With a Detour [Xenonach]

Hey Despaxas here! Here comes Xenonach our newliest hatched egg author. As always a new take on the theme. But don't worry, this one is a classic of the fantasy genre, a dorky knight, a dragon, damsel in distress. What's not to love? I'll leave you to read it after a word from his sponsor.

Y’ello, Funatic here. As the quality control, of this particular control of this newly minted author, I can firmly say he passed. Full score, a big F in the school of Fun, if you may. Anyway, expect a cute wallflower, as well as usual and unusual Gamer shenanigans.

((Author's note per 28/02: the image hosting solution I had been using for the character sheets, skill windows and other system images is unfortunately no longer valid. I will be switching to a new one as soon as IRL obligations and such allows, which I currently hope means it'll be done by this time next week. In the meanwhile, I apologize for the inconvenience. The pictures have now been migrated to a new hosting solution. Thank you for bearing with me.))

After thinking for a moment, John realized that there was a much better solution available. All he needed to do to avoid a guilty conscience, a scolding and an empty stomach was take a short walk. All things considered, a small price to pay. He put on his backpack and called out to his mom on the way out the door, “Have a nice day, Mom, I’m taking the bus-stop by Grans’ today.”

He couldn’t quite make out what she said in response, but he didn’t need to in order to know that it was something along the lines of positive encouragement and a request to say hello to her parents for her. He felt a small pang of guilt in his stomach knowing that even this little was an increase in physical activity for him that his mother would definitely try to nurture, but he quickly pushed that out of his mind to focus on exploring his game mechanics and interface a bit. First, he tried to gradually up his pace through speed-walk and jog to a few seconds of dead sprint. That left him winded, and with no stamina gauge in sight, he concluded that he had no such mechanic.

Then, he brought up his character sheet again, while returning to a normal walking speed. Sure, it blocked most of his view, but he knew the way on the footpaths between the suburban homes by heart. It doubled as a significant shortcut compared to the bus route too, so the only argument against doing it this way was, really, John’s own laziness. Pushing that thought away as well, he fiddled with his interface for a bit.

First, he noticed that his maximum inventory size had increased and by investigating he found out that putting on his backpack had equipped it, which in turn gave him extra inventory slots. He wondered if more expensive backpacks would give more slots, or if it was entirely about volume. And also if it would grant more slots if he took some of his things out, or lose slots when he put textbooks in.

Those ponderings were cut short when he almost walked into a bench along the path, prompting him to rethink how much of a problem his view being blocked by his interface was. Standing still for a moment, he looked for some sort of settings, found them and enabled ‘dynamic transparency’ which turned his interface semi-transparent while moving.

That done, he could keep messing around while walking, and by the time he arrived at his grandparents’ house, he had tweaked a bunch of things. The most important bits were a HUD that faded to near disappearance when he didn’t focus on it and the ability to navigate his interface with his eyes. Until then, he hadn’t realized how he must have looked waving his arms around in the air at seemingly random. In retrospect, that was very embarrassing, but at least he probably hadn’t been seen by anyone he knew, just some joggers passing by that he didn’t recognize.

Poking more at his mechanics would have to wait though, now it was grandpa time. John poked his head in the garage and found the old man exactly where John knew he would be: at the workbench doing woodcarving. It’d been grandpa Sam’s hobby since forever, and after he had retired, finding him here in the morning was about as guaranteed as the sunrise.

Samuel Johnathan Miller
Lvl 16, Doctor (Retired)
Cpt. “Lucky”

Level 16? that didn’t suggest encouraging things about leveling speed. But that’d have to wait as well. “Morning Grandpa”

“Good morning John. You didn’t stay up all night celebrating your big day with your internet friends, I see,” the old man replied with a warm smile. There wasn’t the barest hint of the positive surprise born of low expectations, justified as they may be, nor of the slightly dismissive tone that even well meaning people of older generations tended to have when talking about internet friends. Samuel just sounded happy to see his grandson.

