Annie threw herself into the lesson with everything she had, surprising even me with how vicious she was immediately willing to be. Her first attempt to resist me was a hard knee to my testicles, which I blocked, followed by a headbutt to my nose. Only my Force Armor kept my nose from breaking.
Five minutes of standing grappling was solid cardio, but it wasn’t kung fu enough for my tastes. I put on my weighted vest, settling on thirty pounds, and had Annie drape herself in heavy steel chains, about fourteen pounds, I’d found unattended at the docks.
After our first break, I rolled the next Teaching roll, my upgraded feat resetting its benefits. The universe howled its approval with 11 Successes! That was a success on every die and a crit. It was my best roll since I’d arrived in Black Harbor, and a welcome sign that I’d chosen correctly when spending my Experience.
Following the insights I’d gained from my stellar roll, I decided to become extremely annoying. I hectored Annie, grabbing her and sweeping her to the ground over and over again, only laying off when it seemed that she was about to throw up from the exertion. I kicked her shins to distract her, pinched her sides to force her to twist herself into traps, and bopped her nose with the flat of my palm to force her eyes to water. If she was leaving herself open repeatedly, I would punish her with creative applications of pain or humiliation. When she exposed her chest to me, I would dig my knuckle into her sternum and drag it down hard. Her head and her back I punished with slaps to the relevant cheeks, not enough to ‘damage’ her by game terms, but enough to hurt.
By the end of it, Annie was putting everything she had into her attacks. She really wanted to hit me, with every strike, every elbow, knee, and headbutt meant to put me down. A few of her strikes even managed to break through my Force Armor. I never thought I’d find it beautiful to see a woman so completely embrace the way of violence, but those were the unexpected joys of becoming a shifu.
“Sorry about that,” I said, pulling off my weight vest.
My redheaded student was on her back trying to catch her breath. I had swept her almost thirty times during this last round, barely bothering to try and drag her off the stone pavilion. Frankly, I was surprised she hadn’t vomited from the exertion.
She threw me a thumbs up. “All, hah, good. I do, hah, hate you, though.”
“Not yet, you don’t,” I smirked. “But we’re just getting started.”
One weighted jump rope, one ‘training staff’ (a headless mop), some snacks and a little rest later, and we were ready to start the next training session. I had been thinking about the rat as of late. Not to fantasize about revenge, though there was some of that mixed in, but specifically to consider how he had dodged my grasp on Friday. While he had used some kind of Energy Reading to react to my attack, that, unfortunately, was something I lacked the required Feats, Attributes, and Skills to learn. However, he’d also changed his trajectory mid-air in order to juke me. It had been a sort of twisting burst of his torso, an explosion of core muscles sharp enough to move him the few inches he had needed. ‘Salmon Jump’ was what Style Maker had named it.
I could, and probably would eventually, purchase outright the feat the rat had used, but I was also fairly certain that if I trained long enough, I could mimic it without spending the Experience. That was after all, the in-game justification for my Style Maker.
I handed Annie the staff. We were once more standing across from each other on the pavilion. Non-committal dark clouds moved quickly underneath the lighter grey of the sky, unsure of whether they would or wouldn’t storm. The consistent light breeze dispelled the humidity and wicked away the sweat from my damp grey t-shirt.
“I regret to inform you that our school already has a nemesis, a shameless bandit that has pilfered our gym on multiple occasions, twice this weekend alone! He is brazen, seemingly unafraid of me, and taunts me openly with his martial abilities. But!” I held up my finger. “What the beast doesn’t know, is that every time he waddles out some new technique, he moves one step closer to death. I will pick apart his style and make it our own.”
Annie quirked her head and furrowed her brow. “Uh…”
“Oh, right, sorry. I’m talking about a rat. There’s a particularly portly rat that knows ninjutsu and he’s been terrorizing me since I moved in.”
“Excuse me?”
“Anyway, two days ago he managed to dodge me by flinging himself in a new direction mid-jump. That sounds like quite a useful move for you and I, doesn’t it? Scaled up it would be multiple feet of distance.”
“Sorry, a literal rat? Rattus rattus?”
“I couldn’t tell you the specific species.”
“And it knows…”
“Ninjutsu, it seems. I’d thought it was Rat Style Kung Fu at first, but he left a pile of Japanese cherry blossom petals on my kitchen floor. I think Rat Kung Fu would have gone with peach or plum blossoms, but that’s just a hunch, not everyone is committed to aesthetic consistency. Hmm, yes?”
Annie made the timeout gesture. “I have to stop you. Rats can learn martial arts?”
I shrugged. “It’s a crazy world we live in, Annie Shine.”
It was fun to be on the opposite end of this conversation. I’d brought this same energy to my mother when I’d learned about rats doing kung fu. I could totally see why she’d brushed me off, this was hilarious.
Annie was flabbergasted. I wished I had a picture of this moment to show my mom. ‘Baby’s First Time Learning Rats Can Do Kung Fu’, I could title it. “Wha…”
“I think the basic movement was an oblique crunch and a hip check—”
She held a hand up. “I, I’m having trouble moving on. You’re telling me our school’s nemesis is a ninja rat. We’re beefing with Master Splinter?”
“No! Master Splinter was a man of honor! This creature is a common bandit! Also, he’s regular rat sized, just very fat. Imagine an oversized tube of cake frosting.”
“What did he steal?”
“What do you mean? He’s a rat. He stole my groceries. It’s not like he could pawn my DVD player. Well, no one could really; it was only, like, twenty bucks. But that’s beside the point.”
“Have you…tried poison? Traps?”
I shook my head gravely. “Never, that would be against my Yuxia code. If he were a simple beast, that would be one thing, but I’ve recognized him as a worthy opponent. I won’t escalate to poison unless he invites it in some way, and so far all he’s done is run away. It would be dishonorable. It’s of crucial importance to a Qi user to have a code or a philosophy to live by. Chaos invites Corruption. A dark Qi user is no more than a mad beast to be put down. You’ll want to remember that once you tap into your Qi.”
I wasn’t bullshitting. The game had multiple Corruption mechanics that used your Willpower Attribute as a separate ‘health’ tract, though much, much harder to recover from. There were dark Qi users, dark telepaths, dark magicians, and so on; all people who had been driven mad by their power. So far, I’d avoided any feats that incurred a risk for Corruption, but they were mighty tempting. There was also the chance to be Corrupted by supernatural entities; vampires had thralls, demons their witches, wizards their slaves, etc. At the time, I had considered these to be ‘soft bad ends’, things that weren’t guaranteed to be character enders if the table was willing to go through the process of curing/redeeming their party member, and so were more appealing to a Game Master than outright death. Now, they were facts of life, more hazards to be avoided.
