They accepted it.
Kayla would never choose the safety of her family over that man. She was fine with giving up their stupid traditions, her mother was pregnant while her father only drank while awaiting for his next mission, ussing them as punching bags for the stupidiest of reasons, their family of seven would never survive much more even if there wasn't another baby in the way.
She was ready to work double or triple to pay this loan and be free of this whole danmed gang fight.
With what the vampire had said, she didn't doubt it would not exitate to follow it's word.
After rapidly signing her own name on the contract and seeing the terrifying being that held it smile, she wondered for a moment if she had doomed than all, imagining a thousand possible outcomes to her actions, but none prepared her for what was to come.
"I knew you'd make the right choice!" The vampire said while hugging her. For a moment she didn't understand what was happening, but the soft cheek pressing against her own and the small mounds hitting against her own only led to one conclusion. "Silver! Open the champane! That one I made myself!" It said before getting up and getting her to stand too, soon doing the same for the rest of her siblings and mother before holding the hands of the smallest ones and guiding them by hand.
"Come, come, we will feast tonight! To the dining room!"
Kayla and her family quietly followed, completely stupefied by the sudden change on their host.
It was only when she had a seat held for her that she noticed that they were invited to eat at the table.
"Won't you all sit and eat with me? My wife has already gone to sleep after an exausting fight (And an extensive session of nagging), so i'm all alone right now." She said while hugging the twins on her lap. "My new chef even went overboard just because it is his first day and cooked a lot more than needed."
And so they ate a divine beef with a suculent sauce, crunchy salad that complemented the texture and a light fruit juice that left a sweet after taste.
"It's been so long since i've ate anything that had olives..." The vampire murmured while dreamily looking at the rests of food in it's plate before eating them. " Well, since everyone has ate, than I'd like to tell my lovely maids to go and have their own dinner, because this is divine, and if one of you doesn't go court Blake (previously known as Aster or The Red Smile), I am." She said in all seriousness, which resulted in most maids seeming quite in a hurry when they left. "So, would you all like to go look at your new home?"
*****
The house was quite big. There was a living room, kitchen, two bathrooms, three rooms and an armazen through the two floors, all furnished and with some groceries already in stock.
Work? Kayla could read and write, plus had plenty of strenght or her arms, so Aki imediatly suggested she works on one of his stores as the manager or as one of his secretaries since Silver still needed more help. Her mother could also do some handicrafts, so she was encouraged to try and sell it to their neighbors or the local convenience shop. She was met yet again with stares of disbelief when he explained that she'd pay for each of the children learning under his orphanages, and remenbered them that the man she had taken was also going to contribute to their money situation by working for him in another place.
"Why are you going so far now? The only way to get back so much money would be to sell all of us as slaves, and even them..." Kayla tried to ask when outside of earshot of her family.
"You over estimated your market value quite a bit dear. Just the meal you all ate was worth several gold a piece." Aki grinned while the cat girl almost popped her eyes out of their sockets yet again. "I don't want money from this. While one of your siblings even has the talent for magic, that is not what interests me. After you bring me to the right cave system and i destroy the forces of my oponent, there will be many widowed woman with families to take care off. I want a happy family that i can show around so people see that living under me is better than fighthing agaisn't me."
*****
Later that same day.
Kayla was very scared.
When she was warned that there might be some scary monsters and that some of them were insect like, she was fine with that, she didn't expect what came next though. An army of goblins is normal for a dungeon, even if one still completely functional after capture was rare enough to buy a principality with, but when all of then exude great killing intent, ride completely silent beasts that stand almost the same height as her and are leaded by, aparently, a hobgoblin so big that he could pass as an ogre when wearing full armor and horned helmet and his wife with the image of starved beast ready to bounce at the first prey she sees and strangle it of any life it might not have leaked from looking at her.
Then there were the two 'special agents'. They ran as fast as the wolves, were greatly respected by everyone else and could massacre things many levels over fifty like it was nothing. The pressure they gave just from 'warming up'...
Then finally Aki was bored enough to 'fight' a level eighty broad mother. She shot one purple? fire spear and the spiders all started to run because of the explosion that made the fire start on all of them. I didn't even feel any pressure and thought something might have misfired when i saw that the spiders hadn't died and some started moving towards us with renewed fury and no apparent injury after being on 'fire' for a while, but suddenly they stopped moving and i only heard her mutter because I was right behing her.
