Pain and Gain
My form expanded to ten feet of muscle bound furry fury, pulling out the full strength of the Primal Shroud to enter my Warform, a giant black werebear with a dark lion's mane and a pair of ebon horns not too dissimilar from that of my foes. Fortunately the Xeric Shroud had no problems scaling and reshaping my gear as I pumped up. I activated my Martial Arts Body Strengthening, Flow Acceleration, Focus Battle Aura, Sense Weakness, Greater Ability Boost, Greater Wind Stride, Greater Piercing, Magical Weapon Enchantment, the list went on and on as I powered up.
My Inseparable Greatsword generated a massive blade of golden holy light and I charged the Goliath, the big beast leaning forward using all its limbs to ram me right back as we snarled at each other. I brought my giant sword of light down on the monster unleashing one final Martial Art through it, Six Fold Slash of Light. My one sword strike shifted into seven all bearing the wild and holy power of my attack. The foe may be tough, but seven mid Excaliblasts to the face turned its upper body into a cautionary tale of messing with explosives.
The Company Rewarded me points, this the fourth occurrence of such since I entered this training ground. The stage shifted again, this time to platforms within a world choked on ash, smog, and rust. The fights shifted to robots. Small stubby robots firing energy guns at me at speeds easily avoidable as I smashed them. The difficulty quickly ramped up as I began fighting larger bipeds, red barrel suicide bots, floating weapons platforms, and buzzsaw drones flying in tight formations. It all culminated on the twentieth floor with a fight against a multi story tall mining machine mecha.
Every ten floors the enemy type shifted granting trainees a wide variety of live combat experience for the ten point Martial Talent to luxuriate in. Even if an enemy took me by surprise and managed to slay me, I'd simply start back at the beginning of the Palace and do it all again, but even as the enemies increased in difficulty, I increased in power and skill even more as I mastered my skills at lightning speed.
Poor normies, their EXP gain moves in slow mo.
On the way up I cleared many optional objectives and The Company was quite free with the credits. I even gained two Waifu Tickets, which Isekai Genie automatically swiped and converted to points for me as he fairly enforced his no purchasing Waifus policy. I'm glad he didn't just take the tickets and leave me feeling fucked.
With the points I finished my planned Shroud build by taking another copy of Three Piece Suit and Prismatic Shroud, this time selecting the Jungle Shroud which manifested as a lining of cherry blossom leaves on the inside of my black sable fur coat.
Though plant bio generation and control is spectacular, the vastly more important purchase was Elemental Loom, which allowed for fine control of my elements down to the microscopic level as well as mid air generation of my elements within my area of perception. Both the Jungle and Primal Shrouds gain fungus powers with this purchase as well. Beyond that vastly increased control, spawn range, and mushroom might, I could now draw personal power from my elements, filling my body with the empowering exotic energy of three kingdoms of life and non living minerals.
Sounds terrifying, doesn't it? Watch out lads, this guy powers up in the presence of non living minerals.
It's actually OP, but sounds a bit sissy.
My palace run reached its climax in a series of battles against Virgil, and yes… he is the coolest. Dying violently is a terrible experience, dying to the Judgement Cut End as the son of Sparda times it to his theme song that slaps hard is art. I used the simulacrum of the power obsessed man to help me perfect the utilization of my entire skill set, the man with the full power of anime behind him certainly drove my Martial and Soul Talents wild. I needed every dirty trick of the Mercenary, every exquisite technique of the Master Fighter, the raw power of the Berserker, the Champion's poise, the lethality of the Executioner, every spell of the Paladin, the bastion defense of the Holy Knight, the Inquisitor's dogged endurance and empowered castigation, and the light of the Evil Slayer. I reshaped the field with the Xeric and Jungle Shrouds at will, launching earthen spikes like artillery fire as Whomping Willows rose out of the earth capable of launching waves of razor leaf ranged attacks as whipping roots shot from the ground covered in thorns. I summoned beasts and monsters from my Primal shroud, launched spears of bone, knives of chitin, and binding tentacles. I hit the man with everything I had and still needed time to process his stylish and speed patterns to eventually drag out the W against the ultimate video game character chuuni.
It was absolutely glorious and entirely optional, my final payment came for just reaching the hundredth floor. I didn't beat Virgil for the company. I did it for me.
