Coming down from the high

Slowly feeling the weight of the world and his senses return to him, John fell into the soft moss next to Astrid, sliding one arm over her body and cuddling her into him. She too came back to her senses, looking deeply into John's eyes as he lay next to her. Now, John just had to ask, "What the hell was that that you used there? How did you connect our senses?"

Astrid smiled at that, "I'm an Empath. If I trust a person enough or if I concentrate enough, I can connect theirs and my emotions and senses. It never used to be that intense, but then again, I never experienced anything as intense as this. And I think this sharing of emotions between us had been going on since you used that ability on me, but the sex pushed it to another level."

Was that why he felt so horny before? Because they were already connected and he felt the effect of the Essence of Lust? Why did it do that during his Augment Body anyway? Was that some hidden effect of his skills, or was it something that happened because of Astrid?

"Say, could you tell me what you felt while I was using that skill?"

For that, Astrid had to think a moment, "Hm... It's hard to describe, but while you kissed me, I felt that something in me that was hidden, cut off, returned to me, even if it is still beyond my grasp. I also felt two powerful emotions in you: Lust and Rage, and I felt like I had to choose one of them. And something in me told me I didn't want to choose the rage, so I went with the Lust... I'm not quite sure why there were exactly those two emotions though..."

"I think I have an explanation for that one," said John as he pulled out the Essence of Rage from his inventory. In his hand, it looked like a small crimson cell, with small red sparks while strongly glowing in the same crimson. "I guess this is what you felt? It's an Essence of Rage I got from some of my experiments with my loot."

She looked at the thing with frightful eyes, "It's.. pure rage, nothing beautiful about it, no other emotion, only the wish for ****... It's not as powerful as it could be, but there is still a lot of power behind it. Be careful with that one..." John nodded and put the essence back into his inventory again. He had no idea what he would do with that one...

After a bit of nonchalant small talk afterward, they both started to put on their clothes again (after Astrid cleaned herself out, so she wasn't leaking) and prepared to leave the Barrier again. While John was waiting for Astrid to finish up, he saw that he had new pop-ups waiting for him:

Achievement unlocked: Cherry Popper
Take someone's virginity. Now that your own virginity is lost, why not take it from other people?

+150 EXP (XP Reduction included)
+2 CHA
+2 Skill Levels Fucking
+New Skill Arouse

Fucking, Lv.4

New Skill: Arouse, Lv.1, 20mp
Increase the Libido of the target by up to [Skill Level] x 100% of your [Libido] for [Charisma] minutes. Mana cost reduced by 50% if target is in contact with user's semen.

Free Bond established with Astrid Gjoskenholm

Bond, Lv.4
You can now see health bars for individuals you are bonded with

That new skill sounded like it could cause a lot of trouble, but it would make a lot of things a lot more interesting... Also, he now had to think about a way to effectively get his cum on someone... While he thought about how he could use Arouse, Astrid asked a question that John wasn't sure how to answer, "So... What are we now? I mean... We just had sex, that's not nothing, and I really like you, but this is nothing to build a relationship on... Also from what she told me, you have a similar thing going on with sis... So should we handle it the same way you two handle it?"

That really got John thinking about how to deal with this, "I mean... I guess we can handle it the same way, saying that we're just friends with benefits, but that doesn't quite seem right in this situation... I guess the question is, do we want to be together? And do we want to be exclusively 'dating'?"

Astrid had a quick answer for that, "Exclusively, no, simply because I'd feel too much pressure on myself to be a 'good girlfriend' that always has to be there... But yeah I feel like this is something deeper than you seem to have with my sister... so... I guess this is an open relationship now?"

John meanwhile stood up, went over to her and planted a light kiss on her lips, "Then it shall be so until we either say to make it more official or until we find someone else to be permanently together with. Other than that, I guess we can keep pretty low-key about it?"

Astrid smiled at that and nodded, "Sounds good, as long as you take me to some more of these pretty places, I can feel so free here..."

Achievement unlocked: Not so lonely anymore
Establish an intimate relationship with another person. As if that would stop you from chasing other skirts, hopefully, you thought about that.

