Waking up like it's a normal day... yeah, as if!

To say John was hyped for the next day would be an understatement. As soon as he woke up an invisible **** some people would call 'anticipation' pulled him out of the bed, quick enough so that his brain wasn't even properly functional yet so he didn't notice the empty bed yet. That took one go to the bathroom and a morning routine to notice.

Indeed Brunhilde hadn't been with him when he woke up, and he just got that now... And he didn't even have to put the alarm to Snooze 800 times... Was that some kind of side-effect of his body changing? Was his whole metabolism affected? It would only make sense, but it was still something fascinating to experience.

Now that his brain was functioning properly, apparently Gaia had some things to tell him:

Daily Patch

Fixes:
Due to inexplicable reasons, certain events did not occur like they should have:
-XP resetting to 0: Due to some bug the XP bar did not reset to 0 after hitting a level up. This has been fixed. Due to the influx of levels, all XP gained for the next 3 days will be reduced by 50%.
Intelligence: Threshhold for 25 Intelligence did not trigger due to high starting value. Effect retroactively added. Maximum Mana per point of Intelligence increased
-Rewards not appearing: Certain rewards have not been added. Following rewards will be added now:
300$
1 Scrap Metal
1 Scrap Electronic
1 Piece of Jungle Wood

Updates:
-Equipment Slots added to the character sheet. New slots will be added when necessary.
-Gear Sets are now available. Click the Set button to switch your Item set (attention: no items will be carried over between sets, unless the slots have been marked to allow carry over).
-Defense: Damage reduction will now be shown in the message detailing health loss. Furthermore, Physical resistance will now add 1 point of Defense per 3 Skill levels instead.
-Bond: Bond will now be applicable if a person or creature is in a positive enough state with you (RP >100) or has submitted to you in gesture or word. They will automatically know about the Bond once cast. Creatures will also understand what the Bond is.
-Magic Rope: Skill now costs 2 MP per meter per minute.

Should further problems occur, please contact support.

New Daily Quest: Exploring the possibilities
Create and clear two different hostile Barriers.
+300XP
+200$
+1 Skill Level in any Skill of your choice
Optional: Take someone with you in a Barrier (repeatable, once per Barrier)
+25 RP with that person
+1 Skill from that person
+200 XP for that person
+1 Skill for that person from your skill pool
Double this effect for people you have a Bond with

Has to be done by the end of the day

[Hello, Razorswift here, quick heads up: This is going to be a 'regular' thing I'm going to do. Should I forget some reward or need to change some mechanic, then it will be patched at the beginning of the next day. These will mostly be minor things with the XP bar being the most critical. Thank you for your understanding.]

Okay, this was stupid... now he had a huge debuff on the speed of his leveling (to be honest though, it was pretty **** that he got 4 Levels in the span of a single day...), and he got 'punished' for something he had no control over. Also what support was he supposed to contact? There was no email, no number, no website, nothing... At some point, he would have to look through his interface some more.

Thankfully he had just put the Stat Points into Strength, so it wouldn't take forever to get to his new spear... Speaking of which, he quickly equipped his new spear and the new cloak to see what his 'adventuring gear' looked like right now.

What he then saw in the mirror almost would've given him an erection if he hadn't just now dealt with the morning wood in the bathroom. Looking at him was the picture of a badass version of himself, holding his spear in one hand, the scrap shield in the other, and being clad in a completely black coat. Looking into his Inventory, he could see that the cloak actually didn't even use the Torso section.

Thinking quickly, John took out one piece of Scrap Metal and one piece of leather (which was mostly a whole hide) and tried to use Craft. If a heavy armor took two pieces of metal, maybe a medium armor would need one piece of metal and one piece of leather? The pop-up told him that he didn't even need to take the materials out of his inventory:

Scrap Armor
Armor (Chest)
+7 Def
Heavy Armor: Reduces speed by 25%
-6 AGI
Requires: 2 x Scrap Metal

Enhancements available:
Valkyrie's Tear: Medium Armor, +1 Def
Scrap Electronic: When hit, apply 3 DMG (Element: Lightning)

Leather Armor
Armor (Chest)
+3 Def
Light Armor: Reduces speed by 5%
-1 AGI
Requires: 2 x Leather

Enhancements available:
Scrap Metal: Medium Armor, +2 Def
Scrap Electronic: When hit, apply 3 DMG (Element: Lightning)

Okay, so the Scrap Armor was pretty much out since it restricted his dodging too much, so it would either be the Leather Armor or the Leather Armor plus the Scrap metal. In the end, John chose the light version and put the Scrap Electronic in there.

Item Crafted: Zapping Leather Armor
Armor (Chest)
+3 Def
Light Armor: Reduces speed by 5%
-1 AGI
When hit, apply 3 DMG (Element: Lightning), damage can be multiplied

He put that one on as well, putting him at a total of eleven Defense. Would that mean that all incoming damage was reduced by eleven points or eleven percent? That was probably something he had to try out at some point.

While he was preoccupied with looking himself over in the mirror, someone knocked on his door, shocking John who quickly switched his gear set to his empty one, standing now naked in his room. After the knock, a voice spoke to him through the door, the voice of his mom.

"Honey, you should get up, the bus will be here any minute. Oh, and that friend of yours left you a message saying that she had to leave early or she would get problems with her mom. She seemed very nice, though she could learn to keep her voice down at night," then his mother had to giggle and seemingly left him to get dressed.

Shit, she had heard them? That was embarrassing... Not that he really had a problem with it, but it was just weird to hear your own mother talk about your 'fuck buddy'. And looking at his clock, it was indeed getting close to the point where he had to get to the bus, seemingly having wasted so much time posing in front of the mirror...

Not that he had time to ponder about that, though, he had to get to school! Quickly picking up a fresh set of his school uniform and equipping it in the secondary gear set. Looking at his phone after that revealed two things: Firstly, his alarm didn't go off at all and secondly, he got a message from Brun telling him how she seemingly forgot that she had the early shift today and that she had to leave early.

She didn't sound all too panicked about it in her message, though, indicating that that was maybe a regular occurrence. Sighing to himself and taking his backpack on, John left his room to meet the day.

It's a new day, yes it is!

Running down the stairs he met his mother at the bottom, just as she put on some hiking shoes. "You're going into nature?" he asked her with a surprised look.

"Yeah, after yesterday, I thought it was time to do something completely different today to get my head clear. I'll be back when you get home from school, though, so we can have that talk I promised you. Maybe then you can tell me about your girlfriend?" she said with a wink.

John had the decency to blush while putting on his own shoes. "I guess? I'm sorry if we were too loud yesterday? I didn't want to wake you up..."

"Oh sweetie, it's okay, you're a grown man now, so I'd rather hear your girlfriend there scream instead of her staying quiet, 'cause that would mean that you weren't doing your job right. But you go now, I see the bus coming around the corner."

He could hear the bus as well, so he picked up his backpack, kissed his mom on the cheek, and went out to catch the bus.