As the meal slowly cooked, I finally walked over and wrapped my arms around Isabella while she slowly simmered the meat. “I’m…” I stopped that thought. She always got angry with me if I ever apologized for Little Bud’s actions or accidents. “Is your rump OK?” Gods! How embarrassing! I wish there was a polite way to ask, ‘Sorry ma’am, but did I hurt your ass while having intercourse with it?!’ Maybe it’d be better if I just came out and asked something like that, but I don’t think I could ever bring myself to do it. I get tongue tied just thinking about it!

Isabella however didn’t seem bothered by the question as she just giggled and wiggled her hips against mine while I held her from behind. “My fanny’s fine,” she reassured me.

“So have you spent your points yet?” I quickly changed the subject. Enough of that is enough of that. My cheeks were already red from trying to ask about it. I don’t know how she could be so frank about such subjects without the slightest hint of embarrassment. She really was an amazing girl.

“I was starting to spend them, but then someone came along and interrupted me and then I fell a little behind instead.” She giggled, but I groaned slightly at that terrible pun.

“Want me to finish burning… err… cooking the meat so you can go ahead and spend your points then?” I thought I’d be nice and ask. Besides, even though her cooking had improved a bit with the rats, I still didn’t like it. At this point, I don’t think I would’ve like even a gourmet chef’s cooking, if they cooked rat. I wanted something different, and I wanted it soon. If I never eat a rat ever again when I get out of here, it’ll be entirely too soon.

Isabella giggled and flipped the meat she was frying in the pan. I noticed that she was still collecting the grease for some odd reason. She’d been collecting all the grease that we’d ever fried out of the rats, and there was a disgusting mess of lard and fat in the bottom of the coffee pot. I don’t know what she needed it for, but If she thought it was worth saving, I guess we’ll save it.

As the rat meat cooked on the other side, she started poking at the air in front of her again. “One point mysticism, and you’re right: I gained a title and a bonus five points for surpassing the old human limit. I put two points into luck to make it a ten now. I don’t want bad luck, at the least. And I went ahead and pumped three points into my constitution so I’ll be as healthy as anyone normally would be from here on out.

“I’ve got 57 cheat points left, and I was thinking of spending some on strength, but I got a notification warning that I had to pay an increased cost. I currently have an effective strength of two, but that’s because of my class and the Ka’Lani bloodline. My strength is actually a four, so to improve it I’d need to spend four points, but that’d only raise me to a 5, and since my strength is halved, it still rounds down to a two. I’d have to spend five more points to get my strength to a three.”

“Sounds complicated to me.” I never was the best with numbers

Isabella just giggled. “What it breaks down to is I’d have to spend 9 cheat points to get my strength up to a three, and then 13 more to get it up to a four, and then 17 more to get it up to a five. 39 points total to raise my strength to a five. That’s quite a lot of points that I’d rather spend in other things right now.”

“Like what?” I asked? If it was me, and I was running around naked, I’d think strength might be a priority so I wouldn’t get tired wearing some sort of armor if we found it.

“Well, for 25 points, I can buy off my Vision: Bad Sight disadvantage. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about keeping up with my glasses, or what might happen if they break or get stolen.” Isabella pulled a few pieces of rat meat out of the frying pan and laid them on the counter to cool as she placed a few more small strips back into the pan to start frying.

“I could see you wanting to do that. Not being able to see would be a terrible thing. I’d rather be naked than blind,” I admitted. She’d already told me she had terrible sight since The Crackening occurred. It was probably from the game world turning our old world traits into game disadvantages when everything changed.

Nodding, she went ahead and pushed her finger at the thin air in front of her. Almost instantly she swayed in my arms. “Woooaahh! I didn’t realize my eyes were actually that bad! These glasses make my head spin now,” she said as she pulled them off and laid them off to the side. “Oh wow! It’s amazing how much better everything looks.”

She glanced around her shoulder, looked at me, and then shivered. “Ewww! Or maybe not!” She wrinkled her nose like a rabbits and then giggled aloud.

“Hey! I’m not ugly!” She couldn’t stop giggling.

“I’m not.” I said, pouting.

Giggling, she turned around halfway in my arms and kissed me on the nose. “You’re not,” she agreed as she went back to her cooking.

“And now I’ve got 32 points left,” she confirmed. “I could only take my strength up a whole two points with that. If you don’t mind carrying my stuff around for me when we leave here, I think I’ll skip on improving it for now. There’s a lot of other things I want to get so I can start finding ways to grind them up and improve them.”

“What about wearing armor? Or clothes out there at least? If we run into other survivors, who knows how they’re react to a naked girl as beautiful as you traveling with me.”

Isabella giggled, “you think I’m beautiful?”

“Well, yeah. Absolutely no doubt in that.” I was just being honest after all.

She half turned again, leaned to the side, and gave me another one of her ‘tonsil kisses’. By golly, I tried to return it and taste her tonsils this time too! I don’t know how she managed to do it, but somehow she had an almost minty taste to her mouth – almost like she’d just brushed her teeth. Not that we’d found any toothpaste or toothbrushes so far; at least not that I knew about anyway.

