“🎵🎵 I’m too sexy for my love. 🎵🎵
🎵🎵 Too sexy for my love. 🎵🎵
🎵🎵 Love’s going to leave me. 🎵🎵
🎵🎵 I’m too sexy for my shirt. 🎵🎵
🎵🎵 Too sexy for my shirt. 🎵🎵
🎵🎵 So sexy it hurts. 🎵🎵”
“Yeah. Hello?” Joshua hurried to answer his phone before another verse played on it. ‘That’s all I need,’ he thought, ‘is for my mom — or even worse, my brat of a sister — to hear that playing on my phone. Who the hell’s ringtone is that, anyway?’
“Hiyas, darling..” Olivia’s voice rand clear from his phone, as she deliberately stressed the darling in her greeting. “Are you naked?”
“EEEEEEEeeeee! I can’t believe you asked that!” Another girl’s voice Joshua didn’t recognize squealed in laughter through the phone.
“I am,” Olivia teased, giggling shamelessly. “Or should I say, we are?”
“EEEEEEEEeeeeeehehehehe! He can’t see us, can he? Teeheeheehehe!” The other girl’s voiced pealed with laughter once again. “I don’t have my make up on, you know!” Whoever it was admonished Olivia.
“It’s okay,” Olivia assured the other, unknown, person. “You don’t have any clothes on either!”
“Teeeheeheehehe! I don’t! I really don…”
Glancing down to make certain it was just a phone call and not an actual video call, Joshua clicked the icon of the red receiver on his phone. Hanging up, he cut off whatever else the two were going to say. Making certain to turn his phone completely off, Joshua gently tossed it onto the grass a dozen feet away.
“Women are damn crazy,” he muttered to himself, grabbing up another block of wood to split for the house. “Call me up, asking if I’m naked?” Whack! The axe slammed down hard into the block. “And who the hell else was that?” Joshua wiggled the axe back and forth, pulling it out. “And what the hell are they saying about me?” Whack! The axe slammed back back down in the wood, as Joshua worked off all his frustrations, moodily grumbling to himself the whole time.
----------------------------------------
“Pick up the phone, moron.” Finally in his room again after supper, Joshua couldn’t believe the 47 voice messages, 122 missed calls, and 999+ text messages he had waiting for him. Hell, he’d never even knew his phone stopped counting at 999 before!
“Helllllloooooo!” Laughing lightly, Olivia picked up his call on the third ring.
“Uhhh… Hi.” Joshua really wanted to explode, asking about what the heck was up earlier, but Olivia had answered the phone as a video call this time. The sight of her damp hair clinging to her neck and shoulders, along with the pale skin of her bare bosoms made him swallow down the temper in his voice.
“Just what the heck was all that earlier,” Joshua asked, meekly?
“That was just me and mother having fun,” Olivia laughed light-heartedly; waving her hands dismissively. Wherever she had her phone sitting, it was far enough from her to showcase her body from her head to her belly button.
“Are you in bed?” Joshua asked, trying to sort out the strange perspective on the camera.
“I am,” Olivia giggled. “Just resting on my back while my nails dry.”
“Oh… I see,” Joshua told her, sounding anything but certain. “And why are you answering the phone naked? And why do you seem to be swaying drunkenly every little bit? I’m both enjoying the view, and getting seasick at the same time,” Joshua admitted.
“Sorry,” Olivia apologized, reaching up and blocking the view with her hands for several moments. “Is this better?” Moving back away from the camera, Olivia flopped back down on her bed, now in plain view completely. “Can you see me now,” she asked, lightly?
“Every inch,” Joshua assured her. “Is that a baby carousel hanging above your bed?” He couldn’t help but ask.
“It is,” Olivia giggled. “Well, kind of. It’s actually an antique brass or bronze shadow wheel. You know… The kind where you put a light in it, wind it up, and then it spins to move shadow figures across the room at night. I had the phone hanging from it earlier, if you’re curious,” she admitted. “That’s why the image was probably moving and swaying slightly.”
“So what were you doing earlier, that you couldn’t talk to me and mama,” Olivia asked, poutingly, as she stretched out and relaxed with both arms up over her head, resting on her headboard.
