Time to grind

John had gotten what he needed. A skill to grind. He always has been a true gamer at heart, which must have been the reason he got this power. That also meant that he, unlike others, found joy in spending hours doing repetetive tasks, fighting the same monsters over and over, just for some xp. He liked to see the progress even if it was incredibly slow. And now he had his smile to grind.

He kept looking around in class. Every time someone locked eyes with him, he used smile, but unlike with Anna rarely anyone smiled back. Figures, since the skill was still very weak and most of these people did not like him very much, according to observe.

He not only smiled at the girls. The boys, too. And his teacher, the old fossil. Something odd happened as he used it on the boy to his right.

"What are you smiling at, weirdo?" The guy asked, and as John was not ready to reply with anything instantly, the boy pushed him off his chair. No warning, no reason or anything. Just him being pushed and falling on his ass.

"What the heck? Marko, the fuck?" John asked the guy, Marko. A second later he used observe on him, trying to figure out if he could know what triggered this.
The information were pretty standard. Level 4, title of 'average Joe' and... woa. A relationship score of -146 (+6). So his smile must have worked but he was still way in the negatives. But why would he attack him?

"Boys, I know you have a lot of energy, but please calm down so I can continue my classes!" Mrs Flung asked from the board and John sat back down. He always had thought he got along with Marko. Well, not friendly, but they ignored each other. What had he done to earn that score?

John opened his inventory and went into the description of his skill by tapping on it.

There was nothing there which would explain this, but maybe he didn't need a skill text to understand. Sure, the relationship score was still a mystery, but the reaction was explainable. He smiled at random people, they would feel startled to react to it. And they would react according to their relationship score. So if he used it on someone with a very low score, he would not make it better with them, but instead only trigger situations like this. He had to be carefull not to overuse it, or rather not to use it on specific people.

That brought him another idea. He could use the skill on multiple people, the Note on the skill said so. So every time he was uncertain if a person was hating him, he could just use it on a group and in case, talk himself out of it by claiming he was just staring at nothing.

Sadly a few minutes later, he was out of targets. He had smiled at everyone in class, besides a few selected ones he had now dodged. He still continued smiling. It just felt natural by now.

At the end of the class he got up and put away his notes, or rather the empty sheet of paper that would have become his notes if he took any. Just then a window popped up informing him of yet another new skill.

New skill: Friendly atmosphere, Passive, Level 1

Friendly atmosphere: If you use smile for a longer period of time, the effect becomes area based. Every person around you is affected by the skill at the same time. Their mood also increases.

Note: You can only effect someone once with the passive effect of Friendly atmosphere. This limit resets after the affected person has been away from you for over 6 hours.

Note: To activate this skill you must be using smile for over 30 minutes.

That seemed like a really usefull addition to his smile. At least if the limits or cooldowns don't overlap.

With that in mind he left the classroom.