Friendship Benefits

John woke up precisely when he had set in his sleep menu, 5 seconds before his first alarm. Not only that, but he snapped directly into being fully awake in an instant, for the first time ever. After confirming the time on his phone and turning off both the first alarm and the three that followed it, he turned his attention to the Quest window he woke up to.

That was pretty good. No unpleasant surprises, sudden crises, or demands that he go impregnate half of Springfield. Just stuff he had already been planning to do with a call to push himself at doing it and some extra rewards. Like a more challenging, and more rewarding, version of the one he had gotten Monday morning. ’I hope they stay in this track going forward’.

Are you seriously trying to pretend that you weren’t attracted to most of the women I listed Wednesday morning? Most of those quests are still pending, by the way…

As if it needed extra emphasis, maybe-Gaia also decided to unminimize the pending ones. While setting about re-minimizing them, since he still hadn’t decided anything about which, if any, guild to join, he responded mentally, ‘Just because I find a girl attractive doesn’t mean I’m going to try to kiss her, much less try to have kids with her…’

Maybe you should try assigning a few ability points to confidence next time you level up.

’That is really not the issue here. And if the list was about women I am attracted to, what the hell were Vanessa and Wentworth doing on there? Any attraction I’ve had towards Vanessa’s body has been thoroughly killed by her behavior by now and Wentworth is and always has been a “just no”.’

He received no words in response, but the Laugh Track Button popped out of his inventory in a downward facing position above his head. This caused it to fall down, hit him in the face and start laughing. Sighing, he returned the wayward item to his inventory and went downstairs.

Following the scent of scrambled eggs to the kitchen, he was met by Brenda pointing a spatula at him like it was a sword. With equal parts pleasant surprise and playfulness in her tone, she asked, “Who are you, and what have you done with my John?”

Before he had a chance to formulate a response, his stomach growled audibly in protest that he wasn’t already in the process of inhaling the scrambled eggs. That set his Mom giggling, “Ah, one of the two things in existence that can get a teen boy up early.”

Knowing well enough to not ask what the other was, he semi-pivoted the topic while looking for whatever assistance he could render that would expedite his breakfast access. “Seriously though, I slept better last night than I think I ever have before.”

“Sounds like some roleplay with a girl was just what you needed then.” Between Brenda’s troll grin and eyebrow wiggle, John was pretty sure even the stove caught on to the innuendo.

’Bloody hell, she’s on f- hold up a second, I don’t usually use that swear… guess Qhila is rubbing off on me already.’ Outwardly, he decided not to dignify that with any more response than an overacted ‘are you serious?’ look.

“It’s a mother’s right to tease her son,” Brenda declared with a smirk as she sauntered over to the kitchen table with a panful of finished eggs. As soon as some were on his plate, along with bread and breakfast sausages, he dug in with gusto.

“My, my, you’ve certainly got an appetite this morning. Must’ve been some vigorous roleplay~” The comment from Brenda was prompted by John going for seconds, after having vanished his first helping of breakfast in record time. Rather than manage to protest, he ended up **** slightly on the last mouthful of the first serving.

The rest of the morning went by mostly normally, other than him having upended the routine by coming down for breakfast before showering. Post nut clarity in said shower brought him to realize why he had woken up so hungry: one of the side effects of the Hyde Serum was increased caloric need for two days. Said clarity also reminded him to check on his Background Create progress. During the night, Craft had hit Level 5, and he was a good bit past 2 gallons of alchemist’s fire.

School had been a thoroughly weird experience today. John was used to being ignored by his peers when he wasn’t actively being humiliated or shaken down for lunch money. Well, maybe not ignored as such, since the word implied more deliberateness than it was likely done with. But he was used to spending most of his school day de facto invisible to his peers.

That was very much not so today. Going anywhere very quickly put all eyes on him, if only for a moment. Following that, people fairly quickly refocused on whatever else they had been doing, but kept throwing glances his way. Most of them also made sure to stay at least an arm’s length away.

That last bit had the nice perk of making it easy to move through the hallways even when densely packed with students, but it still made him feel weird. The only other students that got that treatment were Vanessa’s and Frank’s cliques. And Moira, but in that case it at least felt like there was a significant component of respect to it.

But he had been ready to fake the role of potential school shooter to get rid of Frank, so in the end he hadn’t really bit off anything he hadn’t already decided that he was ready to chew. At least if this was the new normal, his fearsome reputation would probably help shield Christie a bit.

Actually, that wasn’t the only silver lining. Despite the outward aversion, RS values with most of the student body had increased. Among the guys he had gone from averaging about 0 to averaging somewhere between 10 and 15. His average with the girls had gone from somewhere around -25 to mostly ranging in the single digit minuses.