“I might rig a trap though,” I added. “I think that’s reasonable. Although, I’d have to get a lot better at trap making to catch him before it became worth it. Now quit stalling. Let’s train.”
I made my second Teaching roll as I set us up. The feat had mentally clicked back on when I could roll again, which had been about fifty minutes after the last one. Three Successes, not much compared to the critical, but a respectable number nonetheless.
The exercise was a simple one, aimed at developing the musculature required for a Salmon Jump. I would jump my weighted rope at a steady pace, while Annie would use her staff to stab at my sides. Her aim was to deliver a glancing blow fast enough to avoid her staff getting hit by the jump rope. I would be trying to jerk out of the way mid-jump while not throwing off my rhythm. The jump rope would be keeping us both honest.
Annie was a natural with the staff, easily following along with my lesson on how to best deliver force with a quick, short jab. Thankfully, she wasn’t trying to really hurt me this time, or else she’d have quickly stretched the limits of my Force Armor.
We struggled trying to find our rhythm. Our first five minutes were jerky; either Annie would mistime her strike, or I would overcorrect and miss my jump. But once we got going properly, it was a thing of beauty. We resembled two metronomes perfectly in sync – or the craziest cuckoo clock to have ever been made.
It was bizarrely intimate, and not quite sexually. I was intensely aware of all of Annie’s micromovements and expressions, and she no doubt of mine. We had mutually adjusted our personal rhythms to match each other’s. It was enough that the system asked me to make an Empathy + Seduction roll in the middle of the session. The Lucky Penny in my pocket pushed my check to 3 Successes. The result was subtle, but I could sense somehow that our connection had deepened.
We rested when our muscles could no longer obey our nervous systems. Once the clumsiness returned I had us break for a bit before trading positions. Annie was a pro rope jumper, to no surprise, far superior to me, but she wasn’t as adept at taking strikes. Over time, though my attacks weren’t causing ‘damage’ by the game’s definition, the repeated body blows sapped her energy. She slowed down to compensate, but it wasn’t enough. Annie was shaking by the time we hit the five minute mark. She would either be too slow to fire or would overcompensate with her reactions, her smooth flow replaced with twitchy, jerking movements.
I didn’t need a teaching feat to tell me that Annie wasn’t prepared for a crash lesson on Iron Body training, and called a break. Afterwards, I had her only practice the staff thrusts as we rounded out the session. Her shoulders were no doubt on fire, but it was better than potentially sending her to the hospital.
Once the feat informed me I could roll again, I had us move to a less physically demanding skill session. I needed to come up with forms for Black City Kung Fu and there was no better way to brainstorm than to choreograph some cool looking fight scenes. Annie had given me the idea. Beyond sounding like fun, it would also present an opportunity to take a crack at the hidden quests related to making video content. I assumed there were more than just the ‘Go viral’ quests from yesterday.
The burgeoning influencer had brought two tripods and a very nice camera with her. Along with her phone, they gave us two static angles to work with. It wasn’t ideal for longer form content, but she assured me she would have at least one JinJin video ready to go. Filming and distributing our training like this was extremely non-conventional. Even non-traditional modern styles wouldn’t have done this at the higher levels, no fighter wanting to give up their secrets prior to a match or tournament. But being a content creator was how Annie was angling to get into the Stunt Performers Guild. And since she was helping me with my plan to expedite entry to the SPG, I wanted to do my part to help with hers.
Besides, with how my life was going, if I was still alive by the time of the tournaments, I’d be almost unrecognizable. Including the Thursday I got here, I’d averaged almost 100 XP a day. Sure, I’d probably die if I tried to keep that up for five weeks, but even if I dropped that down to a quarter of my average, I’d still be a monster come the Qualifiers.
Unsure of how to start with my forms, I decided to cheat a little and used my teaching feat to accelerate my brainstorming. Four Successes didn’t give me any specific ideas, but I did feel reassured that the feat would enhance the effectiveness of any training. I could have her paint my fence and wax her car to learn how to block if I wanted to.
In that case, I figured, I might as well have fun with it.
I came out of my little garden shed twirling two curved wooden practice sabers with a toothy grin.
“Who else starts you with weapons on the first day? Ah, I just can’t help spoiling my senior student.”
Annie rubbed her obliques and winced. “I don’t feel very spoiled.”
I stood on the pavilion so that Annie could see my profile as I entered the Li-Family Plum Flower Double Saber stance.
“This next exercise is to teach you the beginnings of how to study and visualize movement the way that I do, as well as give you practice dodging. Our style is meant to be mobile and flowing, rarely do you ever want to block. Your defense should focus on parrying, dodging, and, of course, attacking, but we’ll cover that when you’re ready.”
I spun my swords in intersecting circles, timed so that they failed by a hair to catch each other. “Here’s how this works. I’m going to improvise a twenty-four move sword form, then I’m going to repeat it exactly as before, two more times for you. After that, you’re going to stand in front of me and we’re going to go through it over and over until you can dance through these blades with panache. Fun right? Don’t worry, I won’t break any bones.”
“Huh. That actually sounds like a lot of fun.” She rocked on her heels. “Yeah. Twenty four moves? I can do that. Can you do me a favor though? Can you take your shirt off? It’ll be better for the cameras, and I think it’ll be easier for me to keep track of you.”
“Good idea,” I said. I ignored the look in her eyes as I pulled off my shirt, still committed to pushing her into making the first move. I was left in only a small pair of exercise shorts that reached about halfway down my thighs, and rode up a bit as my quads flexed and moved.
Improvising the form was a Wits plus Martial Arts roll, something I easily crushed with my 11 total dice. I took a breath and envisioned Annie before me. This form, I decided, would teach her how to circle step. I pictured the pattern my twin blades would need to weave to push her into a spiral towards the center of the pavilion.
My first steps were sublime. I instantly knew I’d made the right decision to take a student. They said that teaching was a great way to breakthrough your own skill plateaus, and I could see why. This was precisely what Black City needed to reach the next level. Without her I don’t think I’d have tried to boil down my style to its core like this.
The vision of my student in my head may have had the redhead’s body, but it possessed considerably greater skill. She flowed around my sabers and through their deadly arcs, avoiding my attacks but moving ever towards where I wanted her. This was a good level of proficiency in Black City for a first form. When came the day that Annie could dodge with the same grace and flare as the version of her in my head in a real fight, I would consider her a journeyman in my style.
I used wide sweeping attacks, fast but telegraphed. They would look flashy for the cameras but give her plenty of time to react to them. This was our first form after all.
