Dungeon 1 Completed

((If you would like to support my work, or just want to read more than one chapter today, feel free to check out my Patreon))

John was roused from the happy half-dozing of after sex cuddles when their surroundings suddenly changed from the mansion’s master bedroom to the large bed standing in a white void. Well, white void except for the pile of what looked like the belongings they had left in the basement earlier. This would have worried him a lot more, if the change hadn’t been accompanied by a message in the chat log.

[Gaia]: If you two horn dogs are done, there’s end-of-Dungeon stuff to get to. And since you’re stuck like that for a while, I took the liberty of turning the interactive Heroes’ Return experience into a couple of windows you can go through without getting up.

There were, indeed, a number of system windows popping into clearer view the moment he focused on his UI. He let them fade again for a little bit though, because something else was more important. “So, uh, sorry about getting us stuck together like this without asking or anything…”

“Hmm?” Qhila let out a quizzical hum for a moment before the proverbial shoe dropped, then softly rubbed her stomach. “Ah. It’s okay, I don’t mind. It’s… nice. Like you’re cuddling me from the inside too…”

’Damn it, Qhila, how am I supposed to stop falling for you when you say stuff like that?!?’ He spent a few seconds trying to think of something else to say, because sharing that thought was just going to make her feel guilty about something that wasn’t her fault.

The save on that ended up coming in the form of the windows he had ignored phasing back into view unbidden and shaking insistently. “Okay, okay, Gaia, I’ll look at the loot and stuff!”

He started with “and stuff”, specifically the system log since he vaguely recalled having ignored a message or two while having his way with Qhila.

Clothing item moved to inventory with consent of the wearer.
Clothing item moved to inventory with consent of the wearer.
Inventory in overflow, no more items can be picked up. Next time you enter a barrier, excess items will be dropped.

“I can put things people are wearing in my inventory??”

[Gaia]: If they let you. And since you hadn’t tried to and would buffoon around enough to ruin her clothes, I decided to step in and at least save the enchanted pieces.

“... You’ve got me there, I guess.”

Qhila chuckled at his exchange with the goddess while John had an idea. A bit of focus on trying later, a window popped up in front of the fun sized alchemist, asking her if she would let John put her tunic back on her.

“So there’s a window prompt now, but not before?”

[Gaia]: I’m not going to toss a bucket of cold water at you over it when even a blind woman could see that she wanted you to strip and ravish her.

It was now John’s turn to chuckle while Qhila glared at the chat window. Then she tapped ‘yes’ in the window asking if she wanted her tunic back on, causing it to reappear on her and the debuff icon indicating inventory overflow to disappear from John’s HUD. That settled, he got started on the notification stack.

Achievement Unlocked: Baby’s First Dungeon
Successfully complete a Dungeon Questline.
Reward: 150 EXP, 300$, 1 Barrier Basic level, 1 Green Mushroom Token

’Well, that certainly confirms that dying to a barrier monster is real **** normally. Good thing we’ve been operating on that assumption from the start…’

Giving Qhila a moment to catch up on the reading, he commented, “It’s interesting that this thing is apparently craftable…”

“Well, aside from being keyed to your Late Bloomer nonsense, the Fateweavers actually do sell things like these. With different restrictions and a 7 figure price tag, but also similar enough that you should be very careful who you show this to. If they learn, they’re either recruiting you by **** or sending every bounty hunter on the continent your way…”

That should probably have worried him more, but since it was just another thing on the pile of things his abilities did that powerful people would kill to control… it didn’t really change anything in the end.

Achievement Unlocked: Dungeon Marathon
Do all 3 segments of a Dungeon right after one another with, at most, food or bathroom breaks.
Reward: 50 EXP, 50$, +1 END

Mad Mutagenist’s Mansion, Segment III rewards
Accept to receive the total EXP, DP, and Loot rewards from the third Segment, including Quest rewards and Boss Chests.
Reward: +2531 EXP, 200 DP, Sack o’ Loot (Mobs), Sack o’ Loot (Miniboss), Sack o’ Loot (Final Boss)
Accept

Level Up

The first sack contained, yet again, a bunch of crafting materials, some cash and some Research Notes bringing them up to 30/40. The second sack had two of both essences, more notes bringing them to 36, and the recipe. Which, if John’s memory served, made this a very good roll on the loot table. The recipe, in turn, let him see the actual window for the mutagen.

A damage multiplier on a mutagen, even a very specific one, was new. The therianthrope mutagen he was still currently affected by basically provided a flat damage increase by giving him new unarmed attacks with a higher base damage than punching. That made this one well worth being a higher Item Level, even if a negative multiplier in the side effects was also new and not in a good way.

