[Congratulations! For losing your virginity, you have earned a Blessed Uncommon Gacha Coin!]

[Congratulations! For sensually treating your girlfriend to a night of unforgettable love-making, you have earned a Locked Unique Gacha Coin!]

The Gacha Gods could not ruin this for me. I wouldn’t let them. Not when I had the best partner I could ask for sleeping contently while draped over me.

I couldn’t force myself to sleep once I recovered what little mental drain I had accrued since waking up. But I didn’t have to, to feel satisfied with how things were. I’d been worried I’d get bored of simply watching her sleep with nothing else worth pay attention to in the room while I was locked in the position we were. But, after an hour passed in the blink of an eye when let myself relax to the warmth her body was casting onto me, I stopped caring.

One hour turned into several and eventually a bit of sunlight started slipping into the room pass the mostly closed curtains of my bedroom windows. Eventually, Velvet started to stir from her slumber.

She stretched out her legs which were intertwined with mine but froze when her she opened her eyes and found her face half a foot away from mine. I could feel the tension in her body leave as she relaxed back into me and smiled.

“Good morning,” she retained a smile after propping herself up to give me a quick kiss.

“Morning,” I kissed her back before we sat up on my bed.

“So… Yesterday really happened, huh?” I couldn’t quite place the tone of her voice as she looked at me with vague amusement I could not readily intuit.

“Yeah, uh, thanks for looking out for me. I’ve already made it clear that you didn’t have to go this far, but, if I’m being honest, I'm really glad that you did,” I grinned at her.

“I’m glad too,” she giggled and leaned on me. “I’d been looking up articles and tutorials on how to make my first time a good experience ever since our second date on Monday. Coco wouldn’t stop telling me horror stories about how her first few times were extremely awkward and how that only stopped once she got over the initial embarrassment and adopted the mindset of ‘making it clear what she wanted.’”

“A lot of what I found online aligned with what she told me, so I’m happy that I decided to follow the advice with where it got me last night. It was a bit nerve-wracking, and even scarier when I thought of what you’d think of me when I acted like that but… Everything ended well and if I had to do it again, I’d agree to do it in a heartbeat,” She said.

I was happy to get a view into her perspective. I was also satisfied to have learned the reason for her drastic change in behavior.

“Say, I know you didn’t exactly plan to stay over here. All you have to wear is that new bartending uniform that was left back in the bathroom. So, if you want I can send a clone to pick up some clothes for you,” I said.

“Hmm?” She hummed as her smile took a devilish tint to it. “If I recall correctly, you were very committed yesterday to not using your abilities. You walked me home, cooked our food and even washed the dirty dishes yourself. So, how about instead of using a clone now, you lend me some of the baggy clothes you like to wear when you go out to Beacon to work out and we can shop for some clothes together?”

“I mean, If you’re fine with wearing shirts that are way too long and take a belt with a pair of shorts that would otherwise certainly fall of, I’m certainly not going to deny you,” I said as I shifted the covers to stand up and pick some clothes for the both of us.

When I went to toss her one of my black t-shirts and a pair of dark blue gym shorts, I noticed the way she was shamelessly eyeing up my junk with a noticeably pleased smirk. I rolled my eyes at her as I went to put on my own clothes.

“Whoa, whoa, wait!” Velvet said as I was about to pull up a fresh set of boxers up. “Um… We should take another shower before we put on our clothes. I can, uh, smell us and I’m pretty sure most other Faunus could too.”

The moment she mentioned the smell, I subconsciously powered up my senses and instantly understood what she meant. Anyone who’d had sex, even if it was a really quick round, would probably pick up all kinds of scents from the sweat to all the other bodily fluids involved.

The two of us, however, absolutely stunk to hell after not only going at it for over an hour — hooray for the beneficial properties of Aura that allowed her to enjoy it for that long, chief among them being superhuman stamina — but also steeping in our stench by sleeping in it afterward. It didn’t smell bad which is why I didn’t immediately pick it up at any point after waking up. But, anyone paying attention or with heightened senses could definitely pick it up and probably tell.