I froze with my arm extended in a lunging thrust and turned to look at her. “I’ll pause here. Next time we train though, I’ll teach you how to disarm me, and we’ll use this as the start of a one saber form that will loop back to the start of todays. That’ll give us our first drill.”
Annie had transformed while she watched, taking the posture and severe appearance of a weathered gymnastics coach. Her arms were crossed, one hand holding her chin between its thumb and index finger. Blue eyes, cold and analytical, followed my every move.
She was the picture of confidence stepping into the ring after I finished the form for the third time. Annie bowed before standing in something resembling a taekwondo stance. I returned her bow and then stepped forward to make the first move at about one-third speed, a dual thrust of my sabers, one low the other high. She twisted her body out of the way, bent like a reed in the wind in the narrow line of safety, then ducked the second move, a pull cut from the overhead blade as it whipped back to defend me in a deadly arc.
Annie had all the right instincts for my style, she was waiting until the very last moment to dodge, and every movement had dramatic intent. She innately understood that the point of Black City Kung Fu wasn’t to look cool while delivering a beating, the point was to look cool and deliver a beating. They were equal parts important. If we were moving full speed and these were real swords, little strands of her hair would have been twirling down in the ones and twos with each dodge, ripe for some slow-mo shots.
Annie timed a stomp to my leg just at the moment I stepped into the next movement, surprising me, and proving herself to be the perfect scene partner. Then, seemingly to her own surprise, she rolled back and under my follow-up low sweep.
THWACK
“Ow, shit!” Annie had stood up, directly into the path of my left saber. “Sorry,” she said, rubbing the side of her face.
“What were you trying to do?”
She grinned. “The stomp was as far as I got.”
“You looked so confident.”
Annie curtsied, and with an over the top German accent said, “Act-ting, mein guter Freund. I was embodying my childhood coach.”
“Well that was still insanely impressive for your first time. I had a vision in my head for how you would have to dodge, but I’ll have to step it up now that I can see what you can do. You might be the one person in this city most suited to learn my style.”
Was Annie a gimme from the Producers? She had to be. We met in my first scene, she was already a fan, and she was an ideal student, it was too perfect.
If so, then I was majorly grateful. I’d avoided most of the romantic stuff at character creation, and that was clearly where most of the Experience lay. But, now that I knew Annie was a designated love interest, I was considerably more worried for her safety.
“Thanks!” said Annie, beaming with excitement, “I knew from the first time I watched you that we would be crazy compatible. You really think we’ll be able to get through all twenty-four moves today?”
“You did four moves on your own from a side profile? Definitely. We should be running this at full speed within an hour. Like I said, I can envision an opponent dodging me. I’ll guide you when you get stuck. You know your body better than me of course, and you’ve already surprised me today, but with a little collaboration we should be flying.”
The little redhead gave me a serious look. “We can do this in an hour? James, if we made one of these a day, we could be doing numbers on JinJin.”
I stroked my chin. “An hour a day? I can probably spare that, but the question is will that hour be one that aligns with your schedule.”
Annie blinked. “Oh, I was thinking we would stockpile some videos for later. But, actually, if that’s what it takes, I could clear an hour a day. Are you serious about this?”
“Am I serious about this?” I asked myself aloud. “Hmm. You are my only student and I am currently in a simmering feud with the Tiger Triad so I do have responsibility to teach you to the best of my abilities. And if we made content out of it, it would inherently force my training to be as entertaining as possible, a guiding principle in Black City Kung Fu.”
Training Annie every day would also ensure I hit the daily repeatable quest, and that I’d get the most value out of my investment into teaching feats.
“I’ll have to leave all of the video and social media stuff to you, bit too much on my plate for all of that.”
She saluted. “You can count on me! But I think you may change your mind once the money starts coming in. You’re serious, though? You want to meet to train and film daily?”
I got back into my starting position, signaling with my practice swords for her to do the same. “I imagine we’ll miss a few days, but I see no good reason not to try.”
“Sweet. I have a good feeling about this. Me and you, we’re a hot ticket.”
“Just try to survive training.” I took a deep breath. “Alright, this time instead of rolling back and standing up, I want you to roll into a handstand and parry the next two attacks with your feet.”
The next hour was extremely productive. Of mine and Annie’s Venn diagram of skills, choreography fell firmly in the middle. We were able to do our 24-move partner form at 1.5 times speed by the end, and I even had time to show her a few disarm attacks she could use to start with next time.
Our training was going well, but while I always enjoyed the training scenes in movies and shows, I was getting a bit self-conscious about how my viewers would take it. In an effort to ease Annie into my martial arts, I’d deliberately been holding back on the danger and pizazz. Sure, if she described her day to her normal friends, they might find it brutal and alarming, but they probably wouldn’t think the exercises were unbelievable. And a martial artist would find my training eccentric but sensible so far. Honestly, my family and other more traditional fighters would think I’d gone easy on her.
I needed to do something that would put both groups on their asses, something that would make me standout from the rest, and ideally something that would help me win the next viewer popularity poll.
Hands clasped in front of my face, I stared down at the character for Strength on my pavilion. “That could work,” I muttered to myself as I had a thought. I gave Annie a stern, confident look. “I think we should try to awaken your Qi.”
“Oh.” She was audibly skeptical. “I thought that took years.”
“It does, normally. But I had an idea.”
First, I had us stand back to back. Our elbows locked together, we lowered ourselves into a partner horse stance. I would use this to teach Annie how to breathe properly.
“Imagine a tire around your abdomen; your breaths should push against that tire equally. Feel my back.” I took a full kung fu breath. “Can you feel it expand against yours?”
The muscles in her shoulders indicated to me that she’d nodded. Any fighter worth their salt could read their opponent through touch alone. “Yes.”
“Focus on those muscles and try to push them against me with your breaths. With time, this will be your default means of breathing.”
I waited until I could feel Annie get the hang of it to continue.
“Once you no longer have to focus to breathe correctly, I want you to turn your attention to your lower dantian, two fingers breadth below your navel and three breadths within. This is the seat of your Qi and the location of the Gate of Life. Feel the primordial flame, your truest potential, as its energy flows outward and through your body.”
This is where the shenanigans began. I had a fairly lofty goal in mind, awakening Annie’s Qi, and was planning to use an improvised Aura maneuver to achieve that. Ordinarily, this would be an extremely difficult check, and I didn’t think the Producers would bail me out twice in a row for improvised maneuvers. But, I had a plan.
To try and make the goal a bit easier and justify a lower Success threshold, I started with a teaching roll. Hopefully, a high enough result would open the doors to what I wanted to do next.
Nice! We were starting strong with a critical for a total of 8 Successes. At the very least, no matter how well the rest of this went, Annie would remember this exercise as strangely impactful.
