It turned out Nakamamon was a shortened form of Nakama and Monster, the former meaning ‘companion’ in Japanese and the tter totally obvious. But apparently also Japanese?

  Companion Monsters… Companiomals? No, that was stupid. Monsterpanions? Even worse. Okay, I gave them mental consent to stick with the name they gave it.

  My mind continued to swirl. How cool would it be if I got a friggin nd octopus made of gems and precious metals? Or a Pegasus plus unicorn but also a panda bear? The flying ones could make for some awesome rescue squad stuff.

  A whole lot had just been unched at me in a very short time. Gods, Nakamamon, people trained to deal with the plight of corrupted gods, a big system screen that popped right up in front of my face.

  There were corrupted gods. There were game stats. I had a token. I had a special ability.

  I realized I had… something. An issue. In my peripheral vision, several small bursts of dancing light. I grabbed at one with my hand.

  Achievement: first near death experience

  Whoo, that was close! You nearly perished! Let’s try to avoid that kind of thing going forward, shall we?

  Reward: +5 Free Tokens

  Achievement: first Nakamamon encountered

  What mysterious and amazing creatures they are! You have encountered a Vulpetunia.

  Reward: +1 Free Token

  Achievement: first small god encountered

  In a world of magic and monsters, we really should’ve been prepared for the existence of gods. You have encountered a god! Humbling experience, was it not?

  Reward: +1 Free Stat level

  Achievements. I exulted, and resolved to look around ter for an Achievement list so I could go after all of them. Collecting things was definitely my jam.

  And yes, encountering a god was definitely a humbling experience. Holy crikey, it was not something I was going to handle lightly going forward.

  “You okay, boss?” Regina asked.

  I realized I’d been staring vacantly out at the insane but wonderful and amazing ndscape, and ignoring my guide. She’d called herself a Ranger. That, plus system, meant a lot of possibilities I hadn’t considered before.

  I mean, since going through the portal, I totally forgot I was here to do a job.

  “What kind of jobs are there? You’re a Ranger. Is that a special character css?”

  She gasped. “I guess the academy isn’t going to go over chargen... sorry, Christopher. We’ll have to do it together.”

  “Uh…” The way she’d said the words ‘do it’ had been suggestive… or I was just imagining things, talking to a beautiful girl? She could be messing with me.

  I took several looks over Regina as she hefted the hiking pack up onto her back again. She was wearing a pleated skirt that came down just below mid-thigh, and stockings. Both had been brown in color, the skirt a pid pattern, but they were now spshed with magical color as well. Green vine designs and flowers now twined around her toned legs. The chest strap she clipped right below an excellent pair of breasts. The top two buttons of her top had come open at some point, showing me glimpses of colr bone and the color shifting, glittery freckles all over her body. It led to a deep well of cleavage I definitely stared at for too long. By the time I gnced up, she was grinning down at me.

  “Say ‘character creation,’” she instructed, and I did.

  My vision filled with a huge blue rectangur screen, just like before after I’d woken up from surviving the touch of the flower god. The chunky 8-bit letters now read ‘please select a name’, and Christopher Fletcher had already been entered there. Below that was a keyboard.

  “You need help?” she asked, sounding closer than before.

  “I… have done this before, in games.”

  “Don’t pick a dumb name, like Shadowdude Superkiller, or LadiesMan69. The other academy students will bully the hecky Becky out of you.”

  I ughed. “I can just go with my regur name, I guess?”

  “If you want me to advise, you just said ‘reveal character sheet’ and it will show anyone else nearby.”

  I wanted to, but I did want to prove that I wasn’t an idiot. She already had reason to doubt my intelligence. Plus, she wouldn’t know that I got a special bonus from touching the flower god. For some reason, I didn’t want to show off that I knew everything about all the flowers in the world. It wasn’t that her knowing it might emascute me. I didn’t give a shizz about machismo. After all, I’d gotten a free pass out of gym css all through middle and high school. I didn’t know whether the power was typical or unusual, whether it was good or bad, and whether she had a simir thing or not. If she didn’t have one, she might march off and put herself in danger to grab one, and I wasn’t going to endanger her life like that.

  “It’s okay,” I said, and accepted my pin old name. I could go by Fletcher. It was cooler than Christopher, and I could also go by Chris.

  The screen then showed me five basic stats: Affinity, Durability, Ingenuity, Likability, and Physicality. Each had a numerical value.

