“So what about this guy? Wasn’t you going to question him?” I asked while pointing to the goblin who was now starting to struggle with his bindings.
“Huh? Why would I question him?” Isabella sounded a bit confused, but her answer confused me just as much. "I can't even understand him."
“Uhm… What’d we bring him back here for, if it’s not for questioning?” I asked.
Isabella finally giggled lightly – I was happy to hear her light laugh again – and she finally pulled herself back away from me. Walking over to the goblin, she put a hand on either of its shoulders and then her hands started to glow with a flickering blue-white light surrounding them. What looked like blue electricity crackled from the goblin to her. The beast twitched and jerked and tried to get away, but it was bound tightly and just had to squirm and suffer. It took a couple of minutes before it passed out and Isabella quit.
“He’s food for my magic.” She turned back around and lightning sparkled in her eyes. “I don’t want to keep feeding and hurting you all the time, so this little guy can help me recover my magic and ease the burden off you. He doesn’t have but a portion of your life force, but I can snack on him multiple times a day if he recovers quickly enough.”
“Poor guy,” I muttered. “But, better you than me,” I told him.
“Stats!” I wanted to check on how things looked after that last point and then spend my extra cheat points.
Name: Bloody HellTitles: The WitnessAge: 17Level: 9CP: 61STR: 10SYI: 8WIL: 7DEX: 10MYS: 8PRE: 7CON: 20SPR: 2LUC: 11HP: 136MP: 80SP: 0PD: 1DR: 0MR: 0SE: 9PE: 48
I had quite a few unspent points now since I’d gained 50 when I leveled up last. I spent my first one on CON, and a ding went off and greeted me.
DING!
Congratulations, you are the first to push past the normal limits of human health!
You have gained the title: Health Nut.
Your CON increases by 5.
Your health increases by 50.
All I could do is blink. Spent enough points to finally go over 20, and I jumped all the way up to 26!
Name: Bloody HellTitles: The WitnessAge: 17Level: 9CP: 41STR: 10SYI: 8WIL: 7DEX: 10MYS: 8PRE: 7CON: 26SPR: 2LUC: 11HP: 186MP: 80SP: 0PD: 1DR: 0MR: 0SE: 9PE: 48
Now, I was wondering if there were other breakpoints like this. Would a CON of 30 give another large boost? Or 50? I had 41 points remaining, but should I save those or spend them in CON like I’d originally intended? The health had definitely made a difference with the goblin fight. I’d been stabbed multiple times, and they hadn’t even managed to do over half my life to me.
After a moment’s inner debate, I went ahead and spent the 26 cheat points to raise my CON once again. We hadn’t found anything that even vaguely looked like it could be counted as armor, and really we had nothing much to protect us from the creatures we were fighting. If I went down in a fight, it really wasn’t the end for me, but without someone in front of her to be her shield, Izzy would get swarmed and killed quickly.
The more health I had, the longer I could stand between Izzy and the things that would try and kill her like those goblins. And, when necessary, it would give me more life so that I could share part of it with her for recharging her energy. And, I’d recover faster when my health did go down, so I’d be able to jump back into the fight again quicker. Before, if I’d taken 100 points of damage, it would’ve taken me five hours to recover that much life. Now, I could heal that same amount in less than four hours.
“Hey Iz,” I started.
“Iz?” Isabella giggled.
“Uhh.. Iz that a problem?” Was she offended? Names seem to mean a lot in different cultures. They tried to teach us that here, but I wasn’t thinking.
Giggling lightly, Isabella leaned up and pulled my head down and gave me a light kiss on my nose. When I smiled, she then pulled herself tight to me and gave me a long deep kiss that made the roots of my hair at the back of my neck stand up! Her lips and tongue tasted sweet and warm, and even though I couldn’t put an exact name to what they tasted like, I liked it.
“Nope. Not a problem at all,” she assured me while snuggling her body back against my chest. “What were you trying to say?”
“Umm…” What was I trying to say? Dang it! Isabella had this incredible way of flustering and distracting me, which was both annoying and enjoyable at the same time. “That’s right! I was going to ask you if you didn’t have a twenty in one of your stats somewhere. Mysticism, I think?”
She nodded her head up and down against my chest. “I do.”
“Then you might consider training it on up to a 21 at least. I got a large bonus at that point for passing the previous limits of humankind or something. It might be worth the jump for you.”