Qhila didn’t comment as she read the description, but she wiggled a bit against, and around, him. This, in turn, put off the loot haul for a bit while John added another load to her stuffing.

“If you keep doing that, we’re going to need to take another break in about 3 minutes. Not that I mind, but you know…” They were back in cuddle position, and ‘that’ referred to Qhila softly caressing the small bulge he was still making in her lower abdomen.

She hummed softly as the only response, but after another few seconds she stopped. Since they were evidently going back to focusing on the loot, John opened the last sack, containing the rewards from the final Boss. It contained a full set of common drops, a tame cleaning slime, the girallon mutagen and the trousers.

No legendary and no notes was a bit of a let down, but John really didn’t have it in him to be grumpy about things right now. Cuddling with Qhila was far, far too enjoyable for that.

Now this was a much more niche mutagen, but also with a much milder and more niche side effect.

Halfway through reading the item description, a tingling feeling spread throughout John’s body, similar to the sensation when blood flow to a limb has been cut off for a bit. It only lasted for a moment and a quick glance at his buff icons and his arm confirmed what the less snug envelopment downstairs had already told him: the mutagen had just expired.

He finished reading, and let Qhila do the same, before he pulled out. She let out a slight, disappointed whimper at that, but strangled the sound halfway and hid her mouth behind one hand. John didn’t need to be able to see it to know there was a dusting of red on her cheeks now.

Before he had time to tease her about it, however, she cleared her throat. “I suppose you’re going to insist I take this too…”

“Yep. Even if I had any use for the stats, they’re the wrong size. If you want to pay me back for them, you can get up in a moment so I can see how they look on you.” He triggered the prompt window to let him put them on her via inventory.

She looked at it for a long moment, then sighed in a way that he knew was accompanied by a theatrical eye roll and a smile she was failing to suppress. She accepted the prompt, then got up and turned slowly for his benefit.

At their base, the pants were thin, form fitting leather in a light brown color that made for an understated emphasis on the shapely meatiness of her thighs and big bubble butt. Elevating them in every sense was a set of buckled straps coming from the sewn-into-the-pants belt, in darker, more robust leather. In addition to forming a framework to which tool loops and a set of four bigger pouches, two on her thighs and two on her tail, were attached, it also framed her butt in a way that naturally drew the eye. Dotting the proverbial i, the straps holding the bottom of the thigh pouches were tight enough to create an impression of thigh squish through the form fitting base.

“They look great on you.” He gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up. ’We’re going to have to schedule regular mating press breaks in future dungeon runs at this rate.’

“It’s more important that they’re practical and useful,” she scoffed, failing to conceal her smile as she returned to cuddling on the bed. Feeling a little awkward, now, about being the only one who was pantsless, John reequipped his own as well before snuggling close.

The next window was the end of Dungeon shop. It had the ‘recharge a mana battery’ and ‘clear elixir side effects’ boons that had also been present in between segments. They were probably grabbing the latter for both of them. There was also one, now, for restoring expended Climax Control instant refills at 5 DP, and one for guaranteeing fertilization from a vaginal creampie if it was at all possible at the very cheap rate of 1 DP.

He could also exchange DP for 16$, 16 EXP or 8 Skill EXP per point. Of those, the latter two were fairly interesting. If he dumped almost all of their DP into it, he could get both of them another Level out of this, getting the Dungeon marathon almost on part with Arena running for EXP farming. And if he threw his share at Skills instead, nearly 4000 Skill EXP made for a lot of Skill Levels.

Both of those could be farmed elsewhere, however. High end loot and the last few Research Notes to get the humanis elixir they needed for the Quest to bring Qhila to meet Brenda, on the other hand, was Dungeons only and ‘now or never’ respectively. At least as far as getting it reliably went, anyway.

The Research Notes were 10 DP a piece, for a total of 40 for the ones they were missing. That left them with 447. On the loot front, they could buy a roll on the combined common rarity boss tables for 25, uncommon for 50, rare for 100, Epic for 200 and Legendary for 400, with all tables that had unrolled entries favoring those over what had already dropped. He could also pay double to just straight up pick an entry out of the ones that hadn’t been rolled.

In the present situation, that left him two main options. They could roll for a legendary that was probably either going to be the mutagenist’s medallion from the first Boss or the Chevo signet ring from the last one. Alternatively, they could have their pick between a cleaning slime formula, bearclaw, mutant’s bastion, and a guinea pig club, or roll two of those.

Picking up a bunch of lower rarity stuff was also an option, of course, but likely the inferior one unless one of those pieces was something that slotted really well into their existing strategies and gear. Aside from the names, the shop provided tooltips with a one-line description of the items. No stats, but still better than nothing.

