perform a ritual to summon a demon and ask him to grant her a temporary but powerful spell. First, she needed to address the demon and tell him what kind of spell she wanted to get. Then she received a reply telling her what kind of ritual she needed to perform in order to get the spell she wanted. The ritual always involved a human sacrifice, and the more powerful the spell she wanted, the more violent and bloodier the ritual was. One time the demon had her cut a victim from neck to crotch and gut him clean. However, the spells she received as a reward for worshiping the demon could only be used for twenty-four hours, and she could perform only one ritual in a day.

When Melinda planned to do a difficult epic quest or venture into a perilous dungeon, she always sacrificed one of her slaves in order to get a powerful offensive or defensive spell. After completing a quest or clearing a dungeon, she usually wandered around the forest, looking for a person she could enslave to top off her gang.

A few days ago, she lost two of her people during a raid into a dungeon. Most of the dungeons were extremely dangerous, and Melinda more often than not lost some of her men during a dungeon run. So after losing two of her men after the most recent dungeon run, she used a control spell on a winged creature and had it look for any people in the forest. A couple of hours later, she received a mental reply from the creature, informing her that it’d just found a pair of people. Melinda set up a mental link with the creature and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she looked at the world through the creature’s eyes. It was perched on a branch of a tall tree under which were two men who sat near a fire they’d built. She marked their position on the map and gave the creature an order to follow the two of them wherever they went. After she turned off the mental link, she gathered up her men.

As she learned later on, the two men’s names were Kwan and Michael. Melinda attacked them during the night, but they managed to escape from her. Melinda and her men combed the forest for them for a few hours before finally giving up the chase. The two strangers gave her the slip, and he thought she’d never see them again, but to her surprise, when she sent another winged creature to fly around the forest, it came across a camp, in which four people lived. As it turned out, Kwan and Michael had teamed up with a young couple whose names, as she learned later, were Nina and Kirk. The discovery excited Melinda a great deal. She had three more men to enslave, and they had a permanent place of living, which meant they weren’t going to relocate to another place anytime soon.

By the time she discovered their camp, she’d already topped off her gang with two more fresh slaves, so there was no immediate need for new slaves. She marked the location of their camp on the map and every day had a winged creature fly over there to check on Kirk, Kwan, Michael, and Nina. One of the previous days, she watched them fight a tree golem—a guardian of the forest. They’d chopped down a lot of trees in the past few days and therefore awakened the guardian of the forest. Luckily, none of them were killed in the battle.

Right now her gang was full, so there was no need to enslave more people. However, Melinda knew that her slaves didn’t live long, what with her sacrificing some of them to the demon and losing others in dungeons. Sooner or later, the need would arise to top off her gang with new members. When that happened, she would attack their camp. She didn’t know what she would do with the young woman called Nina, though. So far, she’d targeted only men. Melinda didn’t have any hatred toward her, so she would probably let her go unless Nina caused her too much trouble. Anyway, for now, she left the four of them alone, but she sure kept a watchful eye on their camp.

Finally, her men finished rubbing the magical oil into her body. Her tanned skin shimmered and emitted a soft glow. Melinda closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Feeling invigorated by the magical oil, she cast a levitation spell, and her body easily flew up, her feet hovering a few inches from the ground.

Melinda opened her eyes and looked at her slaves. All of them were kneeling before her now, waiting for her orders. She checked the map and put a pin on the location of a dungeon she hadn’t cleared yet. Dungeons were extremely dangerous, but they were also full of treasures, so she had to venture into them every now and then to find a rare item as well as better armor and weapons for her gang.

“Follow me,” she said to her men.

As they began to get to their feet, she wheeled around and flew through the air as lightly as a feather carried by a rush of wind.

The cursed staff continued to drain her of her sanity, but Melinda had long since reached a point where she no longer cared.