“Hmm…” Isabella sounded as if she was thinking things over, so I gently moved my hand down and caressed her butt. If it was fair for her to distract me, why the heck couldn’t I distract her? Isabella stayed there against my chest for a while, letting me caress her butt, and finally she wiggled and turned around in my arms so that her back was against my chest instead. My fingers froze almost instantly. I had no idea where I was supposed to put them when she was leaned against me like this!
Feeling my hands stop moving, Isabella giggled and gently pulled them up from her waistline and she rested one hand of mine around each of her breasts. I guess this was a good enough place to put them! Soft, warm, squeezable little mounds of heaven were right here in my hands. My better half was starting to wake up to look around and see what all the fuss was about, but I tried hard to ignore it.
Seemingly unaware of the turmoil she was bringing inside me, Isabella snuggled back and then started poking at thin air in front of her. Here she was trying to deal with the game system, while I was trying to keep my own system from overloading! Finally, my little brain took control over my bigger brain and I picked her up gently by the waist and pushed her forward and against the wall. If shaking hands didn’t count as a first, and kissing didn’t count as a first, then apparently it only counted as a ‘first’ when my front was doing something with her front. The way she was now, this wasn’t her front, so this much was fine. Right?
Little Bud stood up and nodded that he thought it was fine, so for the next half hour or so Isabella groaned and moaned with her chest leaned up against the wall, and I grunted with the effort of relieving a little fellow who now had a super-human amount of health. When I’d finally finished, I went over and flopped back down in my favorite chair and leaned back.
Without saying a word, Isabella came over and nestled down in my lap and leaned back in my arms. I was wondering if she might be angry or something, but it didn’t seem like she was. Slowly, I wrapped my arms around her and cupped them back around her breasts. I really do think I may becoming a demon worshipper.
“Hey Iz?” I needed to say something.
“Yeah?” She didn’t move and just rested herself against me.
“What exactly did you do outside earlier? You mentioned something about hiding us, and I trust you and all, but I’m just curious how you hid us.” I was letting my fingers trace little circles around her nipples, and I was amused to notice that apparently they liked to stand up and look around just as Little Bud does. Women really are mysterious creatures!
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“That?” Isabella sounded like she was almost going to sleep. “I used my magic and enchanted a few thumbtacks. The lifeflame is something that burns through energy really quickly, but phantasm uses energy based on how big an illusion I made. I figured that if I made several small illusions, they would hold an enchantment for a decent period. A few days at least, and maybe as long as a week right now. They’ll last longer as I keep leveling up and improving myself.
“But even with my talent being what it is now, it should make a few simple illusions to make the doorway just look like another section of wall. The goblins don’t know these hallways, they don’t realize that there should be a door here, and they’ll probably be afraid of The Guardian. Even if they send a search team out to look for us, I doubt the goblins they send will want to stay and look very hard.
“What if they’re down here and The Guardian blocks them off from getting back home? Whatever scouting party the send, it’ll probably just dash by, look in the rooms they see – maybe go into the janitor’s room and all since it doesn’t have a window – and then after a quick peek at the roof they’ll return back. They’ll just assume that whatever killed the goblins, The Guardian must have gotten as well.
“At least, that’s what I’m hoping and thinking will happen if they send anyone.” Isabella yawned lightly, and her head was slowly starting to nod downwards.
“Hey Iz?” I was curious, so I wanted to ask.
“Yeash?”
“What was this morning like?”
“A little salty, but nothing disflavorable.”
I’m glad her head was down and she was going to sleep. What an embarrassing response! “Umm… What I meant was how much energy did you get from… you know… doing that?”
Yawning, Isabella told me, “I think it was about twenty points of energy or so, but it took most of the day for my body to convert or digest it. I’m guessing the healthier something is, the more energy their ‘seed of life’ has, and since you had a twenty con it gave me that much energy over a period of eight hours or so.
“It’d take a long time to fully recharge someone’s energy like that, but it explains why many of the Ka’Lani became prostitutes or wenches in times of peace.
"You’re about twice as healthy as your average man, and it’d take you several weeks to recharge me like that. For the Ka’Lani of old, I’d imagine they would need dozens or scores of partners to recharge them if they had a large pool of energy to draw upon and it got low. The only way for them to do that, without hurting people, was for them to wench and find multiple partners for their energy needs.”
“Well, you’re not going to do that.” I was sure of that, and I wanted to make certain she knew it as well. “You can get your energy from me. You’re not going to be wenching or prostituting or anything like that. Understand. Only me, and that’s an order!”
“Sokay,” she mumbled back to me as she was drifting off to sleep.
