Power Fantasy

by Scottie Futch

  Scott read through the list of issues he suffered from and sighed. He had caught zombie aids, or whatever, but managed to resist it. That was a good sign, but it was no doubt entirely due to his disease resistance and traits. A normal person with his endurance stat probably would have succumbed to it, mild case of it or not.

  It made sense that such a thing could be resisted. Otherwise, every time a tiny bit of zombie gunk got into their eyes they would turn into drooling undead rapists. A hard bite or serious scratch were a bit more difficult to resist and most people probably could not manage it. He was no longer most people.

  His status was just as interesting. Even without the chance to itemize, he had gained points in a lot of things including a couple of attribute points. He realized that several of his attributes must have been close to gaining a level, or perhaps there was a bonus applied somehow as a reward for completing the mission.

  Whatever else he had gotten out of the deal he had no idea. Though, it seemed he finally gained another level in edged weapon mastery if the points available meant anything.

  “Scott?” asked Summer suddenly, a nervous and fretful tone in her voice.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” he said while making a pained attempt to smile.

  “Thank god!” she cried tearfully. Summer bounced over to him then threw her arms around him.

  It was sweet agony being in her arms. Sweet, for obvious reasons. Agony because of his injuries.

  “So, you’re alive?” asked Tosh curiously.

  “Yeah. I’m guessing Saiko dragged my carcass back here?” he asked.

  “Yeah. She went with a group of people to get medical supplies,” said Otakun. “Your fever had us all worried that you were going to turn, but you didn’t…”

  Scott closed his eyes and sighed. “Almost did. I was able to resist it, but it turned into a serious blood infection instead.”

  “You… resisted?” asked Tosh. “You can do that?”

  Scott poked at his dingy looking costume. They had not removed it, either because they could not or because they figured doing so might hurt him worse. “This thing is the reason. I’m more resilient to disease and poison than normal people, and the system claims it was a mild case of it.”

  “You’re going to be alright, right?” asked Summer, her voice muffled a little because her head was buried in his chest.

  “I need to convert antibiotics, painkillers, and a med kit to heal. Probably a few of each to be honest,” he replied.

  “We have some of what you made before?” suggested Otakun. “Though, Ms. Oppai already used your med kit on you.”

  “It was just gauze!” she exclaimed. “What kind of emergency kit is that!”

  Scott offered her a pained grin, then stroked her hair. “If there’s any pain killers, or a normal emergency kit left that would be awesome.”

  “You were out of it for a couple of days,” said Tosh in a mildly accusatory manner.

  “I was unconscious because I had a cognitive issue,” said Scott. “Summer using that med kit probably saved my life because it treated my bleeding inside and out.”

  In response, she nuzzled her cheeks against his chest. Her reaction to him being alive was remarkable, and quite touching. “I’m sorry that I worried you.”

  She drew make and looked up at him with tear stained eyes. “You jerk! Don’t do that to me again!”

  Scott drew her in for another hug then propped his chin atop her head. He really did need to either get stronger or avoid getting involved in combat scenarios altogether. He barely made it through this time, and that was because Saiko had hauled his big ass over to the mall.

  “Cognitive issue?” asked Tosh.

  “Brain damage, I guess,” said Scott.

  “Pain killers can cure brain damage?” asked Otakun.

  “What can I say? I have a simple brain,” said Scott with a chuckle.

  “Eww…” said Summer. She giggled softly and continued, “You’re all sweaty.”

  Sweat rolled down his face as another chill overtook him. That damned blood infection was absolutely annoying.

  Otakun went out to fetch the items Scott needed, and let Momoko know along the way that he was up. The pink haired genius sauntered into the room with her hands on her hips and her arms akimbo.

  “Well. Look who finally decided to wake up,” she said in her typical snarky manner.

  “It’s good to see you, too,” said Scott with a soft smile.

  Momoko snorted at him but did not say anything particularly bitchy. Instead, she asked him if he thought that he could move soon.

  “Depends on how well my items treat me, but it’s gonna cost me a small fortune either way,” said Scott.

  “Medical expenses in this country have been on the rise,” said Summer with a sad little shake of her head. “The pharmaceutical companies really don’t know how hard they make it on people.”

  He mussed her hair playfully and she gasped at him like he had scandalized her. How dare he do that! She would have to punish him later.

  Otakun returned with a bag of stuff, and Two ladies in tow. Though, using the term ‘lady’ for Jade was a bit of a stretch at times. The other newcomer was a petite blond woman in a police uniform. Scott thanked him as he handed him the bag.

  “Hello. My name is Salami. I am a prefectural police officer. I hear that you are awake?” she asked him seriously.

  “I… think so?” asked Scott. It was obvious that he was awake. Officer Salami, obviously she was the local equivalent to the character Asami, from the manga. It was good to know that she existed in this world, though what she said next was even more interesting.

  “That’s great news! Officer Motorola will be thrilled,” said Salami. “She had left in order to try and get help at the police station but ended up stranded on top of that building.”

