More experiments

Finally, there she is.

I’ve been scouring the school for a while trying to find Ivy. The sun has completely set by now. Truth be told, I was about to give up and talk to her tomorrow after my class with her, but she happened to be in the very last place I went to check.

No matter what you’re looking for, that’s always where it is, the very last place you check. A fact of the universe as immutable as **** and taxes.

Still, there is a reason I kept this place for last. There was no reason for me to expect her to spend her Sunday evening in the library.

But there she is, peering through a thick textbook with a look of intense concentration on her face.

Of all my students, she’s... well, not the last one I’d expect to do this, but she’s certainly not among the first either.

“Glad to see I’m not the only one working late today,” I say as I sit down on a chair opposite hers across the table. Just close enough to have a conversation, but just far enough to avoid seeming inappropriate.

Oh, don’t worry, I’ll get inappropriate later, just not right away.

Her eyes snap up from her book, blinking a few times as if she’d just been awoken from a trance.

“Huh, what?” She mumbles with a certain confused annoyance, before recognising me and instantly switching to a nicer, almost sycophantic tone. “Oh! Good evening sir! And, well, gotta learn stuff from something...”

Her change of heart about me may be very useful for this experiment, but it’s almost creepy at times.

It’s interesting that even when she’s sucking up to me, she still finds a way to complain about the school. It was clear from her tone that she meant “gotta learn stuff from something, since I’m certainly not gonna be learning from the teachers.”

“What are you studying?” I ask.

She wordlessly raises her book to display the cover, something about secrets to success written by some tech mogul who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, as well as a meagre inheritance of 10 million dollars.

I’m not sure how to strike up a conversation up from that, and if I immediately started asking unrelated questions while she’s trying to study, she’d just get annoyed, which could make her less receptive to my arguments, and thus would raise the price of my point.

Of course, I could simply use Parley to **** her to debate me, but where’s the elegance in smashing a door open, when I can instead take my time to carefully pick open the lock?

And besides, if my last experiment of the day doesn’t pan out, I might need it then, so it’s better to keep it ready.

I open up my laptop and decide to spend some time doing some actual work for a bit. She’ll be more open to talk after we’ve been working side by side for a little while.

And for the next thirty minutes or so, we simply sit in silence, focused on our tasks at hand, until I feel that the time is right.

“You’ve been very diligent lately, Ivy. It’s nice to see,” I praise in a warm voice.

“Thank you sir!” She replies with what sounds like genuine happiness.

“May I ask you a question?”

She looks up at me and maintains a steady eye contact for just a second, albeit one that feels unusually long.

“You’re wondering why I’ve changed my attitude towards you.”

There’s no question in her voice. She’s not asking me if that’s what I’m wondering about, she’s telling me she already knows.

“Yes. It’s been quite the sudden change, I hope you can understand my curiosity.”

“I do. But there’s no big mystery to it. You’ve changed the way you act, so I changed the way I act. That’s all there is to it.”

“And I take it you view this change in my behaviour as positive?” I ask.

“Well, yeah, obviously. No offence, but you didn’t exactly exude an aura of discipline. But now you’ve figured it out. If you want people to respect you, make them,” She explains, lightly hitting the table with her fist to mark her point. “You and I are the only two people in this school to get it. Oh, and I guess there’s that meathead Tatiana, too. But even then, she doesn’t understand the difference between discipline and ****, between respect and fear. It can be effective in the short term, but I guarantee her authority is going to fail sooner or later.”

I can’t help but chuckle.

“Oh I believe it will. And I’d wager on sooner rather than later. But that’s an interesting point you’re making. I do think the other teachers are slowly starting to get it too, though. I like to think I have a certain... influence on them.”

“Well, it can’t come soon enough. In the meantime, I’m just taking care of my education myself. If someone’s not willing and able to make themselves be respected, then they don’t deserve to be listened to,” She raises her book again and points at its cover, before continuing. “I’m not reading it for class. Why would I listen to business advice from someone who ended up in this dump and isn’t even able to impose their authority in here? I’d rather listen to what actually successful people have to say.”

