Sunday Morning Part 1 - A slew of messages.

There were two reason why John woke up. The first, lesser reason, was the sun that was shining into his face through the window. In their heated finale of the day neither him nor Rave had thought about closing the curtain, the only reason why the sunlight hadn’t hit him earlier was because of his shirt that somehow managed to find its way up there. The much more important reason for him waking up however was the feeling of something pressing against his chin.

He already could see it, a textbook scene from a romance novel. After their first night together him and Rave must have fallen asleep arm in arm and right now, happy in his embrace, Rave must have snuggled up against him unconsciously as she dreamt about what else the two of them could do. He opened his eyes and was already ready to kiss the pink-haired girl awake when he realized what exactly was pressing against his face.

Rave had turned around in her sleep. Completely. What he saw directly in front of him was not her face, smiling, but her foot. Rave laid in the bed with limbs spread out. Rolling to the side, her foot dragged across his face in the process, Rave mumbled, “Nooooo, Jimmie stop building Michael Bay movies, they don’t even taste gooood!” For future reference John mentally remarked that Rave was prone to moving a lot and talking while she slept. The heel of her left foot landed on his shoulder and caused five damage to his health. “And kicking.” He whisperingly added to the mental list.

Slowly and carefully he wiggled himself out of the bed without waking up Rave. Once he managed to do that he had a good view of her sleeping face. Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, she looked the same as always, pink dishevelled hair, full glossy lips, clean skin. John had assumed that a lot of work must go into the hair, nothing looks so perfectly dishevelled without any time spent, but as it seemed he was wrong. That or some Abyss Shenanigans were at play, no way to be sure. Not that it was important though, she was sexy as all hell regardless.

Speaking of Abyss Shenanigans though there were some windows flying around him and it was time to finally get around to it. He turned to his ‘Quest completed’ first.

He had gotten with a bigger dick last time. Part of him wanted to go with it the second time as well. However, unlike 5% Charisma, which was really good in its own right, he had no idea what he would be missing in a Skill Evolution Point. Apparently, it was good enough to forego not only the 2cm bonus but also an enchanted item and 500 Experience for. He may regret that decision but he decided to choose the option which granted the SEP.

And the weird things just kept rolling in. Relationship screen? Okay? Sure, he wanted to try and get max relationship with Rave anyway, he was feeling very attached to the girl that he just lost his virginity to and she was generally a blast to hang around with. Attached enough to drop his plans to create a Harem? Unlikely. Time would tell. He accepted the quest and (after making sure that new item was placed in his inventory) moved on to the next window.

Okay, nice, but this raised his Libido and he was kinda afraid of what would happen if it shot through the roof. Also, curious. If WIS and INT were anything to go by SOMETHING would happen if he increased the base to 25. He was tempted but if yesterday was an indication for anything he would need even more mana. Actually, what he needed was a way to have effectively infinite mana. More windows first though.

And with all that his Stat Screen now looked like this.

Now he wanted to eat something, but before that he wanted to get dressed. He went over to the bag Rave had just tossed in front of the wardrobe yesterday and took out his spare clothing. He had to rummage through Rave’s stuff but after having actually been undergarments just touching them just didn’t have the same appeal anymore. Once he had dressed up in a black shirt and blue jeans he went to the kitchen quarter.

He unloaded the canned food and then froze when he had put all of it on the counter. How in the name of the devil was he supposed to heat it up? He turned the stove on but nothing happened. Which was logical, where was the electricity supposed to come from anyway, but as Rave had informed him they were supposed to have an internet connection here so what was he supposed to think now? Everything about this container made no sense whatsoever.

He stood over the kitchen counter, arms crossed and puzzled about what to do. ‘Is there like a switch or something?’ He asked himself and looked around. Sure, there was a switch but he was fairly certain that it was just for the chain of lights above him that snaked itself around the corners of the rood. He flipped the switch and, indeed, nothing happened. He kept looking.

When his search kept being without success his eyes fell on the contraption in the middle of the room. It was made from a large black metal cylinder at the button from which several dozen cables connected to the roof in a chaotic fashion, bending around a large metal tube. The cylinder at the bottom also had a circular cut-our, wide enough to put his hand into. John Observe’d the thing.

