The beginnings of a cult, with you as the leader!

Well, you might not be happy about Pike's message, but it was still good to see her again. That wasn't only because she was your one friend in this dark world. Totally independent of the fact that Pike was going into a long-winded rant involving your lack of focus that you didn't want to be held accountable for, you zoned out and remembered back to how the Pumpkin Herald had come to be...

When the two of you had hatched this scheme, you told Pike that your fame depended on her being recognized as your herald. To be recognized as your herald, she needed to be, visually, in some way associated with the Pumpkin Lord.

Her expression was immediately reproachful. "If you think I'm wearing your scarecrow stuff, especially after you just ripped the pants-"

You waved your hands to interrupt her, while thinking to yourself that you probably could manipulate her into wearing that gear via the unfortunate curse she'd placed upon herself earlier. That'd be pointless, though; you knew as well as anyone that your unattractive gear only weakened your already miserable Appearance stat. Nobody would follow someone like that into a haunted cave. Tilting your giant, goofy head, you questioned if she had any leftover goodies from last Halloween that might work. If she wore Halloween gear out of season, people would definitely believe she was living up to her title as Pumpkin Herald! A true devotee!

Pike's eyes widened for a moment and she shook her head. You could tell she was biting her lip again, although the expression was covered by her face mask.

You questioned her again.

This time, her eyebrows twitched and the lower half of her eyes trembled. You saw a bead of sweat roll down one cheek. She looked like she was struggling to eat some spicy curry.

You asked her once more, exactly the same way. Finally, the manipulation check went through.

"Yes! I have a Pumpkin Bikini from last year's Halloween event." Her words ended in a huge sigh.

As your carved smile bent outward and the candles inside your eyes glowed with invigorated flames, you nodded your head so hard that you felt it might come detached from the roots that cemented it inside your scarecrow frame. You urged her to equip it! Moments later, you greeted the true form of your Pumpkin Herald... a sulky elf dressed in a totally embarrassing, Halloween-exclusive swimsuit. Swimming wasn't the sort of thing you do in October, right? And yet, you were totally willing to discard that logical question and embrace the sight in front of you, drinking in the sight of your friend's body shamelessly.

Without the full garment on, she looked a bit shorter and frankly, more girlish. This was despite a relative lack of womanly blessings in the chest area, but the rest of her body was firm and light, the perfect accompaniment to a rogue like herself. She was as tan and freckled as you'd dared guess, with cute spots across her upper arms, breasts, and even her bum, among other places. All of her gear had been replaced by pumpkin equipment, including a goofy hat in the shape of your head, covering most of her own hair besides the tail hanging partially out of the back. The swimsuit consisted mostly of orange panels, decorated with orange jack-o-lantern faces in black over each breast and the butt, with stringy green straps, tied with enticingly tiny rabbit-ear bows on the sides. You cursed whatever cruel god had created you without the dexterity to pull those loose! It had to be every man- or monster's- fantasy. Other than the ties, the coverage of the bikini was decent... and yet, still, it left so little to the imagination!

"... Y-You actually expect me to wear this out and talk to the other players on this server?" The elf crossed her arms at her modest chest and frowned, looking some mixture of bashful and scornful.

For a moment, you reconsidered, in the face of her shyness.

But only for a moment.

Now, back to the current situation. You welcomed the sight of that bikini and the elf wearing it, but you could do without the rest of the context of her arrival!

With alarm bells ringing inside your empty pumpkin head, you feared that Pike was about to blow the lid off your whole operation on the very first run! You knew how these adventurers worked... you couldn't just kill one to prevent them from talking. Killing them actually accomplished very little, because not only did they respawn, but they also had the unique ability to place a bounty on you... Not that you'd ever had a bounty before. You'd heard people mention it, but dying to a pumpkin head was pretty rare, and if someone did, would they really advertise that they'd just let it happen? "Hey, someone kill that loot pinata that held me in place and hit me with terrify and fire spells like 20 times until I died!" Not likely. Again, street cred was pretty important for these players.

Pike must realize that, right? If she told Winnifred the White the full story, you were as good as done for!

"The truth is, this Pumpkin Lord isn't interested in molesting you. He's-"

You broke in here with your ghostly voice: "Ooooo~oooo, don't put woooords in my mooooouth!" Your weak protest echoed throughout the cave as you tried desperately to keep that door open. After all, maybe you hadn't been sure at first, but your stiff lower vine was telling you that actually, you liked molesting Winnifred quite a bit.

"... Okay, so maybe he is interested in molesting you. But that's not why I brought you here! We need your normal stuff, like ore, wood, a claimant crystal if you have one of those."