“Good call,” I said as I pulled my leg clear of the boxers and set them aside. I sighed at the thought of needing to clean my bedsheets and covers so soon as well.

“Come on,” she said as she sauntered over to the bathroom. “While we’re cleaning up, why don’t you tell me more about what happened yesterday? You mentioned something about the Titans reacting to Dark Magic. I heard some reports about Grimm moving strangely all around the world before I turned up at our job, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with you.”

I followed her and as we started to clean ourselves I explained everything from the point of entering the Extinction Scenario to confronting Raksha after wrapping up my training of Dark Force.

“So, you are kind of like the second coming of the God of Darkness after all, right?” She asked. “You’re strong enough to fight both the Brother Gods, you’ve actually taken an aspect of the God of Light’s being and now your Dark Magic is good enough for Titans to defer to you.”

She embraced me for a few seconds as she said, “I can’t help you change how you feel about what’s happened, just know that I would have done the same thing if I were in your position. I don’t think you did anything wrong after being forced into that Mission and if you couldn’t expect the reaction you got from the Titans to your Dark Magic with the memories and experience of the God of Darkness, no one could have.”

I told her about the Final Release Scenario and she didn’t bat an eye when I told her about all the needless deaths I’d caused. She waited until I was finished with the whole story before saying, “It’s understandable why you feel bad. I think it was bad and that you were wrong for going to far for getting more of those power tokens. However,” she stared at me seriously.

“I think you’ve already reflected and repented enough. You already learned your lesson and realized the dangers of trying to make the most of your power. In the end, what was lost was going to end up erased once the simulation ended anyway, right? So, just try to keep your head up and look out for the same traps in the future,” she said.

“I was trying to, starting yesterday, by not overly using my powers for every inconvenience,” I said. “But then the whole thing with the Grimm happened and, well… Maybe it was just another case of my bad luck getting to me at the worst possible time. Maybe there’s something to what I was trying to do back then and I should continue to strive to live like a normal person for a long while. I think I should keep it up for at least a couple of weeks or a month to clear my head.”

“That might help, but I don’t know if you can get withdrawals like any other addiction gives if a person lets one get severe enough. You already told me you’ve had your powers since you woke up from that coma around a month ago, so it hasn’t been that long since you could even start to abuse your power. But, then again, there’s the whole time thing working weird in your Scenarios and Mission things and with the way your powers have grown exponentially stronger, there’s no telling how bad you might react to quitting cold turkey.”

“I don’t know, so far I haven’t used any Gacha Coins or accepted any of my already decided rewards in over a day and I don’t feel particularly stressed out. So, I’m just going to stick with complete abstinence for now. If that changes, I’ll, uh, talk to you about it,” I said.

We finished cleaning ourselves and drying off before putting on the clothes I’d picked out for us. We continued to make small talk the whole way from my apartment over to one of the luxury clothing stores nearby.

I could see Velvet grow hesitant to shop there and at first, I thought it was because she had come prepared to pay but wasn’t exactly rolling in dough like I was. She had brought her purse and had made quite a bit of extra cash from her first-night bartending, but even then it probably wouldn’t go far when a dress could easily run tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Lien.

When I told her not to worry about it and let me take care of it, she accepted it after I explained a bit more about how I got my money. That did little to ease her clearly anxious demeanor and rather quickly I found out why.

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Until now, I had spent all my time with Velvet in very “safe” and “inclusive” settings. When it wasn’t at Beacon with her team, it was either alone at my place or at the restaurant where we worked. The one time we went out alone, it had been well into the night and to a restaurant backed by the White Fang or at least adjacent to the more extreme Pro-Faunus Anti-Human side of things.

Now it was close to the middle of the day and we were in the middle of Vale’s commercial district, in one of the higher-end clothing stores. I’m not saying everyone and everything was suddenly out to mistreat Velvet just because she was a Faunus, but there was a good number of… odd looks thrown our way, to put it mildly. When we entered the store we chose, I also noticed the very direct way seemingly all the employees who politely walked up to other Humans with a smile and offered them help, pointedly ignored us.

