NOVEL NEXT Chapter 5: Killing Time
Week 1, Skyblock
Snow was pleasant enough for company. She enjoyed cooking, singing, cleaning, dancing, and chattering about anything that popped into her head. Unfortunately, she just didn't have much life experience to contribute to the conversation. The poor girl had been working as a scullery maid since her father died when she was around five. She could talk to animals, but she thought nothing of it. In fact, she seemed surprised and intrigued when Gil pointed out that most people couldn't.
"Well why not?" She asked, "it's not really a very difficult thing to do. I started talking to the birds when I was about eight. I suppose I was quite lonely, but no more than many other young ladies."
As Gil had expected, she was a modest, traditional sort of girl. She was very pretty if her extremely pale skin wasn't a turn off, but the chances of seeing any skin normally covered by her dress was just about nil. Even sitting too close to her or touching her hand uninvited made her jump with fright and embarrassment.
Unfortunately, there just wasn't much to do on the skyblock. Gil liked sitting around a fire chatting with a stranger and eating slightly bland soup as much as the next guy, but he was already bored by the end of day two. Planting a few potato eyes in the hope that they'd grow into something was all well and good, but it didn't take up as much time as you would think. Especially if neither person involved knew enough about farming to bother optimizing the process beyond "bury it shallowly and hope."
Gil exercised as much as he could, and offered to show Snow how to do some basic stretches and aerobics as well. Snow was in decent but unexceptional shape; she had spent most of her days doing light housework, but couldn't recall a single point in her life where she deliberately pushed her body's limits. Gil, for his part, didn't actually know all that much about maintaining a good physique. Body Tune-up was an incredibly useful perk that many testers generally tried to pick up early on, and for good reason; maintaining a peak physique was an entire lifestyle.
Gil started turning over the pros and cons of using the corruption fruit on Snow in his head long before he actually had the thing in his hands. The second time that he was politely but firmly asked to sit in the tent so Snow could bathe, in fact. Gil was not so horny that he was incapable of being near a pretty woman without trying to rip her clothes off, but he did have limits.
Pros: Gil could pass the rest of the week far more enjoyably, and with any luck Snow would generally become more comfortable with him. There are far worse things to have as one's first retinue member than a beastmaster maid. She seemed to have a sweet and gentle disposition, and absolutely no ambition or objection to hard work to speak of. She'd also hopefully become less uptight when he started bringing other girls home, which he definitely would be doing.
Cons: It was an unnecessary use of resources. Snow didn't want conflict, so she didn't want to go home. She actively liked cooking, cleaning, and tidying up; if Gil didn't want to give her a good schtupping, she'd already be perfect. Further, he might be less willing to sell her off once she was captured if he burnt resources tweaking her personality. There would be other beautiful women; hot girls were a selling point whether the customer wanted to befriend, romance, or ravage them. Did Gil really want to use a consumable on the first one he met?
By the time her timer ran down and she was fully captured, Gil determined that in fact he did. It was not an economically wise decision, but Gil wasn't such an optimizer that he would endure three more days of monotony just to save a relatively minor item. By the Light, items existed to be used.
Obviously he didn't shove the fruit down her throat the moment it appeared in the box. First, he checked his tablet to see if anything changed. A few new things were in the missions, shop, and retinue tabs.
After capturing Snow, he'd been given a new mission:
Capture or Kill the Seven Dwarves
Reward: 1 Credit, unlock Pocket Change perk for purchase
Special: the Seven Dwarves count as one target for the sake of bindings. You must still capture each of them individually, but you may use the same binding on each one.
Pocket Change: Whenever you go through a portal, you will be granted a small quantity of the local currency. A McDonalds combo meal, a single healing potion in a JRPG, or a bag of animal fodder will likely deplete your finances for the day.
Gil felt sincerely ripped off. If he hadn't used the stamp on Snow, this mission would have been extremely easy and profitable. The dwarves seemed gullible and good natured enough to let him stamp them with only minor effort.
Gil didn't have much personal interest in the seven miniature comic relief sidekicks, but that just meant he could sell them off the moment he finished the mission. Gil doubted they would sell for much in the grand scheme of things, but if Humbert was anything to go by they'd probably shell out at least a few consumables, maybe even some credits. Killing them was right out. Some people would have shrugged and grabbed the axe for the easy credits, but Gil was not one of them. He wasn't anywhere near that hard up yet, and the payout would be pitiful if he couldn't sell the shorties afterwards.
The perk, Pocket Change, would be similar to Gacha in that it would provide a constant drip-feed of resources. Unfortunately, he wouldn't get the perk for completing the mission; he'd earn the right to purchase it. He didn't even know how much it cost. He'd consider it for 1-2 credits, since buying a jar of peanut butter every week would help his food scarcity problem, but if it cost 5 credits it might as well not exist.