  Affinity 0

  Durability 3

  Ingenuity 4

  Likability 2

  Physicality 1

  I was surprised at the Durability score. I hadn’t thought of myself as someone who could suffer a lot of punishment, but when I moved my finger over the word, it expined Durability was for mental and physical fortitude.

  Beneath the stats were the words ‘Please pce five additional stat points’ followed by ‘Unspent free points: 6’ The +1 free stat level had come from the contact with the flower god.

  “Affinity?”

  “It’s for magic, magic beings and gods,” she said. “A higher score makes you more magical.”

  “Got it.”

  “You’re going to get a Token for each of your stat points every time you level up,” Regina said, though she couldn’t see what I was looking at. “But here’s the thing, your base attributes aren’t really going to change. You’ll get one point every four to six levels.”

  All of them seemed valuable, but I immediately put a point in Physicality. Nothing happened, though I’d been hoping it would heal up my legs and give me big muscles. And maybe those washboard abs, and the lines down the sides of my abs, the ones they called cum gutters. Sadly, nothing like that happened.

  I then considered that the system had given me a Likability of 1 before I met the flower god. That was no good. I boosted it by two, on par with my Ingenuity. The st two points I put in Affinity, so I could have some inkling of what was happening with magic. Finally, the game told me I had started off smart, and I wanted to keep it that way. I put the free stat point into Ingenuity.

  If I knew anything about games, it was that the early levels were going to be easy, and I’d earn dozens of levels before the inevitable slow down.

  When the game asked me if I was sure about these choices, I pressed the confirm button.

  My new stats read like this:

  Affinity 2

  Durability 3

  Ingenuity 5

  Likability 4

  Physicality 2

  Congratutions! The window now told me. You have gained 2 Affinity Tokens, 3 Durability Tokens, 5 Ingenuity Tokens, 4 Likability Tokens, and 2 Physicality Tokens. Now each of my stats had a little readout beside it: 2/2 for Affinity, 3/3 for Durability, and so on. Beneath all that, it read ‘Free Tokens 6/6’

  You have not chosen a css! Would you like to choose a css?

  “I don’t want to choose a css though, do I?”

  “Let’s hold off on the css until you’re into the academy and they know where to put you.” Cocking her head, she regarded me with an easy smile. “You catch on real fast, huh?”

  I shrugged, unsure whether or not I was slow in asking all these questions or not. How many people came through, and how often? How many of those… died? And how often? What was the academy like? When would I get to choose a Nakamamon? Would I get to engineer my own somehow? Would there just be like three choices and I’d have to settle for one? What was I expected to do over here? I sort of got that Dick Johnson hadn’t wanted to spoil the magical fun of entering this pce, but he could’ve prepared me with a job description, at least.

  I wasn’t about to get answers for any of these questions right away. It wasn’t even vital that they get answered today, or this week. I was just swirling all around in my brain.

  Gods. Magic. System. Monsters. It was a lot.

  She grinned. “Let’s go take a rest. There’s no rule we have to get to the city in any sort of hurry, and I feel like we’ve hit our danger quota for the month, so I don’t expect any other trouble.”

  “Really? What about predators?”

  She ughed. “Most stuff here just eats magic. And since we’re not magically rich, they don’t bother with us.”

  “Oh, that’s good.”

  “Yeah, you’ll get your daily pill and you’ll take it. That stops us from turning into monsters.”

  I froze, and once again she threw back her head and ughed. “Sheesh, I’m sorry, Christopher. I keep adding stuff on here. Look, the pill keeps us from overloading on magic and changing into magical beings. Every living thing attracts some magic, right? And if that process goes on too long, you’ll, I guess, be part of the food chain. It’s never happened to anyone I know, because we take our pills every day.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ve been here for going on six months, and no problems turning into a magical creature, then being eaten by a hungry boulder. Sorry for scaring you.” She chuckled, and I joined in.

  She gestured toward a boogie tree, one of the ones with enormous green spheres instead of leaves. A closer look at it revealed a big dopey grin with two knots for eyes. That grin broadened as we approached.

  “Is this thing… a Nakamamon?”

  “It’s ninety percent pnt, I’d guess, and the rest creature. I’m not a researcher so I couldn’t say what they’ve got in terms of brains, but they all seem pretty chill and happy. In fact, they love to be climbed.”

  She took off, climbing the tree, while below I was going to ask Regina about all of this when I peered up into the tree’s branches and stopped, mouth hanging open.

