The grinding went about without incident. First, he and Thana took care of two of the Quest’s conditions, that took about 7 hours. Even with Thana trivializing every enemy group, they still had to explore all of the dungeons in order to find the boss rooms. That was, to put it simply, a lot of walking. Also, returning to the house to give Lydia and Rave access to the Flask of Grinding, when it was full, delayed them a bit.
The 25 dungeons part was therefore done around 13 o’clock. On average they had needed about twenty minutes per dungeon. Waves were usually over in a flash, but floors took considerably more time, especially if they were the underground type.
When they were about to go and hunt down the 2000 enemies, Lydia stopped them. “Here,” she said and handed John a new flask. It looked a lot like the old one, an overly long neck on a round main body that was flattened at the bottom.
“Huh,” John grunted and turned the flask in his hand. it would save him a lot of trips back and forth. It also seemed totally innocent, not like something that sucked up the soul of the dead and created a potion from it.
“It was a challenge to find this. Refilling potions are rare in the first place, but Soulpotions seem to be particularly bothersome to create,” Lydia told him. “It does not help that alchemy is a barely exercised discipline.”
“I wonder why people who have these don’t just abuse them,” John thought out loud, as he replaced his old flask with his new one. “I mean, all you need to do is power-grind some dungeons.”
“Several reasons,” Lydia, who, without a doubt, had done her research, told him. “For a start, these seem to resonate with your ability to increase other people’s level. So, it won’t work like you propose without you in the first place.”
“Interesting,” John mumbled, “I thought it already pretty strong that you were able to level like me, albeit much slower, in the first place. Well, I guess this is more of a catch-up mechanism so you don’t fall too far behind. Ah, how nice and OP it would be if you would get all of my other abilities as well when we are in a group. It would be so bonkers if you guys had Gamer’s Body and could learn things with Skillbooks and the likes.”
“Your ability skews reality enough as it is. Then again, perhaps it will expand in due time…” Lydia shook her head. “For normal people, these flasks provide a boost in experience as well, but in another way. Basically, it increases their concentration while learning and makes the acquiring of muscle memory faster. It is helpful, but not by so much that it justifies the abhorrent monetary investment I had to make to get my hands on this.”
“And you think with me around it will be?” John asked.
Lydia folded her hands behind her back and looked at him in her usual stern way, “As far as I am concerned, every one of your ‘levels’ I can get that gives me an edge over enemies in the tournament is a worthwhile investment. If this raises the efficiency of that endeavour, it is enough for me.”
“Can we fucking continue now?!” Thana shouted over, she was standing at the hedge surrounding the gardens just waiting for John to get his ass moving again.
“On my way,” he shouted back. He was stopped, however, by Lydia clearing her throat while tactfully raising her hand.
“Would you lend me your ear one more moment, John Newman?” she requested and gestured him closer with her already raised hand. Interested, John obliged. “I must say that my investment in you has been majorly rewarding already.” Her tone was almost sweet as she said that. “Take this flask as my gift.” She hastily kissed him on the cheek and then stepped away from him. “Now off with you, I have paperwork to attend to!” With a bit of a blush on her attractive features, she whirled around and walked away.
John grinned like the fool he was when he returned to Thana. She rolled her eyes and gestured for him to lower his head. Crossing his arms, John continued to smile, now mockingly. “Want to kiss me too?”
“And what If I fucking want to do that?” Thana countered as if she was being accused of something; “Now get down here, you tall bastard!”
He did and the giant grin Thana flashed should have been warning enough. Sadly, he did not have the reaction time to do anything about what followed. Thana’s face vanished from his field of view as the tiny master of blood magic and crazed laughter executed a perfect kick to the side of his head that sent him flying.
-666 HP. The initial kick’s damage. -133 HP. He bounced from the garden floor like a skipping stone. -48. One more bounce. -96. He flew through the empty gate and crashed against the wall in the exit building, plaster raining down on him as it broke off the badly maintained wall and revealed the blank stones behind.
He got up with a slight cough; dust had gotten into his lungs. Highly uncomfortable. Like everything else, Gamer’s Body fixed that. Snickering, Thana stepped out a moment later.