It was probably not really actually all of the employees, but it was to the point where it took half an hour for one of the first few sales associates who passed us up the first time to come over and halfheartedly offered to help us. By then, my patience had been brought down so low that I didn’t say anything and just stared at him until he left us alone.

It hadn’t just been the employees. It had been people on the sidewalks and customers in the store talking under their breath. Employees and other customers alike giving us side eyes and blatantly casting their suspicions on us as we look for Velvet’s clothes. Nobody said anything, but it was obvious what they were all thinking and I was having a pretty hard time not letting it get to me when I considered that this was likely how Velvet felt whenever she was out alone. In fact, it was probably worse because at least now she had me to subconsciously pressuring people into leaving us alone.

I hadn’t realized it until the looks we were getting slowly turned from suspicion to dread, but I was once again subconsciously exerting spiritual pressure on these people just like I had done on our Monday date to the server who I’d been getting annoyed at. Only now that I had managed to more or less perfect my control over Spiritual Power and Spiritual Pressure did I realize that was what was happening.

For a time afterward, I kept it up and felt pleased by the way these ignorant people were getting a taste of their own medicine. But when the looks of fear and dread upset Velvet even more than what we had been getting before, I reigned my spiritual pressure back in and felt like kicking myself for both making her even more uncomfortable on top of also choosing to use my powers prodigally.

One good look at Velvet and how saddened she appeared was enough for me to forget about feeling sorry for myself. I couldn’t do anything about the way people looked at her for being a Faunus, but I could do the exact same thing she was doing for me and try to distract her.

So, I talked about anything and everything that came to mind. I talked some more about my time in other worlds; about my insane abilities and cheated skills. I reflected on all the private details of my life that I’d told her and in turn, asked her to share more about herself.

From simple things to why she wanted to be a Huntress in the first place to how her parents were doing now, I kept pushing for details until she either became hesitant to talk or her focus was directed on gossiping to her nosy boyfriend. Fortunately for me, she never took more than a second to come up with an answer, and she never showed even a hint of hesitation when it came to answering some of my more personal questions.

Eventually, we ended up eating lunch after finishing our clothes shopping, taking our haul back to my apartment and changing back into something nicer. By then, Velvet’s mood had picked back up and since the distraction tactic worked, I used it whenever it was needed on our way to eat lunch.

“—So how about it?” I asked.

Someone or another, we had started talking on how I planned on spending my break from Gacha madness.

“I’ve never been to a hot-springs, but I’ve heard Yatsuhashi mention he used to go to one with his family once every year when he was growing up. I hear they’re mostly a thing in Mistral, though.”

“We don’t have to go there,” I said. “It also doesn't have to be something we pack up and go immediately. I’m just saying, the short time I spent in one in an alternate world’s heaven, was pretty relaxing. Aside from that, the only thing I have planned is practicing a bunch of hobbies and trying not to instantly perfect an artform after a few hours.”

“Also, I guess training Jaune to get into Beacon next year also counts, but since most of the experience is coming back as feedback from a Shadow Clone, it’s not really something that helps pass the time. I would go do that in person, but,” I smiled at her, “I’d much rather spend my time with you.”

Velvet smiled right back before asking, “You have a disciple?”

“Yeah. His dad is the person who unlocked my Aura and after I found out he planned on doing something as stupid as trying to enter Beacon without Aura, I gave him the chance to either train under me or give up that suicidal idea.”

“You sound very fond of him,” Velvet looked at me smugly. It was strange see that expression outside of our fun time last night.

“Jaune’s pretty cool… when he’s not complaining about me trying to kill him with how much work I put him through every day,” I scoffed. “I don’t get why he complains so much. It’s only been a few days and he’s almost capped out on his physical potential. If he manages to break through the barrier for Ki like I’m hoping he does, he’ll probably end up as the strongest person in the school by the time he enters Beacon.”