As Virgil faded away I grew a comfortable throne from the ground, covered in cushions as a crystal bowl appeared filled with loose pomegranate seeds. Look upon the pomegranate seeds I have without all that psychotic peeling work and tell me the Jungle Shroud was an unnecessary purchase. Tell me, and I will know you to be a liar, for this pomegranate experience is worth far more than waifus. This is true satisfaction.
I had 246 points left over after completing this training mission. The Company and the Genie granting me 340 for all the optional objectives I managed. I had enough to carry out my plan, a plan that would generate even more points for me by gaming the multi mission selection my Patron enabled and forced on me, but I chose to ignore the sirens call of those points and instead focused on a limited time offer mission for new contractors only, and despite rising up to T8 power, I still count as freshly unboxed and can still take the basic tutorial mission and other beginner options.
As such, rather than start my new life in Overlord, I selected the mission: Long Live Familiars, and entered a portal to the Familiar Forest in the wonderous world of DxD. I'd like to say that the first thing I noticed was the maroon night sky, or the twisted trees, but the middle aged Ash Ketchum knock off rhyming about being our guide sucked a lot of attention out of everyone attending this mission.
Despite the guy being a walking joke, I knew he was a Senior Contractor with The Company, and managed this multiversal version of the Familiar Forrest. The guy looked old and dumpy, making him really stand out in the throng of teens with swimmers builds. There was only one other try hard in this pack of NPCs a guy in dragon bone armor and I didn't need supernatural warrior perception to tell that this guy was a malignant personality, and a dragon to boot. Even the swimmer douches clammed up anytime he looked at one of them, and they were mostly tier 2 or 3 scrubs with a few guys with Naruto Style Headbands or superhero costumes mixed in. Of those with any actual points to their build, half spent all their budget on waifus and the other half were dragons. Of the two the only ones that could pose a real challenge were those with waifus like Supergirl or Wonder Woman.
It didn't matter if they were scrubs or not, we contractors couldn't interfere with each other on this mission even if it had a competitive aspect to it. We had 72 hours to make as many familiars as we wanted in this forest, though only certain familiar categories earned us points. The contractor that wracks up the most points wins.
I had this in the bag.
First off, the 72 hour limit means these guys can't use the Company Stamp to cheese this mission. Only the Shroud of Power had the turnaround time to be effective on this mission, everyone else had to go about it the old fashioned way and convince or force the subject to create the Familiar bond using their own magic. Though only Shroud Contractors could compete with me, not all Shrouds are created equal in this matter. The Xeric, Primal, and Jungle Shrouds are capable of maintaining Shroud integrity separate from the continuous control of the contractor. The closest to this is the popular Cyber Shroud that can generate technology using Nanomachines, but the machines themselves and thus the Shroud itself dies soon after. Only the Shrouds I run have a create and forget aspect to them, the Shroud constructs maintaining integrity as long as the plants, animals, and minerals naturally exist.
I chose to gamble on myself and my earning potential on this mission as I grit my teeth and dumped the 190 points needed to pick up Inexhaustible - which made my mystical energy regeneration infinite enabling me to spam any ability I have the total capacity for endlessly - and its two prerequisites, Soul Defense x2. Once the Familiar Master shot the starting line gun I activated my Shrouds broadcasted their power into the natural environment, seizing control of all non sentient plants, animals, and minerals along their travel path. I could snuff the will of anything weaker than me over time or with a concentrated effort, but kept it low intensity to maintain the fastest speed of spread. At my current output I could cover the area of Peru every day, but activating my Martial Arts my Tier boosted to 8 and my Shrouds reacted accordingly, their output locked to my Tier not any other form of power expression and now capable of covering the area of Africa each day. Boosting myself and blasting my shrouds on max would have been ruinous on my staying power prior to my hefty investment.
Now it just felt like the kind of effort needed to sustain a conversation.
I narrowed my focus on this mission to only the captures mentioned in the optional objectives: dragons both eastern and western, Imoogi (which are giant snakes a step below eastern dragons), mountain gods (giant furry boars), baphomets (beast-man demons), 9 headed-hydras, and Tiamats. Of those only one of them has a chance at squishing me like a bug, and only one version of her at that. As long as she does so between her glorious thighs I will not resist. Despite her total bae status, I will avoid encounters with any Nasuverse versions of Tiamat the company may have dumped into this expanded version of the Familiar Forrest.