I really wasn’t tired as I sat there holding her, but I didn’t want to move much either and risk waking her. Instead, I simply sat and enjoyed gently rubbing, kneading, and caressing her as she lay snuggled in my arms. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I could make it in this new world. I would’ve stirred up the goblins, had no way to really hide from them, and then probably gotten dragged off to their home and placed in a huge crockpot to cook forever more. When I revived, it would’ve been in the middle of their camp, and I’d just get killed and tossed back into the pot. The eternal goblin meal! Even thinking something like that made a shiver run up and down my spine.
Gently, oh so gently, I picked Isabella up and moved her over to the other couch away from the goblin and laid her down. She resisted leaving my arms by trying to hold onto me even in her sleep, but it wasn’t difficult to pull away really. She just didn’t have the strength to hold on tightly.
Then I eased over to where the goblin lay passed out, and I picked him up by the scruff of the neck, dragged him into the bathroom, and shut the door behind us. If he was going to become an energy snack for her, this little guy needed some “modification” first.
I won’t go into details of what happened next; I’m not proud of what happened next; but when all was said and done I’d acquired the start of a new skill: Harvesting (Humanoid). And the goblin? I think he was beginning to learn his place amongst us. Izzy had just fed on him until he was near death, and then with only a little time to recover his life, I helped “modify” him so that he didn’t have teeth or claws anymore, and wouldn’t be as likely to hurt anyone.
The little green guy just whimpered and slobbered and tried to screech. I suppose in his language he was telling me to stop, that’d he be nice or something, but unfortunately for him I didn’t speak his language. If you’re going to beg me for mercy after trying to kill me, you’ve got to do that in my language.
When I finished, I dragged him back into the main room and dropped him in the floor near the coffee table. The little bugger just whimpered and rocked itself back and forth, and honestly, he looked pitiful. Part of me was sickened by my behavior and told me that no living creature deserved to be treated like that. Another part of me was telling me that he deserved it and that I should give him some more of his own medicine. I ignored both parts. A man just does what a man has to do, and that’s all I did. If I did anything more, I wouldn’t be a man. I’d become a monster.
Putting a lid on my feelings of pity and anger both, I tried to tune the goblin on out of my mind. He was well tied for now, and without claws or teeth, he wasn’t going to cut or gnaw through those bindings anytime soon. Figuring it was safe to leave him to his misery; I went over to the kitchen and gathered up all of Isabella’s long hair. It used to go almost to her knees, and now it was only down to the middle of her neck. Feeling a strange sense of loss and sorrow, I was careful to try and collect every strand I could, and when I had I carefully wrapped it together with small pieces of the wire that was in the janitor's room earlier.
After that, I gathered up my janitor’s outfit and tried my best to wash all the blood stains out of it as much as possible in the sink. I must not be a very good housewife as they didn’t look much better when I was finished than they had when I’d gotten started, but I did my best. After that, I spent a good half hour and broke a dozen of the smallest quills, before I managed to drill a hole into one of the other larger quills.
Using that larger quill (which had come from one of the cat-sized rats), I finally strung a piece of Izzy’s hair through the hole and tied it off. Maybe she had cut it much shorter than she’d intended, but I’d came up with a way I could use it to always keep a part of her with me – I used it as the thread to sew up the gashes and holes in my coveralls that the goblins had placed there by stabbing and slicing at me.
I was still sitting in my chair and trying to sew my coveralls when Isabella finally started to wake up and stretch. She looked around, found me with her eyes, and then finally yawned and got up and came over to stand in front of me. Curious, I looked up from my sewing, and she leaned down and gave me another one of those passionate ‘let me taste your tonsils’ kisses that made my toes curl up in pleasure. Once she’d finally finished, she giggled and skipped over to the fridge and bent over to get out some of the last remaining rat meat.
“Don’t fix any for me,” I told her. “We need to stretch that as much as possible, and I’m not really that hungry.”
“Liar.” She giggled at me and turned and pointed a finger in my direction. “You’ve already told me that you always revive with an empty stomach and are hungry after each rebirth. You’re going to eat with me, or else I’ll just skip eating also.”
She looked quite serious, so I just sighed and nodded. “Fine then.” What else was I supposed to say? I wasn’t going to let her go without eating. The idea just didn’t sit well with me.
“Besides,” she pointed over at the goblin and then raised an eyebrow slightly seeing his disheveled and bloody state, “if worst comes to worst, we’ll eat that thing before we allow ourselves to starve.”
My nose wrinkled at the very thought, but I nodded in agreement. “I we have to, we will.”
I pray Mother can forgive me; I’m not certain if I’m slowly becoming a man, or a monster.