In the aftermath of having sex with Regina yet again, the system didn’t award me Pleasure Seeker level 11. This wasn’t too big of a bummer, nor was it unexpected. The higher level you were, the more you had to fulfill experience triggers. The first bunch of levels had come all at once, and now they’d come slower and slower.

  What did happen was an increase of our shared abilities. It turned out that Regina reached Herb Lore at level 3, and I got Wild Lore level 3 as well.

  I’d secretly hoped to get a brand new ability for each level of every special ability, but it wasn’t to be. And, after looking it over, I was gd. I already had a lot of abilities. It was good to see Wild Lore shift into something more useful, rather than add something that wasn’t useful in the slightest.

  Wild Lore III

  (Special Ability, Uncommon, active)

  I- Concentrate on a pnt, animal or native of this world to understand it better. While doing so, your Identify is considered +3 levels. Information you gain is based on your Ingenuity attribute.

  II- Choose a pnt, animal or native of this world and spend a Token to gain the ability to speak to it for up to a minute. During this time, your Likability and Persuasion are considered +2 levels. The subject’s level of trust and information given is based on a Likability check, including the Persuasion skill.

  This was really good. I had only used it a bit, but I was pleased with the progression. Free levels when I performed certain actions, excellent. This had already engaged to give me information about the Marshells, Marshins and Marshmellows. It would help going forward for sure.

  In the immediate aftermath, I also gained a new Achievement.

  Achievement: Third Level’s The Charm

  One of your special abilities has reached level 3! How exciting. You’ve begun to tread what is sure to be a very long and winding path, Healer.

  Reward: +1 Ability Upgrade

  I could definitely get on board with that. My first instinct was to grab Hard at Work at level 3. The level 3 lowered all skill check difficulties for my css by 1. I wanted to reach for higher, but having things be just a little bit easier wasn’t so bad. It was essentially like having a free Token spent on the difficulty at all times. When I looked at it this way, it was a very valuable ability and upgrade.

  “I love it!” I tried to convince myself, and it didn’t really work all that well.

  The other options I’d already explored: Healer’s Resistance and Healer’s Endurance weren’t what I needed right this moment. The Pleasure Seeker abilities weren’t going to help with regard to the egg situation either, though Post-Sharing Crity might help if I could take a break and have sex with Regina whenever the 10 minutes ran out. A quick look showed me that the bonuses would increase to +3 to all attributes for 10 minutes as opposed to +2. Which was great, but wouldn’t be as great as an increased duration. And it required me to have sex first, which was a sporadic occurrence, mostly in my tent right now. Blissense just wasn’t going to be helpful in the slightest here.

  The only thing it had done so far is told me Cinzy was kind of messed up, and had probably been coming on to me since this expedition started. I had no clear idea of what horrors it had shown her when we both engaged in the use of the ability, but for the moment, it was best to py it cool and accomplish this task before trying to figure out if she wanted me to slowly draw anal beads out of her before slowly putting something much bigger in there.

  After gazing down at my hardening cock and willing it back to normal, I sighed, stopped thinking about Cinzy and her kink, and sank the Ability Upgrade into Hard at Work.

  Hard At Work III

  (Special Ability, Common, passive)

  I- When engaged in checks that pertain to your css, your Tokens are worth double.

  II- When you assist someone in their job, and seek to reduce the difficulty of a check, 2 Tokens will reduce the difficulty by 1, instead of 3 Tokens for 1 reduced difficulty.

  III- All css-reted checks using your css skills have their difficulties are reduced by 1.

  “Let’s get to work,” I told the system, and banished all the screens.

  I had ingredients id out, a series of instructions inscribed onto a cy tablet, and I had everything prepped long before Cinzy arrived.

  Fairy Poppins came first, flying in through the window and bobbing up and down in front of me. I gave her a friendly smile, told her I was gd to see her—this was the truth—and kept right on grinding up roots, soaking flowers in oils, and drying leaves with the help of a magmamander.

  None of these were quick processes, so I just narrated while I worked for the four or five inch tall fairy.

  “I’m just marinating these cloves in sesame oil,” I told her. “The cloves need to soak up the oil for a good few hours so they dissolve in the heated potion ter.”

