Hump day.

First order of business, he had a new daily quest:

John was happy to see a quest that didn't require him to fight; after the previous day, he was less than enthusiastic about throwing himself up against more monsters. Still, while it shouldn't be too dangerous, he had no idea what the caches looked like. Hopefully Observe would be able to identify them.

He accepted the quest, yawned, and moved on to the next thing on the list. After checking his door was locked, John pulled his armor out of his Character Sheet and laid the damaged leather on the bed. It looked a lot worse than he remembered, with rips and holes all over the chest, arms and legs. There was a particularly nasty slash from the left shoulder all the way to the right hip. John shuddered. He'd been lucky the hydra hadn't disemboweled him.

Studded Leather Tunic
Unremarkable leather attire, studded with metal for additional protection.
Condition: Severely damaged. Armor reduced by 2.
2 Armor; +1 Reinforcement

While he picked up one of the bracers, he brought up the Forge window.

Studded Leather Bracer
Repair: 2 units of leather
Deconstruct: 3 units of leather
Armor is already Reinforced

He lacked enough leather to fix the armor, so repairing all of it was out of the question. John melted the bracers back into materials, which he set next to the remaining armor. One option was to use the resources from part of his equipment to repair the rest, but that'd leave him ****. Alternatively, he could try making something new with all the hydra parts he'd gathered. It wasn't a hard decision, and he browsed the Forge menu while deconstructing the rest of the studded leather. He quickly came across what he needed:

Hydra Scale Mail
Crafted from the hardened scales of a multi-headed horror, this armor naturally blends in with jungle plants.
8 Armor; No Reinforcement

Hydra Scale Armor Set
26 Armor
Set Bonus: +2 Agility, Camouflage (Minor)

The hundreds of scales he'd stripped off the beast served him well, transmuting into a vest of green, layered mail. As the description suggested, it was colored a mixture of dark and light greens that likely would vanish against a backdrop of ferns or bushes. John tried the armor on, experimentally rolling one shoulder to feel the surface shift and flow with his motions. It was a bit more inhibiting than his old armor, slightly heavier too, but not enough to be a problem. He was happy enough with it.

Unfortunately, his stock of throwing knives was less easily replenished. John lacked the tertiary materials he'd used to make Lerna's Jaws in the first place, and couldn't Forge extra daggers without them. It was a pity but a valuable lesson. Next time he made something in the field, he'd be sure to bring back some extra materials for repair costs.

John dumped the rest of the hydra parts into the chest at the foot of his bed, along with most of the loot he'd acquired the day before. When he got to the Solaris Keystone he hesitated, holding the burning disc in his tattooed hand. As before, a glow spread from the Keystone across his skin, wavering lines of blazing light that beckoned him to places unknown. He wasn't sure what to do with the relic. Keeping it at home would be safest, but then it'd be hard to get to if John needed to use it. Then again... he wasn't planning to use Stellar Dive today, and Hearth could bring him back home.

The light vanished as John deposited the Keystone into his storage chest and switched back to his clothes. He looked at his tattooed palm, holding it away from him and rotating his wrist to inspect the design from all angles. It was too unusual to dismiss as a mere fashion choice, and tattoos were against the Academy's dress code. He'd need to keep it covered. Fortunately, Ashcroft Academy allowed its students to wear long-sleeved uniforms during the summer.

John grabbed one of his winter shirts out of his closet and threw it into his Character Sheet. The sleeves covered the portion of the tattoo that reached his forearm, but left his palm completely exposed. That'd be the hard part to conceal. Bandages would just attract attention, he didn't own a pair of gloves... he looked around the room for something he could use. John's eyes landed on his desk, where several small tubes of paint from his art project were scattered about. An idea sprung to mind.

He just needed to cover up most of the design with various paints. Then, if anyone asked, he could claim to be working on his project for Miss Summers; June, his mind corrected a second later. Which reminded him... in all the chaos of the past few days, between exhaustion and oversleeping, he'd missed his routine. Not today.

John hooked a finger in his pants and pulled them down, using his imagination to conjure up the sexier images from the past couple days. There were a scant few, but he took his sweet time with each one. June, her panties around one ankle and wet pussy completely exposed. Erica's breasts, freed from the confines of her armor and just begging to be groped. Moira bending over like her ass wasn't just out there for the world to see.

One by one, he tried to remember every detail in crystalline clarity, then transmute those memories into fantasy. It wasn't hard to imagine June begging him to take her, not after overhearing her gasp and moan. The only change was his name on her lips, her legs spread around him instead of for her fingers... He tried to imagine what Saturday would be like... what new side of his teacher would he see? A mental image of her screaming his name amidst tangled sheets almost brought John over the edge, but he held back.

His imagination shifted to Erica, remembering the softness, the firmness of her body under his fingertips. The way she moaned as he fondled her... the fantasy was easy to create. Her, kissing him and begging a chance to 'reward' John for saving her life. Stripping her out of that confining armor, consciously this time, blushing with an embarrassment he'd never seen before. Her body under his fingers to play with as he desired, her mouth wrapping around his cock to show her thanks... again he had to hold back. There was still one more...