“Aaaah.” John understood as the flip switched inside his brain. He stuck his hand inside the opening and started to try and emulate the feeling that he had whenever he used Mana Power Attack without actually using Mana Power Attack. He promptly gained a debuff called 'Mana Drain' which cost him 6 Mana per Minute.

The apparatus sprang into action with a series of clanking noises. John heard gear turn inside the metal shell, the air began to softly vibrate around his hand. ‘6 Mana per Minute?’ John thought and checked his status with his free left hand. Thanks to his latest stat increases he was regenerating 5,4 Mana/minute and after equipping the Necklace of the Haunted Woods that went up to 5,9. Just out of boredom he calculated how long exactly he could sit here given his numbers.

“So I pay 0,1 every minute with my mana pool of 182. 182 divided by 0,1 is the same as 182 times 10 so I can sit here for 1820 minutes, that in hours is 30,3 repeating. So, I can sit here and give mana to this thing for about one day and 6 hours.”

Gaia could go suck a fat one. This calculation was very important, -6 MP/minute was exactly the same as Possession’s cost. Now he knew he could actually keep levelling that while he slept. Would be an interesting feeling to be sure. His spirit would be awake while his mind rested? Or would he have the weirdest level of lucid dreaming? What did the Achievement mean by ‘right next to him’ anyway? Rave was still lying in be-

“Good morning, John.” Rave said and kneeled down next to him, wrapped in a thin blanket. “GOD GRACIOUS!” John exclaimed, jumping at her voice suddenly intruding his thoughts. “Jane is fine.” Rave joked, “No need to start worshipping me or anything.” Wait, did she just call him by his actual name. Wait, wait, did she just tell him to call her by her actual name? Time to look what Observe said.

Okay, okay, wait, wait, what? Wait. John suddenly felt very conflicted about the development of his life. Not conflicted in the ‘I shouldn’t be doing this’ but in the ‘This was actually too good to be true’ kind of way. A girl had a crush ON HIM? Was this because he acted like a man for once instead of brooding to himself all day or because of his higher Charisma? Was it because Rave was just the kind of girl he could actually hang around with? “Where have you been all my life?” He asked before he could stop himself.

“Wow, okay that is gonna take a bit.” She started listing off places by counting them on her fingers. “I spent the first five years of my life in England, then we moved over to Germany but we didn’t stay at one city and mouthed south to north continuously until we eventually ended up in Sweden when I was twelve. Mom and Dad then started to fight, a lot. When I was fifteen they took ‘a break’ and mom took me to her parents in Japan while she was gone doing Auction stuff. I stayed there until I turned seventeen and they officially divorced with dad gaining custody over me which then ended with me moving here about one and a half years ago. So, yeah, that’s where I have been.” Okay, either she didn’t know what he had implicated or she chose to ignored it. Either way was fine with John.

The lights above him suddenly sprang to light. “Oh, I must have forgotten to switch them off again.” He mumbled. Rave got up and did it for him as he kept feeding mana into the machinery. “How much more mana can you feed that thing? I want to know if I can go take a shower or if it would be too much on you.” “I can keep going for another day.” John answered truthfully. “Wow, what?” Rave asked. “Is it that weird?” “It is to me. I can charge that thing enough to get the oven going for ten minutes maybe, then again I don’t have a lot of mana and I can’t regenerate while it is being drained.” John blinked in confusion, “You can’t?” “Of course not, ya dunce.” Rave threw the blanket back on the bed and now nude walked over to the bag of clothes, pulling out a towel and a few hair products. “There are a lot of ways to regenerate mana. I do it through concentrating the worlds energy I take in while breathing in my centre. It replenishes power pretty fast but I can’t do that while I give away mana or cast something, the streams would get tangled up and cause inner bleeding. It doesn’t matter most of the time because my attacks come in short bursts instead of drawn out barrages. You on the other hand just keep on regenerating at a steady pace by simply existing.” She pointed at him with a bottle of shampoo. “Which is, once again, bullshit. However.” She smiled widely and winked at him, “You are MY source of bullshit right now.” She turned and, hips swinging seductively, walked into the shower. “Keep being interesting, John!”