"So… how did that happen anyway? The last thing I heard, Emi was just trying to boost her Unholy skill." I said.
"You recall that Emi wanted to reach rank ten in her first tier Unholy magic skill and then take Summon Familiar as a capstone spell?" Lysander explained.
"Yeah."
"Well she did that. Maddie and I accompanied her to the woods last night, during the Night of Monsters, to conduct the familiar summoning ritual. The ritual involves sending a call out to the Infinite Abyss, using the blood of a virgin maiden to entice an eldritch entity into a trap and then bind it to her will."
"I see where this is going… she enticed Shiggy?" I asked.
"Indeed. It appears the gods want to help us clear the Taint as much as possible, but are bound by rules. Apparently, there is no rule that says the Elder God of Violated Purity cannot intentionally become a summoner's familiar."
"So… that big tentacle monster just now… was her familiar?" I gasped. That was ridiculous and overpowered.
"Erm… no. When acting as a familiar, the amount of power Shiggurath can project is restricted by Vyreth's system. As a familiar, Shiggurath is merely a ball of tentacles, roughly the size of a beanbag chair. What you witnessed was an ancient ritual the old god taught Emi allowing a somewhat larger portion of the god's power to manifest on the mortal realm." Lysander explained.
"Somewhat larger? That's an understatement. That mass of tentacles must have been at least sixty feet tall," I gave Lysander an incredulous stare.
"This is how Emi described it: Imagine an ocean, and then get an eye dropper, and place a single drop of water into your palm. That is Shiggurath when acting as a familiar. The Rite of Ankadiesth is more like… a swimming pool. Indeed, it is quite large when compared to the eye dropper, but when compared to the ocean…"
"Ah… I see." I said.
"So umm… why didn't anybody else rescue us?" Chloe, who had been quietly listening the whole time asked. "I mean… they could have sent town guards instead of a god, right? I don't know if Mistress Tyler's enslavement was legal, but I was definitely stolen property."
"Yeah, I'm still pissed off about that. We figured out where you guys were pretty much immediately." Maddie said. "Adam survived, by the way, just barely. Apparently, someone stabilized him with healing?"
Chloe smiled, and raised her hand.
"Yeah, thought it might have been you," Maddie smiled. "Anyway, so someone nearly killed Adam, and Father Jacob went on the warpath. Tier threes are scary, let me tell you. He incapacitated a whole gang of thugs with magical glowy shit, and we found out they'd sold you to the Scarlet Thorn."
Maddie gave me a frustrated frown. "That's where the investigation ended."
"Father Jacob refused to investigate that place for some reason. He apologized to us, said his hands were tied, and offered to reimburse us a hundred gold, Chloe's approximate market value. As for you, Tyler, Maddie blabbed to him about your demihuman nature, so he only told us that you were legally enslaved and he merely regretted that we didn't have the chance to enslave you ourselves first." Lysander said.
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"You blabbed, Maddie?" I gave her an accusing glare.
"Well he was all like… 'Why was Tyler taken? That shouldn't be possible.' so I might have… explained why?" Maddie looked down at her toes guiltily.
"Eh, whatever. Even if I was human, I doubt that would have stopped them. I bet they've kidnapped humans too. Madam Orchid seemed to think so, anyway." I said.
"So, naturally, since none of us wanted to abandon you to your fate. It fell to us to rescue you." Lysander said.
"Yeah, but after seeing what a tier three [High Priest] could do, we sorta realized that a level three, a level five, and a level seven wouldn't be able to assault what was basically a castle full of armed thugs in the second tier or higher," Maddie said.
"Our plan was to level into mid second tier, perhaps level twenty or so, and hopefully unlock some skills to bypass their defenses and break you out. Wind magic in particular has some useful options for stealth." Lysander said.
"But then Emi got herself a pet god… and we were able to act a little sooner. You know the rest." Maddie added.
"So you guys levelled up?" I said.
Maddie raised her hand proudly, "Level six."
"Level nine" Lysander added.
"You guys should borrow my dickgirl. I think Chloe went from level three to level six in what… two hours?" I said, looking at Chloe for confirmation.
"Level seven actually, Mistress." Chloe said proudly.
"That's not even close to fair… I spent like, eight hours killing shit." Maddie complained.
"As bizarre as it seems, Tyler's idea of domesticating monsters for easy levelling is a good one. I wonder if there are limitations imposed on the rate of sexual levelling…" Lysander said.
"It's a shame we don't have like… a numeric exp bar. That would help us graph the levelling rate." I said.
"Fucking nerds," Maddie, the former neckbearded Linux guru, teased.
When we got back to the rectory hall, my friends had a pair of dresses set aside for Chloe and me. My dress was white with red accents, with a neckline that wasn't too low. It was a nice modest cut, still a dress but not overly frilly or feminine. Quite tasteful, and well chosen. Chloe's dress was a simple charcoal grey, comfortable and well made, yet designed not to draw undue attention to her. Perfect for a tastefully dressed slave girl. Both came with some cute knee socks, and comfortable shoes.
Sadly, my friends didn't have enough extra dresses ready for the twenty-six girls, boys, and monsters in my new ill-gotten slave harem.
The temple rectory building was large, but not that large, and much of it was occupied. They had only the one extra bedroom to spare for us. The rest were reserved for the priests and acolytes. We'd have to figure out where to let all my slaves sleep. Hopefully we could rent a house on short notice… For now, since it wasn't bedtime yet, we settled on cramming everyone into the drawing room.
The drawing room was the size of a somewhat small living room. With two couches and a chair. I pushed both couches against the far walls, to maximise floor space. Still, the room was definitely not big enough to hold everyone comfortably.
Twenty-four slaves, plus Chloe, me, Maddie and Lysander… Twenty eight warm bodies in a tiny little drawing room. The two monsters weren't included. One of the priests nearly had a fit when I tried to take my monsters onto their sacred temple ground. I had nowhere else to put them, however, so we reached a compromise. I commanded them to sleep, and stuck them in the cellar for now.