Moira. The self-righteous paladin. John replayed the moment in the vault in his mind, but this time, when she bent over, he sank his fingers into that fantastic ass. She exclaimed something about lewdness and perversion but didn't resist. Not as he pushed her against the coins and ripped open her catsuit, not as he entered her and took her from behind. She only moaned and writhed with pleasure as he took out every last bit of frustration on her tight body... At last, he came.

John took a few minutes to just relax and breath, before cleaning himself up and throwing fresh pants into his Character Sheet. Preparing for school only took a few minutes, and he had time to take a long and relaxing shower, but John hopped in and out as quickly as he could. After the last night's fiasco, John was hoping to avoid any chance of running into his mom. Best case, she'd keep prying about Moira and ask questions he couldn't answer. More likely, she'd try to ground him or re-negotiate their curfew agreement. Absolute worst case, she'd bring up his absences...

Once he'd dried off, he sat at his desk and pulled out a few random tubes of paint. He'd need to make the mess look unintentional and random, so John started by adding some light strokes of color to his fingers. It didn't take long to cover up most of the tattoo. Just to finish up the look, he added some paint to the edges of his sleeves and clapped his hands together. Once they were dry, he'd be just another art-obsessed Academy student.

John waited for a few minutes with his hands held out, browsing his Character Sheet. There was still the prompt from the day before, about choosing Black Rose Executioner as his Combat Style. He stared at the window, letting the gears in his head turn.

As he'd felt the night before, the Combat Style was seriously tempting; it filled some of the holes in his skill-set effectively and sounded metal as fuck. Sure, he was curious who the 'Black Rose' were, but would Moira tell him if he asked her? The description seemed to allude to them being a sort of black-ops team for the Order, which was just the kind of thing that the paladin seemed ill inclined to talk about, and he was on tenuous enough ground with her as is. John sighed and pulled out his phone, unlocking it with his password. At least he could address his primary concern.

John N. (8:11): Hey, would you be freaked out if I had a spell that impaled people?

While he waited for a reply, John headed downstairs to the kitchen. By his estimate, he had less than twenty minutes before his mom woke up, maybe another fifteen while she showered. Ideally, he'd be out of the house before then. He'd poured himself some cereal and taken the first bite when his phone buzzed.

Erica C. (8:17): Dude that sounds hardcore and awesome.
Erica C. (8:18): Oh I wont be at school today. Should be back on my feet by tomorrow.

John felt a little silly he'd even been worried about it. The berserker ran around cutting monsters in half with her axe, why would she be bothered by something like that? Honestly, he was getting worked up over nothing. John re-opened the prompt, and a sub-menu opened, presenting him with a simple:

Gain this Combat Style?
Yes / No

John pressed 'yes'. The window vanished, replaced with a new Combat Style window. He gave it a cursory glance then dismissed it. Right now, he'd focus on breakfast and getting out of the house before-

Upstairs there was the sound of a door shutting and footsteps. John pushed back his chair and readied to make a break for the kitchen door if his mom came downstairs, but, as expected, the footsteps ended halfway down the hall. He breathed a sigh of relief as the bathroom door shut overhead. Setting an alarm on his phone for five minutes, he dug into the simple breakfast with purpose.

While he waited for the bus, John browsed the news on his phone. The top headline was all about another disappearance, this time of someone he knew. Her name was Lydia Mortimer, she was seven years older than him and the hot babysitter for most of his childhood. As always, the police had no leads or even suspicions of where the girls were taken... but John was starting to make guesses. With a whole world of supernatural entities hidden below the surface of normal life, there had to be people with the motive and capabilities. He'd ask Erica later, maybe the Order was already on the trail of the kidnapper.

The bus pulled up and he got on board, taking the first empty seat and diving back into the news. Like the other disappearances, the person had seemingly vanished into thin air, leaving behind no reason for their absence. Where the story got particularly interesting was that Lydia had been on the phone before her disappearance. She'd been on the way to a friend's house for a party when the host called her, asking if she could pick up some wine. Lydia had agreed... then never showed up. By the evening, she'd been reported missing.

Police theorized that she'd cut through the Little Italy Botanical Garden, where she'd been isolated enough to be kidnapped. Of course, they didn't know how the perpetrator had managed it. The Garden saw enough visitors during the theorized time of her disappearance that someone should've seen something.

John had his own theory. She'd gone missing in the middle of the day, in a place that was busy enough that the Order might not notice but not remote enough to plausibly pull off a mundane ****... and there was one spell that could account for the anomalies. He was reasonably certain that Lydia had accidentally entered a Barrier. If so, it wasn't likely she was still alive...

John had to cut off that train of thought before it got too gruesome and busied himself instead with checking the contents of his Inventory as a distraction.

After the haphazard treatment he'd performed on Erica the day before, John had decided to surreptitiously raid the bathroom first-aid kit for some supplies. He had a roll of gauze, some sterilized needles and thread, medical tape and a small bottle of ****... enough to perform a few small field surgeries if he had to. Before he'd left the kitchen, he'd added several of the high-energy crunch bars his mother bought but never ate as emergency rations. It made for a halfway decent survival kit.