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"The frequency of soul breaking at distance still isn't that good. Fire also seems to be the tipe that combined with the effect can cause lots of damage, but only in a drawn out scenario, so maybe void would somehow be the answer to burst damage, but infusing it with any effect is just..." Her mutters grew quieter and quieter and she kept talking, but it was mostly magic theory i dind't understand much more than 'all the spiders have just been completely aniquilated and don't have a speck of an injury in their body to show because i was innefective'. What in actual hell does it seem like when it is efficient?!
*****
Hundreds of insects dripping poison and acid, wolf riders, great serpents and a few demons surrounded all the entrances of a cave and prepared to intersept anyone that tried to get away.
The attack started not by any of those entrances, but through the slave pens, followed by the storage area. There wasn't any bloodshed yet, just the activation of powerfull bariers and of a teleportation device on the entrance of both these places.
All magicians on the place noticed this, of course, but the time to be sneaky had already passed.
*THUUUUUUU....*
With a horn sounding through the whole place, the wave of attacks started.
Centipedes and worms suddenly broke through the floor and started mauling at the nearest source of flesh they could find.
Arrows and spells were sincronized and planned, two or three per bandit and that greatly decreased their numbers, nevermind the various beasts taking down their opponents from the shadows.
In the slave pens.
"It's just a hobgoblin, kill it already!"
"They're mostly woman, how can they even be this good?!"
"JUST SHUT IT AND DIE QUIETLY!!!" Screamed the daughther of a beserker, Malit, as she repeatly cut down through man spouting the same lines. One even called her coward in his last moments as she attacked him in the back while he tried to get a hostage! If this is not iritating, than she did not know what the word ment.
At the storage area.
A frozen and jagged rockscape could be found at the center of the fight, a hobgoblin covered in leather armor and holding a saber cut down his enemies one by one as he made sure the loot was intact. The loot was the most important part of the fight. That, Gris'Gor learned the hard way already. He didn't pay attention to his opponent's blabering like he used to. He simply secured the loot and hoped his wife would deal with the people they bought back like it had become the norm. He apparently wasn't that good a tribe leader.
The boss room.
When the bear kin got his face kicked sideways and felt something break in his shin yet again, he already knew he was dead. The worst part was that even just one of the two brats that monster sent to attack him could take him down on their own, but they fought against each other as well, otherwise he would not even have battled them and simply died on their first sneak attack.
Caught with his pants down and with his weapon on the other end of the room, the man finally fell to his knees and through ragged breath surrendered. Only then did Aki appear.
"I promissed i would not let any of you reach damn near your god again, and i will keep my promise. You, with such strong titles, will become a great resource. From today onwards, your new name is D-1001." Explained the maniac while smiling and holding the man's head up by the hair before knocking him out with a knee to to the throath.
*****
"I would have subjugated that man much faster if this green shorty didn't interfere!"
"And i would have done it even faster if mister rainbow clothes didn't come!"
"And i wouldn't have a headache! Complains asside, you're both smart enough to know that i paired you together because i want you to fight like rivals, incentivate each other's growth. Now, i also wanted you FOUR to notice one specific thing. Any idea what it would be?" Rebuted Aki, looking back from the transcript of what they had looted to see that neither had any idea and two blobs had manifested on Ion's (Aki said his name was too strange around these parts and he should use the chance to get a better one) shoulders. "Not even one of you old fucks have a speck of XP on any skill related to teamwork! No, driving fear is not a comanding skill, is a puppetering one that needs constant imput, something too hard to do in any big enough fights, and no, guiding light isn't either, that's also a puppetiring skill, but for creating puppets instead, anyone affected is as effective as ants when it comes to keeping thenselves alive, and you don't have any AoE attacks that do not kill your allies in the process, so do something about working together first, then you develop something that breaks multiple laws of physics and metaphysics. The only one with an excuse would be Ion, and that's because he is even younger than me and only as smart as a dromedarian!"
As if affirming Aki completely correct, all three old timers lowered their 'heads' and the youngster seemed to completely agree as he nooded solemly with a smug air to himself. Half because was the only one not getting a talking to and half because he did not know what a dromedarian is. The second part would be quite normal considering where he lived his life and how poor he was before, but he literrary walks around with two huge libraries that have time tistortive fields, all the time!
"Now if you excuse me, i have a cat girl to get out of the wall, some worms that want potato starch and plenty of wolfes that want to be called good boys and girls." Aki said before sighing and walking over to his very precing compromises.