I felt my Shrouds encounter my first target and fell backwards into the earth and let the land itself move me to the next location. I appeared to find a massive Imoogi bound in grasping roots. The serpent jagged near-black purple scales bit into the roots, but the Jungle Shroud simply generated more material tougher than the last. I arrived at the head of the beast which hissed revealing its light blue maw and fangs that glistened with green venom. Faster than the creature could react, the Primal Shroud thrust a sleeve into its mouth, transforming it into a kraken tentacle. The tentacle and grasping roots shifted and changed forming a prison and womb, my power invaded and inveloped the creature, and in less than ten minutes the beast was bonded as my familiar. My company device alerted me to the 20 points I gained for clearing two optional objectives for this quest. One for the Imoogi capture and one for a High-Level capture.
I had already retreated into the earth and arrived at the next target, another Imoogi, and though the second verse rhymed with the first, they were not the same. I gained 10 points for the mission's competitive score, but no more Company points to spend.
My next trip through the earth brought me to a third Imoogi, but this one was in no condition to be anyone's familiar as a white furred pig the size of a hill munched on the snake.
"Too small for a snack." spoke the booming voice of Keith David if he had food in his mouth, "Come here so I can stomp you little thing."
I chose not to answer the pig with words, but instead opened the earth under it creating a giant pit to swallow the enormous pig. The pig squealed and screamed as I closed the pit up, despite the massive weight of the earth packing onto it, I felt the pig digging its way up. I bound it up in clay hard as rock, but the pig would not be denied. Every second it dug closer and closer to the surface, so I used the Jungle Shroud to grow a tree on top of it, a tree of massive proportions and the fullness of my Tier 8 strength backing it. The tree tangled the boar in its roots and stuffed full its mouth that prior ate its way through natural stone. Try as it might, the pig couldn't overcome the tree I created and soon was kept alive only by the air the root in its mouth provided. From the roots sprung a womb for the giant monster to be born again as my Familiar, and the points I received for capturing a mountain god and an Ultimate Class told the full story. When in doubt, slam a mega tree on top of it.
I traveled around without need for rest, and captured Familiars like a machine. The only real hand up being the other contractors and their often busted waifus. A Super Girl in particular had a habit of arriving just before me to my next high value capture, snagging whatever beasty I had been traveling too and taking it back to her Contractor. I could tell that he was running a Shroud from the frequency of this aggravating event, but obviously not a bind and forget version like mine that allowed me to juggle multiple captures in many locations. As such his griefing strategy was doomed to failure.
I found it far easier to capture eastern dragons than western. Not due to any great disparity in power between the types, but because half the time I'd set up to nab a western dragon and get a sudden alarm on my device reminding me not to interfere with my fellow contractors. Despite running into at least a dozen dragons of time, and a half dozen dragons of space. None of them came even close to the aggravation caused to me by Super Girl. Apparently they didn't read the fine print that conflated the fundamentality of their dragon element with the amount of time it takes for their power to grow into it. This event could only be attended by contractors during their first week on the job, and it would take a dragon of time millenia to grow into its full Tier 7 might.
Speaking of dragons, Supergirl beat me to the first Tiamat I encountered, zipping away with the gigantic DnD dragon goddess and taking with her my sweet sweet points. I felt pretty salty even if that Tiamat would have wound up in my 'Betrayal Inevitable' box of familiars for liquidation or release along with with the hydras, baphomets, mountain gods, and imoogis… suddenly I understood that The Company only incentivized capturing the pain in the ass monsters… though at least I could have sold her for a sweet 320 points.
On the last day I finally found another Tiamat, though this one far weaker than her predecessor and hiding in a cave deep into the seemingly infinite dimension. I emerged into the dark domicile causing my target to fall over onto her ass in surprise before she summoned three dragon heads that tried to blast me away with wind cannon attacks. Once the dust settled and she saw me standing exactly where I first appeared just covered in a new layer of slit and clay she tilted her head and cursed, "Well, fuck!"
Grandblue Fantasy's recruitable Tiamat looked like an azure haired movie star with elf ears and a harem girl outfit. She's also tied for weakest Tiamat in the catalog with the one from Destiny Child. Though not as exaggeratedly sexual that version, Tiamat had it going on.
"Let's not play." I announced as the Xeric Shroud cleaned me off, "I've been running around for three days stuffing all manner of beings into giant wombs to bind them as my Familiars, but let's consider diplomacy for a moment. Become my Familiar willingly, you're the first I've encountered that I am willing to keep."
"Your armor has an erection!" she shouted and pointed at the risen quality of my codpiece, my Shrouds moving around my awakened anatomy with nary a sound.
Such quality service!
"Don't distract from the matter at hand with matters to come." I told her and she frowned.