“How do you know I didn’t do that and just drank a gallon of coffee for breakfast?” John responded with a grin.

“And trick the best coffee sniffer in the history of Springfield General?” Sam tapped his nose with a mischievous glint in his eye, “I think not.”

John chuckled, then took a look at the pieces of wood Sam had been working on. Unable to tell at a glance, he asked, “Anyway, what are you working on?”

Truthfully, he didn’t really care about the project itself. He did care about making his grandpa happy, however, and knew that asking about it would do the trick. The old man waved him closer, put one finger in front of his lips in the universal gesture for ‘quiet’ and responded in a theatrical whisper, “It’s a present for Liz, or part of it anyway. I ordered an electronic photo frame that can change pictures and snuck our wedding photo album to a print shop to get scanned, but I thought it’d be nice to have a frame to go with it as well.”

“Wow, Grandpa, that’s-”

“Shh! Here she comes.” How he knew, John had no idea, but sure enough: Sam had barely put the unfinished present away in a cardboard box and taken out something else John also couldn’t identify from its pieces before Grandma knocked and then entered, carrying a tray with a cup of coffee and a plate with two cookies.

“Oh, John! What a nice surprise, good morning.” She looked down at the tray. “I’ll go get some more cookies.” Before John had even gotten out a ‘good morning’ in response, much less offered to get the cookies himself, she was back out the door.

John scratched the back of his neck as he turned back to Sam. “Uh, Grandpa, could I bum 10 bucks off you by chance? I, uhhh… kinda spent today’s lunch money…”

“I would say yes, but Brenda has been telling me not to spoil you so much for years, and now that you’re 18, Liz agrees, and I don’t want them to scold me.” He laughed briefly. “How about this: I need to take some stuff to the recycling center today. If you come here after school and give me a hand, I’ll pay you. And give you an advance for your lunch today.”

John didn’t need any time to think about that. While he had hoped to get the money for free, or as a ‘loan’ that Grandpa would likely forgive within the week, earning them for what mostly consisted of keeping Grandpa company wasn’t bad either. Especially since John knew from experience that helping him with chores was very well paid. “Sure, I’ll be here as soon as I can.”

“Great,” Sam said while taking out his wallet and retrieving a 10 dollar bill. “Here is your advance,” he took out a 20 as well and winked as he continued “, and here’s a little extra so you can treat one of the girls to lunch too.”

“I’ll, uh, try?” John responded, not exactly optimistic about how that would go.

Before Sam had time to give some well meaning advice that John would have no clue how to actually put to use, and now suspected he just plain lacked the Charisma to make work, Grandma returned. The old man turned to her and said, “John just offered to help me take the junk and sundry to the recycling center”

“Did he now?” Even without her raising an eyebrow, John would have been absolutely certain she knew whose idea that had been. Even so, the follow up directed at John was genuine, “That’s very nice of you.”

Lizzie Miller
Lvl 11, housewife
Wise Woman

John had a moment to glance at the info above his grandmother’s head, while she put the coffee and cookies for grandpa on his workbench. Another un-encouraging level, and a title that surprised him mildly but felt fitting once he thought about it. He could definitely see her as the old woman the other villagers came to for home remedies and advice if she had lived in the medieval period.

She interrupted that pondering by turning around and offering John a plastic bag with two cookies in it. “There. I packed them so you could take them with you on the bus. And you really should be getting to the bus stop. Don’t want to miss it, young man.”

“Oh sh-” He managed to stop himself before swearing. “Thanks. Gotta go. Mom says hi. Bye!”

2 minutes later, John was inside the bus and ready to ignore his surroundings in favor of his new mechanics. Not like anyone would sit next to him, let alone try to talk to him, anyways. He had a whole stack of faded, ignored windows from the short time he spent in his grandparents’ garage as a result of spamming Observe. Luckily, he could do that quite liberally between the low mana cost and the regen buff from his breakfast.