I didn’t expect her to have such a clear cut worldview. And I can’t say it’s one I ascribe to, but I do want to know more about it if I intend to challenge it.

“Say, what would you define as being successful?”

“Making money. Duh.”

Yeah, I don’t know what else I expected.

“Hmm. And yet you say I’m more worthy of respect than most people in the school, but I’m among the poorest. And those other students you have so much contempt for are quite wealthy. Would you say they’re more successful than me?”

“No, but that doesn’t contradict what I said. Money has inertia, it takes some time for someone to get what they deserve, and for someone to lose what they don’t. And besides, it’s not about having it, it’s about making it. A homeless dude who manages to double what little he has is more worthy of respect than someone who turned 1 million into 1.1 million.”

“You’ve clearly given it a lot of thought,” I admit, stroking my chin in ostentatious thought. “Did your family raise you with these ideals?”

She lets out a small laugh at the absurdity of the notion.

“Heh, do you really think I’d be in this school if my family and I saw eye to eye? Nah, they don’t care about seizing opportunity, about deserving money, about working towards a goal. They just want to set up passive sources of income and let the cash come to them while they fuck around playing golf and riding horses all day. They sent me here to ‘learn to appreciate my fortune’. Apparently my ambition and high expectations of myself are the same as biting the hand that feeds me, somehow.”

You know, ever since I’ve started working here, I’ve been looking at these girls as if they all had the same worldview. As if being rich automatically gave you a singular political and philosophical stance based solely on disdain for those lower on the spectrum of wealth.

But I’m starting to think I’ve been too quick to judge. Turns out the rich can also hate each other.

That being said, I think I’ve found my way in. I just need to phrase this right.

“I see why you disagree with them. They only care about the money itself, not about where it came from. That’s their weakness.”

“Their weakness?” She asks, furrowing her brows.

She doesn’t seem to disagree with me, but just to wonder what I mean.

“Well, it just makes sense, doesn’t it?” I continue. “Money is power, don’t you agree?”

“Course I do.”

“But that’s the thing. Money itself is power, but having it isn’t. If all you care about it having money, then you’re nothing but a **** to it. If money is power, then greed is weakness, because you’ll never truly be free of its influence. All your actions will be dictated by your desire for money.”

“Exactly! That’s what I meant! It’s not just about being rich, it’s about how you get rich, what methods you use, how much you had to work for it!” She exclaims enthusiastically, as if she’d finally met a kindred spirit after years of solitude.

“But I think we should take this idea a step further.”

“How so?”

“Just think about it. If greed is weakness, then disinterest in money is strength. Those who are beholden to their desire for more and more and more money are predictable and manipulable, but those who don’t care are more free than anyone else. I mean, what are you gonna do to control them? Cut their pay? What’s that gonna do?”

“I mean... I guess disinterest does give you a certain resilience. But resisting power isn’t the same thing as possessing it,” She counters.

“But what else is there? Resilience is independence, independence is freedom, and freedom is power. Power to pursue one’s goals unimpeded. You said it yourself, it’s all about how you achieve your goals, how much you work to reach them. But money doesn’t have to be part of the equation.”

“But it should be. Money can be the fuel you use to go further, to reach goals you couldn’t have dreamed of otherwise. You’d be a dumbass to refuse to use it,” She responds instantly.

It’s interesting to note that her eyes are still clear and focused, meaning the app hasn’t kicked in yet. But I don’t think it’s because my arguments are ineffective, I think it’s because the app knows I don’t need its help yet. And I’m thankful. It wouldn’t be as fun if Ivy weren’t at her full capacity to argue back. I want to enjoy this.

