Flay The Slaves

I awoke once more. It took me a few seconds to finally get my bearings, but I figured out that I was safe since I was hobbled up in a small corner of the cottage. Another five years, dashing away at the clock of me having to take this world away.

The little one was getting slower at growing up, and my body was get slightly, just about a week every year, younger. Which, if I did the math for all of that, every fifty-two years, technically meant that I was only actually aging by, well, fifty-one years.

Well, either that's the correct math or I'm more growing more senile while my body grows younger.

Benjamin Button, but fantasy. All the time in the world, well, as much time as I could make use of, and I was still having to deal with the issue of the American.

You see, I've taken to training up ever so slightly as well when I had the time, getting the right punches that hurt me the least, and whoever my enemy was the most.

It was, well, decent, to say the least. But it's not going to cut it. I needed to get some of that fear of death back into my system. And speaking of systems, it seems that prolonged exposure towards me has a negative effect to anyone with a system.

Specifically speaking, the American got sick with the sniffles one time. It shocked me a little as the bellend starting shivering and sneezing like a stereotype, so I did the only thing that I could've done.

Fed him, and waited to see if he would've survived the endeavor. I know I know, it's very odd for me to just outright do something this cruel, but the little one hadn't been taught any medical things aside from the very barebones.

So I just told her to feed him some slop from our dinners and set a fire near to him to let him sweat it out. Very bad idea, but it's still an idea at the very least.

After that little incident however, he seemed to regain some of the natural strength that his build would have afforded to him. It was at that point that I decided to have another chat with him.

It wasn't all that terrible at the start, up until I began nudging about his "class" and the others that he was summoned alongside.

"Allow me to make it very very clear, I don't know what exactly your game is. What know I can do, and what I will do, is not give information. I screwed up so many times with all of your manipulation that the only damned way I'd be able to forgive myself is if I took you and your little girl down with you."

"*whistles~* Well sonny, I just wanted an itty bitty bit of knowledge to help myself get a better foothold, you get me?"

"No, I really fucking don't old timer."

"Well slap me in the nuts and call me daddy, your generation still says old timer?"

"What? What do you fucking mean? What do you mean by generation? Hey! Give me something as well old man! You keep prying and poking for info, isn't it wrong to just take and not give?"

"Tsk tsk tsk, oh ain't that something? Son, tell me exactly what year was it in your world when you got sent to this one."

"...."

"See? You're smart, you can withhold, and if you can withhold and fail at times with withholding, then I'm more than capable of doing the exact same thing."

"Yeah, I can keep my mouth shut, for fucking years at a time. You got the idea right, eh old timer? I'll fucking die before I ever tell you anything about what we've been doing in the party."

"Ah, but of course you younger children would try to get into a group and go off to adventure and fight and get all the gold that your hearts could ever desire, wouldn't you?"

"Yeah? I keep hearing you talking mad shit at me and my teammates, but how do I talk about you huh? Old fucking man, has fucking technology, artifacts, machines and even subordinates upon subordinates upon fucking subordinates to throw at us to get rid of us.

And what was the reason that we were told when we first got summoned? Ah yeah, that's right, world domination! You're just as one-sided as the rest of us, you bag of bones."

I couldn't help but begin chuckling. Oh what a real character, that's some pep to his voice, I'll say that much.

"Hmm, I won't say that my actions are all too complex for you to understand. But I will say something else different."

I got ever so closer to him during this talk and began something special, something that only someone from Earth would have ever been able to know.

"Just how much could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck would chuck wood? Does that, ring a little bell, or maybe sound off a nice, large, klaxon blaring at what I said."

I took a few steps back as his mouth started to mimic a fish. Opening and closing, over and over again until his brain finally caught up with what I said.

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

"Well, I don't wanna have to talk about my past much, but mother always was a bit of a K-Pop fan, never really understood why she ever did have a kid with my old man if she was more partial to getting off to a poster of an androgynous Asian man."

"I'M GONNA FUCKING SCORE YOU ALIVE WITH A KNIFE MADE FROM YOUR DAMNED FEMUR YOU EARTH TRAITOR! YOU AREN'T THE DUNGEON MONITOR, WHERE IS THAT BASTARD?!"

"Woah woah woah, what are you going crazy over? Sonny, I said I was from Earth, that's all you need to think about. Unless-"

"Ohohohohoh, no no no no no, you got my ass once you old cunt, you're not tricking me twice in a fucking row, you hear me?"

"Lad, I don't know if you're picking the exact same thing that I was putting down for you to grab, but if it wasn't obvious already...actually, you know what?

I wasn't going to be bullshitting you for too long laddie. Fair game, I'll concede that point."

"HAH! I knew it! You are a traitor!"

I know, I know, odd little choice. It's just that things are a lot more peculiar, specifically the people, than what I'd actually anticipate. A false facade borne from the miscommunication between me and a half-lucid American that fought against a disease awhile ago?

You can't really blame me for taking this chance to capitalize on this. I really wouldn't want to miss out on this, after all, an alter-ego might be something that the doctor ordered.

"Well, I see that you're not getting anything out of me anytime soon, you betraying ass, so do me a good little favor and bleed me already. It's just about the only thing that you could do about me."

.....I feel like he's going crazy. Wait no, he was slightly crazy from how much time he must've spent fighting in this world with little to no actual idea on how to cope with not being with the ones that you called your family, both the found type and the biological type.