Next, I got to employ a feat that I had previously thought would languish unused. Heartfelt Serenade, which I’d gotten for kissing Shania, allowed me to add 4 dice to a Seduction or Persuasion roll, once per person, so long as I was singing to them when I did so. It was an absurd ability that I’d only been grateful to receive because it gave me a much improved singing voice as a side effect, but it was hopefully about to come in clutch.
I began to throat sing, something I hadn’t known I knew how to do but evidently fell under the auspices of the feat. A loud, eerie double-tone came rumbling from the base of my neck and chest. The sound made Annie tense momentarily, before the sonorous massage of vibrations from where our bodies were connected lulled her into a deeper relaxation.
After a few minutes, our breathing was perfectly synchronized. I could throat sing through the inhale of breath, and had used that slight change in pitch to coach Annie into following along with my slow constant breaths. Finally, she was ready for me to engage in the last step. I turned my minds eye inward to the river of power flowing through my body, chasing a strand of pure Qi as it exited my own dantian and moved into my spine. I tried to direct that energy into Annie, to reverse the path and try to jumpstart her Qi production.
Somehow, I convinced the system to let me roll an Aura + Seduction to do this. I guess, technically, I was trying to seduce Annie’s Qi network with my own? I wasn’t entirely sure of the specifics, but I had 14 dice in the pool with the 4 from Heartfelt Serenade and 1 from Rule of Cool, since this was the sort of thing that would defy belief from a layman, and an expert would find reckless, dangerous, and possibly insane.
Annie gasped, her lower dantian exploding into a roaring inferno. My breathing managed to stay steady, but only because of the added focus that my song provided me. Internally, my mind was struggling to control the deluge of information and emotions that were assaulting my body and soul. Ten Successes may have actually been a few too many. I wasn’t sure what I had in mind would happen, but this was beyond my wildest expectations.
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Unlock your first Qi Nature (Fire).
Reward: 15 EXP, +1 Elemental Control (Fire)
Bonus, You and your student simultaneously unlocked same nature: 5 EXP, +1 Aura, +1 Elemental Control (Fire)
Bonus, Used Seduction: 25 EXP, +1 Occultism (Erotic Sorcery)
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Have 6 dice in Aura.
Reward: Gain Special feat Infused
[Special Feat]
Infused – You have taken the first step on the long journey from man to God. The wellspring of Qi in your core has begun to alter your body, changing and improving it at the cellular level. This grants you a wide variety of benefits, esoteric and not, most notable of which are: your aging is slowed, your natural lifespan has doubled, and your base Health and Willpower tracts are increased by 1. However, it should be known that every element of your biology is of value to mystics and monsters alike, and that unless you take steps to mitigate it, your soul glows like a torch in the night.
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Unlock a student’s Qi.
Reward: 10 EXP, +1 Wits, +1 Leadership
Bonus, Used Seduction: 15 EXP, You and Student Gain Minor feat Dual Cultivation
[Minor Feat]
Dual Cultivation – You may intermingle your Aura with your partner while engaged in consensual sex. This is a profoundly intimate process that grants 2 dice to all Sensuality and Endurance rolls to both you and your partner during the scene, and cannot be interrupted willingly once began. At the end of the Dual Cultivation, roll a combined dice pool of both of your Aura Attributes; you each gain Experience equal to the number of successes. If your partner has this feat as well, add 2 dice to all relevant pools. A person may only benefit from this feat once per day.
[Ally Quest Complete! (Annie Shine)]
Unlock Annie’s Qi
Reward: 10 EXP, +1 Acrobatics, +1 Dance
Bonus, Unlocked her Qi Nature simultaneously: 10 EXP, +1 Elemental Control (Fire), +1 Physics
[Ally Quest Complete! (Annie Shine)]
Irrevocably alter Annie’s body to become lewder.
Reward: 50 EXP, +2 Occultism (Erotic Sorcery), +1 Finesse
Bonus, It was an accident: 10 EXP, Gain Item Silver Dollar – As long as this coin is on your person, you may treat a single 5 on a die as a 6 for any roll. If lost or destroyed, it will return to you the next day.
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Implement sexuality into a lesson to a positive effect.
Reward: 15 EXP, +1 Seduction, Gain Special feat Sex Ed
Bonus, It went unnoticed: 15 EXP, +1 Deception
Bonus, Magnitude of the effect was Defining: +1 Random Attribute (Attunement), +3 Random Skill (Stealth)
[Special Feat]
Sex Ed – NPCs that you train gain double the benefits from training when you include a sexual element to the lesson. This applies to both what they would learn naturally and any relevant feats that you may have.
If Annie’s dantian was a bonfire, mine was a volcano on the verge of eruption. It was all I could do to leash my power, contain it before it escaped my body in the form of uncontrolled heat and force. Unfortunately, I had tied my metaphysical network to Annie’s, and her total inability to wrangle her Qi, to no fault of her own, was keeping me from managing mine. I began to detangle us as quickly and carefully as I could.
Qi was the basic building block of life. It both created, and was created by, the body. As I pulled my Qi out of Annie, I could feel her network undergoing rapid evolution. Her spiritual power had doubled and gained a new Nature, embodying the Chinese element of Fire. The energy of Impulse, Passion, and Explosive Growth rewrote Annie’s metaphysiology, and these changes were reflected in her biology. Guided by my initial 10 Successes on the Aura + Seduction roll, Annie’s newly awakened Qi was impossibly horny. What it was doing to her, I could only guess, but the quest, ‘Irrevocably alter Annie’s body to become lewder’ said it all, really.
Had I not been undergoing my own small metamorphosis myself I might have been able to control and moderate Annie’s changes, but I had to abandon her to her fate. My consciousness was forced inward, lest I lose control and vaporize us and our surroundings.
Eventually, after an unknown amount of time in deep contemplation, I returned to what was now my baseline. My Qi settled down, but I could sense the heat ready to lash out at a moment’s notice. Was my Nature really Fire, I wondered, or had I earned that as a result of my improvised Maneuver? I suppose I’d been fairly impulsive lately, but I’d always thought of myself as a fairly level headed man. The James half of me was a bit disappointed, having memorized Bruce Lee’s ‘Be Water’ speech at the age of nine. Now I was ‘Being Fire’, which meant that I would have to completely rework my martial philosophy. The Alan half of me was self-conscious, wondering if this was somehow a referendum on the fact that we were only here because he’d responded seriously to a scammy email.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
An unspoken, noiseless signal passed between Annie and I, and we both slowly dropped onto our asses, still leaning against each other. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought the sweat soaked, exhausted woman behind me was feverish.
“Holy, ah, shit, ah…” panted Annie. “That was…insane.”