  Fairy Poppins rested on the window sill and watched me work. I set to chopping stalks and dividing them up into attempt piles, in case I flubbed the cure up.

  “I really hope Cinzy can get herself together pretty soon. She’s not really handling this failure situation well, is she?”

  Fairy Poppins shook her head sadly.

  “I understand she’s sailed through a lot of life really easily, being so smart and so pretty. Failing for your first time when you’re twenty-something can be hard.”

  I shrugged and swirled the cloves around in the oil. Fairy Poppins watched me work, knees drawn up and chin on her knees.

  “I learned it pretty easily. There are always going to be things you can and can’t do, that’s just a fact. You have to focus on what you can do, and get good at it.”

  Eventually I got the cauldron set up, took a deep breath, and started heating the oil. Just like the st time, this mixture was a series of steps that had to be done in a specific order. It was precisely like being in potions css. This one, though, differed in one important aspect: it would be misted over the whole hatchery. I wasn’t entirely sure how that was going to happen, as we didn’t have any spray bottles handy. The magic would’ve warped the pstic they were made of anyhow.

  “Focus on one thing at a time,” I told Cinzy’s Nakamamon. She had flown over and was standing on the ingredients.

  “Could I ask a favor of you?”

  She nodded vigorously.

  “Unfortunately, I need an assistant or two. Could you make sure Cinzy is feeling better, and grab her? And An while you’re at it, if he’s okay to come in here.”

  She flitted up to me, saluted, and followed this up by bopping me on the nose. I ended up sneezing from the fairy dust I got in my face, but I ughed nonetheless.

  By the time An and Cinzy entered the hatchery, I had the temperature of the cauldron at a nice two-twenty, and had dissolved the already-softened cloves in there, followed by the stirring, the ground roots, and then the mana-soaked stems.

  “Cinzy, I’m so gd you’re here,” I told her.

  “What?” She sounded very much like she was in a daze, like nothing

  “I’m. Gd. You’re. Here.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “Because you’ve got an incredibly high Likability, you’re perfectly suited to keeping eggs happy, and you’re walking around, meaning you’ve gotten over the nonsense that happened earlier.”

  I heard a sob.

  Well I hadn’t meant ‘the nonsense that happened earlier’ to mean she was at fault, but apparently that was how she saw it. I got halfway through yelling that very thing when I heard the door sm.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered.

  “B-boss?” An asked.

  “It would be really nice if everybody put aside their drive to be perfect, and just tried their fracking best!” I called, more angrily than I wanted. “The mission needs us all to be doing our jobs, An!”

  “Y-y-y-y-yeah,” he mumbled, clearly upset, and looking the same way Cinzy had before she stormed out.

  “Not you too.”

  Healer’s Resistance II: You have been dealt damage. Would you like to spend a Durability Token to resist the damage and step down the duration of debuffs by 75%?

  “Yes, I very much would,” I said. “And, for that matter, I’ll spend one on An here.”

  The two Tokens, like before, appeared before me as massive gold coins. Both were a good half inch thick, and the video game sound of the coins —c-cling!—sounded twice. While Physicality Tokens had the image of a muscle flexing torso, Durability Tokens instead had a small raised image of a faceless person hauling a backpack that was easily twice their size.

  The UI then went on to expin that I’d just resisted all damage from a Debilitating Lash, a psychic damage effect. The Debilitating Depression had already run its course, because my Stamina had already replenished. It informed me about a minute ter that An’s Stamina had fully replenished also, from where it had been draining away, and he was now done dealing with the psychic damage.

  “Get Cinzy back in here right now!” I really was allowing this to get me angrier than I should’ve been. Once more, I pstered a smile on my face and tried whistling as I worked.

  The fight was on, then, to actually craft the thing I had been requested to craft. It required only one temperature alteration, which I liked, although there were more ingredients overall. The sundrinker petals and seeds were in there, along with a flower I’d seen on my first day here, the common numphty. I smiled as I ground up the numphty stems. Yes of course, I thought, the flower with the silly name gets to be on the list of the mood-improving cure.

