While I was scrubbing and thinking of what we were going to do next, I noticed a shadow block the doorway of the bathroom. Looking over, there was Isabella, completely naked herself, standing and staring at me. She was staring at me, I was staring at her, and a weird silence filled the room.

“What are you doing?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Umm…” She was starting to turn red and fidget. “I heard the water running, and since you didn’t answer me, I thought you might’ve been in the shower again and needed me to wash your back.”

Seeing her skin flush a deeper shade as she blushed even more, I finally had had enough and quickly turned my back to her. “Yeah. Back wash you can me for.”

“Huh?” She sounded puzzled, and I had to clear my throat and repeat myself again. “Umm. Yeah, you can wash my back.” There was a slight giggle from behind me, and then I felt her hands scrubbing down my back again.

“What were you doing earlier, “ she asked. “And, what do we need with all those rats?”

“Well for starters, I’m going to skin them.”

“Skin them?”

“Yeah. “ I slowly shook my head up and down. “You remember how to look at your stats, right?”

“Well yeah. I’m not stupid.” I heard a little stomp of a bare foot on the floor; it was actually kind of amusing sounding. “All I have to do is say ‘stats’.”

“Yeah.” I nodded once again. “And we also now have skills. Well, you might not yet since you’re still level zero, but I’ve got some.”

“Skills, “ she said while her hands moved on down from my back to scrub over my buttocks. I tensed up and held my breath, but was too embarrassed to say anything. I can’t say it felt bad, but it definitely felt odd. I don’t guess anyone had washed my backside since the last time my mother did it for me when I was a babe.

“Nope. It doesn’t do anything except make a weird ‘dump dump’ noise.” She giggled lightly.

“Well, I’ve got a few skills now, and we’ll work on getting you some soon too. One of mine is for harvesting animals, and I wanted to practice it on those corpses. The more you practice a skill, the higher it gets. And the higher they get, apparently they become more useful. The description for my skill reads, ‘Allows the user to attempt to harvest meat and other goods from an animal. The higher the skill, the higher quality animal products that can be harvested.’

“And with the world like it is now, who knows what type of animal products I might be able to harvest in the future. For all I know dragons could be real and if I get skilled enough I might be able to harvest the leather for armor or their bones for weapons. So all those rats are a place for me to start at.”

“Makes sense,” she answered me.

“And besides, we can always use the meat now,” I told her matter of factly.

“Use the meat?” She sounded shocked. “You mean you want to eat a rat?”

“Nope. I don’t want to eat a rat,” I emphasized, “but at the same time I’m not going to let myself starve to death. Just how much junk food do you have left in that vending machine, and what do you think you’re going to do once it’s gone?”

She was silent for a moment and finally answered. “You’re right. There’s not a lot of food left, and I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t want to eat a rat either.” Her voice got low and quiet. “But, I don’t want to starve either.”

Saying, “I guess meat is meat,” she finally laid the cloth she was scrubbing my back with on the rim of the still running sink and turned and left.

By the time I’d finished scrubbing my front down she was back at the door again, but this time she was dressed once more. “Here, I thought you might want this.” She held out the dress I was wearing earlier.

“Give me just a moment to dry off, “ I told her.

“Sure. Can I ask something?”

“You just did,” I replied.

“Ha ha funny. What I was going to ask was why you’d took your clothes off earlier before bringing those big rats in here.”

I turned off the water in the sink and picked up the cloth we’d used earlier to dry off on. I could tell now, it was another dress similar to the one she was holding out for me to take.

“That’s simple, “ I told her. “I knew that room stank, and I knew I was going to be carrying those large rats.” I glanced over to the three in the tub beside me. “One thing I’ve already learned: all supplies are precious now. We used to take food and water for granted, but now it’s something hard and precious to get. Clothes are another thing that we used to take for granted, we always had them and could always replace them, but that’s not true now. I didn’t want to ruin them if I didn’t have to, with the blood or stink. It didn’t hurt me to do without, but if I need to turn those into a bandage or something later, and I couldn’t because they were too soiled or nasty, I’d always regret it.. I knew what I was doing was going to be nasty, and I just didn’t want to ruin them.”

As I was finishing drying off, she stared and then nodded at me. “You’re right,” is all she said as she turned and walked back into the other room, carrying the dress I was going to wear with her!

I finished drying off and went into the other room, and was shocked to see her sitting naked on the couch looking through the backpacks I’d just carried in from the goblin’s room. “What? What are you doing,” I stammered.

“Trying to see what you brought back. Is that OK,” she asked?

“Yeah. Sure.” I wasn’t certain where I should be looking at the moment. “Where’s your clothes?”