“Black City, baby. No one does it like us.”
I checked the time. That whole process had only taken twenty minutes. That made sense, while my legs were burning a bit, now that my body was returning to neutral, I didn’t feel all that tired physically. We still had to do a bit more to successfully finish Training Hard.
Not that it was strictly necessary. Today was a wild success for me and Annie, and an extra 1 to 3 Experience was hardly going to make a world of difference.
Annie’s breathing was shaky, her voice throaty. “James, I can feel it, my Qi. It’s, it’s so hot.” She squeezed her legs together and turned her head to press her cheek into my back.
“Yeah. Turns out we both have a Fire Nature. Always thought I was more Water or Wood, but taking a look back on my life decisions, things are definitely lining up.”
Annie shuddered and repeated, “Fire…”
“What else are you feeling? How’s your…body?” I couldn’t think of a polite way to reference the lewd changes.
Annie broke into a fit of giggles. “Uhhhh, no comment.” She coughed a few times before calming down. “Sorry. I’m stronger. No, not…exactly. But I’m better. I don’t know how to put it. I just feel more alive.” She paused. “And grateful, so, so grateful. Thank you, James. This is surreal.”
Let’s hope she felt the same after adjusting to her new ‘upgraded’ body. “Don’t mention it. I’m just glad neither of us exploded.”
“Was…that on the table?”
“Ha! Oh yeah. I didn’t want to panic you earlier, but that was incredibly dangerous. And I had no idea what I was doing. Maybe don’t tell other martial artists about this. Holy shit, definitely don’t tell my mother about this. Actually, maybe this all stays a secret technique, yeah?”
Annie laughed. “Sorry, did you say you thought you were Water or Wood earlier?”
“Hey, I said things were lining up. And I don’t want to hear it from you. You’re also a Fire Nature.”
“True.” She hummed. “We should totally use that as an excuse any time we get caught acting messy.”
“Oh, we should for sure be as insufferable about this as possible.”
Annie twisted her body a bit so that she was resting against me in a side hug, legs curled under her and one arm around my sweaty, bare chest. A few droplets of rain fell from the dull grey above, turning to steam where they landed on our skin.
“So, good to keep going?”
“Keep going?” she asked, a little tired.
“Keep training. Your call. It’s been a good day so far, but I haven’t hit the wall yet.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I think so. Just give me a sec.” The little ginger’s nose dug into my back as she took a deep breath. “Hey, James, why does your sweat smell good? I couldn’t tell if it was deodorant earlier, but now it’s, like, undeniably your sweat.”
I frowned. “I think you’re smelling my power. That could be a problem. I’ll have to watch out for draculas now, I bet.”
“Draculas?”
“You know, blood sucker types? Wear capes, walk on walls, turn into bats?”
“Vampires?” She giggled. “Are those actually real?”
“Don’t know, but I assume so.”
Annie laughed. She thought I was joking. “I guess it can’t hurt to be on the lookout.”
She kept holding me, her arm sliding down a bit to my abs. “Can I request the exercise?” she asked after a few more long breaths of my musk. There was a hint of implication in her voice. That lust that had been present in the immediate come down from the Qi ritual had bled back in.
I stalwartly continued to ignore any hints she was dropping. “Of course! What were you thinking?”
“It’s a little silly,” she pitched her tone up, putting on a bit of ‘damsel’ in her voice, “but you hear all these scary stories. I know it isn’t how most rapes happen, but a part of me’s always been worried that someone’s going to sneak up on me in the street and pin me down and fuck me while I struggle.” She practically purred the last words.
“You want to learn how to escape pins? Sure, we can end on a sensible note.”
“Great!” She leapt to her feet. “Let’s get started! Oh, wait.”
She hooked her thumbs up her leotard and into where her leggings began. “I’m overheating,” she said, keeping eye contact. She pulled the leggings down her prodigious, athletic ass. In order to get past where the leotard’s crotch was holding them in place, she kept her thumb hooked in the legging and lifted her leg up and out of it, revealing more and more of her bare, pale leg until the entirety of it was held perfectly vertical next to her head. It was a strip tease that I chose to interpret as a show of flexibility in my himbo brain.
Her leg stayed raised until she had pulled the now empty leg under her leotard unrestricted, allowing her to take off the leggings normally.
I blinked placidly at the display, wearing an innocent patient smile. The game forced me to roll a Deception at this. While I couldn’t know the results, I did have to fight back a smirk at the almost feral desperation that flashed over Annie’s eyes.
“Should I put my shirt back on?” I asked. “Collar control can be very important for beginner wrestling.”
“No.” She lay on the center of the of the pavilion on her back. “This is how I imagine it happening in my nightmares.”
I pointed to the grass. “Are you sure you don’t want somewhere softer?”
Annie briefly grit her teeth but passed it off as a smile. “I want it hard. To…replicate what it’s like in my dreams.”
I shrugged and moved to kneel over her. “What pin should I use first?”
“I don’t know. However you would fuck me if you were a bad guy, I guess.”
“It might be hard for you to tap as we go along. Want a safe word?”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“O-kay…Just say, ‘Pine Tree’ if you want to stop.”
I grabbed her left arm and lay it across her neck. Then, I folder her legs up until her ankles were above her head. Her legs also trapped her arm, which let me pin three of her limbs with my body weight. To choke her all I needed to do was lean my weight down on her thighs or push down on her ankles. I could also fold her further into a mating press if she somehow got both arms free, which would disable or hamper her shoulders by crushing them into the ground.
“So, not a whole lot you can do. You’ve got a hand free, but I can free both of mine if I need to. But you do have a weapon, or at least, what Black City considers to be one. Feel the ground beneath you, try flexing your shoulder blades. That little bit of motion and force they provide you? That’s your playground and your arsenal.”
She licked her lips. “I want you to go all out. I need to know. Wreck me if you have to.”
I nodded amicably. “Choking you out here wouldn’t be great for a lesson, but other than that I’ll go all out to keep you down. Ready when you are.”
Annie immediately started trying to squirm and twist out from under me. Her powerful core flexed under me like a steel coil, but I had total control of her hips and she wasn’t going anywhere. She was strong though, enough that I had to lean forward onto her, shifting my weight towards her thin arm trapping her neck. It wasn’t hard enough to fully block her air on her own, but every time she made a particularly strong effort with her lower abdomen, it would shift her body up a bit and into the arm. Annie was effectively choking herself as she fought me.
The Annie of an hour ago would have tested every movement she could to determine which was choking her and then moved onto other strategies. Instead she was doing her best to thrash underneath me, growing more frantic as she did. Rather than getting frustrated or more violent, she seemed to be growing more thrilled.