  Regina had taken off the hiking pack when we reached the tree, and now hunkered on a strong branch. Her feet perched on the branch, but the rest of her hung over in pin view.

  Either she had taken off her panties when I wasn’t looking, or she hadn’t been wearing any the whole time. I could see straight up her pleated skirt and past the stockings. They were only thigh highs. She was on full dispy right above me. It was mesmerizing.

  She was grinning down at me, with a knowing smile. “You coming up?”

  I’m sure she could see the confusion, embarrassment, the amazement and the lust all written on my face. I tore my eyes away from her nether region, the first I’d seen in the light of day since… a long time.

  Was she teasing me? She had to be. The arousal warred with the shame of knowing she was just messing with me. I’d be shot down in a heartbeat.

  “I can’t… my legs are…” She knew my legs were garbage. She’d been carrying half my supplies for several hours.

  “Give it a shot,” she said, all encouragement and no hint of superiority. “You might be surprised.”

  There was one branch I could grab onto. It actually lowered a little so I could heft myself up. I silently thanked the tree creature. Growing up with messed up legs generally meant my upper body did a lot of compensating, so I did have a bit of muscles in the arms, chest and shoulders. Pulling myself up wasn’t too difficult, but getting my legs under me was uncomfortable, then when I didn’t move, painful.

  Below us, Tweedle Dee frolicked around happily, yipping and waving his several tails. Eventually he made his way over to a sunny spot and sprawled out.

  Regina had reached down, not far away, and was pying with herself. The contrast between the stockings and her skin was mesmerizing. The way her freckles sparkled in the shade of this weird tree was incredibly cute. Her eyes were glowing, literally, and if I had to guess, her hair had grown out a good three inches in the st three hours. The thick reddish locks framed her face and made her look all the cuter.

  Okay. The math went through my head instantly: if I didn’t go up there, there was absolutely no chance of me getting id. If I did go up there, the chance existed. She had already provided me with what I figured was a lot of fap material if I got shot down. And if everything worked out, she and I could have some sexcapades any time she returned to the city while I was in the academy.

  “You coming up, new guy?” Her voice had changed. It was huskier, thick with need.

  When I went to climb up onto the next branch, the tree again adjusted the next branch so I could get at it easier. Still, my legs didn’t like this at all, and compined when I got up from my crouch.

  Physicality check: You do not have the associated skill for this check. This check is Moderate difficulty. Would you like to spend 2 Tokens for an automatic success?

  Total Tokens: 2 Physicality and 6 Free Tokens.

  I reached out and tapped at the big Y floating in the window in front of my face, but it wasn’t necessary. My intent, or reaching toward it were enough. The window disappeared and -2 Tokens floated up from the bottom of my vision in huge, 8 bit blocky letters.

  Right before power flooded into my body, two enormous coins sprang into being in front of me. Both were simir to the coin I’d been given by Dick Johnson: thick, a good three inches across, but where Dick’s coin had had a fairy on one side, this one had the silhouette of a bodybuilder embossed on it, from the waist up at least. The faceless little guy held beefy arms up, mid flex. The other side—because the coins were slowly rotating in the air—showed this same henge behind the trees, and the mountains behind the henge.

  They rotated for several moments before disappearing into a burst of rainbow energy. That energy coursed into me.

  I felt indestructible. The condition was only temporary, it turned out, because a small circle sprang to life in the corner of my vision and immediately turned into a tiny green circle, with an expanding sliver of red like a pie chart. It was a timer, ticking quickly down towards zero.

  So of course I did what I had to do: climb the tree towards Regina. I did so in a blur of movement, grinning the whole way. She had only been two more branches up, but the climb wasn’t easy. She was on a thick branch and reclining against one of the tree’s gigantic ball leaves spread eagle.

  Still, it was terrifying.

  “Get over here,” she told me, and I obeyed. The timer for Physicality Tokens rapidly wound down, but she had moved onto the gigantic leaf sphere and I climbed on after her.

  I marveled at the spongy feel of the big green ball, and the scent of Regina’s arousal. I could smell it, something I hadn’t thought possible. She smelled natural and wild, a mixture of some different herbs. I couldn’t pce the one, and it felt like it kept shifting: mint, dill, rosemary, basil, vender, and others.

  A zy smile spread over her face. “I thought you might not make it.”

  “I had to,” I said.

  Her zy smile spread. “You know anything about eating at the Y?”

  This is Christopher freaking the F out.