  Cinzy appeared not long after I began trickling mana into the cauldron as instructed. She moped into the hatchery, bawling, leaning first against the doorframe and then slowly sinking into a crying ball of pure misery after two steps. Not looking away from the cure I was crafting, I pointed at her with one hand and quickly spent the Durability token to help her overcome the Debilitating Lash.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  She blinked away the tears and looked at me like she hadn’t seen me in weeks.

  “Fletcher? What happened?”

  I didn’t stop stirring, and actually had to make a Durability check at Easy in order to continue going without losing my concentration.

  “Something called a Debilitating Lash,” I told her.

  “Duh, I can read,” she said, and wiped her eyes with the insides of her wrists. “Where’d it come from?”

  “I think it was a psychic attack from the eggs… possibly from the Marshins. Could you kindly go check our Guardians and how they’re doing? If they’ve been affected…”

  I didn’t need to tell her again. She shot out the door, her half-white, half-brown tushy bouncing amazingly before it vanished.

  Some thirty minutes ter she arrived, panting, and telling me that they had weathered the Debilitating Lash poorly. Although only Isabelle had been seriously affected, all four of the Guardians gave ground and slowly dealt with psychic damage before turning and securing bridges far closer to the hatchery. Isabelle had gone fully fetal position. When the Marshins tried to press through Isabelle’s bridge, Drat appeared out of nowhere with a terrifying Nakamamon wrapped around his torso. He, An, and Cinzy had scared them back, and dragged Isabelle directly to this ptform.

  “How about Trent?” I asked, still stirring and still infusing the whole thing with mana.

  Her eyes widened and she ran out the door again.

  While she was gone I continued to monitor the situation with the cure. The mana went in along with another batch of sundrinker petals, and I eased the cauldron back down to two twenty by putting the telescoping legs of the tripod up to where I’d marked them.

  Cinzy reappeared a short time ter, telling me that she’d nearly exhausted her mana on her mood stabilizing special abilities, because they’d hit Trent so badly.

  “I think,” I said, stirring and pushing an increased amount of mana down into the concoction, “that we’re going to need that escape ptform. Tell him to double time it, and he can have up to two mana potions if he needs them.”

  She let out a low whistle. We didn’t have many of the really good mana potions that would st, so using two of those meant I was really serious.

  “You got it,” she said.

  She had just returned and said something when the UI interrupted and gave me the check dialogue. I held up a hand, staring down at the cauldron to see if it matched the instructions on the tablet I was using.

  “All right,” I muttered to myself, “it’s been a dull yellow orange the whole time, deepening to yellow, and now it’s supposed to shine like the sun. And… sing? I don’t know how a potion’s supposed to sing.”

  A tiny, distant heavenly chorus could be heard, and I frowned in amazement. It nearly made me lose my concentration.

  Develop Cure (Small/Fairy) Check: This check is Very Difficult (7). You currently have 5 Likability, 3 levels in Small Nakamamon, and 0 levels in Fairy aspect Nakamamon. Would you like to spend your 4 Tokens to automatically succeed at this check?

  Total Tokens: 5 Likability and 6 Free Tokens.

  *Hard At Work: Your Tokens are worth double given you are engaged in your css duties.

  I let out yet another huge sigh, this one of relief. The difficulty was lower than that of a god, which was nice, and also realistic instead of going with the slowly escating difficulty rating most often seen in video games.

  A total of 8 ranks would give me two to three successes, not eight. I had the option of sinking my avaible skill points into Fairy aspects, or just spend the Tokens, hoping they replenished quickly. Even if I spent the 7 remaining skill points, that would give me maybe 4 more successes, if I was lucky. No, it was better to keep the skill points in reserve and spend the Tokens for now. I still had plenty left for

  I spent the 4 Tokens. All four of them rose out of nowhere—c-cling c-cling c-cling c-cling!—and spun in mid-air before they faded out of existence. They puffed into various different colors of smoke and glittery stuff.

  Success! You have crafted a cure for a unique creature.

  I let out a whoop of triumph and immediately pulled the cauldron away from the magmamander.

  “Now we’re talking,” I said, about three seconds before Larelle entered the hatchery.

  “We have to go.”

  This is Christopher’s rexing sex adventure getting decidedly far more fraught than it should’ve been.