She stopped suddenly, falling back limply to catch her breath. Her eyes and her smile were wild. “Twisting to the sides not working,” she said lustily. “What about up and down?”
Annie picked up her butt and pressed her crotch directly into mine, staring manically at me. She didn’t have much room to move, but she started to gyrate her hips up in a circular motion, effectively massaging my dick. Her sex, now separated only by the leotard, was considerably warmer than the rest of her already burning body, and was wet with something that distinctly wasn’t sweat.
The system demanded an Endurance plus Deception to not instantly get rock hard. My one Success was barely enough and I was quickly at half-mast. Her eyes widened a fraction at the feel of me. If she thought that was impressive, she had no idea what was coming.
I coughed nervously but didn’t pull back. “Not much you can do with that I don’t think. Don’t forget your free hand.”
She grabbed a hold of my hair and pulled me into a hard kiss, before falling back somewhat dazed. The sudden motion had crushed her neck into her left arm in what was basically a self-inflicted lariat.
Annie didn’t let go of my head though, nor did she break eye contact. I did my best to look surprised and concerned for her health. Once she had recovered her wits, I opened my mouth, ostensibly to voice this concern. But my student quickly cut me off, as I had expected her to do.
“Wait.” She paused, completely frozen, having clearly panicked. “Listen. I…I need you to fuck me. Medically speaking. I’ll literally die if you don’t fuck me.”
“What?”
“No, shut up. Let me think.” She closed her eyes. “Okay,” she said after a few breaths, “James. I am ridiculously attracted to you. You,” she wiggled her hips to emphasize her point, “are clearly attracted to me. So here is what I propose: No strings attached, no future expectations of any kinds, no questions asked, sex. Just two super hot people, getting off together. What do you say?” Then, as if doubting the strength of her argument, puffed up her cheeks and made her eyes as wide as possible. “Pleeeease?” she added, pouting her lips.
[Hidden Quest Complete]
Intentionally get someone so aroused and stimulated that they proposition you.
Reward: 10 EXP, +1 Seduction, +1 Deception
Bonus, Pushed them to openly molesting you: 10 EXP, +1 Presence
Project Himbo Complete! That was a fun way to push my Presence to 7. I had reached a level of beauty that could only be described as alien. Someone could go their entire life without seeing a man as attractive as I was now in person.
I chuckled. “Are you doing a Chibi hamster face?”
“Is it working?”
I kissed her gently, a stark contrast to the vicious hold I was keeping her in. Forgoing tongue, I let my lips massage hers. Annie was eager and instantly receptive, letting me take the lead but subtly urging me on with little twitches of her hips. I had only gotten 4 Successes on the Sensuality plus Seduction roll for my kisses, but I had a feeling that it didn’t matter much. She was truly desperately horny, and likely had been since I’d kickstarted her Qi. After a point however, she started to shy away from my kisses, whining and wriggling in frustration.
“What’s wrong?”
Her breath was short and harsh. “Sensitive. Everything is so sensitive. My lips—”
That was ambrosia to my ears and I immediately captured her mouth in a kiss. Annie bucked her hips up with a surprised start. She semi-fought me, enjoying our kisses but afraid of the precipice she was teetering on.
I held her lower lip between my teeth and softly pulled at it. That was the last straw. Annie tensed her entire body as she came.
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Make some orgasm from a kiss.
Reward: 15 EXP, +1 Finesse
Bonus, Made possible by a change you made to their body: 5 EXP, +1 Occultism (Erotic Sorcery), Gain Minor Feat Love Doctor
[Minor Feat]
Love Doctor – You have, in your own way, learned the meridian pathways in the human body better than most. You may use your Erotic Sorcery skill to make Medicine rolls, and gain 2 extra dice when doing so. There are predictable and unpredictable side effects to practicing medicine in this manner.
“Eee—kh!”
I leaned forward, choking the air out of her throat and stopping the loud pitched whine she began to emanate from disturbing the neighbors. Oxygen deprivation could extend and heighten orgasms, which demanded another Sensuality roll from me. Three Successes, but again, it was largely extraneous. I imagine I was also being helped by my Porn Physics feat, which was keeping this as safe as it could be.
Her right hand had spasmed when she’d orgasmed, clawing onto the back of my neck for dear life. As she leveled out, she switched to playing with my hair affectionately. I took that as a signal to let up a bit.
“Before we continue,” I said, “two questions. Inside or out, and indoors or outdoors.”
“On the pill,” she panted. Annie looked up at me and bit her lips, clearly debating the next answer. “And…indoors. Outdoors when I…relearn restraint.”
She’d already reneged on the ‘no future expectations’ part of our agreement, but I hadn’t been planning to keep to that one either.
Since it was guaranteed to eventually be useful, I somewhat frivolously purchased a Minor feat for Telekinesis that would help me with grappling. Did I have purely sexual uses in mind currently? Yes. But it also synchronized well with Black City Kung Fu and would give Annie a safe way to interact with telekinesis. And—
Ah, who was I kidding, I did for the sex.
[Minor Feat (Telekinesis)]
Three Python Force Technique – Your keen martial prowess and grounding in telekinesis combine to enhance your natural grappling ability. Subconscious desires grant you mystical aid equivalent to 1 die in all grapples, and many situational Strength rolls. You may also add 1 automatic Success to a grapple a number of times per scene equal to your total dice in Telekinesis.
“Secret Technique time!” I said. “You excited? This will be your first taste and lesson on telekinesis. Pay attention.”
Annie barely managed a “Huh?” before letting out a choked yelp, as a thick band of force pressed her closer and tighter to my chest. I slid my free arm underneath her to help, effectively sandwiching her between it and my body, and rose to my feet. She couldn’t speak, still folded up as she was before. Her neck was now pressing into her arm, which in turn now trapped her legs where they were against my hard chest and thighs, the opposite of before.
There was a hint of curiosity in her eyes, though it was quickly being pushed out by raw desire.
“I figured out how to use telekinesis recently. Just a random epiphany while training one day,” I explained as I carried her towards the door. “It’s supposed to be an ace-in-the-hole, so don’t go spreading it around, but I think I’ll be able to teach you how to do it as well.” Annie nodded with her chin, as much as she could, to show she was listening. “If we’re going to have a physical relationship, it’s going to be included in our Master-Student one, not tacked on as hedonistic impulse. I think that’s the best way to avoid corrupting our bond. Understood?”
Annie indicated she agreed, but I had a feeling she’d go along with anything as long as it meant she got to have sex. For my part, I was largely hoping my collection of feats and Social Attributes would manage the intricacies of our relationship for me going forward.