“What were you thinking there?” John wanted to know. He did his best to sound angry, but he was more confused than anything else. He was getting used to Thana’s absurdities and with Gamer’s Body he was pretty well equipped to deal with them. “Because it was way too harsh.”
“Rave punches you all the time!” Thana cried out as if he had just accused her of murdering a basket full of kittens.
“Yeah, playfully,” John checked his suit for any damage. Thankfully, the defensive enchantments and magical materials had held. The only issue was the dust on it.
It wasn’t great at physical protection, so it failed at being actual armour. John had decided to go with protection against elemental attacks and shenanigans like acid instead. In his mind, anything that managed to get into melee range and then break through Mana Protection would fuck him up no matter how thick an armour he wore.
Back to the topic at hand. “When Jane punches me, it’s rarely even painful; you just kicked me into a different dimension.” He gestured at the door. “Literally. You’re lucky it’s not broken by the way.”
“Well, move your ass quicker and don’t make me jealous and we won’t have that fucking problem again,” Thana growled and crossed her arms.
“What are you suddenly jealous about? You just spent the whole night fucking the rest of my harem.”
“Yeah, and it was awesome. Little known fact though, you ass,” she raised one hand and tapped against the side of her head, “I am still train-fucking mumble brained…” John raised an eyebrow as Thana’s words slowly became quieter. She studied John’s facial expression for a bit. “You are telling me kicking someone in the face is not the correct thing to do when I am jealous?” she finally asked.
“Well, no,” John said. He didn’t know what the correct response to jealousy was, it was an ugly feeling. Violating his face was not among the healthy solutions though.
“It felt pretty fucking right though,” Thana whispered, her tone between self-satisfied and apologetic. She looked at John and the dots in her eyes were spinning slowly, showing at least a slight bit of remaining agitation. “As a matter of fact, the idea is still REALLY tempting.” Her eyes darted to his health bar. “You COULD survive another loving ass-whooping like that, just saying. Come on, just let me gently almost-but-not-completely break your fucking neck.”
“How about we don’t do that?” John suggested and slowly inched away from Thana by stepping along that wall. Her eyes followed him and the dots were slowly speeding up.
One foot forward, the largely unclothed blood mage stepped towards John, slowly. He wrecked his brain for an answer. ‘Fuck it, caution to the wind!’ he thought and jumped at Thana in an attempt to hug her or something. Would have maybe worked under other circumstances, but now that she was the slightest bit worked up, her superhuman reflexes were fully operational. She had already dodged before his feet got off the ground.
John stumbled over an outstretched leg she left in his path and would have, very inelegantly, landed on his face if Thana wouldn’t have caught him at the wrist. He turned his head to see a wild grin. “Chillax, butt-munch, I won’t actually kick your ass again,” she said with an insane snicker. His muscles relaxed and Thana let go of his arm. He managed to catch himself in a panicked motion.
Kneeling on the concrete did finally manage to make him snap with anger. “I’m going to spank your ass red and fuck that smugness out of you come tomorrow.”
Of course, that wasn’t exactly a threat suitable for Thana, whose eyes glinted with happiness, “Shit, really? Sounds awesome!”
“Just…urgh,” John pinched the bridge of his nose- “Okay, lessons in being a human number, I don’t know, 132? Don’t punch people just because you feel like it.”
“I kicked you though,” Thana pointed out, her smile betraying that she just wanted to annoy him at this point.
Wisdom and Charisma let John find the correct tone for his next words, “Thana, my patience is running thin.”
The dots froze and so did the blood mage’s smile. “Are you seriously mad at me?” she asked, shocked. “Shit, sorry, I just thought that… you people always banter like… I don’t fucking know it’s…” John raised a hand so that she stopped talking.
“Okay, let’s run this through slowly. So, you became jealous of Lydia when she kissed me, correct?” John asked.
“Yeah,” Thana answered.
“In the future, when you feel jealous, I want you to think about why for a moment. Then, if you might, please talk to the people involved to see if there is a non-violent solution to things.” He got up and rolled his shoulders. “Because there should be and I do not like getting hurt – at all.”
A moment of silence. “The best solution I can think of is still kicking you in the face – like really fucking hard,” she finally admitted.