Speaking of the shop, there was a new tab: Stamp Upgrades
5 stamp credits
Open Hands (5 stamp credits): you may sell your stamp binding. This removes all Stamps in your possession (including from the Extra Stamp upgrade), but grants you 20 credits you may use as you see fit. You may buy back the Stamp for 20 credits. Your stamp-captured waifus will be unaffected.
Canvas (10)
Extra Stamp (10)
Tattoo Storage (20)
Symbolic Tattoos (25)
Power Tattoos (30)
The one available "upgrade" didn't appeal to Gil much, since the stamp was by far his most reliable tool so far. That didn't mean he would never use it, but he'd really need those 20 credits. As hilarious as it would be, he wasn't about to throw away his stamp for the Gacha upgrade.
"Maybe if I had five worlds I was happy with, and I'd already stamped people in all of them." He mused. "Still, that's a big if."
Far more intriguing were the later hidden upgrades, and the fact that he had multiple kinds of credits. The Stamp binding, by default, didn't have many upgrades. Well, not anymore. They'd nerfed Megapixel a while back and turned it into the most expensive Hypnosis App upgrade. Being able to capture anyone you snapped a picture of at any range was a bit broken, even at a 200 credit cost, and it honestly didn't fit the "marking your property with your seal of ownership" vibe of the original stamp. Canvas, if he remembered right, was normally a very cheap upgrade that made your stamp permanently visible for people who really wanted a tattoo showing that they owned their girls. It sure as hell wasn't worth 10 real credits, which made him less than enthusiastic about the value of Stamp Credits, even if he seemed to be earning them passively somehow.
"Stamp… Credits… unclear… at… Start…" Gil muttered as he wrote down his concerns on his tablet. "Review my prior report on poor tutorialization. Introducing one thing at a time is an improvement, but it's all a bit cryptic."
Gil didn't expect anything to come of his complaints, but his very existence relied on his ability to generate useful data. That meant documentation and proactively engaging with all systems. He hadn't signed up for an "objectively poor decision making" test, so he didn't need to do anything really stupid like toss Snow and his stamp off the side of the box. He just needed to play through like a reasonable, self interested customer trying to have fun.
His theory was that he'd gotten the five credits for capturing Snow with the stamp, but he still didn't know why. Would every capture be worth 5 stamp credits? Was Snow specifically worth 5 stamp credits? Would every binding have its own upgrade tree, and why hadn't he gotten any soul-trading credits from Humbert if so? Whatever the case, he didn't have enough credits to buy anything good without selling his stamp.
He listened to Snow singing to herself while washing off the sweat from the day's workout. It was time for the moment of truth. He opened the retinue tab and checked Snow's sheet. Her tags included princess, Big Name, Tier 2, social, maid, monster tamer, protagonist, stress defense, creature defense, and female.
"Hah," Gil chuckled to himself at the protagonist and Big Name tags, "I fucking called it. She's the main character of her own story. Tier 2, so she's not considered to be particularly powerful. Most people make it to tier 2 if they have any unusual skills to speak of and speaking to animals definitely counts. Shame I'm not getting defense rebates this time. Ah well. Let's see what you're worth…"
Sell Snow White (Big Name)- 2 Credits, Creature Defense.
Creature Defense: Adds the Creature Defense tag to one member of the retinue. Retinue members with the Creature Defense tag will never be attacked by non-sapient living creatures without provocation. Even when provoked, such creatures will focus more on driving the retinue member away rather than killing them, or will preferentially target other people. Alternatively, this can be used to upgrade a Creature Defense tag to Creature immunity, making it nearly impossible for a non-sapient life form to decide to harm the retinue member.
Gil blinked. One member of the retinue? That was one hell of a nerf. Normally defense perks applied to the entire retinue, including the tester and all captured individuals. Then again, having the tag now meant that the waifu had the defense, which compensated somewhat for the lack of rebates.
Snow had the Creature and Stress defense tags, so she could walk through a pit of venomous snakes and probably avoid getting bitten if she was quick, and could bounce back from almost any trauma. Given how long it took for her to completely shrug off the fact her only living family wanted her dead, that checked out.
Gil decided, at least for now, that he wasn't going to sell Snow. She had a few defenses and could marshal a swarm of animals to assist her. If creature defense hadn't been nerfed, or if he had anything worth buying for 4 credits, he probably would have saved the fruit and dropped her to save food. As things stood, however? She seemed just useful enough for Gil to justify keeping her. Naturally, that meant a bit of corruption was in order.