I paused at the closed door, briefly stumped by the puzzle in my own horny haze. Shaking my head, I planted my foot on the door, and used the Three Python Force Technique to turn the doorknob with my Aura. Kicking it closed behind me, I dropped her back down to the ground directly onto my cold concrete floor.
A dirt-spackled tiny window was the only light in the mudroom between the back door and the rest of my apartment. It was a grimy little place, barely more than a closet, crowded by exercise equipment and yard tools, but Annie had given me the impression that this was exactly what she was in the mood for. Today, at least, she wanted it nasty.
She took a deep, shaky breath and coughed. “Can we fuck now?” she asked in a raspy voice.
“One sec, this is still training.” I gave a stern look at her pout. “Firstly, I’m going to wrap you the Three Python Force Technique. You won’t be able to tap or use your safety word unless you also spontaneously learn how to use telekinesis. Are you okay that?”
“I’m not tapping.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Secondly, now that you’ve awakened your Qi, I want to show you Dual Cultivation. I know the basics, and it should come naturally to you, but it will be my first time actually doing this. Just a warning.”
That managed to cut through her lustful impatience. “Aww, I’m your first?” Annie cooed. “I’m honored. Hmm, I almost want to ask for lovey-dovey, love making instead of a hard fuck.”
I smirked. “Who said I would listen?”
I leaned forward to kiss Annie again. This time my tongue led the way, meeting her own. Just as martial artists learned more about their opponents from a single clash of fists than they could from hours of conversation, our dueling tongues taught me volumes about Annie. For all her incredible beauty, I could tell she was relatively inexperienced. She was a decent kisser, but she was frantic, utterly awash in these new sensations and unsure of what exactly to do with herself.
My right arm let go of her ankles, allowing my telekinesis to take over. Before buying the feat, this would have taken concentration, but now, so long as I didn’t get too fancy with it, I could hold her down without trouble.
I rolled the last Teaching roll of the day before I could get too carried away and forget. I only got 3 Successes, but their effects were doubled by the sexual nature, ensuring that Annie would get 6 Experience from this ‘lesson’. Theoretically, if there was anything to gain from struggling with my telekinesis, that too would be doubled.
The cloth of Annie’s gymnast leotard was stretchy. Now that my hands were free, I could do what I’d been dying to do since she’d revealed her outfit. Grabbing hold of the boob window in the leotard, I finally freed her breasts, pulling the cloth down and around them. The leotard snapped back, now under her boobs, pushing them together and framing them in an absolutely divine vision. They were moderately large – big enough that they could swallow my dick, but not so much so that they seriously impeded her acrobatics.
Annie’s head snapped back as I grabbed her breasts and squeezed. She actually hit the concrete floor with a loud snap, drawing a wince from me. Her moans continued rising, seemingly unaffected by the pain though. If anything they grew louder.
My thumbs brushed tantalizingly against her nipples. I could tell she wanted more, but there was a strange pleasure I got from teasing her in this way. The teaching roll from earlier had also told me to draw out her frustration, but that was almost forgotten as my own lust started to run wild.
The fact that I had only gotten 1 Success to molest her breasts and had managed to make her jump from the feeling let me know that her erogenous zones were vastly more sensitive. That was fine by me, and from the sounds of it, fine by her as well.
I kissed my way down her chin and neck. Annie strained to push her chest up and into my grip, anticipating what was coming. I paused though, peppering her sternum and collarbones with little kisses.
The pressure on her neck let her breath and speak, but not without difficulty. “Please!” she gasped out.
Annie’s face was flawless and unblemished, but her body had a sparse smattering of freckles. I took the time to peck as many as I could on my way down to her soft, perky boobs. My own fraying patience urged me past many though.
Using telekinesis, I angled her head up, so that she was making eye contact as I lowered my lips to her nipple. Annie tried to pull my head down with her free hand, but I decided to grab her wrist and telekinetically pin it to her side instead. The game was kind to me and cruel to her, granting me another Sensuality and Seduction roll once the hard nub was between my lips. My hot breath alone had been visibly affecting her, so I wasn’t surprised when 3 Successes managed to push her right back to the edge of another orgasm.
I pulled my head away and eased off of teasing her chest. As much as I may have wanted to continue, and I very much did. We weren’t even Dual Cultivating yet and I didn’t want to her to pass out before we started.
My Lucky Penny, which let me turn a single 4 into a Success, and my newly earned Silver Dollar, which let me treat a single 5 as a 6 for criticals, were both in the pockets of my tiny, athletic shorts. While I didn’t need them with Annie’s lewd changes, I would be rolling for Experience during the Dual Cultivation. Instead of kicking them off me, I settled for pulling them down and under my cock and balls.
Annie couldn’t see my dick, her view blocked by her own breasts and legs, but she could feel the weight and heat of it on her sex and let out a relieved sigh. I pushed the shaft down, so that it could mold around her camel toe, her soaked and sticky leotard hiding almost nothing. As much as I wanted to continue dragging it out, she was poised to cum from anything more than just this. Before I continued though, I made sure to dig the tip into her abdomen, so that she knew just what she was in store for. She sucked in air through gritted teeth at the feeling.
Hooking an index finger into the crotch of her leotard, I pulled it to the side, revealing her bare pussy. Strands of her natural lubricant stuck to the cloth and my finger alike. It had a different shine to it than her sweat, and had visibly dripped down into her ass.
As wet as Annie was, my dick was still big enough that it required a little force to make its way in. Her pussy struggled a little to let me in.
“Aggh! Yeeeees, finally,” she moaned as my head finally entered her with a little pop.
A bestial base impulse to bury myself in her had to be pushed aside for a moment as my mind turned to my Qi. For the second time today, I started to mingle our Qi together. This was a much calmer, easier, and more ordered process with the aid of a feat. Annie was able to help me this time as well, her own Dual Cultivation feat teaching her how to manipulate her Qi. The click and clack of mental dice informed me that I would receive 4 Experience at the end of this. Luckily for Annie, this counted as a lesson for the purposes of my Sex Ed feat, meaning she would earn 8 Experience, all while on her back. I really did spoil my student.
I flexed my pelvic floor as I thrust in slowly, making my cock jump up and scrape the top of her walls, right along her G-spot. My dick game, with it’s 7 Successes and porn star size, hit Annie like a freight train, triggering a massive orgasm before I even reached the half-way point.
The first thrust was powerful but slow. I savored the feeling of her walls spasming and writhing against me. She was hotter than any woman I’d ever been with, both visually and literally, her sex warmer and tighter than anything I’d experienced. At the height of her climax, she actually became tight enough to almost arrest my movement. In another world, and in another person, I would have stopped, worried about hurting her, but I had Porn Physics here.
Annie came down from her orgasm just an inch before I hit her back wall.