“Ki is a power not exclusive to you?” Velvet asked.

I opened my mouth, but stopped as our waiter had returned with our lunch. Once our — mostly my — plates were set on the table and we thanked the waiter, I continued, “I think the only power that’s energy system I have access to that would be strictly impossible to have without my powers is Magicka since you need to be born with it. Chakra is much the same and even I wouldn’t be able to use it without the ability to transmute it from other energy and having the knowledge of how to manipulate it. But, Ki and Spiritual Power already exist in every living being with a soul. Actually making it so you have enough to use it is a whole other matter.”

Velvet smirked, “So what you’re saying is I too can be a Death God?”

“I mean…” I shrugged.

Her smirk gave way to disbelief, “Wait, really?”

“If you really wanted to, I’m sure that with a fraction of my powers — I’m talking so little I’d probably recover them back in a day or so — you could be a fully-fledged Shinigami. It’d be enough to make use of your Spiritual Power and get started on discovering deeper powers of the soul beyond just your Semblance and Aura. Then,” I paused, an excited smile forming with no effort from me to contain it, “I could teach you all the spells I learned.”

“And that thing about Ki is also true? Anyone can unlock it if they simply train hard enough?” She asked.

“I would hope so. Apparently, no one in this world that I’ve come across has actually unlocked theirs — the few who looked like they might have only had their locked Kis artificially propped up by Magic — but it should be possible. I should know for sure in a month, unless you want to give trying to unlock yours a try. I’ll have to warn you first, that the process will leave you more tired than you can even imagine. Though, luckily for you since you already have a decent foundation to work with, you will probably only need a week or so of my kind of training to pull it off… if it’s possible.”

“I’m a little hesitant to try getting either type of power,” Velvet said as she put her silverware down, “But, I also want to get stronger for myself, my team… and you. Which do you think I should get first if you’ll help me try to get both?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter either way. Spiritual Power is good because it's versatile and comes with a lot of neat benefits once I make you a Shinigami. Ki, however, has no ceiling on growth and with enough time spent working on it could probably put on or even above my current level.”

“Aren’t you almost at the point where you can destroy planets?” Velvet looked at me skeptically.

“Yeah, but that’s mostly because I’ve cheated my way to maximize the potential of my Spiritual Power. I bet in a couple of months or years, I’ll be able to do the same with just my Ki even if I just stick to training it the good old-fashioned way. I’m still sitting on a couple of extremely high-end Gacha Coins related to the spiritual power system that might see my Shinigami and related powers rise to even more broken levels, but even then Ki will eventually overcome it all.”

“Then, maybe it would be best to start with Ki and build on top of that later. If all it takes to raise Ki is working out with heavier resistances, I can work that in with my current training routine.”

“...You just let me know when you want to start. Though, we’ll definitely need more workout clothes for you if you want to go that route,” I said.

When I finished my food, I paid for the bill and we left to buy the aforementioned workout clothes right away. I don’t know if it was my hesitant tone coming off like I didn’t believe she had it in her or if Velvet was just a training freak all this time and I had just never noticed, but she seemed really adamant on wanting to get with the training right away. This quickly changed once we got through the eighteenth, or maybe nineteenth, cycle taking her legs to failure.

She kept going but, it was with a resigned acceptance that she couldn’t fake any desire or enthusiasm for actually wanting to continue working out. This went on for about seven hours before I stopped her from continuing.

When we made it back to my apartment, she all but collapsed into the shower and demanded that I wash her. That was perfectly fine by me and once we were done in there, I went on to cook us a veritable ton of food which she ate a good portion of. She was going to need the calories if she wanted to keep going and not just wither away before her Ki unlocked.

“It’s a shame we couldn’t have our first cooking lesson today like we planned last week, but I’m fine with this too,” she said as she licked her lips of the Xacuti sauce that had been doused on the half a chicken she ate.

She went to the couch to watch some TV while I washed the dishes — and everything else that had been dirtied while making our meals — and when I went to sit next to her, I found her already fast asleep. I moved her over to my bed and covered her up before returning to the apartment living room.

