Free Afternoon

“Notice for students with history or civics classes this afternoon. Ms. Wentworth has been granted a leave of absence this afternoon. As a result, the classes in question are canceled.” The brief click of static that followed indicated that there would be no further announcements, and was immediately followed up by the bell indicating that the next classes were starting shortly.

History and civics were the rest of John’s school day. So no rush with the rest of lunch for him. “Well, that’s my afternoon all opened up. Would you like me to walk you to class, or do you happen to have a free period now?”

“I have literature… but you don’t need to escort me…” Getting shot down took the wind out of John somewhat, but was still giving him a small smile and her Relationship Score had gone from 26 to 27 when he made the offer.

“Okay… Then I guess I’ll see you la-” John failed to resist the impulse to facepalm when he realized what he just said “-err. I mean, I’ll talk to you later.”

“You too…” Christie lingered for a moment, as if she was about to say more, but then collected her white cane and school bag and left.

Thinking back over lunch, John felt like that could’ve gone a lot better. But also that it could have gone a lot worse. In the end, he had eaten with a girl and increased her RS by 24 in the process, which was a way better outcome, on his selfish goals, than he had dared hope. More importantly, he had helped alleviate the isolation and loneliness that Christie had been saddled with, even if only a little. That John felt like it could have gone even better was, essentially, a clear indicator of how foolish it was that John hadn’t tried to befriend her earlier.

John pushed away the thought of how much loneliness he could have spared her, and himself, from, and focused on his mechanics, and the rest of his lunch. More specifically, he went looking for the Skill Quests that his latest Observe improvement had promised. They turned out to be in the Observe tooltip, along with something else new.

The other new thing was a tag on the skill, with a tooltip.

[Special Skill]
This skill has a non-standard maximum level and/or non-standard leveling method, if the skill has levels at all.

John was pretty certain that the tag hadn’t been there, or anywhere else, before but now it turned out to be not just on Observe but on Gamer’s Spirit and Gamer’s Body as well. Since their Skill Level just read ‘Max’ in his skill list and wasn’t displayed at all in their tooltips, he guessed that they were in the ‘have no levels at all’ category. Given that the tag existed, it being there made sense. That didn’t change that the tag hadn’t been there, or existed at all as far as he could tell, when he looked his tooltips through earlier.

‘Did I get stealth patched?’

No.

‘Really? Why are new things showing up in my tooltips then?’

John waited a minute for the entity in charge of his powers, whom he had decided to think of as ‘The Developer’, to answer. When it didn’t answer within that time frame, John concluded that it probably wasn't going to answer at all.

Shrugging, John turned his attention to the Skill Quests. It was pretty convenient that it apparently applied retroactively to things he had already Observed. It was also pretty convenient that he could apparently progress the ones that were still locked, though presumably he would only be able to claim the reward when it was unlocked. On the flip side, there was no nested tooltip telling him how to unlock the locked ones. It was probably done by clearing some of the other quests, but confirmation would have been nice. The ???? quest was also a puzzler, but that was clearly by design.

John finished lunch and took a look at the pitiful Food Buff it provided. The one from breakfast had run out during art class while his focus was elsewhere. Sadly, that was before he got any of the skills with big mana costs so most of the bonus MP Regen had been completely wasted. The lunch Food Buff lasted 1 hour and 30 minutes, versus breakfast’s 2 hours. More damning was that it gave a measly .25 MP/minute compared to 2.5 from his mother’s food. And the sandwich had been pretty good by school cantina standards. In other words, John was going to ask if his mom could make him boxed lunches going forward.

In any case, his MP Regen was currently wasted on a full pool, and he did have some expensive effects to use it on now. There was especially one that he wanted to put on himself permanently.

Partially to be on the safe side, and partially so he could see it happen, he headed for the restrooms. Inside a cubicle and with his pants and boxers down, it only took a light touch and a quick visit to one of his fantasies to bring him to full mast where the change should be at its greatest.

Without hesitation, John cast Augment Body to increase the size of his penis. A pleasant, tingling warmth surged through his dick and tempted him to just go back to the fantasies and worry about examining his handiwork later. He resisted the temptation, but decided that the next ‘treatment’ should happen in tandem with more… inspiring stimulation. He knew exactly when.

Meanwhile, he looked at the actual main effect of the spell. The growth was noticeable, but 5% was predictably nothing earth shattering. Still, it was a definite step in the right direction, and with both quest rewards and more uses of this Skill to look forward to, this was one source of self-consciousness he could probably put behind himself soon. Inspection completed, he returned to the land of vivid imagination to finish what he had started.

5 minutes later, he left the restroom. With nothing more to do at school, John sent his grandpa a text saying his afternoon classes were canceled so he was going to be ready sooner than expected. Whether Sam would see the text before John arrived was anyone’s guess.