“What’s the second-best solution?” John sighed. With slight hesitation, Thana took his hand. She was learning quickly, the percentage of things she broke was under 50% of things touched now. John trusted her enough to believe that she wouldn’t break his hand.
SNAP. John’s body tensed for a moment as his little finger twisted in a way it wasn’t supposed to. “Shit,” Thana let go of his hand, “Sorry. Forget it. I am happy now.” Her hastily spoken words were entirely unconvincing, and so John took her hand, preventing her from pulling away.
“This is not alright.” The words made the blood mage cringe with guilt “I don’t want to be your punching bag, so you keep working at this. I believe in you. You will do your best not to hurt anyone unnecessarily. Understood?”
They locked eyes, and slowly, Thana reached for his hand again. Her touch was still uncomfortably tight, but nothing broke. She put his hand on her tits.
Now that was not the romantic gesture John had expected.
Months of daily sex had trained his hands to automatically squeeze the softness of breasts. Before he could stop himself, his fingers were already digging in. Wonderfully, the warm flesh, filled with the hopes and dreams of mankind, welcomed his touch. His hand started to circle just the slightest bit, the leather that separated his palms from naked, smooth skin was awfully hot. The feeling of her nipple slowly hardening under his touch, a reaction of what was happening, which was mirrored by the tightness in his pants.
Knowing that nothing could come of this for another 11 hours, he raised his hand once Thana started panting with half-closed eyes. “Spank me…” she said, her eyes lustfully glancing up to him. The light in her eyes turned fairly quickly into mischief, “…daddy.”
And like that, his boner was gone. “Let’s just continue to farm,” he stated in a defeated tone. “We will have to keep working on this though. Violence to calm you down and getting molested when you want to apologize are seriously screwed up responses to doing something wrong.”
“You know it,” the insane girl giggled; “I am getting used to it as well. Maybe I won’t actually be able to get this head of mine right but just learn to somehow get along with everyone else?”
“That’s actually what we call being normal,” John pointed out. “You will be hard-pressed to find someone who isn’t slightly wrong in the head. We just generally hide it and let it out when we are with people we trust.”
“So, what you are saying,” Thana slowly spoke, “is that it’s enough if I learn not to fuck-over all my problems by punching them dead?”
“Also, not to offend people with whatever you say. You don’t have to get along with everyone, but a bit of niceness would help.” He demonstrably rolled his neck. “I really can’t stretch enough that you’ll have to try that, because I am not putting up with you doing that whenever you feel jealous.”
“Can fucking try,” Thana agreed. She stretched with a sigh of relief, “Fucking hell, and here I thought I had to act all normal and shit in the future. So, all I need to do is learn how to be acceptable to the faggotry that is humanity. I can do that. At least I fucking hope so.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” John told her. “At least if you are willing to stick around me.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I have literally nowhere else to go,” Thana said, then, panicked, she added. “You are not trying to get rid of me, are you? John, you ass, I need you, don’t do that to me. I literally don’t know if you would survive trying to ditch me. I cannot guarantee whether or not your head will end up inside your girlfriend’s ass.”
“Calm down. I won’t ditch you, as long as you keep working on yourself.” He had to say that daily and he would likely have to keep doing so for a long time. Confidence wasn’t built in a day.
“I am a bad bitch, sue me!” Thana said, her voice breaking between angst and happy laughter.
“That you are indeed… Whatever, back to farming for serious now, we have important business in the evening.”
“Right, Richard Ratdick,” Thana mused, her mood now swung back into complete happiness again. John couldn’t help but giggle. “What’s so funny, bone-bargo’ed?” Thana wanted to know.
“I am just getting dangerously used to you being all over the place,” John told her; “It’s kind of cute.”
“I’ll show you cute!” Thana growled, blushing. “Point me at something I can turn into bloody paste!”
Killing 2000 enemies took another 45 minutes. They had already scouted the best dungeon (the Troll arena). The crowd had about a thousand trolls. Well, to be exact, the spawn range seemed to be between 800 and 1000. Three runs of that Instant Dungeon took care of the Quest.
It was uneventful, by and large. The ease with which Thana slaughtered everything gave them ample opportunity for small talk and every opportunity to talk was an opportunity to expose her more to normal social behaviour. Slowly, ever so slowly, he was getting her to a stable state.
She was lucky she was endearing.