The cleric knit her brow and poked out her lower lip in a pouty expression. "Hm? A clam man crystal isn't 'normal stuff.' Those used to drop only from raid monsters. But this ghost wants to use it like a monster would, right? To build liars and things?"

"Claimant. Lairs." Pike seemed far less patient with the girl's speech pattern than you were. "And yes. We're trying to construct a dungeon for the Pumpkin Lord."

"D-D-Dungeon?! How unspeakable vile!" The cleric was getting very hot and excited again; her cute hips and legs squirmed as she rested her delicate, thin fingers across the explicit intersection. "What is he planning to do to the players in that dungeon?!"

You spoke up before Pike could manage to; you thought you could handle this answer better than she could. "Toooorment them! Put them in chains and degraaaaade them! I'll gain minions that make moooockeries of the humans!" Your answer rang throughout the narrow cavern.

It was all the cleric could do to keep up her shocked and indignant RP face; you could tell she felt like nodding along in imitation of your frequent bobble-head gesture. "To think that you would try to plumber my resources for such an endeavor! I shan't... I shan't...! No!" With that last, well-voiced but incredibly shallow protest, she dropped all of her resources onto the ground around her. Amusingly, they all plunked out a few stacks at a time in quick sequence.

Pike began picking them up and stashing them. Delighted, you bounced up and down on your stick and questioned her about what you'd gotten. In response, she shared with you a look at the party inventory readout:

Acquired Pickaxe x1
Acquired Cave Mineral x1
Acquired Logging Axe x1
Acquired Wood x1
Acquired Wool x47
Acquired Dye x 47
Acquired Rainbow Crystal x20

With unamused frowns, the two of you turned to look at the naked cleric and waited for an explanation on these mismatched, poorly allocated resources. "Cave miner alls and wood are actually kind of boring. I got bored of mining and chopping. I wanted to make cleric clothes, so I learned to so! It isn't a useless skill!"

She got bored after just one chop of her ax and just one swing of her pickax?! Whatever... You asked Pike if she knew anything about mining and logging.

"Yeah, though I usually just steal whole, finished goods, so I don't collect or harvest mats. Materials do not have a great going rate. At this point, I'm willing to start harvesting them myself, just to speed this up. You uh... You finish up with your cleric here. Whatever you were planning to do. It's getting late, though, so I'm not going to hit rocks for long."

Oh right! You really ought to think of what to do with Winnifred. She seemed excited about your dungeon, but she'd given you all of her meager belongings already. Ironically, you'd robbed her without casting a single spell or using a single attack. You... weren't really sure where to go from here. Feeling a little bad about it, you told her you'd do as you promised: she'd be visited by a very exciting skill book in the days to come!

"Fowl demon! I know what you really desire!"

You thought she was probably about to tell you what she really desired, but you told her to go ahead anyway.

"When I saw another player acting as a monster's herald... such a lewd, debaucheries profession... I steeled my heart. I knew that there was a chance that I may end up meeting the same fate; he may toss aside my dignitary and **** me to submit! I may even be **** to live out the rest of my days as his ****!"

You stayed quiet.

Unable to read your expression, she coughed and continued, spelling it out for you. "I thought that I might also be turned into a Pumpkin Herald."

... Well, now there's a crackerjack idea! Loudly, you boomed in your ghost voice for Pike to return. Unfortunately, once she did (carrying a nice bundle of five cave minerals already), she looked a little less than pleased with your decision.

"No way... Winnifred's sticking around?! She's a demented RPer, she's so lazy she hasn't done any mining at level 2, she hasn't upgraded a single piece of her equipment except with dumb cosmetics, she's obviously a huge pervert, and furthermore, she's not even level 5! That means you can't give her a new title! And... And Pumpkin Herald is my title..."

Hm... Pike had a point. You did the pumpkin-head equivalent of stroking your chin, which really meant rubbing the underside of your head with your shirt-sleeve in a jerky motion, then nodded. You'd give her a different title once she reached level 5... How about... Pumpkin Missionary?

"M-Missionary? You're putting me in the missionary position?"

Of course!

She seemed very happy about that. Pike, on the other hand, rolled her eyes and fished out another Pumpkin Bikini. Although the cleric seemed a little hesitant to discard this nude scene she'd concocted, you found her convinced once she considered how utterly, sexually humiliated she'd be, wearing this thing in public. Moments later, you had reduced two proud lady player characters into pumpkin-clad goofballs wearing your face printed across their cute butts. That's a double win! Whereas Pike looked utterly uncomfortable at all moments to be trotted around in the teeny bikini, Winnifred looked... similarly uncomfortable, but you were well familiar with her enough by now to know it was all an act. The way the cleric turned this way and that, adjusting the suit out of her ass-crack and fighting back tears in her eyes as she clutched a hand to her bouncing, poorly supported bosom, was an actress' master class in erotic ways to pretend you're unhappy with a lewd garment you'd been **** to wear... or, in this case, that you basically begged to wear.