"Just get on with the mind rape already, what are you some kind of Contractor Cuck?" she spat derisively.
"Don't get it twisted, my mind control powers are restricted, and I don't see the point in paying a thousand points to unlock them when I can just offer you the easy way, or the hard way. The choice is yours, but the answer is yes." the silent threat of the tentacles I sprouted from the Primal Shroud swiftly escalated as they morphed into chitin blades and hooks.
The path of least resistance is lubed in tears and blood.
"Fine! Fuck! I'll be your Familiar!" she yelled at me and I received 100 points from Isekai Genie when he snagged the T7 Waifu Ticket I would have received for this objective.
"I am glad we could come to this understanding." I nodded then wrapped her in my tentacles.
"I thought this wasn't supposed to happen if I gave up!" she shrieked.
"Shush. We go." I responded and pulled us into the earth.
We were reaching the deadline of the mission, and needed to return to the starting point to be considered for final competition between the contractors. Along the way I continued to broadcast my powers as I'd become accustomed too and made a remarkable discovery. A woman made a great show of capturing a small imp as her familiar, the creature joining up with a half dozen others of its kind. She had soft features and long azure hair styled in a princess cut hidden under an oversized black hoodie. She pulled in her dragon aura so tightly as to be a nonfactor in finding her, but nothing could hide from me as my Shrouds continuously expanded my control of this landmass and all non sentient life on it. Even the microbes on her pale skin betrayed her to me, and what a glorious expanse of skin they betrayed. The Grandblue Fantasy Tiamat looked like a glamorous movie star with her voluminous windswept hair and athletic body, this Tiamat looked like a wet dream of a hentai housewife. Wildly oversexually developed as to cause distraction. I almost missed her greeting as we burst from the ground nearby her.
"Hello fellow contractor. Are you having a good time collecting waifus and familiars?" She greeted with a wave.
"It's getting better every day." I replied and waved back to her, "Even better now that I've found you."
"It's against the rules of the mission for us to interfere with each other." she quickly responded and took up an aggressive stance as the imps behind her rushed forward to shield her with their bodies.
"Just give up before it's too late!" GBF Tiamat shouted at her counterpart, "He's a tentacle rape monster!"
GBF Tiamat's disclosure failed to have the cautionary effect, instead a horny blush spread over the other Tiamat's face.
"Are we talking…" a lewd grin split her mouth, "Tentacle hentai?"
"You are the DxD Tiamat, aren't you?" I sighed.
"Don't know what that means, and don't care." DxD Tiamat shrugged.
"Listen up." I announced, "I like you. I want you. I'm going to have you. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The choice is yours, but the answer is yes."
"Yes." she shuddered and gasped, "Oh my, that gave me chills and made my booty clench."
"I'm a warrior." I told her as I approached and put an armored hand on her shoulder that damn near enveloped her, "Now become my familiar!"
"Okay!" Tiamat agreed.
"That was so much more easy than all the other one." I let out a breath of relief, "I was starting to think that I'd lost some rizz on my power trip."
"You smell strong… and breedable." she explained.
Ah, the DxD is strong in this one.
We didn't have to wait long after getting back to base camp for the Familiar Master to announce me as the winner of the contest, with second place going to my rival Super Girl Guy by a wide margin. My grassroots approach overcame the Kryptonian factor, at least in this limited competition. As the other contractors started going home I pulled out my company app and started releasing the Familiars I didn't want to keep back into the wild.
"What the hell are you doing!" Zatouji shouted at me, causing me to pause.
"Getting rid of the Familiars I don't want to keep." I answered.
"Stop right now!" he shouted and stomped over to me, "What the hell try-hard, you're supposed to take those home with you!"
"Yeah… but most of these familiars suck." I replied, "At least half of them are openly plotting to betray me, and almost none of them match the morality requirements for my upcoming Grand Mission."
Zatouji rubbed his eyes in frustration, "Listen try-hard, the high value objective targets are all species we want to reduce the population of. We've got too many and no one wants them."
"But you guys had Tiamat on that list?" I inquired about the incongruity.
One only needs to see Tiamama to want her.
"Have you ever heard of a Red Herring?" Zatouji grumbled, "Listen, just take them with you and kill them or free them in your home dimension. Just don't do it here. Culling powerful beings can leave an aura that messes up the weaker, cuter, more popular Familiars."
"Sure thing, boss." I accepted his request easily.
After all, the Company and Isekai Genie got me 385 points for this mission. I had nothing to complain about.
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