Taking Stock, Getting Started

The ride home was uneventful, thankfully. John and the driver barely exchanged five words between them before the car parked and he got out, which suited John fine. While the silence was awkward, it was less anxiety inducing than struggling with smalltalk.

John was also grateful for the fact that his Mom had already told him she’d be home late, it meant he didn’t have to come up with an excuse for where he had been. She wasn’t usually strict about these things, but she did worry… something John never liked to be the cause of.

He gathered the mail, unlocked the front door, and stepped inside the cozy Newman family home. In comparison, it was a shack next to Brighton Manor, but he was surprised to find that didn’t bother him. People of all ages dreamed of living in lavish mansions, surrounded by art and hedge mazes, but now that he had been in one, John decided he preferred this life more.

Sure, it was small, but it was comfortable. His mother had never focused hard on decorating. Instead, she took pride in making the house be as welcoming and hospitable as possible. The first floor was built to be open and airy. From where he stood he could see up the stairs, into the kitchen ahead, the den to his right, and part of the dining room through it. The only things he couldn’t see were the bathroom and the rarely-used living room around the hall corner. No doors separated any of the first floor rooms, simply denoted by archways and the hardwood floor giving way to tile, giving way to carpet. It was nice- and very blue. His mother seemed to love powdery blues.

John dropped his backpack by the stairs and the mail on the entry dresser after locking up. He headed into the kitchen, aimed directly for the fridge. Freshly armed with a glass of iced tea, John sat down at the raised kitchen table and relaxed for the first time in hours.

I lost my V-card today. I’m supposed to be calling Liam and bragging about it, not tired and helping some holy inquisition stage a manhunt for the woman who took it.
Then again, she also wasn’t supposed to be a half-demon doppelganger who kidnapped my art teacher and sucked magic out of my dick.

John sighed. So far having magic wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. That reminded him, however, to finally check out his character sheet. He had dismissed a lot of windows without reading them and it was time to figure out what they were.

Opening his sheet displayed the same blinking exclamation as before, which he was about to click before he realized that he was Level 4.

But I failed my quest, and I haven’t even fought anything yet!

Wait… if I know the Goddess, and I think I do...

Following his hunch, John tapped the exclamation point. His vision was immediately assaulted by all of the popups he’d ignored earlier. It might have sent him sprawling backwards and out of his chair if he hadn’t been expecting it. As it was, he had **** but to go through them one by one.

-
<Achievement Unlocked!>
Sitting in a Tree
Receive your first kiss.
+1 CHA
+20 EXP
-
<Achievement Unlocked!>
Knob Polished
Receive your first blowjob.
+5% Penis Girth
+Semen Flavor (sweet)
+1 LIB
+30 EXP

-
You Have Been Pulled Into a Trap Barrier
Owner: Nazrinn Lovejoy
Level 10
-

-
<Achievement Unlocked!>
I’ll Make a Man Out of You
Lose your virginity.
+10% Ejaculate Volume
+10% Penis Length
+2 LIB
+100 EXP
+My Approval
-
<Achievement Unlocked!>
Titty Time
Suck on a breast during sex for the first time.
+20 EXP
-
<Achievement Unlocked!>
Mixing the Gene Pool
Have sex with an Abyssal hybrid.
-Semen Flavor (bitter)
+1 CHA
+50 EXP
-
<Achievement Unlocked!>
Hot for Teacher
Have sex with one of your teachers… sort of.
+1 INT
+1 LIB
+20 EXP
-
<Achievement Unlocked!>
From the Brink
Survive being dropped to 0 HP
+1 HP Regen per hour
+1 END
-

-
<Level Up!>
+5 Stat points
-

After taking the time to process the achievements, John had only one thought.

“You’re a real pervert, you know that?”

Suddenly, John found his dick erect with alarming speed. From flaccid to a rigid tent pole in no time at all. Alongside it came a powerful horniness, causing his cock to twitch with anticipation.

“You’re just proving my point!” he yelled back to his empty house.

He sat in frustration for a short while longer, resisting the urge to run off for the bathroom and jack off. That’s what she wanted, he knew it, and he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

About a minute later he sighed and left the kitchen.

-
<Skill Level Up!>
Masturbation Lv. 19
-

John dried his hands off and left the bathroom after a quick session that was as satisfying as it was defeating. On the plus side, Alter Body and the Achievements were starting to add up. His dick had gone from pretty small to decidedly average in just one day. On the other hand, the Goddess’ insistence that he cum buckets had the size of his load increasing at a much faster rate. If this kept up, he’d have to start buying tissues in bulk.

With the Deus Ex Erotica out of the way, John retrieved the books he got from Reginald and sat down on the couch. His regular homework didn’t matter, it was finally time to learn what the Abyss was actually all about. He spread them out on his lap and gave each an Observe.

-
Introduction to the Abyss
Item - Misc
-A basic text covering the most rudimentary information regarding the Abyss. An essential for aspiring mages.
-
Races and Societies of the Abyss
Item - Misc
-A basic text containing brief summaries of the culture of several dozen of the more influential races in the Abyss.
-
The Protected Space
Item - Skill Book
Teaches the Skills “Create Instance” and “Exit Instance”
Utilizes 2 Skill Book Slots
Use? <Yes/No>
Skill Book Slots Remaining: 2/4
-

Huh, only the one about Barriers is actually a Skill Book. I guess that means I have to actually read the other ones. I should be grateful I get to skip reading any of them, but it’s still a little unfair that I have to spend two slots just to use the one book.