But had all of this nonsense culminated in plenty of EXP? You checked your status window, then felt your eyes bulging at the sight of an incredible list of various, unfamiliar readouts. Pumpkins didn't normally get a lot of chances to enjoy these sorts of messages. Likely to the chagrin of devoted gamers and EXP min-maxers everywhere, you scrolled haphazardly through the list...

+50 EXP for recruiting a cultist!
+2 EXP for manipulation success!
+2 EXP for manipulation success!
+2 EXP for manipulation success!

... at breakneck pace, skipping all of the specifics...

+2 EXP for manipulation success!
+10 EXP for successful robbery of an enemy player!
+50 EXP for recruiting a cultist!
+2 EXP for manipulation success!

... and trying to ignore how the vast majority of them were related to your tricking girls into serving you in perverted ways, until finally, you came upon your full updated status page.

Level 3(+2) Halloween Pumpkin-Head
Monster, Plant, Explicit
Experience to level up - 280
Attributes:
Strength 3 (+1) | Dexterity 2 (+1) | Stamina: 42 (+2)
Charisma: 32 (+1) | Manipulation: 30 (+2) | Appearance: 10
Intelligence: 29 (+1) | Perception: 21 (+1) | Wits: 21 (+1)
Skills:
Identification (Skill/Spell Books)
Curse removal (Skill/Spell Books)
Dungeon Crafting (Ultra) - NEW!

Feats:

Treasure Monster (Books, Ultra-Rare): This monster spawns skill and spell texts when struck by a close range attack. There is a ten-second timer between allowed spawns, although damage can still be sustained. The level of the text varies depending on the level of the one striking it, although the rarity is preset by the feat itself.
Immobile: This monster cannot change move from its current position by its own power. It can still move its body, but cannot change its location. It can be moved by forces besides itself.
Weapon Restriction (Total): Cannot equip or be equipped with weapons.
Elemental Resist (High): This monster greatly minimizes damage from all elements.
MP regeneration (High): This monster automatically recovers MP at a high rate.
Buff/Debuff Spell Resist (Total): This monster's stats cannot be buffed or debuffed by spells.
Heal Resist (Total): This monster cannot be healed by any means other than leveling up.
Vine Manipulation (Novice): This monster can stretch and harden the vines composing its body. With preparation time, this yields a boost in Strength and Dexterity boost at the cost of Stamina. Also increases reach slightly. - NEW!
Spells:
Sphere of Fear: Casts an AoE spell around the user with distance and effect based on Intelligence. This spell lowers defense and has a chance to terrify based on Intelligence. There is a cooldown on this spell's usage that is lowered based on the Wits stat.
Sphere of Fire: Casts an AoE fire spell around the user with distance and effect based on intelligence. There is a cooldown on this spell's usage that is lowered based on the Wits stat.
Phantom Hands: Creates a pair of free-floating hands that act with Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina directly translated from the user's Intelligence stat. The summoner's MP will be drained as long as they are in use. They will vanish either when dismissed by the summoner or killed, or when the summoner runs out of MP or is killed.

Not too shabby! You'd reached the level you needed to be to use a claimant crystal and thanks to whatever twisted gods dictated this realm, along with that level came one such free crystal! For most people, it would appear in their hands; for you, it simply bounced off your straw and clattered onto the ground as soon as you read the notification. The gods had clearly never planned for the possibility that a creature starting at 1 Dexterity could get one of these things. Still... a free crystal is awfully generous, considering you used to have to kill raid bosses to get these things. Maybe the gods were feeling bad for their mistreatment of the pumpkins over their long lifespan?

There were one or two other things that caught your attention. It seemed that flexing your new plant groin earlier had given you the ability to control your vines a bit better in general. That was going to be a great boon going forward, as you certainly hoped you'd be seeing more and more opportunities to use appendages for purposes other than straw-filled slaps. You'd even gained one point of dexterity! A 100% increase from where you were this morning! Pretty soon, you'd be able to replace your own hat on your head all by yourself, should it ever fall off! Unfortunately, you were still completely immobile...

You wondered if leveling would make that immobility go away eventually. Maybe some kind of class change would? What would it be like, becoming a feared and revered level 40 raid boss with a giant cult and hordes of minions, but still rooted into the ground by a scarecrow's post? Would you still be unable to dig that thing out and move yourself, even once your strength reached average monster levels?