The grinding went about without incident. First, he and Thana took care of two of the Quest’s conditions, that took about 7 hours. Even with Thana trivializing every enemy group, they still had to explore all of the dungeons in order to find the boss rooms. That was, to put it simply, a lot of walking. Also, returning to the house to give Lydia and Rave access to the Flask of Grinding, when it was full, delayed them a bit.
The 25 dungeons part was therefore done around 13 o’clock. On average they had needed about twenty minutes per dungeon. Waves were usually over in a flash, but floors took considerably more time, especially if they were the underground type.
When they were about to go and hunt down the 2000 enemies, Lydia stopped them. “Here,” she said and handed John a new flask. It looked a lot like the old one, an overly long neck on a round main body that was flattened at the bottom.
“Huh,” John grunted and turned the flask in his hand. it would save him a lot of trips back and forth. It also seemed totally innocent, not like something that sucked up the soul of the dead and created a potion from it.
“It was a challenge to find this. Refilling potions are rare in the first place, but Soulpotions seem to be particularly bothersome to create,” Lydia told him. “It does not help that alchemy is a barely exercised discipline.”
“I wonder why people who have these don’t just abuse them,” John thought out loud, as he replaced his old flask with his new one. “I mean, all you need to do is power-grind some dungeons.”
“Several reasons,” Lydia, who, without a doubt, had done her research, told him. “For a start, these seem to resonate with your ability to increase other people’s level. So, it won’t work like you propose without you in the first place.”
“Interesting,” John mumbled, “I thought it already pretty strong that you were able to level like me, albeit much slower, in the first place. Well, I guess this is more of a catch-up mechanism so you don’t fall too far behind. Ah, how nice and OP it would be if you would get all of my other abilities as well when we are in a group. It would be so bonkers if you guys had Gamer’s Body and could learn things with Skillbooks and the likes.”
“Your ability skews reality enough as it is. Then again, perhaps it will expand in due time…” Lydia shook her head. “For normal people, these flasks provide a boost in experience as well, but in another way. Basically, it increases their concentration while learning and makes the acquiring of muscle memory faster. It is helpful, but not by so much that it justifies the abhorrent monetary investment I had to make to get my hands on this.”
“And you think with me around it will be?” John asked.
Lydia folded her hands behind her back and looked at him in her usual stern way, “As far as I am concerned, every one of your ‘levels’ I can get that gives me an edge over enemies in the tournament is a worthwhile investment. If this raises the efficiency of that endeavour, it is enough for me.”
“Can we fucking continue now?!” Thana shouted over, she was standing at the hedge surrounding the gardens just waiting for John to get his ass moving again.
“On my way,” he shouted back. He was stopped, however, by Lydia clearing her throat while tactfully raising her hand.
“Would you lend me your ear one more moment, John Newman?” she requested and gestured him closer with her already raised hand. Interested, John obliged. “I must say that my investment in you has been majorly rewarding already.” Her tone was almost sweet as she said that. “Take this flask as my gift.” She hastily kissed him on the cheek and then stepped away from him. “Now off with you, I have paperwork to attend to!” With a bit of a blush on her attractive features, she whirled around and walked away.
John grinned like the fool he was when he returned to Thana. She rolled her eyes and gestured for him to lower his head. Crossing his arms, John continued to smile, now mockingly. “Want to kiss me too?”
“And what If I fucking want to do that?” Thana countered as if she was being accused of something; “Now get down here, you tall bastard!”
He did and the giant grin Thana flashed should have been warning enough. Sadly, he did not have the reaction time to do anything about what followed. Thana’s face vanished from his field of view as the tiny master of blood magic and crazed laughter executed a perfect kick to the side of his head that sent him flying.
-666 HP. The initial kick’s damage. -133 HP. He bounced from the garden floor like a skipping stone. -48. One more bounce. -96. He flew through the empty gate and crashed against the wall in the exit building, plaster raining down on him as it broke off the badly maintained wall and revealed the blank stones behind.
He got up with a slight cough; dust had gotten into his lungs. Highly uncomfortable. Like everything else, Gamer’s Body fixed that. Snickering, Thana stepped out a moment later.