“Katayoki,” I called out to my Zanpakuto Spirit.

“What it do, what it be, my master supreme?” Katayoki tried to rap and it honestly cringed me down to the root of my soul.

“What the fuck was that?” I asked him.

“I don’t know, but it helped take the edge off the serious mood you were about to start this conversation with, right?”

“I guess… Anyway, what do you think I should do with Hogyoku’s Wish? Getting rid of Daily Dose of Catastrophe is a Mythical Grade wish which will take six full months for the cooldown of the Perk to end,” I said.

“But you don’t want to do that,” he tonelessly said. “Not when you don’t have to. When all the remaining Scenarios and Missions that remain are much less dangerous than that last one, and when you could just wish for a temporary reprieve from the Curse with an ‘Appeasement of the Gatcha Gods’ which comes with a much shorter cooldown. I don’t really get that the big hold up here is.”

I’d found out about the Appeasement of the Gatcha Gods while seeing if there was any wish to stop the Curse for a predetermined amount of time. As it turns out, much like there were levels to the Curse regarding the Gatcha Gods, there was a Blessing that temporarily canceled out the effects of a Curse.

Appeasement of the Gatcha Gods was a Unique Grade Perk that would stop the effects of a Curse — stop the current countdown towards the next day’s Daily Dose of Catastrophe in this case — for seven hours while the cooldown to be able to use Hogyoku’s Wish again for that level was only six hours.

“I’m just worried about what might happen once I start using Gatcha Coins again. Anything short of using only Blessed or defined Skill, Perk, or Ability Coins is going to come with the risk of potentially bringing me another terrible Curse,” I said.

“Anything at the Mythical Level, but that’s beside the point,” Katayoki said. “Look there’s not really a right or wrong answer to this. I don’t think it matters either way. I mean, even without Hogyoku’s wish to bail you out of taking another Mythical Curse, you’ve got a ton of backup on top of backups to keep yourself alive.”

“I’m not—”

“—worried about that? You’re worried about going crazy with wishing for tons of little things? Who are you kidding here,” Katayoki scoffed as he cut me off. “The only real issue with using Hogyoku’s Wish to get rid of a Mythical Curse is that afterward you won't have it to do the same thing once your bad luck catches up to you.”

“...I want to use it to wish for all my current Skills to have their level caps increased to twenty and also maybe to wish for a fast travel point to some of the worlds I’ve seen in the Scenarios,” I lamely defended myself. It was a bullshit argument that didn’t require a piece of myself to see right through it.

“Look, there’s no point in trying to convince yourself you want to be prepared or whatever. However you want to spin this narrative, the fact remains that Gatcha is very simple. Either you gamble or you don’t. Wishing for Daily Dose of Catastrophe will permanently get rid of that threat looming over you, just waiting for you to forget. If you can’t handle a mere six-month wait before rolling for any Gatcha with a risk of terrible consequences, then that’s on you.”

“Ah, whatever,” I grumbled to myself as I sat down before another piece of paper to start drawing. I wished for the Daily Dose of Catastrophe to go away and—

[Congratulations! For managing to use a way to break Mythical Curses, you have earned a Mythical Perk Gacha Coin!]

Sure, why the hell not?

I emptied my head of any more negative thoughts and focused on drawing the nightscape outside my apartment. It was still relatively early for me to go to bed considering how little energy and effort I’d spent mostly hanging around Velvet, so for the next couple of hours I kept drawing until I eventually went to bed at around 3:00 AM.

I hadn’t managed to avoid getting an extremely high-Grade Gacha Coin, but I had passed the day without using any of the ones I had stockpiled. Hopefully, after a couple more days or weeks, I’d feel fine enough to start using my power responsibly.

Though, I guess the real test for that would be seeing if I could make it six months from now until Hogyoku’s Wish became available before I use any Epic or above Grade Gachas with the chance to roll for Curses.

That was where the risk in my power was starting to shine through.