Above all else, yesterday had taught him that he wasn't prepared. Without Erica, he'd have been eaten by the hydra or trapped in the cave for the rest of his short life. Without a series of overwhelmingly lucky events and acquired skills, both of them would have been **** to live on drop bears or hydra meat. If he wanted to make it past level 10, it would be a good idea to do everything he could to hedge his bets on surviving whatever the Developer threw at him.

Which led to the last item he'd appropriated... a syringe of morphine. John wasn't sure why their home first-aid kit had such a potent painkiller, but he'd thrown it in his inventory. He wasn't Erica. If he'd suffered a bite like she had, and lived, the pain alone would've made it impossible to keep fighting. Sure, Gamer's Body would convert the actual damage into lost hp, but from his experiences the agony would persist. If he had to... only if he absolutely had to...

There was a heavy thud in the seat next to him, and John looked over to see Frank's ugly mug leering at him.

Oh. It's you.

The bully sneered; one of his front teeth was slightly crooked. John stared at it without much interest as Frank growled an insult. Days ago, literally two days, John would have been flinching away from the spittle or blustery threats that were thrown his way. When the fist lunged at him, he would've winced rather than stoically take it to the cheek. -1 hp. John would've cowered... but Frank wasn't scary anymore. In 48 hours, John had seen actual monsters, lived through a fight for his life, then killed said monsters. Comparatively, Frank was a balloon of hot air.

"Fucking faggot, why... won't... you... listen!" he screamed, punctuating each word with a punch.

-1 hp.
-2 hp.
-1 hp.

The pain shook John out of his distant state, and he glared at the bully, who seemed taken aback. Not once had John shown any real defiance, until now, and Frank simply had no clue how to handle it. So, he did what his stupid little mind told him to do. He punched the problem till it stopped being one. Except this time, John punched back. Two days ago, he'd wondered how much a single point of strength was worth... now he saw the results of nearly doubling the stat. He hit the bully right in the gut and knocked the wind clean out of him, forcing Frank to wheeze and gasp for air.

Frank's face turned purple as his eyes bulged out like a squeezed frog. They focused on John, and he started to panic. His first punch had been a bit of a cheap shot; the larger boy was practically made of muscle, but they'd been relaxed while he beat on John because Frank hadn't expected a counter-attack. Now, as fat fingers threatened to close around his throat, John desperately punched at the bully's stomach without much effect. All around them students whispered and stared, none wanting to intervene in the fight.

One hand closed around John's windpipe, and he knew he had to stop the bully. The spectators were too scared or entranced by the fight to step in; he could asphyxiate before anyone built up the courage. Frank's fingers clenched, and John choked. He struggled, lungs starting to burn, but the pressure only got worse.

Frank is going to kill me. Holy shit, he's seriously going to kill me if I don't do something!

Restraint snapped, **** aside by **** survival, and John dug his fingernails into the back of his attacker's hands... while casting Rend. The effect was immediate; Frank released him with a howl of rage, and he collapsed to the seat, gasping for air. John looked up in time to see the brute stagger back into the aisle, one hand half-covering the deep scratches on the other. A flicker of red energy worsened the injury, tearing into the ravaged flesh. It vanished before any of the spectators could notice it. Only John, grinning like a maniac, knew what he'd done.

A minute after the fight had ended, the driver finally intervened, separating the two of them until the rest of the students exited the bus. It wasn't a particularly difficult task, with Frank almost crippled by the pain in his hands and John trying to catch his breath. Teachers were summoned, and they were each put in the hands of their respective 'homeroom' teachers. Frank was led away by the irresponsible Coach Conroy... and John ended up in Mrs. Wentworth's office.

No sooner had she closed the door behind them and taken a seat behind her desk than the teacher let out an exasperated sigh, "Mr. Newman... I believe I gave you explicit instructions not to place yourself in this situation. Why are you here?"

"Frank tried to kill me," John said, rubbing his throat. The skin was sore and would probably bruise.

"Did he now..." Ms. Wentworth said something under her breath that sounded like, "That troglodyte," then she spoke clearly again, "What did you do to him?"

John blinked, confused, "Sorry, what?"

"Don't waste my time. I felt your magic, you're not as subtle as you might believe. What did you do to him?"

"I... might've ruined his hand?" he winced as he spoke, half expecting his teacher to incinerate him on the spot... but instead she smiled.

"Good. You are dismissed, Mr. Newman."

What.

"What?" he sputtered.

"You heard me. You may go," Mrs. Wentworth replied, turning to her filing cabinet and opening the middle drawer.

John needed to know, "Why?"

His teacher looked at him over her glasses, and John wished he'd just left. She removed a file from the cabinet, placing it on her desk before speaking slowly, "It will be a valuable lesson for him and the Hawthorne brat. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."

In a literal blink, John was standing outside of Mrs. Wentworth's closed office door.