None of the lower rarity options really sounded like that kind of stand outs, though he did find the ‘monkey business’ being a business suit that gave a bonus to money drops and fruit-based food buffs amusing.

The cleaning slime formula was a pun item baby bottle that produced a cleaning slime every week. They had no real use for the slimes other than selling, and John’s barriers were likely going to outpace the passive income very quickly.

The bearclaw was a generic sounding magic sword and the guinea pig club was a cavalry mace that could summon a giant carnivorous guinea pig called “Bob the Big Lug” as a mount. Amusing, but neither John nor Qhila knew the first thing about mounted combat.

The only epic item that was of actual potential interest was the mutant’s bastion, a shield that was strengthened, whatever that meant, while the wielder was affected by a mutagen. John could potentially use that in tandem with the Alchemfist, with his inventory letting him swap it in and out quick enough not to get in the way of using the squirt gun or firearm.

It was, fairly appropriately, outshined by the remaining legendary options. The mutagenist’s medallion granted “a number of utility and empowerment benefits to regular use of mutagens”, which made it sound like it was to mutagens what the trousers were to traps, except more powerful as well. The Chevo signet ring provided a minor boost to “intelligence”, which was probably the stat rather than a general term, and a major one to alchemy crafting.

“Ultimately, it comes down to a guarantee of a good item that’s useful part of the time, versus a high chance of an item that’s great all the time with a small risk of getting a second useless plate of the hound.” John concluded, after mulling it over for a while.

“And the ‘useless’ double can still be sold for a big pile of cash to get you some real armor,” Qhila commented. “This whole thing has been a string of taking risks that would normally be insane, but having it work out and getting rewarded for it anyway. So unless a risk looking reasonably sane is actually a signal to not take that risk in video game logic or whatever you call it, the answer seems obvious…”

“That is a very good point. Research Notes and a legendary roll it is. Do you mind if I toss the rest of the DP at some of my slower-growing Skills? I want to see if the Boon also affects Skill EXP that’s been bought for DP.”

“It’s your power.” Qhila shrugged.

“It may be my power, but we cleared the dungeon together and I couldn’t have done it without you. Hell, I would probably have gotten myself killed or something by now without your help even if we don’t consider barrier monsters. The stuff is ours, and you get a say in how we use it.”

Qhila grabbed his hand and just held it quietly for a long moment, before answering, “Maybe put some of it into your barrier Skill then. It might help the Late Bloomer nonsense keep coming.”

Well, that was certainly something he could do. Mentally, he locked in the choices and confirmed when a second prompt asked him to.

This was several flavors of unadulterated awesome. The general stat boosts would just make either him or Qhila more effective in general, given how big a role alchemical stuff played for both of them. Meanwhile, the active while on a long cooldown was a really vicious DPS boost once something had been set thoroughly on fire or the like.

“So, which of us do you think would get the most out of this?”

“You.” Qhila sounded very certain. “Maybe not right now, because I’m still making more complex brews, but at the rate you’re going, that’s not gonna last long. Also you can continue compounding stuff in your sleep or while doing other things, while I need to be in the lab to do so.”

That was a fairly solid pair of points. And Qhila had gotten two epic drops, so she wasn’t really getting shortchanged on loot, at least not by much. As long as they didn’t use all the money from selling the plate on him, at least. John equipped the ring, and dove into the remaining notifications.

Achievement Unlocked: Beauty and the Beast
Have sex while using a mutagen.
Can’t really blame you for wanting a stronger jawline…
Reward: 50 EXP, 50$, Horsepower Mutagen

Achievement Unlocked: Overstuffed
Cause an abdominal bulge in your sexual partner.
Surely, you can fit a little bit more in there.
Reward: 50 EXP, 50$, +0.5 cm dick size

Achievement Unlocked: Inseparable
Knot someone.
You dawg.
Reward: 50 EXP, 50$, Good Girl’s Collar

Achievement Unlocked: Creamy Filling
Cum in the same orifice 6 times without pulling out.
You do know the fertility toggle is set to “off”, right?
Reward: 50 EXP, 50$, +1 LIB, +10% cum volume

’...’ Despite having already fucked Qhila thoroughly tonight, as evidenced by the Achievements he had just gone through, John was very strongly tempted to test the collar out with her right here and now. Or at least ask her about trying it out. While she generally seemed happy to let him take control, they hadn’t actually talked about kinks and associated boundaries much, so he didn’t really know how much she was on board with in that direction.

Unfortunately, he was already going to be home quite late, and as much as his mom was inclined to be lenient with him spending time with a girl, the leniency would surely run out sooner or later. So, instead, he finished up the reward train by distributing his stat points, then called up a fresh character sheet to compare to one he had left open and faded since they’d started the Dungeon run, for comparison.