“What were you thinking there?” John wanted to know. He did his best to sound angry, but he was more confused than anything else. He was getting used to Thana’s absurdities and with Gamer’s Body he was pretty well equipped to deal with them. “Because it was way too harsh.”
“Rave punches you all the time!” Thana cried out as if he had just accused her of murdering a basket full of kittens.
“Yeah, playfully,” John checked his suit for any damage. Thankfully, the defensive enchantments and magical materials had held. The only issue was the dust on it.
It wasn’t great at physical protection, so it failed at being actual armour. John had decided to go with protection against elemental attacks and shenanigans like acid instead. In his mind, anything that managed to get into melee range and then break through Mana Protection would fuck him up no matter how thick an armour he wore.
Back to the topic at hand. “When Jane punches me, it’s rarely even painful; you just kicked me into a different dimension.” He gestured at the door. “Literally. You’re lucky it’s not broken by the way.”
“Well, move your ass quicker and don’t make me jealous and we won’t have that fucking problem again,” Thana growled and crossed her arms.
“What are you suddenly jealous about? You just spent the whole night fucking the rest of my harem.”
“Yeah, and it was awesome. Little known fact though, you ass,” she raised one hand and tapped against the side of her head, “I am still train-fucking mumble brained…” John raised an eyebrow as Thana’s words slowly became quieter. She studied John’s facial expression for a bit. “You are telling me kicking someone in the face is not the correct thing to do when I am jealous?” she finally asked.
“Well, no,” John said. He didn’t know what the correct response to jealousy was, it was an ugly feeling. Violating his face was not among the healthy solutions though.
“It felt pretty fucking right though,” Thana whispered, her tone between self-satisfied and apologetic. She looked at John and the dots in her eyes were spinning slowly, showing at least a slight bit of remaining agitation. “As a matter of fact, the idea is still REALLY tempting.” Her eyes darted to his health bar. “You COULD survive another loving ass-whooping like that, just saying. Come on, just let me gently almost-but-not-completely break your fucking neck.”
“How about we don’t do that?” John suggested and slowly inched away from Thana by stepping along that wall. Her eyes followed him and the dots were slowly speeding up.
One foot forward, the largely unclothed blood mage stepped towards John, slowly. He wrecked his brain for an answer. ‘Fuck it, caution to the wind!’ he thought and jumped at Thana in an attempt to hug her or something. Would have maybe worked under other circumstances, but now that she was the slightest bit worked up, her superhuman reflexes were fully operational. She had already dodged before his feet got off the ground.
John stumbled over an outstretched leg she left in his path and would have, very inelegantly, landed on his face if Thana wouldn’t have caught him at the wrist. He turned his head to see a wild grin. “Chillax, butt-munch, I won’t actually kick your ass again,” she said with an insane snicker. His muscles relaxed and Thana let go of his arm. He managed to catch himself in a panicked motion.
Kneeling on the concrete did finally manage to make him snap with anger. “I’m going to spank your ass red and fuck that smugness out of you come tomorrow.”
Of course, that wasn’t exactly a threat suitable for Thana, whose eyes glinted with happiness, “Shit, really? Sounds awesome!”
“Just…urgh,” John pinched the bridge of his nose- “Okay, lessons in being a human number, I don’t know, 132? Don’t punch people just because you feel like it.”
“I kicked you though,” Thana pointed out, her smile betraying that she just wanted to annoy him at this point.
Wisdom and Charisma let John find the correct tone for his next words, “Thana, my patience is running thin.”
The dots froze and so did the blood mage’s smile. “Are you seriously mad at me?” she asked, shocked. “Shit, sorry, I just thought that… you people always banter like… I don’t fucking know it’s…” John raised a hand so that she stopped talking.
“Okay, let’s run this through slowly. So, you became jealous of Lydia when she kissed me, correct?” John asked.
“Yeah,” Thana answered.
“In the future, when you feel jealous, I want you to think about why for a moment. Then, if you might, please talk to the people involved to see if there is a non-violent solution to things.” He got up and rolled his shoulders. “Because there should be and I do not like getting hurt – at all.”
A moment of silence. “The best solution I can think of is still kicking you in the face – like really fucking hard,” she finally admitted.
