Laugh Track

What show was Marisa talking about? Was it John peeping on her most evenings, meaning she was the one who had caught him in the act and triggered that achievement? If so, why did she continue last night? And why did she not seem mad about it? That didn’t make any sense.

It seemed far more likely that she had referred to something else that John either didn’t know about, failed to make the connection to, or had forgotten about. Even so, his boner, which had finally broken through the raised threshold at the thought of Marisa being okay with his peeping, insisted that he didn’t discard the possibility that she actually was referring to that peeping.

Until he knew for sure, he had to make another attempt at resisting the urge to peep, though. He could not afford pissing off any Abyssal who was friendly towards him, let alone one that was much more powerful than himself.

As for the Order stuff she talked about, giving their page on the Librarian website a proper read instead of a skim was definitely in his near future. That said, even the skim had made it clear that it was lacking some key information, so he needed to discuss it with Qhila. And with Marisa tomorrow afternoon. Fitting both into tomorrow might be tough…

In any case, he was grinding right now and needed to keep at that for as long as he had time.

John had left a note for his mom saying that he had gone out for a walk and to text him when she got home so he could return. He was halfway through the clear after the one with Marisa when he got that text.

When he came home, he found his mom in the kitchen. Brenda looked a bit tired, but her face lit up in a smile when she saw him. “Hi sweetie. It’s nice to see you get some fresh air.”

“Hey Mom. Need a hand?” After how much he had worried her yesterday, that was kinda the least he could do.

Brenda took a moment to consider before responding, “There isn’t really anything for a second cook to do, but I wouldn’t mind the company.”

“Company it is then,” he said and went to open a cabinet. “And I can help set the table. By the way, before I forget, do you happen to have Marisa’s number? She promised to help me with something tomorrow, but she had to leave before we could hash out the details.”

Brenda smirked slyly at him. “Getting dance lessons now? ‘Qhila’ must have made quite an impression. Or is it for Christie’s benefit?”

“Wha- I- That’s not… uhh…” The first half of that was genuine confusion about how his mom had drawn that conclusion, before he recalled that Marisa’s job was supposedly as a private dance instructor. Obviously, that was a half-truth at most and probably a cover story entirely.

He’d begun protesting, then realized that he didn’t have a different reason that he could actually tell her. So, he deflected instead and let her keep the assumption that was safe for her to have. “So… Do you have her number or not?”

Brenda giggled a bit as she nodded, washed her hands and got out her phone. Moments later, a message ping came from John’s phone. Presuming that it held the requested number and that Marisa having to run meant it’d be a while before she could respond anyways, he let that be for now.

While taking out the plates, utensils and stuff, John went for a new topic. Better not give his mom too much of a chance to get started on Qhila or Christie again. “So, how has work been treating you lately?”

Brenda let out a sigh of not quite suppressed frustration. “Busy. We’re still short staffed since Millie went on maternity leave, and honestly, I don’t think management is trying very hard to find a temp to fill in…”

The rest of dinner went well, but unremarkably. He’d let his mom vent a bit more about her work situation, then she had changed the topic to something else safe, and so on. Once dinner was eaten, the table cleared, and the dishwasher loaded, he had excused himself on account of homework.

Which was kinda true. After all, referring to research on important stuff as ‘homework’ even outside of a school context was common, so it wasn’t really a lie. And if it was, it was a small and necessary one. Pushing the moral concerns aside, he took out his phone.

He’d meant to pull up Abysspedia, AKA the Librarians’ website, again, but the message notification on the phone reminded him of two things. One was the need to hammer out some specifics with Marisa, to the effect of which he sent her a text. The other was the stack of notifications in his system. Probably best to look at those sooner rather than later.

Achievement Unlocked: That Will Be An Important Lesson
Deal damage to yourself with a melee weapon.
I guess I should give you something to stop you from doing that again.
Reward: Light Blade Proficiency Skill. Laugh Track Button.

… Yeah, okay, he kinda deserved that one.

New Skill: Light Blade Proficiency Level 1 [Passive]
Improves your ability to wield small blades such as daggers, throwing knives and shortswords.
+1% damage (Skill lvl)
+1% critical damage (Skill lvl)

If John had any plans of doing much fighting with that kind of weapon, this would be unfiltered awesome. Sure, the bonuses were small at the moment, but it was two presumably stacking multipliers on one Skill.

However, the knife was a backup and he would hopefully use backups less and less as time went on. And it was the backup he had used least in the barrier to boot. Still, free damage was free damage, so it would be nice to have when he did need it.

Laugh Track Button
Divine
Press the button to hear me laugh at you. I may decide to press it myself on occasion, or to add additional laughs to it later on.
Attributes: Blessed, Cursed, Indestructible, Plastic

John had hoped that it would turn out to be better than the name suggested, like the Golden Star Sticker had been. That did not seem to be the case. Physically, it was a white, palm-sized plastic square with a round, red button on which was written ‘HaHaHa’ in yellow Comic Sans.

Pushing the button produced a pleasant, melodious, feminine laugh. He had kind of expected it to be a mocking tone given the context, but it was more of a neutral one akin to someone laughing at the punchline of a joke. The voice was vaguely familiar, though John couldn’t quite place it.

After a few seconds of laughing, the sound stopped and that was that. Since nothing else popped up afterwards, he could now definitively conclude that this thing didn’t come with any hidden boons. Oh well.