“Umm…” Joshua couldn’t help but swallow down a small gulp of sweat, as he stared at the silhouette of her whole side there in front of his eyes. “Hiding from you,” he answered truthfully, compelled by his eternal bond. “You freaked me out, calling up, asking if I was naked, and then cackling and screaming like a wild banshee…”
“Besides… Umm… I was doing my chores,” Joshua added, lamely. “I did earn a few minor points,” he assured her, as an excuse.
“That’s what I was doing,” Olivia laughed. “Family Ties I — Make a parent or guardian laugh.”
“Familial Duty I,” Joshua chuckled. “Complete all your chores for one day, without being told.”
“It’s crazy how many tasks there are,” Olivia sighed. “I’ve been trying to study them all day, and I doubt I can even remember a tenth of all I’ve seen. And some are rather dark,” Olivia warned, frowning grimly, “while others are mutually exclusive and contradictory.”
“Dark and contradictory?” Joshua asked, trying to pay more attention to her words than to her body, for a change.
“Well there’s one that’s a personal quest,” Olivia explained. “Romantic Destiny — it’s to give my chastity to the King of the Prom. Yet,” she sighed, “there’s another task I saw called Temptress. The goal there is to taunt as many boys as possible, until they all violate me at once. It’s got a note with it — awards scale with greater number of violators.”
“Basically, it’s to go out and get gang banged as much as possible for my first time,” Olivia whispered, sounding scared. “And, I mean,” she trembled slightly, “that’s bad enough as a woman, but what if guys have a task that’s about the same? Manly Conqueror,” she muttered in a deep, dark voice. “Go out and ravish as many women as possible for your first.”
“Just thinking that such things might become the new normal, in the new world, scares me to death,” Olivia muttered, staring over at her phone. “And the very worst thing is, I don’t even know if someone could even blame a guy for doing it,” she rambled on. “After all, he could just say, ‘God told me to do it!’ I mean… Isn’t that the whole purpose of this whole WRP thing? God renewing the world again?” Olivia looked almost like she was crying, as she slowly finished.
“I actually wish you were here,” she admitted, turning to hug her pillow up tight against her chest.
“Me too,” Joshua admitted, sighing. “But, hey, maybe it won’t be that bad actually. The rewards might not be worth the risk, you know. I mean, sure, you might get a few extra points as a temptress,” Joshua admitted, trying to sound hopeful, “but what’s the chance you’d catch some sort of crotch rot by being with a boatload of assholes? And just for a few minor points? We don’t even know if they actually do anything, really,” Joshua snorted.
“We do,” Olivia countered. “Or at least I do. I tested it earlier, and I just hadn’t gotten around to telling you yet.”
“Tested it?” Joshua asked, curiously, not knowing what she was talking about.
“Yeah,” Olivia nodded, while sprawling luxuriously across her bed. “When you went back to class after lunch earlier, I decided to skip,” she told him, smirking lightly. “I told my teacher that I was needed in the counselor’s office for a meeting over my future career path, and whether I should apply for college courses, or not, next year.
“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever skipped a class,” Olivia admitted, giggling lightly.
“And how’d that lead to you testing something,” Joshua asked, not following along at all?
“’Cause I went down to the weight room while skipping,” Olivia laughed. Sitting up suddenly, she flashed a brilliant smile and gave an expressive thumbs up to herself, though Joshua was much more interested in everything else that she was flashing in front of his phone’s screen.
“Uh huh,” Joshua agreed, nodding his head stupidly, while still not understanding anything. Whatever expression he was making back into his phone, it was one which made Olivia giggle light-heartedly and stick her tongue out at him.
“If you’d quit staring at my boobs for a second,” Olivia laughed, “maybe you’d let me tell you about it.” Pooching out her lower lip exaggeratedly, she crossed her arms over her chest, hiding her ample assets.
“I can’t,” Joshua blushed, then defensively added, “You’re the one who wanted to make certain I could see you!”
“Well… That’s true,” Olivia giggled, flopping back on her bed again. “I thought you might try and get the next two ranks in Companion Familiarity,” she explained, her lower half now the focus of his camera’s screen. “Besides,” she whispered, worriedly once again, “I might as well try and get used to it, if this is going to be the rest of my life.”
“Umm… You still haven’t told me how you tested how effective spending points is,” Joshua reminded her, trying to keep her from wallowing in worry again. Her whimsical mood changes were hard to keep up with, and even harder to deal with, with her leaping from laughter to worry in the blink of a moment.
