It’s Wednesday My Dudes

John woke up to his entire field of vision being blocked out by Quest windows. Quest windows that did not fade when he tried to focus beyond them. ‘Guess I’ll start by taking a look at that then. Besides, it’s an excuse for staying in bed for a few more minutes’

New Multi-Step Quest: Mama’s Boy
(Multi step quests have multiple objectives revealed up front, each with a particular reward for completing that step.)

Just a Peck
Kiss Brenda
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Touching Family Moment
Fondle Brenda
Reward: +1 CHA, 200 EXP

Return to Sender
Lose your virginity to Brenda
Reward: Cooking skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

Beware the Habsburg Chin
Impregnate Brenda
Reward: an Epic rarity crib, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: Making THE Bitch, YOUR Bitch

Hard Won Favor
Get Vanessa to kiss you
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Role Reversal
Get Vanessa to ask you to grope her
Reward: +1 CHA, 200 EXP

Bitch Breaking
Lose your virginity by domming Vanessa
Reward: Intimidation skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

If You’re a Happy Little Sub
Have Vanessa beg you to impregnate her.
Reward: guaranteed conception, an Epic rarity SM harness, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: Deviant Art

Hot for Teacher
Kiss June
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Against School Policy
Grope June
Reward: +1 LIB, 200 EXP

The Oldest Form Of Art
Lose your virginity to June
Reward: Arouse skill, +1 Perk Point, 500 EXP

Virtuoso In The Making
Impregnate June
Reward: an Epic rarity canvas, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: Through the Looking Glass

Romantic Enthusiasm
Kiss Christie
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Nice Touch
Fondle Christie
Reward: +1 WIS, 200 EXP

Bloody Marry
You lose your virginity to Christie.
Reward: Spell Reflection skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP, I’ll try to keep her dad from murdering you if needed

An Heir to the Kingdom
Impregnate Christie
Reward: an Epic rarity mirror, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: A New Home

Cultural Barrier
Kiss Qhila
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Breaking Down Barriers
Fondle Qhila
Reward: +1 INT, 200 EXP

More Than Just An Itch
Lose your virginity to Qhila
Reward: Pheromone Aura Skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

Enough For A Football Team
Fertilize Qhila
Reward: a Lesser Philosopher’s Stone, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: Icy Hot

First Day of Spring
Kiss Marisa
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Graduated from Peeping Tom
Grope Marisa
Reward: +1 AGI, 200 EXP

Dirty Dancing
Lose your virginity to Marisa
Reward: Slick Frost Skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

Ice Princess Thawed
Impregnate Marisa
Reward: Epic rarity dancing shoes, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: A Royal Romp

Fairy Tales
Kiss Moira
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

In the Wake of Florida
Grope Moira
Reward: +1 STR, 200 EXP

The Mutual Maidenheads
Lose your virginity to Moira
Reward: Shield of Light skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

The Legend Continues
Give up the Golden Rose
Reward: Laugh Track Button, Legendary rarity chest armor, +50 stat points, +50 skill levels, 10 000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: Shoot For The Moon

Cherry Tree Blossoms
Kiss Kim Moon
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Full Contact Sparring
Grope Kim Moon
Reward: +1 END, 200 EXP

Taking The S Out Of Slayer
Lose your virginity to Kim Moon
Reward: Qi Jump Skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

The Vigil Continues
Impregnate Kim Moon
Reward: Epic rarity katana, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: Scarlet Seduction

Straight A Student
Kiss Victoria Wentworth
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Suicidal or Suave?
Grope Victoria Wentworth
Reward: +1 INT, 200 EXP

Teacher’s Pet
Lose your virginity to Victoria Wentworth
Reward: Bind Agreement skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

Where No Man Has Gone Before
Impregnate Victoria Wentworth
Reward: Epic rarity grimoire, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: Kindling the Flame

On Her Tiptoes
Kiss Kaen
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Quite A Handful
Grope Kaen
Reward: +1 END, 200 EXP

A Different Kind of Spar
Lose your virginity to Kaen
Reward: Dragon Rage skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

Growing Blaze
Impregnate Kaen
Reward: Epic rarity gauntlets, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: The Gaia Code

Unrecognized Symbol
Kiss Tricia
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Compile Executable
Grope Tricia
Reward: +1 INT, 200 EXP

Stack Overflow
Lose your virginity to Tricia
Reward: Medical Scan skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

Class Inheritance
Impregnate Tricia
Reward: Epic rarity drone, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: Rave Review

Get The Party Started
Kiss Rave
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

