Pursuit Of Pleasure 2

Ten minutes later, Ivy calls me from the kitchen. I walk in, and she hands me a plate with two well constructed sandwiches, with lettuce, tomato, cheese, ham and mayonnaise on them. “For you Gemma.” “Thank you Ivy, it looks lovely.” Mia walks out of the kitchen holding an identical plate and we sit together at the table. Ivy looks slightly nervously between us as we each take our first bite.

“These are great! You did a really good job Ivy!” Mia exclaims. I nod in agreement. “They’re really good, thank you!” Ivy smiles happily at the compliments. “You are welcome. I did my best!” “I figured it would be best to teach her the real basics first. We’ll move onto more complicated stuff eventually. For somebody who was technically born two days ago, and doesn’t have a sense of taste, this is a really good first dish.” Mia praises.

The radiant happiness in her eyes is plainly visible, and she seems to almost sparkle at the words. “What enemies are we going with after lunch?” Mia asks, changing the subject. I look at Ivy for her opinion. “Any preferences?” She thinks for a moment, reflecting on the experiences we’ve had so far. “I liked all three dungeons, but the slimes and goblins were both a nice change of pace.”

“How about we alternate between the two until we level up?” I suggest. “I like that idea.” She replies, and Mia nods in agreement. “Sounds good then. Until then, I wanna ask, how do you enjoy making food?” I ask Ivy. “It’s new and a little strange, but I do really enjoy it! I look forward to learning more about it!”

The enthusiasm from Ivy over her new hobby is absolutely precious. I’m enamoured with this woman, despite having only known her for two days. I’ve seen jokes that lesbians fall in love way too quickly. I don’t know how true that is for everybody, but it certainly seems to apply to me.

“I look forward to teaching you more about it! You’re a great student!” Mia replies and Ivy’s smile widens even more. At that moment, a window pops up that I’m really happy to see.

“We’re about to make you a little more powerful Ivy.” I tell her, opening up her skill tree to see what the next few choices are.

One day I’ll take sturdy. 10% damage resistance is good, though a little boring. It’s also unnecessary in my eyes, for the moment. I was right about the self healing skill being outscaled too. With Ivy having a passive regeneration of a little over 60hp per minute, the skill is absolutely redundant. The upgrade to healing hands is much more in line with what I’m looking for, and I’m really hoping that if I upgrade it enough, it’ll eventually be a percentage heal rather than a flat value.

Dual healing is a really interesting skill. The fact that she has to be in physical contact with both targets is a little limiting, but if Ivy gets access to ranged healing, that part would hopefully be negated. As it stands, I don’t have enough ability points to take the skill, but if it shows up again next time, I just might take it.

The next upgrade to healing hands is really the only choice. The skill tree is suffering from a lack of variety, but really, how much variety can a healer have, especially at such an effectively early stage? Too much variety would make her overpowered, and possibly deviate her path from being primarily a healer. I look at Ivy for any objection, and when she voices none, I click the middle option.

Even though I immediately know that I’m not going to pick it, I acknowledge mentally that choosing rapid regeneration would lead to Ivy being incredibly overpowered in the regeneration department. Between material bonus and refined body, I tend to favour the latter. The description doesn’t specify which stats get raised by 10%, likely meaning that it’s all of them. That’s a pretty powerful bonus.

Although the material bonus might be good, it’s too ambiguous for my liking, and requires that she eat magical materials in the first place. I do have access to those, but they seem pretty weak in the scheme of things and I can’t imagine that the bonuses she could get right now would be anything better than mediocre.

I look to Ivy for confirmation, and she nods. I pick the refined body option and the windows close. I’m tempted to use observe on her to confirm my theory about all of her stats being affected by the new perk, but I refrain for now. I’ll wait until later today to use observe on her, once we both get to level 24 and I raise her libido.

After we finish our early lunch, Mia shows Ivy how to do the dishes. It doesn’t take her long to pick up on it, and they finish the dishes quickly. I ask if I can do anything to help, and get a response that makes my heart flutter. “Just sit there and look pretty.” Mia says, giggling.

I’ve always liked the idea of being taken care of. I’ve had to take care of myself for so long that I’ve always thought it would be nice if I could sit back and relax, letting my partner do things for me. Of course, I’d never want to be completely dependent on somebody else and I’d still want to do things for them too. But hearing Mia actually say it is just a little dream come true. I really do feel loved and taken care of, and it means the world to me.

After the dishes are done, we flip a coin to decide whether we start with slimes or goblins. In the end, the goblins dungeon wins out, so after a thorough check to make sure that we’re properly ready for combat and all our resources are full, I open the dungeon and we begin grinding.

The new upgrades to Ivy’s healing hands skill are useful. She now heals 1HP per 1MP spent, which is a nice and even ratio. It does still take her a while to heal us up properly, but it’s better than it was. With my health bar now being at 125HP maximum, refilling my entire health pool would take Ivy just over a minute.

Given that we don’t get hit all that much, an extended period of time spent healing us isn’t really necessary, but it’s something to keep in mind. If she doesn’t get a percentage healing upgrade, then the skill will be continuously outscaled as we level up and face enemies that deal more damage.

Her thorns and shield skills are as useful as ever. They aren’t battle winning, but they help Ivy to support us a little more, rather than reducing her role to nothing but healing. I can imagine that Ivy would get bored and possibly frustrated with that prospect, unable to contribute to the actual fighting part of combat. This way, she has more to think about during dungeon runs and can help us by healing us as well as doing some damage to the enemies.

Over the course of the three dungeons that we go through, I notice Ivy seeming to come into her own. She seems more and more confident and capable, coordinating well with Mia and I. She’s learning when to attack, when to retreat, when to heal us, what the best openings are for her to get in a short amount of healing.

Every little bit helps after all, and feeling the reassuring touch on my back as my health ticks up a few points, becomes oddly pleasant. If Mia, Skylar and I went much longer without a healer, it definitely could have become a problem. But with Ivy around, I’m reassured that I can deal more damage without having to be so careful not to get hit.

Of course, I still don’t want to make mistakes. In a battle with real enemies, one mistake could mean ****. Because of this, I continue to focus on perfecting my movements and timing in both melee and ranged combat, learning how to better conserve resources and when to take advantage of different skills I have. At the end of the day, it’s just nice to have that peace of mind, to know that even if I do make a mistake here, it won’t mean ****.

We have to wait about an hour between each raid for our resources to regenerate. Both mine and Ivy’s mana bars need a decent amount of time to refill fully. I need just over 40 minutes while Ivy’s takes an hour. It’s a little annoying but hopefully it’s a problem that we can solve down the track. Due to the wait time between dungeons, it’s mid afternoon by the time the popup that we’ve been waiting for finally comes.

All three of us are anticipating what comes next. We excitedly exit the dungeon and walk back to Mia’s house. The five dungeons we ran today netted me a cool $75,000, leaving me at $200,000 total. The thing that amuses me about that sum is that I have no idea what to spend it on, if anything.

Of course, there was no interesting loot either. More items to stockpile and feed Ivy when the time comes. As we get inside, I take a few items out of my inventory and toss them to Ivy, who catches them and starts munching. We sit down, and I open my character sheet to spend the new points I have while I wait. Raising endurance to 25 nets the expected window and a comfortable boost to my health.

My HP is now more than doubled from the new points and scaling increase, with a quick check to my character sheet revealing that I now have 290HP. A substantial increase, one that makes me very happy with my decision to invest the points into endurance. I’ll probably go for 25 agility next, to see if anything happens.

I’m distracted from my thoughts when another window opens in front of me.