I had never made the choice to bring Chrysta into the fold, but did so now. I didn’t know what sort of Healer ability she’d end up with, but that didn’t matter. She was one of my team, and according to my erotic set of abilities, that meant she needed my mark on her.

She and I weren’t close enough to level up any of my abilities, but I did get the choice of Ghostform out of the experience. Mana Affinity informed me that I could turn ghostly for a time, take no damage whatsoever from physical attacks, and I’d be able to walk through walls. There was more, such as creating fear in enemies, but Ghostform would have to take the place of Indomitable, and that was a strong no. Instead, the system applied some xp towards leveling up Indomitable, and that was just fine.

Chrysta and I relaxed and cuddled in the storage room for a good little while. I stroked her lovely head, which cooled my chest a bit. I’d used Pheromones to take away her ghost aspect and make her ‘alive’ and also used Adaptability to handle the ice aspect as well.

Administering the cure for mana disacclimation, according to the skill check, would require a steam bath. We couldn’t use Larelle’s Magmamander because it was acclimated to the mana, but it could create steam by relaxing in a large tub of water, before we removed it. After that it was hot rocks on wet towels, and a double boiler with the cure in it.

I hadn’t paid attention to the physical manifestation of the cure as I was dumping variable amounts of mana into it again and again. It had started to give off that tell-tale purple blue glow of pure mana, with a coruscating oily rainbow sheen we saw on the clouds every day. It was like watching oil float atop asphalt after a rain, or watching the soap in a bubble mix and writhe before it popped. And it hummed, too, though the hum ebbed and flowed from intense to inaudible again and again. The smell too oscillated between sharp like ozone or burning metal, to soft and floral or honey-scented.

The Administer Cure check went off, but I had more than enough successes.

I went first, getting inside and feeling the oppressive heat mixed with the variable mana overwhelm me. No clothes then; I stripped them off and sat on the bench in the bathhouse to soak in the aerosolized cure.

It wasn’t unpleasant, but it also wasn’t wonderful. My skin tingled, and then parts of me I couldn’t scratch began to itch at me: my sinuses, my teeth, my eye sockets. All these felt like they’d grown little spike strips and every movement of my breath through my nose irritated them, every movement of my eyes scratched at the back of my eyeballs, and every breath or movement of my mouth sent annoying toothache pains shooting through my jaws. It subsided not long after, but the process ramped up and grew more uncomfortable some few minutes later.

In the meantime, I was able to collect my thoughts. And deal with some UI business.

Achievement: unique cure created

You have become quite the pioneer, haven’t you? Crafting a unique cure no one has ever done before? That’s worth of some serious accolades. Congratulations!

Reward: +1 free class level (in both your classes)

I’d also gained a level in Pleasure Seeker and Healer both, from my work with Chrysta and my cure work. Both mana disacclimation and my mother’s cancer cure had taken a lot of time and energy.

As for Healer, it looked pretty nice.

Level 40: Ability upgrade: Healer’s Resistance

Level 41: +6 skill points, +1 Ingenuity

For one thing, I’d never had an ability progress beyond level 4. And, my suspicion was proven true a second later when I saw the pop up window.

Healer’s Resistance has become Mender’s Aegis.

Mender’s Aegis III

(Special Ability, Rare, aura)

I- Activate this aura by spending a Durability Token. Allies affected by your aura gain 10 levels of a skill called Resist Ailments for 1 hour. Poisons, venoms, toxins, diseases, curses and other ailments are covered. While they remain inside your aura, the skill levels and duration are doubled.

II- Anyone inside your aura may make a Resistance + Durability check after taking damage from a source to gain a level of resistance in that source permanently. They may spend a Durability Token to gain this level in the event of a failure.

III- Activate this aura by spending 2 Affinity Tokens, and choose one of the following: Air, Earth, Water, Fire, or Void.

Air: Allies affected by your aura gain 7 levels to Air Resistance, Electric Resistance, and Divine Resistance aspect skills for 1 hour.

Earth: Allies affected by your aura gain 7 levels to Earth Resistance, Physical Resistance and Plant Resistance aspect skills for 1 hour.

Water: Allies affected by your aura gain 7 levels to Water Resistance, Ice Resistance and Fairy Resistance aspect skills for 1 hour.

Fire: Allies affected by your aura gain 7 levels to Fire Resistance, Fighting Resistance, and Draconic Resistance aspect skills for 1 hour.