"Well, I should probably do something else for the time being. After all, I can't really kill you yet. Need more to milk out of you.

You're a nice little cow that we're going to have to milk over and over and over again for whatever we can to get our edge be a bit sharper."

"And you know damn well that I ain't talking, so make your move, old timer!"

I think, wait, doubt isn't terrible in this situation, it's not bad to doubt about this. He's probably playing you as much as you're playing him.

"Mhm, we've established that, but I really need to keep sharpening mine and the little one's skills, you hear me?"

I gave him a nice little smile that was a good enough sign for him to realize that it didn't actually matter if he still had things to give, skills to steal, if that's a possibility to be exploited, or some more experience for her to gain.

As for me? Well, I'm not going to pull some Jeffrey Dahmer shit, I'm not gay, literally, I'll just probably outright kill them, instead of doing the equivalent of that one animal that eats the prey or mates that it attracts over.

There are a lot of ways a serial killer could work, and I was more than just a little baby serial killer that had little to no proper psychological aging. No no no, I was an old serial killer that had little to no properly psychological aging.

I've heard the story of old Jeffrey, funny enough I respected the sort of demons that he had to fight. I aspire to be able to torment a person so badly that they decide that the only way that they could have any actual social interaction is via fucking someone of their own gender and then murdering them.

"Well, anyways, tis but a little moment for how long the boss is gonna be living, which means that me and my other comrade in arms are going to be coming along with him for the ride.

No chance for you to get out of this, aside from dying from one of our mistakes, or even dying normally. Which then means that we'd get the flak that was supposed to be going to you for dying so bleeding fast."

The guy was smiling when I walked off, probably trying to play one hell of a chess game with me. Sadly for him, I play checkers. After that little incident with the American, he stood put while handling all of the abuse, with the exact same smile on his face.

I'm not going to lie, the years while he did that were more or less extensively challenging since he never stopped jeering and heckling to make sure that we're nice and pissed at what he was saying.

The man didn't even know much about us, and yet he still decided to play the game that way. That's the part that makes me a little annoyed.

In unrelated news, the little hedgehog finally started to be not so little as the poor thing actually began to grow up more. It was nice to see it being this healthy. That, and the dandelion on its back was a sight in of itself.

Things were looking up after those incidents. Well, except what happened a year later.

It was another good fall, heavy harvests from the tiny speck of garden that I was working with, a nice addition of a second floor and even plans for a nice basement to keep some of the other foods that are from this earth cool.

I was sitting on another tree stump while looking at the progress that I was up to, having a nice little sippy of water with the little one, as she kept asking me if it was going to be time for us to leave soon.

Honestly, at this point, I don't feel like leaving. This place, albeit it has some forms of madness to it with a wolf pack near us, it isn't as bad as most would think it to be.

Sure, there's still issue of the supply of water and even food in the worse situations, but those are more or less remedied when you know how to actually find the bounty that nature leaves for you.

Take for example, mushrooms. Mushrooms in general don't really need all that much, a minimum amount of coolness, humidity, little sunlight, and then they'll begin to proliferate by the droves with the right amount of time spent.

The cave that the wolves, who are now more or less completely and utterly out of the general area? Remember when I said that the cave system went really deep? I would like to make a joke about it, but deep can't even describe just how far it goes.

That's what they say about your moth- okay I'll stop with that. The cave system is more or less something that I wanted to go and really map out, but then again, I had a lot of other things to do. That is, until I began talking about it near the American.

I was more than certain that he was a damn good actor, but then again, I want some of that natural umami in my dishes that no amount of MSG could ever replicate. Oh it can get close, but unless I prefer to have pure migraines on the hourly, I'll have to pass.

And so I looked at the cave, wondering if all of those minerals and ores would also be able to be used in a way that really, really shines out for me? Not yet, obviously, the future is a different tale entirely.

"Old man, what about the cave?"

"Well, I don't really know what we're gonna do with the thing lass. You and I aren't exactly stupid, and that enemy that we have nice and chained up, stewing in his own filth is still acting like a fool, or has a strong point as to why we shouldn't ever go into it.

We can't read him this well right now, he's getting far too good at it when he's with us. I suppose we traded whatever mega strength that he has to more persuasive and intellectual methods."

"But still, it's good to have another place to keep supplies."

"Not really lass, it's damp in there, and despite me trying to rationalize that the iron being oxidized since it's been exposed for so long, it's far from being a sensible choice.

The only things we could keep there are things resistant to those conditions and things that aren't really needed in the long term."

"You're speaking for more often than usual, old man. I'm fine with listening, but you have a way with speaking so fast without me being able to have a chance myself."

"I just need to clear out my head, I've been stewing in my own thoughts while I was building. My role in this world is to do something to it, something that many would actually consider to be madness, and they'd be right, it is madness.

Madness in this world however? It's a different tale. Either one of a fool, or one of a conqueror. God knows I need to be the latter, and not the former."

She just nodded at me as I groaned and stood up once more. I needed to get this extra floor ever so slightly more done, or less we might get snowed in during the winter.

I do not want to have to dig my entire way out of the cottage and dig every single centimeter of snow off of the unfinished wood.

It's not a good thing to be that lazy. It took me a few minutes to think where to work on next when all of a sudden, I noticed that the veins in my hand were getting dark again.

'No no no no no, you cannot be having me go through this again. I still have way too much to-'

"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"