From what John could gather, Barriers seemed like they were an important part of the Abyss. As much as he wanted to keep the slots open to learn something from his school books, he decided they would just have to wait until he leveled up again.

-
<New Spell!>
Create Instance - Lv. 1
5mp, Arcana
Manifest and/or enter a Barrier at your current location. Contents, Environs, and other Parameters set upon creation.
Disabled while under distress.
-
<New Spell!>
Exit Instance - Lv. 1
5mp, Arcana
Leave a neutral Barrier or attempt to leave a hostile Barrier with a success rate determined by the difference between the user’s and owner’s levels. Cost is waived if the Barrier exited is owned by the user.
Failure imparts a 1 hour Cooldown, ended upon neutralization of the Barrier.

John waited for the inevitable surge of information to end before attempting to sift through it, and yet he was still stupefied by what came. It crashed against his mind unlike either of the previous two skill books. Those had been subjects with which he was already familiar, ideas he had already understood. It was easy to integrate the gained knowledge with his own experiences. Now, material built upon the very basics of magical theory **** its way between his memories, concepts wholly alien to his understanding of the world.

He felt strange even after the process was finished. He understood that Barriers were facsimiles of the Abyss, but he still didn’t know exactly what the Abyss WAS. He now knew how to manipulate the world’s ambient mana in such a way as to create a distorted pocket of reality even without any understanding of why it was possible. If the book had not automatically granted him the Skills to do so, John doubted he would have been able to figure out how to create a Barrier, even with the text memorized.

Regardless, he now understood why the world had shattered around him when Wentworth kicked him out and why the art studio was undisturbed after Nazrinn had escaped. Barriers didn’t affect the real world, even if they occupied what could be considered the same space. John reasoned that, if he wanted to, he could create a Barrier inside his own house without his mother having any clue. He liked that idea.

But rather than inside the house, he decided to create his first barrier in his backyard. John still wasn’t sure how big it would be or how much the surrounding area would influence the interior, but he figured having more space would be better than less. John got up, placed the books in his backpack, and headed for the back door in the kitchen.

Now, the Newman property wasn’t huge, but the yard was spacious enough for John to run around in as a kid, chasing pretend adventures. That was before he discovered video games, before he’d been bullied in the school yard for being a scrawny weirdo who’d rather swing around sticks as swords than play kickball. John sighed.

What a shitty time.

But here, in the present, the air was cool and crisp, and there was still a little bit of sunlight left in the day. It was a perfect time to go on his first adventure since childhood. It filled John with a giddy, electrifying glee. He was excited about something, truly, genuinely excited about something for the first time in years.

He focused his energy on Create instance. In response, a small interface appeared in front of him.

Environment, Population (Primary and Secondary), Difficulty, Time Dilation, Hostility, Privacy, Permanence, and Trap. Each option was presented in groupings of windows on the interface. Selecting them revealed options or, for most, where options would be when the Skill reached a higher level. Secondary Population, Time Dilation, Permanence, and Trap were greyed out, unavailable. He understood. According to the book, those kinds of things required more advanced Barriers, the kind that were currently out of his reach. In theory, though, he could one day create a permanent Barrier in which time flowed differently, giving him more hours in the day.

For now, he focused on what options were open to him. As a newbie, he naturally felt that Kobolds would be the best enemy for his first fight. He did have to fight back his inner tryhard, however, convincing himself not to raise the the difficulty from Normal. John had no indication that his powers came with extra lives and he didn’t really want to test that.

Initially, John had selected Cavern for the environment but second-guessed himself. Kobolds could usually see in the dark, he couldn’t. He didn’t exactly have any torches on hand either, which meant cave fighting would only put him at a significant disadvantage. With that in mind, he switched Cavern to Canyon.

His last step was to make the Barrier private. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but he’d learned that leaving a Barrier open was usually asking for trouble. That done, John closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Here we go.”

He opened his eyes and hit ‘Create.’

<Manifesting Instance>
Rockscale Valley - Lv 3
Inhabitants: Kobold, misc.
Nature: Hostile
Owner: John Newman, Private

<Entering Barrier>

Much like the sundering of reality when he had been kicked out of Wentworth’s Barrier, the world broke apart into cascading shards. Unlike before, instead of falling to the ground to reveal the real world, there was nothing behind these fragments of his world. For a brief moment, John felt like he was floating as if he was at the top of a swing, drifting among loose pieces of the world. The landing came when the shards of reality snapped back into place. Only, this time he was not in his yard. As promised, he was standing at the bottom of a deep, red canyon.

John turned to check on his house and found a remarkably house-shaped rock formation in its place. Some of the others a short distance away also looked vaguely familiar to the homes of his neighbors, but the further out from his position he looked, the less the area resembled his neighborhood. Cliff faces taller than buildings surrounded the rocky clearing he had arrived in, casting an adjoining valley entirely in shade.

John could make out a few less organic looking shapes in that direction. Possibly tents, maybe even a rough hut or two, it was hard to tell at this distance. Without anything else to go on, he began to walk. He stepped cautiously, well aware that he could enter combat at any moment. That’s when it struck him.

He didn’t have a single combat skill.

He was still wearing his school uniform.

And he didn’t even bring a weapon.

“Well… shit."