After a long moment with our lips locked together, she turned back around and flipped the meat in the pan. “Let’s be honest. With such a small increase in strength, any armor light enough for me to wear, wouldn’t offer enough protection to be worth wearing. And as for being naked in front of other people, I already have a solution for that, that I might can get started on tomorrow. A four strength isn’t much better than a two strength when it comes to carrying armor, I don’t think.”

“Then what would you spend the points in?” I asked.

“Well, I think I’d spend a lot of points to try and start down the appraising route for us. I can appraise jewelry already – my father sold a lot of jewelry and gems, and I started with a skill in appraising jewelry. I picked up an appraise weapon skill to try and learn about that spike, but it isn’t high enough. The world seems to break things down into multiple categories. Weapon, Armor, Jewelry, Clothes, Books, all sorts of categories. I’m thinking of spending half my points to pick up the ability to appraise and maybe identify all those things. Then, as we find different things, I can work my skill up so that the next time we find something like that tail-spike, I can learn more about it before anyone tries to bind to it.”

“That’s a dang lot of things to try and improve and learn,” I told her honestly.

She giggled and replied, “It’s OK. I was always a bookworm before. I love learning all sorts of things. Did you know, I learned six different languages already just so I could read the books authors wrote in them. If I can learn all those and keep improving them, I can learn how to identify and appraise different things when we find them.”

Finally, I just shrugged. Me, personally, I wouldn’t want to be that weak, but if she thought it’d be OK, I was going to trust her. “Then go ahead, little Ms. No-Glasses Bookworm. You keep getting better at being the brains, and I’ll keep getting better at carrying junk and taking the hits. As long as we work together, we’ll be dandy.”

“Well,” she giggled and wiggled her hips up against mine again, “I think we work just fine together. Just don’t get too behind in your own work.”

Blushing, I let go and turned my back to go back to trying to finish sewing up my coveralls. “You just be careful,” I warned her, “or else you might be the one getting behind every night.”

Laughing freely, Isabella turned off the burner and gathered up a few pieces of meat and brought them over to sit them on the coffee table. “You know, if I can get all these appraising skills up, we might start learning a whole lore more about this world. There’s just so much to learn, and so little time!”

I nodded, as I had to agree with that. There was so much to adapt to in this new world that it made my head hurt. That’s why I’d decided I was going to keep it simple for me. I was going to be the one to grow strong enough to take the hits from any monster. I was going to be the shield that Izzy could stay behind and stay safe. But, for me to do that, I was going to have to pick up some extra skills as well.

Playing around with the system always sucked for me. For whatever reason, the stupid thing wasn’t nice at telling me anything useful. But, I’d already discovered a few things on my own; if I truly concentrated on wanting to learn something, and I had the skill points necessary, I could make a popup appear asking me if I wanted to spend cheat points to learn the skill. I still had a few points left, so I spent a few more as we sat, snuggled, and silently ate supper together.

Of course, the goblin didn’t get any food. He was a short-term snack for Izzy’s magic, and I didn’t expect him to live long. If I can get skills and such from enduring her feeding on my life, I don’t see any reason why this little guy couldn’t either – and who knows what happens to monsters after they get so many points. For all I knew, I could go to sleep one night and the little bastard could cocoon like a butterfly, pop out as a gobdragon or something, and kill us both. A few days to make use of him, and then he was going to help improve my harvesting skill even higher. If Izzy was going to learn how to appraise anything we found, then I was going to learn how to harvest anything we came across.

As for the skills that I was learning now? I picked up “Taunt”, “Roar”, and “Weapon Proficiency: Dagger”. I figure that tail-spike was similar to a dagger-like weapon. At least, I’m hoping that’s what the system calls it, as a few points in it might help give me a boost in learning and improving my fighting with it. Taunt helped me get and keep the attention of one opponent. Roar allowed me to try and taunt or intimidate a whole group of creatures around me. And of course, the weapon skill was just to help me poke things better with my tail-spike when I used it.

“So Drakey-poo…” Isabella giggled and wiggled herself down into my lap after the meal. “Did you get me any shiny sparklers earlier?”

“Shiny sparklers?” She went and confused me once again.

She just giggled and nibbled on my neck and then my ear. “Any jewelry, like I’d asked?”

“Oh!” I blushed, as I’d somehow (not so) accidently forgot about it. “I’m sorry. I was attacked by the goblins before I found any.” I left out the part about how I passed up dozens of pools of liquefied remains, before the goblins found me.

“Well poo!” She pouted her lip out at me and then hopped up and skipped out and to the bathroom. Was she actually upset? Or just teasing me? I’m no good with women! All I know is I was confused once again.

“Well then, you can make it up to me,” she said with a laugh. “Since we’re going to stay in here tonight, you’ll have all night to recover your health, correct?”

“Well, yeah. I guess.” Crap! Was it feeding time again.

“Then can I recharge back up from you?”

I just nodded. Yep. It’s feed the energy demon time again. I let out a little sigh and then gritted my teeth. Her pull on my energy had gotten a little stronger again, but my health had increased a ton with the bonus I got for passing the normal human limit. All-in-all, I was adjusting to the process more and more all the time.