“Oh, that’s simple,” Olivia sighed, melancholically. Sitting up, she turned to face the camera again directly. “While I was in the weight room, I started out establishing a base line for how much weight I could lift. I strained my poor little butt off, and found out I could dead lift a little more than my own body weight. Then, I spent one of my user points in enhanced physical strength.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“After that,” Olivia paused for a moment, to give her words greater emphasis, “I strained to lift as much as I possibly could — and it was ten pounds higher than before. A measurable result,” she stressed.
“Welllll… Maybe not,” Joshua frowned. “That’s not much of an increase. Maybe you just loosened up and warmed up a bit.” Part of him still wanted to try and minimize the effect that just spending points could have over them now.
“Maybe,” Olivia shrugged, “but I don’t think so. After that I spent two more points for rank two in enhanced strength. That time, I lifted an extra twenty pounds. Then,” she continued on quickly, before Joshua could interrupt, “I spent three points for the third rank, and I lifted another thirty pounds. And, with my last four points, I purchased the fourth rank and lifted yet another forty pounds.
“That’s a hundred pounds more than I started with,” Olivia stressed, staring directly into the phone, “and in the space of just a few minutes, at that. And I unlocked a ‘Minor Strength Mastery’, after I bought the last rank — whatever that does,” she shrugged. “The only thing I can really tell at this point, is that the Physical Enhancement advantage has now been replaced with Advanced Physical Enhancement One, now.”
“But I’m now able to lift almost twice what I could, before I spent those points,” she repeated once again, staring directly into the camera. “That’s a huge change!”
“It is,” Joshua agreed, sighing because he didn’t want to. “But what made you choose strength, of all things, to spend your points on?” His manly mind didn’t think muscle strength would be the first thing a girl would spurge all her points up.
“Honestly,” Olivia admitted, “it was mainly because it seemed like it was a good way to try and test the limits of how much the points affected things. That, and they really don’t seem like they’re that hard to acquire with all the various tasks there are!”
“Well, that’s true,” Joshua admitted. “After all, strength is something physical which we can easily measure, like you did. After all, how would we measure something like luck? Go to Vegas and see how quickly it was before we went bankrupt? And if we did manage to win,” Joshua laughed, “how would you know if it was just a singular instance of good or bad luck at work?”
“Same with physical aptitude,” Olivia giggled. “How would you test that? Toss a ball into a hoop and see how many times you missed? What if you miss all the time, like I do? Would that one shot in a hundred be a skilled increase, or just luck and persistence finally paying off?”
“The only thing your test didn’t tell us,” Joshua mused, “was whether it’s a set increase, or a percentage change. You started out being able to lift about your body weight, and then you ended up being able to lift about that much again. If one of the burly jocks on the football team, who already lifts cows for breakfast, was to spend ten points, would they be able to lift a cow plus one hundred pounds, or would they be able to lift two cows? Is it a set one-hundred-pound increase, or a one-hundred-percent increase?”
“I don’t know,” Olivia admitted, frowning a little in thought. “I’d like to think it was a set increase, or else those points are going to carry a lot more weight for already gifted individuals, and yet make almost no change for people who aren’t as good with something. Twice as strong as an invalid is still going to just about be an invalid.”
“It’d also mean that I might be wasting my points in intelligence,” Joshua snorted, self-depreciatingly. “After all, 30% smarter than an idiot is still an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot,” Olivia corrected him. “At least, I hope you’re not,” she added, compelled by her status to reveal the whole truth. “Besides,” she instantly tried to change the subject, with a slight frown on her face, “wasn’t you taking skills to help you learn more about how all this stuff works? How has any of that turned out? Did you learn anything useful, yet?”
“Assess, appraise, and inspect,” Joshua snorted. “They’re not what you’d expect them to be,” he muttered, disappointed. “Assess seems to be some sort of probability system. I can do something like think about, ‘What’s the chance that I can hit that block of wood dead center with the axe,’ and then I’ll see a little figure of some gears grinding, before a window pops up and tells me something useless like, ‘With your current level of assessment, and with all the currently gathered data, your estimated chance is twenty-three percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus thirty-two percent.’
“So apparently, I have somewhere from a negative nine percent chance to a fifty-five percent chance! With an analysis that great, I should probably rush straight over to Vegas and become a zillionaire,” Joshua snorted.