“What’s the second-best solution?” John sighed. With slight hesitation, Thana took his hand. She was learning quickly, the percentage of things she broke was under 50% of things touched now. John trusted her enough to believe that she wouldn’t break his hand.
SNAP. John’s body tensed for a moment as his little finger twisted in a way it wasn’t supposed to. “Shit,” Thana let go of his hand, “Sorry. Forget it. I am happy now.” Her hastily spoken words were entirely unconvincing, and so John took her hand, preventing her from pulling away.
“This is not alright.” The words made the blood mage cringe with guilt “I don’t want to be your punching bag, so you keep working at this. I believe in you. You will do your best not to hurt anyone unnecessarily. Understood?”
They locked eyes, and slowly, Thana reached for his hand again. Her touch was still uncomfortably tight, but nothing broke. She put his hand on her tits.
Now that was not the romantic gesture John had expected.
Months of daily sex had trained his hands to automatically squeeze the softness of breasts. Before he could stop himself, his fingers were already digging in. Wonderfully, the warm flesh, filled with the hopes and dreams of mankind, welcomed his touch. His hand started to circle just the slightest bit, the leather that separated his palms from naked, smooth skin was awfully hot. The feeling of her nipple slowly hardening under his touch, a reaction of what was happening, which was mirrored by the tightness in his pants.
Knowing that nothing could come of this for another 11 hours, he raised his hand once Thana started panting with half-closed eyes. “Spank me…” she said, her eyes lustfully glancing up to him. The light in her eyes turned fairly quickly into mischief, “…daddy.”
And like that, his boner was gone. “Let’s just continue to farm,” he stated in a defeated tone. “We will have to keep working on this though. Violence to calm you down and getting molested when you want to apologize are seriously screwed up responses to doing something wrong.”
“You know it,” the insane girl giggled; “I am getting used to it as well. Maybe I won’t actually be able to get this head of mine right but just learn to somehow get along with everyone else?”
“That’s actually what we call being normal,” John pointed out. “You will be hard-pressed to find someone who isn’t slightly wrong in the head. We just generally hide it and let it out when we are with people we trust.”
“So, what you are saying,” Thana slowly spoke, “is that it’s enough if I learn not to fuck-over all my problems by punching them dead?”
“Also, not to offend people with whatever you say. You don’t have to get along with everyone, but a bit of niceness would help.” He demonstrably rolled his neck. “I really can’t stretch enough that you’ll have to try that, because I am not putting up with you doing that whenever you feel jealous.”
“Can fucking try,” Thana agreed. She stretched with a sigh of relief, “Fucking hell, and here I thought I had to act all normal and shit in the future. So, all I need to do is learn how to be acceptable to the faggotry that is humanity. I can do that. At least I fucking hope so.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” John told her. “At least if you are willing to stick around me.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I have literally nowhere else to go,” Thana said, then, panicked, she added. “You are not trying to get rid of me, are you? John, you ass, I need you, don’t do that to me. I literally don’t know if you would survive trying to ditch me. I cannot guarantee whether or not your head will end up inside your girlfriend’s ass.”
“Calm down. I won’t ditch you, as long as you keep working on yourself.” He had to say that daily and he would likely have to keep doing so for a long time. Confidence wasn’t built in a day.
“I am a bad bitch, sue me!” Thana said, her voice breaking between angst and happy laughter.
“That you are indeed… Whatever, back to farming for serious now, we have important business in the evening.”
“Right, Richard Ratdick,” Thana mused, her mood now swung back into complete happiness again. John couldn’t help but giggle. “What’s so funny, bone-bargo’ed?” Thana wanted to know.
“I am just getting dangerously used to you being all over the place,” John told her; “It’s kind of cute.”
“I’ll show you cute!” Thana growled, blushing. “Point me at something I can turn into bloody paste!”
Killing 2000 enemies took another 45 minutes. They had already scouted the best dungeon (the Troll arena). The crowd had about a thousand trolls. Well, to be exact, the spawn range seemed to be between 800 and 1000. Three runs of that Instant Dungeon took care of the Quest.
It was uneventful, by and large. The ease with which Thana slaughtered everything gave them ample opportunity for small talk and every opportunity to talk was an opportunity to expose her more to normal social behaviour. Slowly, ever so slowly, he was getting her to a stable state.
She was lucky she was endearing.