  “Ah. Did everyone make it here alright?” he asked her.

  Salami glanced at him and Summer then looked away, her face slightly flush. “Uh, yes…”

  “The little girl, and her father, who were with Officer Motorola came by to see you while you were out of it,” said Otakun.

  At the mention of a little girl and her father, Scott immediately became interested. In a normal world, it would be just a coincidence. This was not a normal world. In the anime series there was a little girl and her father who were trying to survive. Her father had been killed when they asked a group of people for a place to stay for the night, and Takashi saved her from the horde drawn by her loud wailing. None of that happened in this world, and it could be a coincidence, but he doubted it.

  “I hope they are doing well?” he asked.

  “They’re doing fine. Even picked up another little friend along the way,” said Otakun.

  “Oh?” asked Scott.

  “Yeah, a little white dog…” said Otakun.

  The tone of those words spoke volumes. Otakun had recalled what Scott told him to watch out for a few nights ago, and those three sounded suspiciously similar to that description.

  Salami smiled at Otakun then slipped a little closer to him. “Yes, and you were quite brave to hold off those poor infected so that they could all make it inside.”

  Otakun looked at her bashfully and rubbed the back of his neck. “It wasn’t really that brave. I was sniping them from the roof.”

  Salami took his free hand in hers and offered him a starry-eyed look. “It was amazing…”

  “Was it?” asked Otakun with a nervous smile and then an even more nervous laugh.

  Salami smiled brightly at him and rapidly nodded her head. “You were awesome!”

  Momoko noticed this and gasped a little before she stuck her nose into the air like it didn’t matter to her in the slightest. It was clear to Scott that a few things had happened since he’d been dropped by that big dead bastard.

  The new girl chatted happily for a few minutes but was then dragged off to deal with some crises or another. Free of her well-meaning intrusion, Scott looked to t
he items that Otakun had brought.

  “OK. We got some pain killers and a few unconverted med kits,” he said lightly.

  “Will it be enough?” asked Summer?

  “I hope so,” he replied.

  Scott took a pain killer, already converted by the system, and waited to see what would happen. In truth, the pain in his body receded slightly but he felt almost nothing else. He checked his status and saw no difference, either.

  He took one of the med kits and spent a few hundred points to convert it. After it was converted, he opened the kit up and took out the small roll of gauze that he found inside.

  Med Kit Usage Guide

  Wrap the gauze around any limb, or other extremity. The effect is automated and will work whether there is an injury on the extremity or not.

  “So…. Alright,” said Scott with a mumble.

  “What?” asked Summer.

  “Ah. Just reading the instructions…” he replied.

  “There are instructions?” she asked curiously.

  “Yeah. Apparently, it’ll work no matter what part of my body I wrap.” Scott did not wait for her to respond. He began to wrap the gauze around his arm instead.

  Once the small roll of gauze had been used up, he marveled at what happened next. The arm he wrapped had no open wounds, yet the bandage immediately began to soak through with blood. After approximately one minute the blood crusted over and the bandage broke down the center. It then disappeared in a cloud of sparkling lights.

  This time he felt a good bit better, though still feverish. His status showed that his maximum hit points and energy had increased slightly. More importantly, his severely battered body status had changed to simply ‘battered’.

  “Working?” asked Summer hopefully.

  He smiled at her then nodded. “Yeah, somewhat. This is going to cost me a fortune in points to fix, but it is definitely working.”

  “I’m so glad!” exclaimed Summer tearfully. “You had us worried…”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I’m honestly surprised it turned out like this,” he admitted.

  The others watched in silent fascination as he repeated the process by popping another pain killer then converting another med kit. This time the result of the combination was much more pronounced. His battered body status was reduced to ‘multiple serious injuries’. His brain damage was repaired entirely, as it was a mild affliction originally.

  He popped his last prepared pain killer then converted the other two remaining bottles. In the end, his body status was healed to ‘Severe bruising and minor lacerations’.

  “Much better, but not even close to one hundred percent,” said Scott now that he’d run dry on restoratives. He’d spent over a thousand item points to make that happen, but only managed to boost his hit points and energy points to a bit over half of their normal maximum.

  “You’d think game items would work better,” said Otakun. “Don’t they usually completely heal characters and things like that?”

  “Maybe, but the stuff I have seems to be geared toward other things,” said Scott. “The med kit is mostly to stop bleeding, maybe disease, and to restore hit points. Treating my actual status effects otherwise is kind of a bonus.”

  The little meeting soon turned into a general chat session as the group filled Scott in on what he had missed in greater detail. Summer had mostly stayed by his side throughout the last two days. Saiko did so as well for the most part, but she was often called out to meet with the officers running the mall. During that time, he happened to take a look at Summer’s information.

  Summer Oppai

  Status: Fretful fiancé

  Affection Rating: Concerned – [+72]

  Level: 103

  Cost: 12589[Cost is now set. It will reduce once agreement resolution is met.]

  The cost to make her a waifu had not changed because of their agreement, but her affection rating had increased. That was a good sign, even if it made him feel like an asshole for making her worry about him.