“Well, it’s not that great now,” Olivia giggled, “but you’ve only put a total of three points in it so far. Maybe it’ll give better odds when the skill goes up higher. Minor quirks might have a four-rank limit, like the ‘Dislike underwear’ disadvantage, but full-fledged skills might not. They may have advanced ranks, like the enhanced strength does,” Olivia offered, shrugging uncertainly. “What’s the other two skills do,” she asked, curiously?
“Appraise seems like a skill a merchant, or auctioneer, might want. It basically helps analyze the composition and value of something.” Glancing past Olivia’s naked shoulders, Joshua focused his gaze on the carousel hanging above her bed. “Oriental-European bronze shadow wheel, moderate damage,” Joshua read out loud to her. “Age over two hundred years. Skill insufficient to determine history or unique properties. Estimated value under current market conditions, two hundred to two thousand dollars American.”
“Whoooo…” Olivia whistled softly. “That’s a good bit of information, for just a few points. It definitely might be worth taking that skill up higher in the future, to keep from having others rip you off if you ever try to buy anything. Car salesmen are definitely going to hate your guts,” she giggled, lightly.
“Inspect is really the skill I was trying to buy,” Joshua chuckled, imagining himself spouting out a long appraisal for a used car in front of a salesman. “It actually lets me break things down into components and gives me information on them. For instance,” Joshua smirked, “I can tell your three sizes are 38D-24-35. From your wrist to shoulder is 20.6 inches, and from the floor to thigh is 30.5 inches, and your thigh has a 22.3 inch circumference.”
“And I wear a sexy size eight shoe,” Olivia added, laughing lightly. “I guess that’ll make it simple if you ever get a job as one of those clothing shop salesmen.”
“Well, it’s better than that,” Joshua smirked. “It even works on the WRP interface. I can inspect skills, and such, and now get a little more information on them. Like if I inspect Enhanced Strength, Physical I, I now can see the cost is one user point, and it has an one-line description of, ‘Affects how much weight one can physically lift and carry.’ It doesn’t answer the question of whether it’s a fixed increase, or a percentage,” Joshua shrugged apologetically, “but, as you said before, I only have a total of three whole points invested in it, so far.”
“Still,” Olivia beamed, “it definitely seems like something you should improve, as well.”
“Oh, I plan to,” Joshua assured her. “But it’s not quite as easy to use as it sounds,” he cautioned. “Think of the world as a giant webpage, with every word being a hyperlink. You start out with something simple, like, ‘Inspect Olivia’. Then you get a little info like, ‘A youthful girl of model proportions. She is your Eternal Knight.’ If I want to know anything about your arm, I have to narrow the inspection down to that, in specific.
“It’s actually kind of tedious and time consuming,” Joshua sighed.
“It didn’t seem that bad when you were listing my measurements a moment ago,” Olivia frowned, wrinkling up her nose at his description.
“Well…” Joshua blushed slightly, admitting, “I’ve been using it for a while now, just testing it out. Not all of those figures are guaranteed to be exactly exact, but I’ve got better at keeping track of things since I spent my points on enhanced memory and enhanced intelligence.
“If intelligence and memory work for me, like strength did for you,” Joshua mused, “then I’ve became about thirty percent smarter and have a thirty percent better memory, though it really doesn’t seem that big of a change. It’s not like I’m smart enough yet, to come up with a good gauge to measure the change, like you did,” Joshua snorted, self-deprecatingly.
“You could always do something like see how many digits of pi you can memorize,” Olivia suggested, trying to be helpful.
“I could,” Joshua laughed, “but I never really tried to strain my brain to see how many digits I could learn before,” he admitted. “3.14 was always good enough for math class, so I never bothered to try and learn more. That’s what calculators, computers, and phone apps are for!”
“Even if I figure out how many digits I can remember now,” Joshua sighed once again, “I just don’t have a good baseline to compare them against.”
“You might be able to tell with your test grades in school,” Olivia laughed, still trying to be helpfully positive. “If you used to get 80s on your tests, if you’re thirty percent smarter, you might get perfect grades from now on! After all, a third of eighty is over twenty, and a twenty point improvement would make you perfect!”
“Would make my test grades perfect,” Joshua corrected. “And even then, that’s nothing very impressive — the school already has a ton of students with a 4.0 GPA. It just means I’d be as smart as a nerdy teen honor student. Woooo!”