Before going through those, though, he took stock of the info above the heads of the other people in the bus. The lowest level person besides himself was, surprisingly, the bus driver who was a Lvl 4, Gambler rather than one of the other students, whose levels were mostly in the 5-8 range. The most common class was, unsurprisingly, Student, while a few pointed towards future careers like Veterinarian, Athlete and Socialite. To John’s great chagrin, the highest level person in the bus was also one of his primary bullies since middle school:

Frank Dickinson Jr.
Level 9, Athlete
Alpha Meathead

At least his title was less than flattering, but really, Frank was 3 times John's level? That felt like bullshit. Sure, he had been at the top of the pecking order in school for as long as John had known him, but that was still just a big fish in a small pond situation.

John pulled his thoughts from that, since stewing in indignation would do him no good, and returned his attention to the stack of unread Observes. Skimming through, most of them were completely uninteresting, but there were two interesting Observes and a few other notifications that had ended up in the pile as well without John noticing. The Observe on the cookies from grandma showed that they gave a Food Buff like his breakfast, this one slightly stronger but with a much shorter duration. Presumably, the duration difference was because one was a meal and the other a snack, while the strength difference was likely because Grandma was a few levels higher than Mom. A nested tooltip attached to Food Buff confirmed John’s suspicion that they didn’t stack: only the strongest one applied at a given time.

Even more interesting was the frame Grandpa had been assembling.

A nested tooltip for natural enchantment confirmed what the description implied: that the frame was magical not because of any magical ability on Sam’s part, but simply by the strength of his emotions. That was very wholesome, but also poked at the sore spot of John’s own lack of hopes for getting something remotely like it that he usually did his best not to think about. So he moved on to the first notification.

Achievement Unlocked: Ohana means family
Leverage a family connection to solve a problem.
There is still time to learn the basics of social interaction!
+1 CHA, +1 WIS

Snark aside, that was great. Free stat boosts were nothing to scoff at, especially when one of them was to his weakest stat.

That left some unanswered questions. But even with the stuff that wasn’t unanswered, the EXP and CHA boost looked good and no matter what ‘base’ dick size meant, there was no way it wouldn’t get him a bigger one and that alone was enough to go for the bonus objective no matter the potential humiliation. Sure, he had largely given up on getting an actual girl to touch it, but with a stat system and charisma boosts, maybe that was due a re-evaluation.

How the system knew how much Grandpa was going to pay him, he had no idea, nor did he know if the figure was taking into account the advance he had already gotten or not. There was also the possibility that the system would give him extra cash for it on top of what Sam would pay, but that seemed too good to be true. John’s assumption that ‘RP’ was short for Relationship Points was confirmed by a tooltip, which also told him that they ranged from -200 to +200.

The real puzzler, however, was the last part of the failure consequence. Did that mean someone was giving him the quest, or at least converting his agreement with grandpa into a quest and attaching additional rewards? And if so, did that mean the entire system was given to him by someone? Or was it just his subconscious creating these things somehow, and correctly predicting that he would feel guilty about it if he didn’t keep his promise? Well, until he knew more, he should probably act as though some powerful entity had given him these powers and, in that case, keeping them happy was very high on his priority list.

Achievement Unlocked: Good Boy
That decision deserves some tendies.
+5 chicken tenders, +1 Libido, +10% cum volume

Well that confirmed the entity option. Not least of which because of the chicken tenders that had shown up as a stack in his inventory. Not that he had anything against chicken tenders, but it was definitely not something he would think of as a reward. Not to mention that the other things were dubious boons as well. And then there was the part where this entity seemed able to read his mind. Hopefully, the last notification would be enough to keep him from pondering those implications too much.

On the positive side, his lunch question was truly settled now.

Observe skill Lvl 3. Relationship Score view unlocked. Observing mundane objects no longer grants Skill EXP.

Not getting Skill EXP from observing most objects was annoying, but visible relationship scores more than made up for it. He didn’t have time to investigate how he scored with the others in the bus, though, as it had just arrived at the school.