Void: Allies affected by your aura gain 7 levels to Dark Resistance, Psychic Resistance and Ghost Resistance aspect skills for 1 hour.

While they remain inside your aura, the skill levels and duration are doubled.

This ability does not cover divine damage caused by gods.

“Awesome,” I muttered. In every way except complete immunity granted by Healer’s Resistance. And 14 or 20 levels was pretty great. I noticed that at first there was no poison aspect resistance, except it was right there in the first level description.

Next, I had a look at my next two levels of Pleasure Seeker.

Level 47: +12 skill points

Level 48: Ability Upgrade: Eromancy, Post-Sharing Clarity

Good. With the 18 skill points, I could advance some of my Healer skills by the available 4 levels afforded me by Mender’s Focus.

Post-Sharing Clarity IV

(Special Ability, Rare, Passive)

While you have intimate relations and afterwards, all participants gain +4 temporary bonus to all attributes and skills for the next 30 minutes. This bonus does not grant additional Tokens.

The duration increases by 30 minutes for each relationship level above base acquaintances.

Excellent. Nothing was revolutionary here except for the plain old goodness of better duration and better effect. Now that stakes were being raised and I was encountering even harder missions. In fact, after having sex with Chrysta, my attributes and skills were all elevated right now, and would continue to be for the next hour plus.

Eromancy IV

(Special Ability, Heroic, Active)

I- You automatically detect arousal, passion, erotic thoughts and feelings, and their points of origin, to a range of Affinity x30 feet. You may spend a Token to home in on those thoughts and experience them. Targets will immediately detect your presence in this case. Unwilling targets use Psychic Resistance and Durability to force you out, versus your Pheromones and Likability. The subject may spend a Token to eject you.

II- Spend a Likability Token: You may bring a target you are touching into your mind, to experience a psychic delving of your choosing. This could be memory or imagination. The target will know truth from fiction instinctually. The subject may exit your psychic projection at any time.

III- While inside these fantasies, you may influence them or take control. Spend a Token to begin shaping these thoughts, daydreams, or dreams. You may attempt finer control using additional Tokens or by Pheromones and Likability checks. As before, the subject may spend a Token to oust you from their mind.

IV- You may bring targets equal to your Likability attribute into your mind for the psychic delving. You need not be touching these targets, but instead may be Relationship level x 10 feet from them to initiate the delving.

Eromancy had become something of a background feeling in the last several weeks. There’d always been a cloud of arousal and sexual thoughts going on around me, and I’d always known where it was coming from. I hadn’t needed to use the psychic fantasy delve… but now that I was reminded of the ability, I might have a useful tool with my Claudius problem.

As usual, this is Christopher warping his Pleasure Seeker abilities to deal with non-erotic issues.

The cure for mana disacclimation took only ten or twelve minutes. It was long enough for me to spend all my skill points the way I wanted them. I put 4 points into Develop Cure, both Human and Medium, along with 4 points in Mana Affinity and Administer Cure. That already left me with only 2 points, so I put those into All Aspects. One of these days I’d get to heal some Nakamamon.

Sitting here with my thoughts was relaxing, even if I was presently bringing Chrysta back from a little tryst and looking forward to the next one. And also playing cards. The minutes slid by, and gave me a rare moment of total quiet that felt… wonderful.

Congratulations! you have been healed of mana disacclimation. You no longer risk becoming a permanent part of this world. Your chakras have been acclimated to the parched magical landscape of your home world, along with the lush magical world here on Dorfilialtos. The process of moving between worlds will still be a strange and uncomfortable one, as your chakras normalize, but permanent consequences are no longer a danger or worry.

I headed back to the area where my clothes were, robed back up, and headed out. On the way, it was time to grab another achievement.

Achievement: mas-cure-bation

You have cured yourself of an illness! Unlike the automatic healing done by gods once they themselves were cured and in their right minds, you have sought out the ingredients, crafted, and then administered the cure on yourself.

Reward: +1 free class level in Healer Updates are released by novel⟡fire.net

“Dang,” I muttered.

“Well?” Tara demanded. She was holding a content Dori to one swollen breast, and the baby was placidly suckling. Cinzy, Izzy and Ivy stood not far off, with Ivy giving Tara’s baby and boobs the side eye. A jealous side eye, I realized. Alan was also waiting, and looking around the cave where we were playing euchre, I realized Fletcher II could get the news to Trent and Drat as well. Chrysta hovered not far off.