And I can see it in her eyes. In the way she’s maintaining eye contact with an intensity I’ve never seen from her, a burning, determined spark of intelligence shining through her pupils. I can see it in her corner smile, in the speed at which she replied to my last point, in the excited spasms shaking down her leg, in the way she keeps tucking her perfectly maintained raven black hair behind her ears to keep her vision unobstructed. Everything in her demeanour shows that she’s enjoying this debate as much as I am. That she’s finally found someone willing to stand up to her points and challenge her, intellectually, in a way that apathetic teachers and kowtowing classmates never did.

I, and I alone, am ready to fight her.

And fight her I will.

“It may be one way to reach your goal, but it’s far from the only one, and out of all the ways to power, isn’t it the least elegant? Paying your way to the top is nothing but brute ****. Think of history. The prophets who founded religions, the revolutionaries who toppled corrupted regimes, the philosophers and explorers, the artists and scientists. Those who truly changed the world forever did it not for money, not because of money, but out of ambition, for the sake of higher ideals, lofty hopes and an insatiable hunger for knowledge or beauty. Did money help some of them? Yes, of course, but they would’ve done it even if they didn’t have it.”

“How do you know that for sure? You can’t just bring up history if you’re just gonna ignore some of the variables.”

Just the response I expected. She’s putting her guard to one side, time to swing from the other.

“Ivy, why argue on technicalities? Just face it. You said yourself that I’m the only person in this school worthy of respect. And I happen to be one of the poorest. Do you think that’s a coincidence? Two hundred incredibly rich women around you, and the one person worth listening to, worth debating with, the one who stands up to you is one of the few poor people around. Those girls are obsessed with their fortune, and as such they flock to you. They look up to you, not because of your qualities, but because of your money. You’re one of the richest people here, and that’s all they see. That’s all they care about. But I’m beyond that. I don’t care about money, and as such I am free of your influence.”

Of course, I lied to an extent. I don’t see myself as a greedy person, but I surely wouldn’t say no to higher standards of living.

Right after I say this last point, I see something shifting within her. She didn’t expect me to bring my argument back to the present, back to us, and she seems genuinely thrown off balance by it.

And the app knows it’s time to kick in.

Ivy’s eyes slightly lose their focus. Her forehead wrinkles, as if it were hard to concentrate, hard to think.

Let’s do this.

“I may not look like it, but poor and independent as I am, I’m the most powerful person in this school. I’m the one you should look up to, the one worthy of having authority over you.”

“Authority..? But...” She trails off.

“But what? You know it’s true. You already knew it before. I’m the one person you should listen to, the one person you should obey.”

“Obey... you?”

“Yes. Don’t you feel that this school has been left to chaos for too long? Students disrespecting their superiors, teachers not caring about the quality of their education, staff putting appearances above actual quality... We can change this. I can change this. But you and I need to restore order to this place.”

“Restore order...”

I’ve reached the point where my arguments are no longer logical, and the app is doing some heavy lifting. Her eyes are almost entirely blank, I just need to push some more.

“What else can you do? Your power has no hold over me, and you know I’m worthy of your respect. Surely that can only mean that I outrank you.”

“Outrank..?”

“Yes. You have power over all those who desire money, because you have more than them. And since I have nothing, I have power over you. Where else would I go on the hierarchy?”

“Power over me...”

“It’s okay Ivy, you don’t need to fight back. Just surrender, and serve me.”

“Serve you... yes. Yes! I should serve you!”

-40 BS. 8 remaining.

Phew, I was actually a bit insecure towards the end. The shift from real argumentation to bullshit was a bit less elegant than I’d planned for. I’m almost sad that we didn’t reach a proper end to our debate, but I would’ve been a fool not to lunge in when she lost her footing.

Oh well, it’s not like this is the last time I’ll be debating.

I’ve tried to respect my rule about beliefs having to bring something good, in this case by stressing the importance of bringing order back, but whether or not it actually leads to an improvement in the way the school is run will depend on how I act going forward.

