I picked the middle option.
Not fast. I stood there in the dark with two watchmen frozen on the wall and read it twice, because the system had volunteered this one.
Nobody had asked. Nobody had mentioned the vial since a troll's death grip on loot had put it in my pocket, and here it was now, glowing politely between PLEA and SNEAK, because the game had watched me limp up that road, looked at the gate, and quietly run my arithmetic for me. And the arithmetic of my entire time in this world was simple.
Every door I had met, someone had opened after I satisfied somebody.
The bullywug.
The troll.
Three bandits and a pouch of coppers.
The toll of this road was sex.
I had the fare, the guards were already rigid, dawn was coming, and underneath all the practical reasoning sat the plain truth: I wanted to know what the oil did.
I chose option two.
The vial arrived in my hand, warm through the glass. The stopper came out with a pop, and I tipped the oil into my palm, and it was too warm, warmer than my skin, faintly amber, faintly glowing, and it kept moving after my hand went still.
ITEM USED: TROLL-BLESSING OIL
EFFECT TRANSFERRED TO NEAREST MALE ENTITIES: 2.
STAMINA: ×2.
REFRACTORY PERIOD: NONE.
SATIATION THRESHOLD: INCREASED.
ESTIMATED TIME TO SATISFY: [CALCULATING]...
ESTIMATED TIME TO SATISFY: [CALCULATING]...
[WARNING] DAWN IN: 47 MINUTES.
The calculation never resolved. It just churned, and I read the lines in order and felt the trap close with my own hand on it.
Twice the stamina.
No pause between rounds.
And a raised threshold, meaning harder to finish, meaning more of everything before the door opened, and the system could not even tell me if the math worked inside forty-seven minutes because the math was refusing to answer.
Committed.
Me again.
I hooked my thumbs in my waistband, dragged my soaked pants down to my thighs, and put my foot up on the milestone.
The stone was cold through my boot heel. Lantern light off the wall caught everything I was doing, and I knew they were watching, forty feet away and up, both of them, and I worked the oil in anyway. Slowly. Inner thighs first, both sides, then two fingers through the lips of my pussy, thorough, then reaching back and around, oiling my ass while the night air cooled everything the oil touched.
Three days ago this would have killed me on the spot. Now I was performing maintenance. Loading the equipment. And if my pulse was up while I did it, that was between me and the milestone.
On the wall, the broad one took three steps down the ramp and stopped dead, one boot mid-air. Over his head, small grey letters swam into focus: GATE SERGEANT, GARRIK, LV 4. The black of his pupils spread and swallowed the grey of his irises whole.
Beside him, the young one's halberd simply left his hands. It hit the stone with a clatter that banged off the granite and rolled away down the empty road. WATCHMAN, TOMAS, LV 3.
"Gods above," Garrik said. "Tomas, do you—"
"I know," Tomas said. "I know."
Something behind Garrik's eyes finished its shift and clocked out. He crossed the ground in six strides, halberd abandoned where it lay, and lifted me clean off the milestone, foot and oil and all, like I weighed a rumour.
"Gatehouse," he said. "Now."
They carried me. Literally carried me, Garrik holding me against him mouth-first while Tomas scrambled ahead to throw the bolt on the guard post built into the gate tower. A hearth, a bench, a cot, one narrow window going grey at the edges, and I catalogued all of it upside down over a sergeant's shoulder like any of it was going to matter.
Garrik put my back against the timbers of the inner gate itself and kissed me like a drowning man, all beard-scrape and desperate tongue, and his hands dug into my ass and spread me, groaning at the weight of it. His mouth left mine and travelled, jaw, throat, the top swell of my breasts where they'd escaped my shirt, and he bit down on my nipple through the fabric just as Tomas finally got his belt open behind him.
"Been on this gate since sundown," he growled against my chest. He tore my shirt open. Buttons scattered. His hot mouth sealed over my bare nipple and sucked, hard, and my cunt clenched around nothing, drooling oil and old cum down my thigh.
"Sundown. And this walks outta the dark."
He freed his cock one-handed. Thick, ruddy, a fat mushroom head already glazed, heavy balls drawn up tight in a forest of dark grey hair, and he notched it at my entrance and sank into me standing, my back flat against the gate, my own weight driving me down onto him inch by inch.
"Oh, fuck."
My head knocked back against the timber. He was thick in the way that made my walls ripple and stretch, and with the oil and three loads of bandit cum already in me, he slid home to the root in one long filthy glide. My pussy took him with an obscene wet shluck, the mess squeezing out around his shaft in a frothy ring.
He fucked me against the gate. Standing, my thighs over his forearms, my tits bouncing with every thrust, him snarling into my neck, me wailing every time that fat head dragged over my deepest spot.
He made me come twice like that, my spray running down his shaft and pattering onto the floorboards between his boots, before he bellowed and emptied himself into me, thick pulses I felt splash against my cervix.
Six. Seven. Eight.
I counted, because counting was the last rational act I had left.
And he didn't stop.
That was when doubled stamina stopped being words on a menu.
He didn't soften, didn't pause, just changed the angle and kept railing me, his own finish churning to foam around his shaft, and somewhere under the noise my brain took a quiet, cold note: forty-seven minutes, two of them, threshold raised, and I had thrown the switch myself.
"My turn, Garrik, my turn," Tomas hauled me off the sergeant mid-thrust and bent me over the bench by the hearth. His cock was a different animal entirely, shockingly long, thin, curved like a scimitar, the head an angry pink. He drilled into my sloppy pussy from behind, and the depth made me scream, his narrow crown punching through the mess and kissing places nobody had reached all night.
