Record keeping and logistics

The rest of Gil’s week passed at a comfortable pace, without too much to take up his time beyond personal training and sleeping with the multiple willing women he had on hand. He would check his tablet about once a day for updates, of which he found quite a few.

For one thing, Zena had somehow jumped in power all the way to Tier 6. Her sale price had even updated, which he hadn’t seen before. Where before she’d been in the random gacha crowd, she could now be sold for the Normality perk and a character card that Gil, of course, didn’t recognize. He had no clue who Lady Liadrin was, but hopefully she’d be a good replacement power set if he ever needed to sell Zena.

Normality wasn’t a terrible perk for a test like this, but it wasn’t incredible either. Essentially it would cause the person it was attached to to fit comfortably into everyone’s preconceptions no matter how strange they were.

Keilnei, as an easy example, could explain she was a space alien refugee that worshipped holy beings of light to someone in Brockton Bay. She could even throw in that she had a slutty split personality that would only sleep with Gil. They would accept this information without comment, as if they met people like that all the time, and move on with their lives. They would remember the information and even act upon it if they needed a towering war veteran with healing magic, but they would never report her to the authorities unless she broke a law they cared about.

In other words, handy but nothing he couldn’t basically do already with a bit of management and his disguise perk. Possibly better for resale than personal use.

He didn’t properly know what prompted that rank up and price reevaluation, but thought it might have something to do with her finishing a mission for him. It was a nice one, but he’d frankly expected it given the situation when he left. That didn’t make the payout any less delightful.

Revive the Genesis Tree on Mt. Rikuroa.

Reward: 5 credits, Zubat Card, Absolute Gullibility Spray

Absolute Gullibility spray: someone who inhales this gas will lose the ability to question things that they are told for about an hour. They don’t have to LIKE what they hear, but they will BELIEVE it. If it runs directly counter to something else they know to be true, this will probably cause dissonance. After the effects fade, they will perceive the world normally but will cling to any new beliefs barring strong evidence to the contrary.

Zubat appeared to be some kind of small, eyeless bat creature with blue fur. It was a generic tier 3, meaning that it was an entire species of creatures that all had similar power sets. In the case of Zubat, that power set consisted of flight, sonar, disorienting sonic attacks, and a life draining bite. In other words, it was a bat the size of a large falcon from a setting with high magic.

What to do with it was, of course, a question worth pondering. It had several abilities that would be great to give to himself or members of his team, but that was the sticking point. Really there were two options, or perhaps three. Use it on someone weak to turn them into a moderately dangerous and mobile tier 3, use it to give someone already dangerous a handy new power, or sell it at the Bazaar. Keeping it around just to use it as a one-up seemed best for a weaker card, like the Piura or Shiho.

The spray’s uses were as obvious as they were flexible. He was already amassing quite a team, and would continue to do so. Sometimes people’s wills just needed to be softened up with Magic.

Naturally, he’d also gotten a new mission in the same world. One which may run counter to the goody two shoes angle he’d been pushed along in The Lands Shrouded in Mist.

Kill Master Zopu of the Biron Monastery

Reward: 1 credit, Gender Bend the Monastic order of Biron, making all members into women.

He was pretty sure that Biron was the order that Vahn’s teacher, Tetsu, was from. They seemed like a bunch of badasses, so killing one of their masters while in their monastery seemed like it would be quite a hard job. The reward was more fun than it was useful, as well. Gil liked orders of kung-fu warrior nuns as much as the next guy, but they would hardly be throwing themselves at his feet if he killed one of their masters.

If he was exceptionally lucky, Zopu was intended as a boss fight. Perhaps he was evil, or possessed. That way, Zena might find herself in a position to kill the guy legitimately. She might even do it unprompted. It was probably too much to expect, but Gil was an optimistic sort of guy.

Of course, she wasn’t the only one to have put in a hard day’s work. Rose had also been busy getting busy. She had somehow, within a few hours of becoming a succubus, drawn Vista into her bed. Promising. That had completed her mission, and gotten Gil another new outfit.

Brockton Bay

Fuck/Marry/Kill- there are three girls in the Brockton Bay Wards; Shadow Stalker, Vista, and Flechette. Have sex with at least one, kill or sell at least one, and capture at least one one. It is your choice who, but you need to spread it around and order doesn’t matter.

1- 2 credit, Character card: Cow Lady (My Hero Academia), unlock target tracker upgrade (complete: Killed Shadowstalker)

2- 5 credits and Greater Waters of Lethe (complete: Captured Flechette)

3- 8 credits and Shroud Binding

The Shroud binding was another beefy one, usually neck and neck with the Parasite for the position of “most powerful binding.” Gil was partial to tantric rituals and sympathetic magic, personally, but even he needed to acknowledge that the Shroud of Power was king when it came to quickly and easily making a battle harem without the kind of body horror baggage that the Parasite had baked in.