“Oh my God. Fuck! Ruin me, baby, ahhhh!”
She opened her mouth and lolled her tongue out a bit, begging for a kiss. It was tempting, but I wanted to see her face during this next part. Despite the fact that I had reached the entrance to her cervix, I still had another inch or so of my cock that had yet to bask in the warmth of her pussy.
Annie gasped in shock as I continued pushing. The pressure of my dick drove the air out of her lungs, my slow pace continuing unabated. Porn Physics supplemented all pain from penetrative sex with equal amounts pleasure. With teeth gritted in a mix of pain-pleasure enforced by the Special Feat, she clamped her vaginal muscles down to try and keep me from progressing.
I buried myself fully inside the athletic redhead, making her mouth fall open in a silent scream as she experienced her third orgasm. An involuntary tear rolled out of her eye. I leaned down and licked it off her face before moving to the crook of her neck. She shuddered in another mini-orgasm as I started to lick and kiss her there. Her cervical gate flexed around the tip of my dick. The steady thrust had prevented me from entrance further, but it was struggling with the size, opening and closing rapidly on my cock slit like it was making out with it.
I let out a loud groan, only able to keep myself from cumming with the help from Dual Cultivation’s boost to Endurance. I did have to stop though, letting myself stay sheathed to the hilt inside her. It didn’t help too much, her spasming pussy doing its best to milk me. Her Qi too, swirling within me, tugging at my Dantian with a peculiar playfulness, was trying her best to make me cum. Her feminine Yin-natured Qi network wanting nothing more than to drink deeply of my masculine Yang energy.
My hands stayed busy while I remained hilted. I ran them down her sides, her back, her legs. All of Annie was so powerful and enticing. The way her muscles could be felt through her skin, flexing at my touch. I could feel her straining against the telekinesis, hungry for more contact.
The only part of her she could still control fully was her pelvic floor. As she rode the waves of pleasure, her sense and reason ebbing in an out, she used her muscles there to make her will known. Her walls squeezed me rhythmically, not as strongly as when she was lost in the throws of her climax, but much more skillfully and deliberately.
I couldn’t deny her for long. With a shout I drew my cock back to the entrance of her pussy, and slammed down. I used our Dual Cultivation to distract me from the intense pleasure, splitting my focus on the sensations of her Qi inside me, and my fast, staccato thrusting.
Time fled our notice. At some point we rolled for Training Hard, but I shunted the notification to the side for later. It did saddle me with an Exhaustion condition, but I used a Breath to Recover instantly and continued. Annie, who did not possess my recovery ability, was merely along for the ride at that point. Luckily, it didn’t change things too much. Though she couldn’t maintain her intentional massage of my dick through her burning, wet walls, the rapid, wave of her orgasms was a rhythm of its own.
I came at some point, my cum spurting out around her tight seal during a thrust, spilling down and into her butt cheeks. Then I came again, and again. Our Dual Cultivation kept us going, making it impossible for us to stop. When I began to flag her Yin Qi would rush into the vacuum of Qi that orgasming caused, picking me right back up again. My Yang Qi was doing the same to her.
After I came for the second time, Annie began to pass in and out of consciousness. She didn’t have the Qi required to endlessly spur me forward the way I was doing to her. Eventually she passed out completely. As a gentleman, I normally would have stopped at this point, but the feat didn’t allow me to relent.
I kept thrusting. There was no rhythm here beyond ‘FAST’, my hips practically a blur. My hands had moved to her shoulders, using them like handholds to pull her down onto my cock as hard as possible. A vague awareness that my telekinesis was helping existed in the back of my mind, but all higher order thinking had been lost. The world did not exist beyond Annie, her cunt, and her blazing hot Qi.
My last orgasm released a dense marble of my spiritual power that had slowly been building the entire session into Annie’s Dantian. It’s entrance unleashed streamers of her own less refined Qi back into mine, and managed to bring Annie back to conscious thought.
I rolled off of her, panting as I did. I’d managed to re-earn the Exhausted condition, and was without any more Breaths to do anything about it.
“Wow,” I said.
“Wow,” she agreed, pulling her weary body onto me, nuzzling herself into my neck.
I turned my attention to the many, many alerts from the system while we lay there in our own juices, amongst the dirty concrete floor.
Holy shit, that was a lot of Quests.
[Dual Cultivation Results]
Gained 4 Experience.
[Hard Training Results]
Gained 2 Experience.
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Dual Cultivate for the first time.
Reward: 10 EXP, +1 Meditation
Bonus, Your partner possessed the feat: 10 EXP to you both, One of your partner’s feats is upgraded at random (Wire Walker)
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Lose your virginity.
Reward: 50 EXP, +1 Random Attribute (Presence)
[Ally Quest Complete! (Annie Shine)]
Have vaginal sex with Annie.
Reward: 25 EXP, +1 Agility, +2 Physics
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Have 6 dice in Agility.
Reward: Gain Special Feat Power In Grace
[Special Feat]
Power In Grace – Your kinesthetic sense has reached the pinnacle of natural humanity, and your actions possess a surreal bestial beauty to them. You can run, climb, and leap with incredible proficiency, and will virtually always land on your feet. Watching your even casual movements can be entrancing to observers, which can be seductive, intimidating, or both depending on the person. This grants you 1 Automatic Success to many rolls, but be warned, the system will occasionally roll to seduce or intimidate observers without your knowledge.
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Have dominant sex.
Reward: 20 EXP, Gain random Minor Feat from random domination themed Archetype (Shibari Expert)
[Minor Feat]
Shibari Expert – You have studied the erotic spiritual art of Shibari and know dozens of ways to bind a person. So deep is your knowledge that you may stimulate both body and mind. When you’ve bound someone, you gain an additional 1 die to any Sensuality or Aura rolls performed on them; full bondage increases the dice to 2. The Success Threshold to escape your bondage is raised by 1.
[Ally Quest Complete! (Annie Shine)]
Fulfill Annie’s domination fantasy.
Reward: 20 EXP, +1 Seduction, +1 Flexibility
Bonus, Left her craving more: 20 EXP, +1 Strength
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Creampie someone.
Reward: 25 EXP, Gain Special Feat Fertility Dial
[Special Feat]
Fertility Dial – While pregnancy and breeding can be sexy, it’s best with a little intent. You can control your fertility with perfect detail, dialing it from 0% to 100%.
[Hidden Quest Complete!]
Fuck someone into unconsciousness.
Reward: 15 EXP, +1 Endurance, +2 Intimidation
[Recurring Quest Complete!]
Had a steamy smut scene.
Reward: 5 EXP, +1 Random Skill (Occultist (Erotic Sorcery))