New Skill: Bludgeon Proficiency lvl 1 [Passive]
Improves your ability to wield blunt weapons such as clubs, staves and hammers.
+1% damage (Skill lvl)
+1% knockback (Skill lvl)

Kind of the same deal as with the knife Skill, this was nice to have but not a big deal. The second bonus being something other than critical damage was moderately interesting, however. While he wasn’t looking to change his build plans, it was interesting and potentially useful to make note of how different weapons did different things in Abyssal hands. Even if he should probably check if this was a general thing or Gamer specific before basing plans on it.

New Skill: Squirt Gun Proficiency lvl 1 [Passive]
Improves your ability to wield weapons that squirt or spray harmful liquids at your foes.
+1% accuracy (Skill lvl)
+1% PPE penetration (Skill lvl)

Another new Skill, and once again gained without being a reward or from a Skill Book. At this point, it seemed like prompting Skills on their own generally required more concerted effort and practice than getting them by other means, but that made sense.

The Skill itself was great. While he would have preferred a damage bonus if it applied to damaging chemical effects, there was a very good chance that it would only apply to the impact damage of the liquid. In that case it would be negligible because to get enough **** to hurt, he’d need a pressure washer or something like that, and that’d mean going through a lot of ‘ammo’ in very little time.

Meanwhile, accuracy favored getting reliable damage and debuffs in and avoiding wasted shots. That in turn made rarer alchemical concoctions viable options, which would probably boost his damage anyways.

The ‘PPE’ thing was a bit of a puzzler, but a helpful tooltip told him it was stuff like chemical goggles, face masks and hazmat suits. So basically armor penetration for alchemical stuff instead of for physical ****.

Achievement Unlocked: Baby’s First Clear
Clear an Arena barrier for the first time. Without help from anyone more than 3 levels above you.
Congratulations, you now barely qualify for an apprentice level position in Abyssal pest control.
Reward: Twice the EXP and cash reward of the barrier (350 EXP, $124)

LEVEL UP!

Well, that was just great. EXP and money were always welcome. He would distribute the points once he finished the last two notifications.

Achievement Unlocked: Hostile Takeover
Have someone else seize control of a barrier from you.
That can’t be good…
Reward: 100 EXP, +1 Barrier Basics level.

Well, it had turned out to be not so bad. Actually, it might be worthwhile to try to fish for ‘negative’ Achievements in a controlled environment with Qhila or Marisa. Something to discuss with them later.

Achievement Unlocked: Up To Bat
Get a girl’s number.
That really wasn’t how you were supposed to get this, but since you need all the help you can get and she would’ve given it if you asked, I’ll let you have this one.
Reward: +1 CHA, +1 LIB, +1 cm base dick size, +10% cum volume.

And there it was again with the LIB increases. At this point, it seemed like he could barely interact with a girl without increasing it… Which on second thought was kinda not so different from his life between hitting puberty and entering the Abyss, but still. It came with free CHA and dick size, though, which were quite welcome. On the latter, he was starting to enter ‘above average’ territory, which he was quite pleased with.

That wrapped up the notifications, meaning he just had some stat points left before it was research time. Today had made it clear that he was still playing catch up with the Abyss in general and Frank in particular, though, so putting a point in each of his 5 lowest stats was an easy decision.

Achievement Unlocked: It’s a Start
Raise all your base stats to at least 10.
Congratulations, you are no longer abysmally terrible at something.
Reward: 100 EXP, $50

Well that was a nice bit of gravy to celebrate getting CHA to 10 with. But he had a wiki to dive, starting with a proper reading of the Golden Rose page.

According to the website, it was an old, religious, knightly order. They had been started by the actual King Arthur at the behest of the Lady of the Lake, whom the order held to be a guise or aspect of the Supreme Deity. The article noted that equating the Lady with the Supreme Deity was a religious belief of the order, not a proven truth.

The order’s principal mission was to protect mundanes from Abyssal predation, exploitation and ****, which seemed like a fairly noble goal to John. It was light on information about the methods they used to do that though, and when it came to religious orders the, sometimes literal, devil was often in those details.

JRPGs were especially fond of that kind of twist, but it wasn’t like the mundane world was short on examples of religions and religious groups hiding awful stuff behind a benevolent facade. So asking both Qhila and Marisa for more details was definitely still on the to do list.

The part about the Order’s history was fairly interesting but held little of immediate importance. It did mention their involvement in a few bits of nasty business during the medieval age, but basically everyone important was involved in nasty business back then so it didn’t say much about how they were now.

The only part there that he thought could be relevant was that the branch in Springfield, and the Order being in America at all, was fairly new. They had relocated an entire manor from Britain to Springfield in 2003, to serve as headquarters of the Shield Branch.

Much more relevant was what it said about the Wardens. They were a set of three champions of the Order, each hailing from a long matrilineal line. Each carried a blessing from the Lady/maybe Gaia that gave them “power to rival a demigod” in the predictable paladin-like areas. In an odd wrinkle, this blessing didn’t go directly from mother to daughter as one would expect. Instead, it was first passed to the husband when a Warden got married, then to the daughter when she came of age.

A picture captioned “former Lady Warden and current Lord Protector Brighton of the Shield” showed the faces of a woman with fiery red curls and a man with a light dusting of gray in his brown hair and beard. The woman resembled an older Moira so much, he would’ve sooner thought it to be her with an excellent aging filter applied than someone else.

‘Man, if Moira is supposed to have a blessing that eventually gives her power to rival Wentworth, she can’t have been ‘of age’ for long. Actually, didn’t Marisa also say something along those-’

The thought was interrupted by a yawn. Perhaps it was best to let this lie for now and go to bed. He had clearly not gotten enough sleep last night to get the side effects of the incense stuff out of his system, and with how the last two days had gone, he’d best try to keep sharp.