“I-i-i-it w-worked,” Alan said, having examined me with some spell or Wizard ability, or just a skill check.

“It worked,” I affirmed.

A relieved ripple went through the crowd.

“I’m next,” my mother said.

“It’s uncomfortable!” I called, but she was already striding into the bathhouse.

My mother went in, but the other girls were quick to strip off their clothes and join her. Unlike her, they didn’t bother to go inside the building first, and instead just shucked all their shorts and skirts and shirts, and in Cinzy’s case, knee high stockings. She bent over and gave me a smile while slipping them down her knees.

“Thanks, Fletcher,” she said.

She wouldn’t be thanking me for the next ten minutes or so.

In the meantime, I grabbed up the next level up information. There was no way I’d get to level 50 by the time Mom’s cancer cure was done, but I’d take all the levels I could get.

Level 42: +14 skill points

The slow uptick of skill points was so nice to have continue. I spent these as I had before: 2 in Human, 2 in Medium, 2 in Administer, 2 to Mana Affinity, then 2 to Transmutation, 2 to Instinctual Casting, and finally 2 to Mana Shaping.

“Okay,” I said, and got back to work.

The question was which direction to head next. Meditating Fletcher was busy trying to get all my Tokens back to good, but OG Fletcher used 5 Affinity Tokens yet again to top off all the other spent Tokens using Arcane Alchemy. The concentrated burst of mana washed over me, replenishing all the Tokens inside my character sheet.

“Okay, so I could go ahead and work on the cure… or I could have a chat with Buttercup.”

I reached out with Psyspeech yet again, closing my eyes and feeling for the Defrit. Once I passed the more difficult check, I told her my idea.

The darkening around me as soon as I explained my plan told me she’d been listening, and the freezing of all the Nakamamon in the city nearby told me she had once again stopped time.

“You are becoming a thorn in my side,” she said.

“I don’t have my purity spirit surrounding me,” I told her.

“You act as though this is a wonderful consolation prize, when in fact both these events are nothing more than continued annoyances to the tasks I must undertake.”

“Let’s speak privately,” I said, and held out a hand.

Without the ‘eyes that see true’ I could only perceive Buttercup as a humanoid silhouette with those wonderful Nakamamon bunny ears, the confusing skirt, and the blobs of swirling purple light where her eyes resided.

“Your confidence is entirely misplaced,” she said. “I could level this city with a wave of my hand. I could have the inhabitants clawing at each other’s throats as their darkest desires took hold of them and drove them into mindless fury.”

“You want me to be scared of you?” I asked.

“You are terrified. I can sense it coming off you in waves.”

“Yet I’m also confident?”

“Humans are curious in that they can be so many things so often.”

I reached forward again. “Take my hand. We will have some privacy.”

She took my hand.

***

Once the Likability Token was spent for Eromancy, I brought Buttercup into my parent’s house. I put my sick mother there, my worried father in the garage workshop, and my very pregnant sister laying on the floor while Brayden pressed his forehead to her face and stared directly into her eyes. She had an exhausted smile on her face.

Outside, things got fuzzier. I could recreate some of my neighborhood from memory, but not all of it. House numbers were clear, but everything else was blurred and indistinct, even some of the minor characters in my parents’ lives.

“Listen to me,” I told Buttercup, taking her hand. “I’m more than ready to help you get through whatever you have going on. If that means helping you break free of your bond with Claudius, that’s what we’ll do. If it means me meeting with Jocinda to flush her out and send her back to earth, I’ll help you do that instead.”

Buttercup was now much clearer and more visible than in the real world. Here, she had a tiny mouth, two of those big rabbit ears with dark pinkish skin on the insides, and I could easily make out all the buckles and metal studs in her dress. She also had on stockings, which could only be seen now from the way they tightened around the skin of her thighs.

“You would not betray Jocinda to my master,” the Defrit told me. “Your moral nature prevents you from betrayal, even with one you do not know.”

“You don’t know that.”

She looked directly at me and lowered her eyes in a look of total disbelief.

“What we need to do,” I told her, and brought her down the stairs to the basement, where my gaming computer had been set up, “is get the actual list of your orders and parameters from Claudius.”

I was sure Claudius had been thorough with her, but I was also sure I could find a loophole in the orders she’d been given, and get her out of the situation she was in.

This is Christopher knowing all about holes.