  Nearly an hour passed before Saiko returned. Covered in blood and her outfit in tatters, she stared at him for a moment then released a soft tired sigh. “You’re alright?”

  “Better than earlier. Thank you for saving my big ass,” he told her sincerely.

  Her smile brightened and she tried to look cool by posing a little. “No. It was nothing…”

  Scott saw her effort and decided not to spoil the mood by letting her know that it would have been better to brain him with her sword at the time so they could have tried again. He did not want to cultivate the idea that whenever he was slightly injured the best way to deal with it was murder. He liked to live, even if this time it would cost him. Such was the price to pay for his hubris. He had not been ready for that fight. Not yet.

  “Anyway, we were able to bring back a bunch of things from the pharmacy,” said Saiko. She handed a big plastic bag of drugs and other things over to Scott.

  “Doxycycline?” asked Summer.

  “Yeah, and a few other kinds,” said Saiko. “I’m supposed to let you pick the ones he needs then take the rest to the communal stockpile.”

  “I really appreciate this,” Scott told Saiko.

  “Yeah. Like I said.” Saiko turned away a bit and lightly brushed her hair back over her hear. “It’s nothing.”

  Scott offered her another smile then blinked as Summer suddenly hugged his arm tight and made a cute little noise. Someone was feeling jealous, perhaps?

  Saiko glanced at Summer then looked away again. It was clear that she wanted to say something, but he figured that she probably didn’t want to come off as jealous herself.

  He looked at the stuff in the bag then checked for something that he could convert. Most of what was available proved to be candidates for conversion, so he picked the cheapest that he could find. He could convert this cheap pack of azithromycin pills into an item that could cure disease for a little over six hundred item points. Scott named the new item, ‘Antibiotic,’ and checked its information blurb to see what it really had to offer.

  Antibiotic

  A low-grade restorative item capable of curing natural diseases. This restorative item does not cure supernatural diseases. Virulent diseases may require more than one dose.

  - Cure Disease [789]

  Uses: 1

  “That’s definitely better than a med kit…” While it would not restore hit points, it would certainly help to fight off an infection. There was also a bit more information provided by another window that explained the difference between natural and supernatural disease. Natural diseases were caused by natural phenomenon. Supernatural diseases were typically magical in nature and usually appeared in the form of curses. He would need a curse removal item to cure diseases of that type.

  Scott popped the pill into his mouth and chased it down with a bit of water. The effect was instant. The chills subsided and his sweating slowed considerably. He checked his status and grinned. That one pill was strong enough to cleanse most of his blood infection as it had gone from serious to mild.

  A second pill, though more expensive than the first, cleansed that illness entirely. All that was left now was the damage to his body in general.

  Still exhausted from his recovery, he only managed to stay awake for a few more hours before he passed out once more. The next time he awoke, it was in the white room.

  “Man. Was I really out of it that long?” he asked rhetorically. He expected no answer and received none.

  Admittedly, he was not certain just what time he had woken up before. There had been no windows in his sick room.

  A quick check of his status made him sigh. “Nearly twenty-five hundred points just to get this far along.”

  His maximum hit points and energy points had increased, a sign that his endurance was helping him to recover. It would still take several days if he could not get more med kits, however.

  After he checked his status, he looked around to see if anything had changed. He wa
s not disappointed. Off to one side of the white circle that defined his existence, he saw what appeared to be an old school jukebox.

  World Theme Playlist

  You may now choose to activate or deactivate background and cinematic music for each world you visit.

  “The hell? This is cool and all, but why is it here?” in the end, he decided this must have been his real reward for that optional side quest. He activated music for the worlds he had access to and then went to the monitors.

  The monitors had a new section entitled ‘Unread Logs.’ So, he tapped on that option and he received a list of several messages that he had received while unconscious. Most of them had to do with his injuries. However, a few of them mentioned rewards. He had gained a point in every attribute and multiple points in his various experience pools. The jukebox was also proven to be the main reward for the completion of the side quest on the first try with no deaths.

  “Wait…. That’s a thing?” he asked thoughtfully. In hindsight it made sense. Given that he could reload infinite times provided he made a quick save each time, he could theoretically accomplish any mission eventually. Successfully completing one the first time should probably come with bonus rewards.

  For the most part there was nothing else of note. However, he did find one more notable message. He had been informed that his lack of coherence had caused him to automatically leave the white room using the autosave feature each morning. Any time he loaded into a world; it would delete his current quick save as he already well knew.

  Before this happened, he had not been seriously injured whenever the morning visit with the white room occurred. So, it never occurred to him that if he was mentally incapacitated the room would just spit him out back in the world he had just came from. It was a situation akin to how he returned to the past automatically prior to the point where he unlocked the white room. There was some nonsense about it being a safety precaution, but it felt more like a way to screw him over. Had he died; he would be resurrected in the white room. Injuries, however, needed to be treated and if he could not make a choice due to being incapacitated the room had no reason to keep him there.