What Happens On The Dancefloor
Grope Rave
Reward: +1 AGI, 200 EXP

Instant Hit
Lose your virginity to Rave
Reward: Knuckle Flare skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

Time To Put A Ring On It
Impregnate Rave
Reward: Epic rarity knuckles, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: Parkour Paramour

Sticky Hickey
Kiss Beth Gryff
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

One Way To Alleviate Boredom
Fondle Beth Gryff
Reward: +1 AGI, 200 EXP

Rooftop Rendezvous
Lose your virginity to Beth Gryff
Reward: Parkour skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

Makes It Harder To Run
Impregnate Beth Gryff
Reward: Epic rarity yo-yo, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: Ragna Rock’n’Roll

Glory
Kiss Erica (with her consent)
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Bravery
Grope Erica (with her consent)
Reward: +10 STR, 20 000 EXP

Snu-Snu
Lose your virginity to Erica (with her consent)
Reward: Meteor Blow skill, +5 perk points, 50 000 EXP

A Clan In The Making
Impregnate Erica (with her consent)
Reward: Laugh Track Button, Divine rarity axe, +100 stat points, +100 skill levels, 100 000 EXP

New Multi-Step Quest: Project Polish

Romance Novel
Kiss Ela
Reward: 100 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat

Teen Fiction
Grope Ela
Reward: +1 INT, 200 EXP

R-Rated Poetry
Lose your virginity to Ela
Reward: Lesser Mending skill, +1 perk point, 500 EXP

Children’s Book
Impregnate Ela
Reward: Epic rarity shield, +5 stat points, +5 skill levels, 1000 EXP

‘Are you fucking serious?!?!?’

Gaia: Gotta keep things interesting while you figure out the Main Quest.

‘… This is almost every single woman whose name crossed my thoughts for more than 3 seconds since Monday morning! I’m half surprised you didn’t throw on the co-workers mom mentioned yesterday evening!’

Gaia: Perhaps I should add them…

‘No! No, please, you’ve already done more than enough.’

Gaia: You can always reject the quests if it’s so terrible…

Well, she did have a point there… Okay, time for some pruning. Vanessa and Wentworth were easy first eliminations. The former might be objectively hot, but her personality was so awful, John had actually managed to kill inconvenient boners by thinking of her a few times.

Wentworth was just… Even if he’d had as much as a sliver of interest in that direction, he considered it very possible that she would be able to know about the Quest somehow and he did not see that ending well for him.

He was about to reject the one for his mom as well because, well, it was his mom, but then he hesitated, feeling like he was missing something. His eyes passed the name of the first objective. ‘Just a peck’...

If a peck on the cheek or forehead counted… well, he’d done that when he was little, so it should still be fine, right? Hell, Italians do that as a greeting if he recalled correctly. That’d be some very easy EXP and then he could delete the rest of the Quest afterwards, or just pretend it didn’t exist if deleting it was impossible.

He accepted the Quest.

The next one he considered pruning was Christie but… While his resolve not to risk pushing anything romantic or sexual on her remained firm, now that the Quest kind of **** him to think about it, he also couldn’t deny that he was feeling a… potential had grown between them in the past two days.

Kind of amazing that it hadn’t been longer, honestly. It felt like weeks, but that was besides the point. The point was that if she made it clear, somehow, that he wouldn’t be pushing her to something she didn’t want, then he would gladly be more than just her friend.

He accepted the Quest.

Next on the pruning consideration was the list of people he’d only Observed from afar. For those, he didn’t really have a strong argument for tossing the Quests, except that he obviously wasn’t going for the lot of them.

On the flip side, he didn’t really have strong arguments for keeping them either, since he had no relationship with any of the girls and no expectation to get one. Unless he ended up joining their guilds. In that case, it would be foolish to toss the Quest, at least until he’d had the chance to meet them.

And if he ended up starting his own guild, then the guildless Ela and Beth were potential recruits. Meaning tossing the Quests for them would be foolish, at least until he had met them.

So this whole set of Quests were best put on the backburner for now. Ideally minimized like the guild quest, but he’d accept them and then delete as things developed if that was necessary to reclaim his field of vision.

Gaia: Fine. Since you’re apparently allergic to just making a call and sticking with it, I’ll re-enable minimizing quests once you’ve decided on the last three.

John nodded appreciatively in no particular direction, but before he turned his attention to those last three, there was one thing that stuck out like a sore elephant. Why on Earth were the rewards for Erica’s Quest past the first step so gigantic???