She looked up at me and half-smiled, half-blushed. “You’re right. They’re something we do need to take care of, and since it doesn’t seem like they can help protect us or anything in here, I didn’t think we needed them. After all,” she turned bright red, “we’ve already bathed together. “

“Besides, “ she continued on pragmatically, “as far as we know right now, we might be the last two people on this island. Worry about something just because it’s the way we used to do it, or because it used to be embarrassing, seems rather silly now. They brought us here so we’d learn to accept the customs of different people in this world, but none of that matters anymore. The only custom worth worry about now is living, I think.”

I certainly couldn’t argue with that line of thinking, and I didn’t even try. When she saw I wasn’t going to say anything more about the matter, she went back to pulling the pens and papers out of the pack with the stationary in it and began looking through them.

Wanting something to do to distract my eyes, I went on over to the sink and grabbed up one of the knives on the counter there and started trying to harvest the rats. “You know, there’s a book over near the door that I’d found that seems to be something quite special. When I try to read it, it tells me my stats aren’t good enough. Why don’t you go take a look at it for a bit and see if you can understand it.”

“Okay,” she answered and I heard her walk over. “Oh my gosh! It’s a big one. I can barely carry it!” I heard a loud THUMP on the coffee table as she plopped it down there. I wasn’t going to look. I wasn’t going to look. I wasn’t.

So, I snuck a glance over my shoulder and saw her sitting cross-legged in the floor with the book opened on the table in front of her. I guess she must’ve had a high enough mysticism to use it, because I couldn’t even get the cover opened myself. I tried to ignore her and immersed myself in harvesting small bits and pieces from the ratlings.

After a while, my skill in Harvesting (Animal) had went up to a 7, when she suddenly let out a little, “OH!”

“Something up,” I asked.

“I’ll say!” She sounded excited. “I’ve been trying to read through this and it’s pretty hard to follow, but a window just popped up in front of me again.”

“What’s it say?”

“It says, ‘Congratulations, you have began to unlock one of the paths of the mystic. You must now choose a path to continue from. Lif…”

‘WAIT!” I turned and leaped towards her and almost threw the half-skinned rat carcass I had in my hands in her direction. “Don’t say another word!”

She gave a little “EEEP” and sat as still as a rock, without even blinking. “I’ve learned a bit about some of these things to! If you say the name, this stupid world might think that you’ve made a choice already. Bloody Hell, that was close, “ I said with a self-depreciating smile as I went over and flopped down on the ground beside her.

“Here, write the choices down for me. That’s what I brought the paper and stuff in here for, after all.”

Without saying a word, she picked up a small notepad and then scribbled a few lines on it and handed it back to me. What it read was “Lifebringer. Painbringer. Lifestealer. Only 3 choices.”

I thought about it for a few moments. Lifebringer sounded to me like the title one might give to a healer. They heal things and bring life into the world. Painbringer sounds to me like that might be a wizard that went out and nuked things or killed them. Lifestealer I wasn’t as certain about. From some of the games I’d played in the past, I’d think it sounded like one of those characters that hurt others to heal themselves. They weren’t as good at blowing things up as the nukers were, but they were often more durable because they could life-tap others to heal themselves.

At first, I was tempted to advise her to follow the path of a Lifebringer. It’d be nice if she could heal me and keep me from dying! But then I also thought about her own low health. “A Lifestealer might be the best for you,” I advised.

She scribbled on the paper and I read it, “So you think I should follow that path?”

“I do,” I told her.

“Then I want to follow the Path of the Lifestealer,” she declared.

She blinked at me. I blinked at her. “Anything happen,“ I asked?

“Nothing except the window disappeared…”

And at that moment the book floated up off the coffee table and was enveloped in a dazzling bright white light that swirled around and engulfed her too. The intensity of the light keep increasing and I had to put my hand up over my eyes and look away. And then, just as suddenly as it came, it was gone.

I moved my hand and saw a much smaller book fall and thump on the ground, and then I just stared at Isabella.

Her hair had now changed color and was a shiny silver color; chrome-silver almost. Her lips had turned pure white, as was her fingernails, toenails, and the area at the center of her breast. Glancing down (and who can blame me for looking her up and down in a case like this?), she was smooth and hairless. No fuzz on her arms, legs, or even.. umm. . between them! Her eyes were wide and shiny blue, and I could tell she was reading something.

“Stats,” she said, and then she gasped. “Looks like my class is Lifestealer now, but I’m still level zero.”

“Class?”

“Yeah, it’s right below where it says name, unchosen.”

“Stats!” I wanted to pull up my own stats to confirm something.

Name: Bloody HellTitles: The WitnessAge: 17Level: 8CP: 11STR: 9SYI: 8WIL: 7DEX: 10MYS: 8PRE: 7CON: 20SPR: 4LUC: 11HP: 116MP: 72SP: 36PD: 1DR: 0MR: 0SE: 8

“Right below the name area you say? Before the STR?”

“Yeah. That’s where it says class Lifestealer now.”

“……..”

Sunnuvagun! She’d already gotten a class at level zero, and my spot there was still blank!! Talk about a real "Classy Lady" -- I guess she was one now!