“So what is your energy limit now,” I asked her.

“260,” she told me. Crap! My health was still only a 186 now. “But,” she continued, “my consume life spell has increased so that I’m now turning 1life into 1.1 energy now. When I take 100 life from you, I get 110 energy. I’m hoping as I keep improving that talent, the ratio will continue to improve and then eventually I won’t need but a fraction what I do now to get my power back up.”

After she’d drained 100 points of my life, she nodded to herself, quit, and then snuggled back down fully in my arms. Soon she was fiddling around with something in her hands and I saw a glow flicker in and out of existence a few different times until she finally stopped and turned and kissed me on the nose.

“You’ve got to help me with something else,” she told me.

“OK.” Hopefully this wouldn’t be as bad as her feeding on my life.

She got up, lay down on the couch across from me, and spread her legs wide. One leg went up over the top of the couch, and the other she laid out and across the coffee table itself. “Come on over here,” she told me.

Hesitantly, I got up. “My front isn’t going to touch your front,” I reminded her.

She simply giggled and told me, “No, but your hands are. Here, take one of these.” She held out something to me, and when I took it I could see it was a wide looped earring. “You’ll need to pierce one of my lips and then put the back on that one. That’s not technically a piercing earring, so it’s going to be hard, but you can do it. Just try and do it all at once, if you can. Please.”

Slowly, I took the earring and stared at it for a moment. Then I stared at her vagina. She’d done something magical to this thing, so I was simply going to trust that she had her reasons. Taking a deep breath, I slowly reached down and pulled the left lip back just a little bit so I could get the earring up against it, and then I pushed hard against her soft, warm skin.

“Yaaaoeeew!” Isabella jerked, her left leg came pulling down from where it was laid over the top of the couch, and she kicked me square in the face before she settled down. It didn’t really hurt.

Tears were in her eyes, as she asked, “Did you get it?” Slowly she opened her legs back up and I inspected my work. Sure enough, the stud had pierced the skin and there were a few droplets of blood around the wound.

“Yeah, but I have to put the back, back on the earring,” I told her.

She sniffled a little as she composed herself. Finally, she nodded and said, “Ok.” To give her credit, she didn’t jerk or kick me this time. She simply tensed up and took a deep breath of air and held it until I was done.

“All done,” I informed her. Believe it or not, I was sweating from that. I guess I’d never make it as a surgeon or anything in this world.

“Not quite,” she informed me while holding out a second earring. This time she brought her legs down and put them together, and then she pulled both arms behind her head and laid on them. “You’ll need to do one of my nipples the same way.”

I was so lost at this point, I don’t even think I can say I was surprised. Slowly, I sat down in the floor and leaned over and played with both her nipples for a few moments. I’d already learned that they would stand up and look around like Little Bud did, with just a little encouragement. Once they were stiff, I repeated the same piercing process on her right nipple. Isabella inhaled deeply, gritted her teeth so hard I could hear them grind together, but she never moved.

It’s a shame she hasn’t built up a physical resistance like mine. I was getting used to knives being poked in me. An earring? Ha! I could probably go to sleep on a cactus now and tune it out without much problem. An earring wouldn’t even be worth sneezing at – but I was smart enough not to tell her that.

“All done, unless you have another.” I said, again.

“Nope. That’s it.” Isabella finally sat up and looked down at herself. “It’ll take some getting used to, but I’ll learn to live with them, I suppose. Just don’t be a bully and yank them off from me in your sleep!”

She giggled, but I still quickly assured her, “I won't!” Then I had to finally ask, “What exactly did I do that for?”

Isabella giggled and leaned over and kissed me on the nose. “You did it because I asked you to,” she said smiling. Then she got up, turned her back around and said something that sounded like, “I’m dressed.” When she turned back around again, she was wearing a flowing white top and a deep blue skirt.

My eyes bugged out and my jaw almost hit the ground I was so shocked. Slowly I reached out to feel the skirt, but instead I ended up feeling her warm skin under my hands.

“It’s a phantasm,” she told me. “Just like what I did with the tacks to hide the door. It looks real, but it’s really nothing more than a colored set of air vapor, held in place with the magic. Anybody who sees it will see clothes, but if you ever want to touch, it’ll be all me that you’ll end up feeling.” She fluttered her eyelashes at me and then winked suggestively.

“That’s why I wanted you to see if you could find some other earrings or studs earlier. I could cleanse them with my flame, and then enchant them and finish up my outfit.” She turned back around and I had to smirk to myself. The backside of her was still all bare. “By focusing on enchanting a small area, it takes very little energy to maintain a phantasm. One earring to cover the whole body would wear out of power in just a few days, but several earrings with smaller areas to cover? The enchantment will probably last for a couple of weeks with them. Then, since we’ll probably level up and skill up by then, I should be able to make some ‘wind clothes’ that will last for a long time.”

Never in all my life had I ever imagined anything like this before, but I have to say: I think I really liked Isabella’s new clothes!