Only the jocks, cheerleaders and their sycophants had lower scores now, while other typical bullying victims, like the literature and board game clubs, showed the biggest improvements. The biggest stand outs in that regard were Julian, the glee club guy that John had tested an Observe improvement on after getting yoinked by Wentworth, going from 12 points to 51 and the girl at -2 that he had almost offered lunch on Monday, whom Observe now told him was in the theater club, having jumped to 41.

The teachers were more of a mixed bag in that regard. The ones he had seen that had gone down, however, were with teachers whose opinion on the matter he cared very little about. In most cases on account of that teacher having turned a very blatant blind eye to Frank’s crap numerous times in the past. The ones that actually mattered to him had all gone up a little.

Lunch on the roof with Christie had been a welcome break from that uncomfortable treatment, even if he did feel a bit weird about the cat, that he now knew was a powerful familiar, showing up to steal some of his lunch again. Not at all weird enough to not enjoy talking with Christie though. They spent most of the time theorizing about what the ghost in the ruined fort could have in store for their characters on the coming Thursday evening.

Moira had also returned his hat between 2nd and 3rd period, but that had been a very brief and largely un-notable encounter. In addition to that, he had exceeded 10 liters of alchemist’s fire during the school day, and practice casts of Enhance Muscle had brought that Skill to Level 4 just before lunch.

On his way through the Barrier Alleys from school to Qhila’s nest, John went over the Order recommendations for Abyssal home defense via the link in the flier from Moira. There was a whole section for security measures for spaces shared with mundanes, which came with both a variety of generalized guidelines and some specific instructions for DIY warding spells, though those were labeled as instructive examples complete with a warning that intruders could be expected to know the particulars of those specific designs.

Unfortunately, a lot of those instructions relied on some magical knowhow and skills, which were presumably fairly common. For those lacking those requisite qualifications, such as John, it went back to recommending either installing a pre-made security kit bought from an enchanter, arcanotechnician or similar artisan, hiring one with security experience to make a custom system, or hiring a guard to watch the property.

The last two were plainly and firmly outside of his price range, unless Qhila happened to have the expertise needed for traps that mundanes wouldn’t trigger and were willing to do it as a favor. That was definitely something to ask her about, but in the meanwhile, he could check out the pre-made kits, the cheap end of which he could afford.

Most kits were likely to either have known vulnerabilities already or to have ones that eventually became known. For that reason, getting aftermarket modifications or additions was fairly common while also being a lot cheaper than getting a system built from scratch. Those modifications, in turn, meant that targeting a place with any security was still risky even if you knew the standard vulnerabilities of it, which made just the appearance of a system useful as a deterrent. Especially, it noted, against thieves going for the supposedly common low risk, low reward strategy of stealing objects with minor natural enchantments from mundanes.

That thieving strategy was an angle that John hadn’t considered. A quick detour past the Abyss Auction checking for comfort increasing magic suggested that, even if the Gifts of Lasting Love were worthless on account of being specific to his Grandma and Grandpa, their mildly magical stuff was worth well over 10 grand.

Maybe the burglar had noticed the near-finished picture frame in Sam’s workshop by assensing, then broken in to look for ones that could be resold? Being a random target of opportunity would make finding out who did it much harder, but John still hoped that was the case. Because if it were an opportunistic thief, and getting shot hadn’t made them decide to leave his grandparents alone, putting up security probably would.

The stuff ended with a section discussing a number of brands and specific models, as well as linking to a few vendors that it said had a reputation of being trustworthy. One of those became the source of an unexpected bit of good fortune: A listed shop local to the Springfield Abyss Market had put a CWI sigil security system, that the ‘Goldies’ had reviewed positively, on sale at a whopping 80% discount.

That made a setup otherwise significantly outside of John’s financial reach an actual option, which in turn made him greatly tempted to make a small detour to pick it up immediately. But a prudent poke at the seller’s website revealed that the 1 week sale would end on the coming Wednesday, so he had time to get Qhila’s opinion on it as well.

On that note, he arrived at her nest barrier. He shot her a quick text telling her so and popped inside. When she didn’t respond after a few minutes, he considered sending another or maybe calling. But on the other hand, she might just be busy in her alchemy lab with something that occupied her hands and she did give him a key. Well, keystone.

After another minute of consideration, he decided to head inside. Transferring the keystone from his inventory to his pocket, since he wasn’t sure it’d work from the former, he descended through the manhole.

At the bottom of the ladder, he picked up a very faint scent in the air. It was tart with a metallic hint, though that last part could just be because he was standing right by the steel ladder. In any case, there was something vaguely familiar about it, but after puzzling about it briefly, he couldn’t place it.

Proceeding further inside, and making sure to take the long route since the trap on the direct one wasn’t set up to recognize the keystone, the scent grew gradually stronger. On a whim, he tried to Observe the scent but that failed, so it probably wasn’t anything dangerous. ’I guess being busy in the lab was on point. Or maybe she’s cooking? The smell is an odd-ish kind of pleasant, so I guess it could be kobold food.’