His hips were young-man fast, frantic, plap plap plap, my cheeks clapping and rippling, and Garrik knelt in front of the bench and fed his fat cock into my moaning mouth, letting me clean my own mess off him.
Two ends, both full, gold climbing the wall, and a delirious corner of me thought: this. This is exactly what I came out here for.
They traded me for the better part of an hour. Tomas flooded me twice, grinding deep and whimpering apologies both times. Garrik bent me over the cot and mounted my ass, working that fat head past the ring the oil had left while Tomas stuffed my pussy, and I was sandwiched between them, wracked with squirting orgasms until the bench, the floor, and both their bellies were soaked.
When they double-stuffed my pussy at once, both of them grinding together inside my stretched, gripping cunt, I came so hard my vision went white, and I felt Garrik's third load hose into me while Tomas groaned and added a third of his own.
Outside the window, the sky had gone pale. Gold crept up the wall.
"The bell," Tomas gasped, still hammering, sweat pouring off his freckled face.
"Sergeant. The dawn bell."
"Then she'd better finish," Garrik snarled, and flipped me onto my back on the cot, threw my ankles over his shoulders, and pounded. Jackhammer strokes that shook my tits and made my belly squelch audibly with every cum-filled thrust.
I was delirious with it, tongue out, cunt gripping him as it would never let go, and when his fourth load finally boiled into me it set me off one last time. I squirted clear across his stomach, screaming, drenching us both.
"Last one," Tomas panted, taking his place, fucking my flooded pussy at desperate speed while Garrik held my legs wide apart.
"Last one, last, hngh."
The dawn bell tolled.
The fifth load pumped into me in time with the ringing, pulse for toll, pulse for toll, Tomas shuddering through it, and on the last toll everything went quiet.
Both men froze. Blinked. Their eyes cleared as fog wiped off glass.
Garrik looked down at himself, soft and ruined, then at the wreckage of me on the cot, torn shirt, cum flooding out of both holes, and went grey.
"Nine hells," he whispered.
"Nine hells." But his hands were already moving, trousers up, then mine, dragged up my legs with a strange, shaking gentleness.
"Gate. The gate, boy. Open the gate."
Tomas staggered out and threw the bolt, and the postern swung inward onto a cobbled street washed in first light. I limped through on jelly legs, trailing cum with every step, past two men who couldn't look at me and couldn't look away.
The chime came, chipper as ever.
QUEST COMPLETE: THE LONG ROAD
TIME REMAINING: 0 MINUTES
NOTE: MARGIN OF SUCCESS IS UNPRECEDENTED. AND CONCERNING.
+80 EXP — EXP: 90/200
HP 38 → 34 (−4, EXHAUSTION)
"Unprecedented and concerning," I told the empty street. "You sold me the oil."
Two men at double stamina for most of an hour, and it cost me four hit points, billed this time as exhaustion rather than strain. The troll's single afternoon had run six. Somewhere in the accounting department, damage was priced by the pound and shame by the hour.
Another window.
ITEM UNLOCKED: MOONLACE PERFUME
JASMINE DISTILLATION. 1 USE PER DAY.
TARGET MALE BECOMES DOCILE AND SUGGESTIBLE FOR 10 MINUTES.
I read it twice. Three times. This one was not a punishment for wearing a bow, and it was not a passive skill with a smug little window. This was an item I aimed for.
Ten minutes of a man who did what he was told. That was a weapon, and it had come out of a quest about walking to a town before sunrise. And it was jasmine, of all things. The game had noticed what I already smelled like and decided to build on the design.
ROUTE B — STAGE 2 OF 6 UNLOCKED.
One down. Five to go. The road had a shape, and the shape was getting shorter.
Aldermoor woke up around me while I stood there wrecked in the middle of the square.
Bakers' chimneys already smoking, a horse cart clattering somewhere behind the rooftops, shutters banging open one floor up.
And the thing I noticed, the thing that mattered, was that none of it was aimed at me.
The baker across the square was too far and downwind.
He glanced up, saw a rough shape by the gate, and went back to his trays. Nobody had looked at me yet.
Nobody had smelled me yet.
My charm ran on proximity and scent, and the whole town was upwind of my crimes.
A fresh board, clean pieces, and I got to choose where I landed.
Down the street hung a sign with a golden stag painted on it, gleaming in first light like it had been polished overnight. The Gilded Stag. Across the square, a crier in town colours lifted his voice off the wet stone.
"Hear ye! By order of the Viscount of Aldermoor! The court seeks a companion of exceptional presence! A trial at the keep, three days hence! Payment in gold, and title to the one chosen! Hear ye!"
A companion of exceptional presence. That was the polite version. Gold and title, Route B promising exactly what the menu had promised, the town and the system reading from the same page.
NEW MAIN QUEST: A ROOM AT THE STAG
SECURE LODGING BEFORE MIDDAY.
REWARD: 100 EXP, SKILL UNLOCK.
[INN] / [CRIER] / [FRESHEN UP]
I looked at the three options glowing over the cobbles, then down at myself.
Trailing. Dripping. Torn shirt, soaked trousers, a week of legend working its way down my boots, and a closed inn common room full of morning men somewhere in my near future unless I did something about it first.
Behind me, two gate guards leaned in their open doorway, breathing hard, not looking away from my back.
Ahead, a town that didn't know me yet.
The menu hung in the first light, patient as ever.
[INN] / [CRIER] / [FRESHEN UP]