Basically, the Shroud was a magical outfit. It could look however the customer wanted, even transforming with a thought. It wasn’t limited to aesthetics, either, as the clothes could be controlled and reshaped into any material or shape imaginable. The clothes reacted to the will of the wearer with enough precision and flexibility to act as additional limbs, and could exert enough strength to overpower most baseline humans with minimal effort.

It also generally reshaped the wearer’s body to a limited extent, based on its true owner’s preferences. From what he’d seen it seemed unlikely he’d get a full body tune up baked into the binding, but even the weakened version Gil probably had would be able to redistribute body mass and adjust metabolism. If he gave it to an extremely obese woman for whatever reason, she’d still be larger than average but she’d carry as much of it as possible in the hips and bust while smoothing out her curves.

When it was a true prime binding, the tester or customer would be able to wrap someone up in the billowing magical fabric to capture them. Holding down anyone below tier 4 or so tended to be fairly easy for a shroud bearer. An inert shroud, which was what Gil found in the item box, was a little bit more difficult to use but still pretty easy to use. It could take the form of any outfit that its bearer could imagine, and would quickly capture anyone who wore it for a few hours. The only difficulty was getting someone to put on an outfit you provided them, though you could usually swap it in for another piece of clothing if you were clever.

And naturally, mission completion led to an additional mission.

Fuck a cape in public, while ensuring that at least one unaffiliated person sees and can identify them by their masked persona.

Reward: 1 credit, Erotic Retcon: Brockton

It was almost too easy. Stupid, likely to draw attention, but easy. That was probably the entire purpose of the mission: to draw eyes towards Gil or whatever proxy he might use. It wasn’t even a particularly rewarding mission, since it offered a grand total of one credit and a reward that probably didn’t give him much of direct tactical value.

Erotic Retcons were usually more fun than they were useful. It was a whole category of reality adjustments intended to make the world more sexualized, sometimes in rather **** or strange ways. Gil had been shocked the first time he’d run into a zombie in another world, for example, as he’d been from a world that had been retooled to make all female undead into total smoke shows. They’d still been just as likely to tear someone apart; in a way they’d become even more dangerous because the smart ones could pass as living people for a few moments longer.

He’d need to wait and see what his new mission was, and consider his options. He didn’t get the impression that Rose would be exactly opposed to a tryst with a supervillainess, but getting such a woman to agree to risky sex might not be easy. Under normal circumstances, it might be impossible. Gil, however, had multiple trump cards, one of which was already in play.

Nessa “Menja” Biermann was listed as mostly captured; the only thing she needed was a good dicking. The parasite was probably driving her mad with lust, while rewriting her sexuality to be directed exclusively to other members of “her hive,” which basically just meant Gil until he could buy and deploy a few more parasites. The capture wouldn’t be complete until she had sex with such a person, and Gil wasn’t entirely opposed to killing two birds with one stone if the opportunity arose. He still wasn’t sure if he would be better served spiriting the warrior woman away to the Skyblock or not.

Gil hemmed and hawed over the question of whether or not he should sell the smattering of new recruits Ireena had managed to find, and decided against it in the end. Rose had told him that selling her recruits massively inconvenienced her when they were at the Bazaar. Ireena didn’t seem like the scheming type, but she also probably wouldn’t take well to her new friends vanishing apropos of nothing.

He decided that the two strange elves could stay active until he could discuss them with Ireena or one of them died. After all, they were only worth minor Gachas. He was already flush with resources this week, so Gil didn’t feel like scrabbling to get his hands on more would be a meaningful benefit to him. Similarly, he wasn’t planning on selling Terra unless he decided to abandon the Lands Shrouded in Mist completely. That said, it wasn’t that he wasn’t tempted.

Terra sell price: 5 credits, Persona Angel Card, Unlock Stable for purchase

Not for the credits, or the character card. There was nothing he was just burning to buy yet and he was largely happy with his current lineup. He didn’t really know what a Persona Angel was capable of; it would probably be handy but was nothing to freak out over. No, he was intrigued by the possibility of a way to handle this giant fucking bird.

It seemed obvious in retrospect, but Boco was a hungry bastard. Gil was lucky that his tree had started bearing fruit again at the one month mark, since that was the only thing that really seemed to fully sate the chocobo. Either that, or an entire block segment’s worth of grass and foliage; mana biscuits had of course been deemed unfit for chocobo consumption. Gil was quickly starting to wonder if a chocobo had been a good idea, though of course Boco had just been an excuse to give Vanessa more credits. The materia was probably worth it, but the bird itself was a logistical nightmare and he wasn’t sure if it was going to pay off while he was in Brockton.

“Well, he should work as transit.” Gil said, “Not exactly subtle in a modern setting, but eh. I might be able to get around more of the city with him.”

••••••••••

A few relatively minor polls for subjects that came up in this chapter. I’ll be finishing up Gil’s downtime and put out the polls for the next excursion over the next few chapters with a bit more meat on the bones.

Boco

https://strawpoll.com/Q0Zp72q19gM

Zubat Card

https://strawpoll.com/BDyNzJ09wyR

What exactly will that erotic retcon look like if our boy picks it up?

https://strawpoll.com/6QnMQ9xrVne