There was time to think about that later! For now, let's check your fame:

Player "Pike"- This player regards you as a close friend! +10 fame.
Player "Winnifred the White"- This player regards you as a legend! +20 fame
You are now the leader of your official cult, "Cult of the Pumpkin," with two or more members! +20 fame
Total fame: 50

At first, you were delighted to see that your fame had increased... then you felt your heart sink. Pike's opinion of you had lowered! You were a legend earlier, right? Why had you fallen from legend to friend!? Well... Actually... Perhaps it was related not to how much they like you, but rather, their reverence of you. To Winnifred the White, you were some formless ghost echoing in a cave and urging her to do perverted things; an unusual monster and a mystery. Pike, on the other hand, had increasingly come to see you less as a one-of-a-kind rarity in the world of Shards of Arkus and more as her doofy, pervy, overly demanding friend... You were okay with that relationship, as long as your total fame didn't drop below fifty before you got around to making that Inner Sanctum...

Now you had everything but the minerals! You spun your invisible head around, eagerly looking between the two pumpkin-clad beauties, then waved your invisible arms above your invisible hat. Time to mine!

"No, come on. It's like... 11:55 pm. I'm logging off..."

Oh no! You'd forgotten they were going to have to leave eventually. Not everyone was okay sitting around in a dank cave all day. You asked her if she could at least leave her avatar here to mine minerals in the cave while she was off.

"No, dude! I've got other things my player needs to do on auto."

She could tell you were dejected... Your silence made that apparent.

"You get lonely too easily... Don't worry. I'll be back tomorrow. That invisibility is about to wear off. Don't get killed by anyone while I'm gone... Just keep that big, fat head of yours as low as you can." She smiled sympathetically, then placed one hand on her hip where the string bikini was tied. "And that lair of yours we build tomorrow oughta be one hell of a player trap to make up for this thing..."

You nodded, telling her it would be the best dungeon a pumpkin-head ever constructed! That was true. No pumpkin-head had ever constructed one before, sooo... by default... But yeah, you didn't plan to half-ass it just because it was the first of its kind. You'd have deadly minions, deadly traps, treasure chests where you store your valuables at the end of hallways randomly scattered throughout the dungeon- the works!

Pike smiled warmly at the idea; you felt your heart beat faster, until you remembered that her motivations were the elimination of her fellow man. Soon after that, Pike vanished; she couldn't teleport, but her escape from the cave on foot was so quick, it was practically the same thing.

This left you alone with your so-called Pumpkin Missionary, even if her title wasn't official yet. Her name, "the White..." It didn't really fit her when she was dressed this way. You could tell she had questions, by the way she was still shifting on one foot. Eager to build your relationship- and knowing that the moment she left, you were going to be without anyone's protection or company for the night- you asked her what was on her mind.

"... My Pumpkin Lord, is it true that your body will become viable momentarily?" She asked the question in a slow, contemplative manner, with some scheme forming in her not-so-pure blue eyes.

You told her that sadly, it was so. Well, visible, not viable. In fact... You shimmered into existence before her. Just a lame pumpkin-head dressed up like a pantsless scarecrow. Only your ability to stick out your tendrils a little further than a regular pumpkin-head made you any different from the generic brand. Part of you wondered if this was where the twist came in: seeing your exposed, loot-box body, the cleric might start beating you with her staff and tank her level 2 **** for the sake of skill-books.

It didn't seem that was on her mind. "... Corrupt as my mind has become, I must ask: would there be ways that I could... increase my standing in you're cult?"

You told her that if she wanted to pick up that pick-axe and start mining, that would go a long way! "You are" cult appreciated hard workers!

She shook her head furiously, then approached you with a stern frown that you'd come to associate with her trying extra hard not to let her real emotions show... but alone, without Pike's assistance, you were now coming to respect it as a source of actual threat. If she got it in her mind that playing around with you had lost its fun and skill books might be more exciting... "Some other way?" she repeated, lowering her eyebrows. Your candle-lights cast an ominous shadow across her face as she grew closer.

Part of you thought that it might be a bit of a betrayal to share your newfound plant manhood fully with this girl before you'd really offered it to Pike. I mean, she might refuse- she was one of those hot-and-cold types- but still, you thought she'd appreciate knowing you'd wanted her before you wanted Winnifred. But what does a pumpkin know of romance?

On the other hand... it was 11:58 pm now. You had about 2 minutes before the timer reset for your EXP collection from sexual activities and you hadn't actually tried doing anything more than getting licked yet. If it turned out to be a great EXP source, you'd regret tomorrow what you didn't do today! Plus, watching how her over-developed, soft-bodied bosom was threatening to swing out of your cult uniform with each ingenuine, indignant tremble of her body made it pretty hard to say no...