“... and then I left to come help you.” John finished telling Sam about having lunch with Christie. They were talking while driving to the recycling center, having focused on the practical matters at hand while loading the junk onto the utility trailer. John had left out everything about his newfound powers and just sort of glossed over it the times where it had affected his decision making. Even if Sam had accepted the whole magical powers thing without issue, explaining all of the contextual implications of video game terms would’ve been a tall order. Sure, the old man was tech savvy for someone his age, but a gamer he was not.

“So you didn’t walk her to class then?”

John shook his head. “She told me not to.”

Sam nodded. “Yes, but people, especially women, often say one thing when they really want to say something else. Back in the day, girls were supposed to play coy ‘till the cows came home, so if you wanted to have any success with the ladies you had to wisen up quick. But there’s enough reasons, other than it being fashionable, for people to say something other than what they want to. When you offered, she said you ‘didn’t have to’ right?”

John took a moment to recheck his memory before nodding. “Yeah, that’s what she said.”

“She might’ve worried that you offered because you felt obligated to. Since she’s blind, she might be very concerned about being a burden on people. Especially if she wasn’t born blind.”

“Oh…”

After a moment of quiet, Samuel continued, “Or I could be way off the mark. I’ve had a lifetime of practicing this stuff and I still get it wrong sometimes. Fortunately, your grandma has the patience to set me straight.”

The old man followed that up with a hearty laugh and John couldn’t help but smile. John still thought that Sam was on to something with what he had said, but somehow he no longer felt stupid about not thinking of it himself. “Thanks, Grandpa.”

“What for? I’m just pouring water out my ear.” Sam guffawed again, while John wondered for what felt like the thousandth time where, and when, the old man had picked up that idiom.

They were both quiet for a bit while Sam maneuvered the car and the junk-laden utility trailer in at their destination. Before getting out, the old man turned to John with an unmistakable troll grin. “Anyway, it sounds like she’s interested. When’s the wedding?”

“Har har har, very funny,” John responded with an exaggerated eye roll. “Seriously though, I think it’s mostly that she’s lonely. The Bitch Queen has decided that she is to be isolated for some reason.”

John generally minded his language when he was with his grandparents. Frank and Vanessa had been the exception to that for a long time, and he used to get scolded by grandma for it. Then, when John was 13, Sam had decided to pick him up from school as a surprise and ended up catching Frank in the act of tormenting him. That was the last time John had been scolded for calling those two bad names. It was also the only time John had ever seen his Grandpa angry.

“Besides, if I try to make a move on her, she might go along with something she doesn’t want because she’s afraid that if she doesn’t I’ll cut ties and she will be alone again. I don’t want to risk taking advantage of her like that.” It wasn’t something John had thought about before he said it, and he didn’t know what had prompted that line of thought. He still meant every word though.

Sam scratched his chin for a moment, then reached out and ruffled John’s hair. “You’re a good kid, John.”

John ducked and pushed Sam’s hand away lightly in mock indignation. “I’m not a kid anymore, Gramps.”

Sam’s troll grin was back when he replied. “Yes, you are, because if you’ve stopped being a kid, that means I’ve gotten old.”

John chuckled, despite a half-hearted attempt to suppress it in favor of more mock indignation, and got out of the car. “C’mon, Gramps, we’ve got work to do and Grandma’s brownies are waiting for us.”

It took most of an hour to empty the utility trailer and put everything in the proper trash containers. If they had tried to be as quick and efficient as possible, they could probably have gotten it done in about half of that, but they set a more relaxed pace, interspaced with the occasional goof from Sam. When they reached the exit and were about to leave, Sam stopped in his tracks and said, “Hold up. Remember what happens when you get old?”

The joke went ‘your memory gets worse, your hearing gets worse and your memory gets worse’. The old man made it whenever he had forgotten something that wasn’t that big of a deal. So instead of giving the ‘right’ answer, John asked, “What’d you forget this time?”

Sam popped the trunk, pointed at a clear plastic sack full of sawdust, leftover bits of plank and other woodworking trash. “That. Would you mind popping over to the incinerables container with it?”

“Sure, be right back.” John grabbed the bag and started on a shortcut between the trash containers on the inside of the loop. Once he was out of immediate view, he tossed the bag into his inventory and opened his quest notification.

Apparently, the last bag of junk wasn’t part of the quest. Also, it turned out the (pending) label was on the brownies specifically and not the entire rewards line. In fact everything else seemed to already have been added to his sheet, including the money. Which had to mean the 50$ was on top of whatever Sam was going to give him. John barely had time to mentally celebrate that before another window showed up though.

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