“And then what?” Olivia asked, poignantly. “One more rank and you’re as smart as an honor’s college graduate? And another rank beyond that makes you another Albert Einstein? And then what? If you buy the Advanced Intelligence, will you be as smart as a computer?”
“I don’t know,” Joshua shrugged. “We just can’t be certain yet. We still don’t know enough about any of this.”
“Well not to change the subject,” Olivia giggled, “which means I’m going to deliberately change the subject… Have you given any consideration who you might choose as a second companion? The sooner you choose them,” she pointed out, “the sooner they can start doing tasks and earning points. And then we can compare notes with them, and all learn about what’s actually going on together faster.”
“I don’t have a clue,” Joshua replied, frowning heavily. “To be honest, I honestly don’t know if I even want to choose someone else. We can’t tell them anything about what they’d be getting into, as the system won’t let us, and they really don’t have any means to refuse. It’s bad enough what I did to you, unknowingly,” Joshua admitted, apologetically. “I certainly don’t want to do it to someone else and prove I’m a complete and totally worthless ass.”
“Then you’ll just need to choose someone who’ll benefit more than they’ll lose,” Olivia told him, biting her lip in deep thought.
“And do you know anyone like that?” Joshua snorted, mockingly flapping his arms back and forth in the air exaggeratedly. “Oh my gosh,” he gushed! “I’m sooooo happy to be your eternal slave now! Why, now I can spend all my points and pass typing class!”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Olivia snorted, glaring at him through the lens of the phone. “You’re just not thinking properly. Someone like my mother would jump at the chance to join the World Renewal Project as soon as possible — even if she had to become a complete jackass’s play toy.”
“Your mother?” Joshua asked, blinking stupidly.
“Mom’s in a wheelchair,” Olivia explained slowly, obviously reluctant to go into deep details over it. “She hasn’t been able to walk since before I was born, and if there’s the slightest chance that she could pay off some disadvantage, or buy some advantage to let her move, and swim, and dance, and play, and live again, she’d happily pay any price just for that possibility.”
“Are… Are you wanting me to choose your mother?” Joshua asked, bewildered and confused.
“Yes... No... I don’t know,” Olivia blurted, compelled by her status to not hide the truth — not even from herself – since he was asking directly. “Honestly, I’m completely conflicted,” she finally admitted. “Truthfully, I’d love for mother to have the chance to join the WRP and completely change the direction of her life — I just don’t really want her to be yours,” she finished with a whisper.
“Well, I can understand that,” Joshua sighed, feeling as if a large boot had just kicked him upside the head. “After all, I am the ass that stole your freedom…”
“Oh no. No. No! It’s not that,” Olivia interrupted, waving her arms frantically in denial in front of the phone. “It’s just…” Blushing bright red, her voice lowered down to an almost inaudible whisper. “It’s just some of the companion tasks are honestly a little hinky, and it’d embarrass me to death to have to make out with my own mother — or worse!”
“I… I can understand that,” Joshua laughed, feeling an immense sense of relief that it wasn’t him, in specific, that Olivia was trying to protect her mother from. “I think — hell, I know — I’d have a impossible time with a, ‘Kiss your Eternal Companion’s woo-ho until they wah-ha’ task with my own mother.”
“Exactly,” Olivia exclaimed! “And yet, I kind of feel guilty about it because I know this WRP thing is probably the only way she’ll ever get her life back again. I feel selfish and icky for not jumping at the chance to recommend her,” Olivia admitted.
“Well don’t,” Joshua chided her. “I honestly don’t think I’d choose an old hag anyway.”
“Mother’s not old, nor a hag,” Olivia snorted, instantly turning defensive. “She’s only thirty, you know!”
“Pfftttppt! Why can’t you women ever admit your age,” Joshua snorted, dismissively. “The only way she could be that young is if she was twelve when she had you!”
“Thirteen,” Olivia corrected. “Would you like to hear mother’s tale? My drama begins where her tragedy ends.”
Joshua was going to politely decline, and save the tale for another day, but a soft little ping in his ear drew his attention to a new pop-up window.
Congratulations! You have received the quest: Companions Tale. Listen to your Companions back story, without complain or interruption. Reward: Increased faction and understanding of your companion, 5UP, 5CP.
“Ummm… Sure. I’d love to hear it,” Joshua assured her. “It’s not like I really have anything else to do this evening anyway. At least,” he smirked, “nothing better than listening to a naked cheerleader talking through video on my phone, all evening.”