+200 XP (XP Reduction included)
+3 CHA
+2 WIS
+2 LIB

Permanent Threshold of 25 Charisma Reached!
RP Gain permanently increased by x1.5

He had to chuckle at that but had to agree at the same time, this Barrier was really beautiful... Thinking about it, John decided not to delete it once they were out. Last time might've been a mistake, but this time he would keep it around on purpose, even if just to have another try to Bond with one of the wolves here.

Once both of them were again dressed properly and had stowed away their uneaten lunches, they didn't have much time anymore, so John quickly put Astrid on his back again and decided to put one of his new skills to the test.

Running towards the room they came from, John jumped into the air, pulled one leg close to his body, and used Flash Step on the pulled up leg to get the most momentum out of the jump. Where he got about two feet in height on the first jump thanks to the weight on his back, he got another four when he used the invisible step to push himself off of, and another four with a second one. Barely not making it to the ledge of the next floor, John used Magic Rope to pull himself up the rest of the way and land on the upper floor of the building.

So, he could probably reach a floor without added weight, and when in doubt he could easily put both his feet on the walls and then use Flash Step again. This skill was going to be so much fun in battle if he could properly use it. Astrid was seemingly of the same mind, "That was amazing! I know that my family can fly, but this is really cool!"

That stuck a thought into John's mind. "Say, all the valkyries are female, right? What about your dad, what is he?"

But Astrid had a quick answer for that, "The men in our family are either warriors themselves of varying cultures, or they are runesmiths. The Valkyries are a fully female thing, as is told in the legends, but it's not like the men are second-grade or anything. My dad used to be a mighty warrior with the strength rarely rivaled by anyone else. But I guess he left some years ago... Not that I know much about that..."

That comment struck John odd... Since they were one the upper floor by now anyway, he put down Astrid on her feet and looked her in the eyes, "What do you mean you don't know anything about that? You said you and Brun hadn't seen each other for years, but that doesn't mean you don't know what happened inside your family, does it?" By now John had noticed a lot of these strange wordings in her sentences, never talking about her teenage years, always keeping extremely vague about anything happening in more recent years.

It seemed like John really struck a nerve there, but she fought through the averseness and just sighed, "I guess you can know by now... You already said that my age doesn't match the age of my sister, right? Well, there's more to that. I can't remember anything about the last six years, the last thing I remember is walking home from school one day, and the next thing I remember was waking up in a ditch yesterday... I have no recollection of the timespan. After what happened today, I'm not even sure that I had any sickness. I think something happened to me, and you undid part of whatever that was... Something that made me lose three years of my life apparently..." The longer she talked, the more did John put her in a tight hug to stop her from freaking out during any of that.

After she was done with her explanation, John gave her a kiss on the forehead and softly said into her ear, "Whatever happened there doesn't matter. What matters is what you do in the future. But if you want to find out what happened in those years, then I will help you with that. But no matter what you do, you will never be alone. You have me, your sister, and probably your whole family backing you up."

Astrid had to smile at that and shyly planted a soft kiss of her own on his lips while she made them move towards the room again, "Thank you, it means a lot to me that I can rely this much on you after only knowing you for half a day. I guess I'll see how much my family stands behind me, they didn't look too happy up until now, but I will have to prove to them that I'm not a threat to the family. But enough about my sappiness, let's get out of here. What's your next period?"

"Double Period PE, then I'm done for today. You?"

"Civics and Maths, then I'm done as well. You still want to go into one of your Barriers after school with me and my sis?"

"Yeah, I really want to see what you can do, I guess. But we'll talk more about it later, okay? I don't want us to be late for the lessons," and they left the Barrier with that.

The classroom was still pretty empty, but the first students were already filing in, thankfully not noticing John and Astrid thanks to their Reentering status. Outside of the classroom they quickly separated and went their own ways, leaving John on the way to his most dreaded class.

Not because it was going to be boring, but because it was probably going to be painful and stupid.

PE pretty much always meant Dodgeball, and so far he didn't have a good track record with Dodgeball.

Maybe that was about to change today...