Now, experiment 2 was about increasing my authority, and that’s done. All I need to do is check the app when I’m alone and then monitor her behaviour in the future.

But that’s not all I want to do now. I have one last experiment for today. And Ivy is still going to be my target.

Ever since I first read the rules of the app, I’ve been thinking.

If you run out of BS during your argumentation, it will fail, and while the target will not remember the argumentation itself, they will reel back from it and see their behaviour be slightly modified in the opposite direction

There’s quite an obvious loophole in there, isn’t there?

What if I purposefully argued for something I don’t want, while knowing I don’t have enough BS?

That way, my target would “bounce back” in the opposite direction, the one that I actually want.

It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

But I have to try it out, just to see what happens.

Of course, I don’t want to put myself into a complicated situation if it backfires, so I’m going to go for a belief with a fairly limited scope.

And, well, I was left a bit... unsatisfied after what happened with the three girls on the quad. So I’ll see if I can get her to satisfy my urges.

Something simple and perverted.

Let’s just make her want to give me a blowjob.

I know, after everything I said about wanting to make sure that every sexual act felt special the first time, I’m just going to go for something straightforward like this, but I’m expecting it to fail anyways, so it won’t really matter.

And if it does somehow work, well, that itself will make it feel special, won’t it?

The rules also say that the target won’t actually remember the argumentation, so it doesn’t even matter how I bring it up.

So no need to be subtle.

“Oh, by the way, Ivy, don’t you hate giving me blowjobs?”

“What? What the fuck?”

“I mean, it’s just not something you enjoy, is it?”

“What the hell are you talking about? Fuck you! I’m leaving!” She yells as she stands up, ready to stomp out.

“No, no. I’d rather you stay here. I demand parley.”

She stays stunned in place for a second, before sitting back down, her eyes shooting daggers at me.

“Fine. Whatever you have to say, say it quickly.”

I have to say, I don’t like this direct confrontation when I can avoid it. But the more constrained my argumentation is, the more likely it is to cost too much BS, which is what I’m looking for.

By arguing that she doesn’t want to give me a blowjob, if everything goes to plan, which it probably won’t, the app will take her into the opposite direction, and make her believe that she actually does want to give me one.

“I mean, just tell me if I’m wrong? Do you like giving me head?”

“Why would I like that? What the fuck is wrong with you!?”

“So you don’t?”

“No, I don’t! Are you happy?”

“You really don’t like giving me head.”

“I really don’t like giving you... head!” She repeats, with scorn at first, but her voice softens a bit towards the end.

“You really hate giving blowjobs to your teacher.”

“I really hate... giving blowjobs... to my teacher...”

The blankness is already back.

“You wouldn’t want to get on your knees and suck me off right now.”

“I wouldn’t want... suck you off...”

-10 BS. 0 remaining.

Insufficient BS, aborting belief implementation and executing emergency memory wipe.

We recommend leaving the target alone during the process.

Immediately after feeling the notification in my mind, I see Ivy bringing her hands up to her temples as she leans onto the table before rapidly losing consciousness.

It looked a lot less painful than what happened to Tatiana, thankfully, but it’s still a worrying sight. Luckily, nobody else is in the library to see it happen.

I should probably listen to the app’s advice and take my leave.

I do grab a bottle of water out of my backpack and set it next to Ivy on the desk. I’m not sure what it feels like to have your memory wiped, but I imagine it to be close to a hangover. Water will help.

I gather my stuff and leave the room. Right before closing the door, I look back onto Ivy and see her moving, ever so slightly. She’ll probably regain consciousness very soon. I close the door and start walking back to my room.

And on the way, I take my phone out and check the app.

---

XP +4! Next level in 13.

Cash +4! Total: 17.

New profile added: Ivy Klaus.

New path unlocked for Ivy Klaus.

New resistances added to Ivy Klaus.

---

Of course, I immediately open her profile.