It couldn’t be the explicit requirement of consent, because even if he disregarded his morals, several of the others required it for all practical intents and purposes. Especially Wentworth…

Typically, quest rewards in games were bigger for quests that were harder or riskier. But how could hitting on Erica possibly be orders of magnitude harder and riskier than hitting on a stern, no-nonsense Demigoddess?? Was she engaged to fucking Thor or something crazy like that?

Whatever it was, he wouldn’t be getting any answers sitting here guessing, but one thing was certain. He was going to tread very carefully around the berserker babe if their paths crossed again sometime in the future.

Qhila was basically in the same boat as Christie. He would gladly explore more than just… alliance? Friendship? Wherever they were currently headed. Anyway, he would gladly explore more if he could feel certain that she was interested.

But while the reasons were Abyssal power dynamics and John being a Late Bloomer rather than bullies and social isolation, fact still was that if he pushed for anything without that certainty, she could easily end up feeling **** to do something she didn’t want to. And that would be wholly unacceptable.

He accepted the Quest.

June and Marisa were both an easy ‘accept’. He felt fairly sure he’d clear at least one of the first two objectives of June’s this weekend if he didn’t fuck things up. With Marisa, things were a bit more unclear, but if she had been talking about the peeping as she left yesterday, that was a pretty good sign. And even if not, it was worth seeing how things went.

He accepted the Quests.

At that point, he heard his mom’s muffled yell from the kitchen. He couldn’t make out the words, but he didn’t need to to know what it was about. Minimizing the 8 Quests he’d neither accepted nor refused, he got out of bed and opened the door before responding.

“I’M UP, MOM! I JUST… GOT LOST IN THOUGHT”

He went about his morning routine mostly as usual. Unlike yesterday, he did remember to save time by dressing via inventory, but lost that time again in the shower because he initially forgot to adjust a certain threshold…

That all summed to him still having to wolf down his breakfast faster than his mom’s cooking deserved. Thankfully, that didn’t weaken the Food Buff. On the topic of which, Brenda had also made him a boxed lunch.

“Thanks, Mom.” He grabbed the lunchbox and went to give her a hug and another shot of skin-smoothening Alter Body in the process. Thinking this as good an opportunity as any, he went for the quick peck on the cheek as well, which did indeed net him the EXP reward.

“Oh my. If I knew preparing your lunch would coax out that kind of affection, I would have insisted years ago,” Brenda teased with a giggle, causing John to blush slightly and mutter something incoherent as he turned and left.

He did yell a proper goodbye to her when he was on his way out of the front door, though. The bus arrived a few minutes later, and when he sat down he felt something palm sized and hard on his seat and heard laughter. From under himself.

Casting his gaze around suspiciously, nobody else actually seemed to have noticed. Thankfully. Scooting over, he investigated and found the Laugh Track Button.

‘I’m pretty sure I left you in a drawer in my room…’

Glaring at the thing did not provoke any changes or explanations, and after a little bit he slipped it into his bag with a sigh. The sigh was half about the button and half about something he’d realized upon his mana bar hitting full.

He had forgotten to set up Create to make Alchemist’s Fire in the background while he slept, thus wasting hundreds of MP that could have gone into building his supply and leveling Craft and Low Alchemy.

Resisting the urge to facepalm, he set it up now, dialed the creation speed to 3 MP/min, which came out to about 170 mL per hour. As long as the Food Buff lasted, that left him with about 3 MP/min for other uses, and once it ended he’d have to dial the crafting rate back until lunch. Still, that’d be pretty good progress.

He also popped an Enhance Muscle for training purposes, then opened his inventory to check out the Gamer Treat, unsure if it would be a case of awesome in lame clothes like the Gold Star Sticker or a full blown joke item like the damn button.

Gamer Treat
Divine
Restores 10 HP and your stamina
A scrumptious treat for good boys.
Attributes: Blessed, Healing

The thing itself looked like someone made a dog treat in the shape of a stylized computer monitor. Appearance aside, the effect was… interesting. On one hand, 10 HP really wasn’t much at this point. On the other hand, it was instant healing with no side effects, which was new. And judging by the rarity it was probably not easy to come by. And the stamina restoration could potentially come in quite handy.

That over with, he pulled up ‘Abysspedia’/the Librarian website and spent the bus ride reading up on the next guild on the list: the Moon Clan.

The reading was expectedly unencouraging. The guild’s purpose was apparently to root out some sort of doomsday cult, with monster hunting on the side. That wasn’t an issue by itself, but as the name implied it was built around an actual blood ties clan.

While the article did say that they had opened up to outsiders when the clan moved to the US from Korea, he still got the impression from between the lines that he would be hard stuck as a second class member unless he managed to marry into the bloodline at its core. Plus, like with the Rose guys, the article didn’t really say anything about the methods they used.