---

Ivy Klaus

Age: 18

Occupation: Student

Traits:

• Queen Bee. Target will be able to spread any of her beliefs on anyone who looks up to her or considers themself lower than her on a hierarchy, at no BS cost to the user. This process will take time and she can only spread each belief to a maximum of ten people.

Resistances:

• Target will resist the idea that she should give the user money.
• Target will resist the idea that she should perform non-oral sexual acts on the user.

---

Right as I read that last part, a notification pops up at the top of the screen, before disappearing a few seconds later.

Nice try :)

This is the second time the app sasses me out. I think it’s safe to assume that it can always make sure that this “reeling back” thing goes in a direction I don’t like. In this case, instead of understanding the opposite of “you hate giving me blowjobs” as “you love giving me blowjobs”, it understood it as “you hate giving me anything other than blowjobs”.

I mean, it can most likely read my thoughts, after all, so it’s not like I can outsmart it.

Although now that it’s taunting me about it, I do want to try and outsmart it, out of spite.

It’s a bit annoying that I’ve locked Ivy out of some acts, but it’s not as bad as it could’ve been. Resistances can be overcome, they’re just more expensive to go against. And even then, it’s only a resistance against performing acts, not receiving them, so there’s probably still quite a bit of fun to be had with her.

And then again, having an oral slut could be fun too.

It’s also interesting that she got a resistance about giving me money, although it does make sense given our conversation.

Underneath the rest of the profile, Ivy’s new options are displayed.

---

Available Path, Servant.

Please select one of the following options:

1. Maid, of honour

   “He has authority over me. I should serve him and keep his life in order.”

   Target will see it as her responsibility to make sure that the user has the best possible standards of living. To that end, she will want to take care of his domestic needs and chores, and will want him to have the best accommodation he can. Eventually, she will want the user and herself to move in together, so she can better serve him. She will take pride in her ability to serve the user, and find both happiness and sexual stimulation in doing the user’s chores. Despite this, she will keep her personality and be able to debate and talk back to the user when she disagrees with him.

2. The Preacher

   “We need to restore order to the school. Each must learn their place.”

   Target will see it as her duty to restore and maintain order within the social group Saint Gregory Boarding School. To that end, she will use her social status to convince others of the importance of respecting order and hierarchy. She will not use **** or sexual domination, but will instead rely on softer techniques. Despite this, she will keep her personality and be able to debate and talk back to the user when she disagrees with him.

---

Hmmm. These are both quite interesting, especially when taken with her trait. It may seem like a weaker version of Tatiana’s Kingpin trait, but it actually gives me a lot more control over which beliefs are spread onto whom. It’ll take some time, but I’ll be able to get a lot of control for a very small amount of BS if I can get Ivy to do so much of the work for me.

Eventually, I could have either a small army of maids taking care of my needs, or a small army of zealots spreading my word far and wide through the school.

I’ve already got a few people helping me spread my beliefs, so the preacher path would simply give me another angle of attack, and would make things even faster, whereas the maid path wouldn’t be as useful in spreading my control, but would give me something entirely new and different.

Choices, choices.

---

---

---

Hello everyone!

Thank you for reading this new chapter! Once again, I couldn't help but write something really long, and we're above the 4000 word mark. I hope you still liked it!

I try not to bring up my ko-fi too often to avoid making anyone feel **** to donate, but I do have some good news: we've found an artist for the character sheet! Professional artist Taleslord, one of the readers of this story, has reached out to me to ask if I was interested in commissioning him. I loved the idea of the artist being one of us, rather than someone completely external, and I think his style is going to be a great fit for the characters of this story!

If you'd like to participate in us getting some art of the characters (first up will be Jenny), feel free to give my ko-fi page a look! I also think I'll have a little blog post up soon to thank everyone who's tipped.

Anyways, thank you again for reading and feel free to vote for your preferred option in the comments here!

See you all soon!