by ilo man
She had the brightest smile. Her curly blond hair framed her radiant face. Put quite simply; she was the most beautiful woman Vinnie had ever seen. Her carriage stopped, and she got out, her movements like floating silk billowing on a light breeze. She wore a silver gown with a large straight collar behind; the gown hugged her hourglass figure, its plunging neckline accentuating her full breasts. Like her name, her skin was as white as snow, and Vinnie knew he was watching the most beautiful woman in the land, and his heart sank as he remembered his own hideousness.
In hope, in desperate hope, he called for his apple, holding it out as if his very life depended on it, his bottom lip trembling. Blanche moved closer, greeting everyone in line. Then, just as she closed on Vinnie, she turned and walked across the road, greeting those folk instead. Vinnie’s whole body sagged. The fight went out of him, and he accepted his dreaded fate.
Princess Blanche was too good for him. He could feel her esteem; it was like strands of silver emanating from her. What was he thinking? Why would she take note of him, the ugliest of the ugly, nothing more than a monster?
Then she turned again, crossing the road once more, along from Vinnie, past Vinnie. But…she hesitated, and her head turned toward him, and Vinnie felt her radiance bathe him with the brilliance of her esteem. She took a tentative step towards him, then another. Vinnie couldn’t breathe. He felt light headed. Not now, please, not now, don’t faint now. And then she was in front of him, her eyes sad, taking in his despair, but Vinnie had hope, sudden hope, and he pushed out his palm, apple atop.
“For you. Vinnie gives to you.”
Princess Blanche blushed. Dimples formed on either side of her stunning smile. “Thank you,” she said, and she took the apple, and she leaned forward, and she gave Vinnie a peck on his sallow cheek, a kiss so light it could have been the wind itself.
Your Esteem value has changed! You old value was minus 2. You snagged a kiss from a Princess. The land awards you four esteem. Your new value is 2.
Vinnie felt his body change. Princess Blanche took a step back, gasping at her handiwork and taking a bite out of her apple. Vinnie’s stoop vanished, and he straightened. His trailing leg drew back in. He felt his chest puff out, and an enormous burst of energy tore through him, restoring his muscles, smoothing his skin, fleshing out his frame. Even though captivated by her very essence as she stood before him, his stats flashed across his mind’s eye and momentarily took his attention away.
Attribute (Value x Esteem modifier = True Value)
Health: 1 x 1.2 = 1.2
Stamina: 3 x 1.2 = 3.6
Strength: 1 x 1.2 = 1.2
Agility: 3 x 1.2 = 3.6
Intelligence: 6 x 1.2 = 7.2
Mana: 60 x 1.2 = 72
Virility [Cumulative True Value]: 3.46 x 1.2 = 4.15
For the first time in an age, Vinnie grinned, a full and gleaming grin. Princess Blanche swallowed her bite of the apple, beaming back. She fluttered her eyelids. Her cheeks reddened. Then her smile vanished. She clutched her stomach, bending double. She cried out in pain, fear washing over her eyes. Looking straight at Vinnie, she mouthed the word “Why?” before she collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Guards rushed towards her, but she was already unconscious.
Congratulations! You have completed your quest: Give the apple to Princess Blanche. You have leveled up! You have two unallocated attribute points. You are now level 3 and have 500 points. You must double that to get to level four. At level three you have the attribute, perception, available.
Level 3 be damned, Vinnie fought to get close to the stricken Princess. He muscled his way through, gazing down on her sleeping form.
You have poisoned Princess Blanche. She is in a deep, deep sleep and can only be woken by the kiss of her one true love. Your reputation with the Royal Family of Groveland has altered. You had 0 reputation and were considered neutral. You now have minus 50 and are a traitor. To redeem yourself you have to undo that which you have done.
Vinnie felt his legs giving way, but not from feebleness, from anguish.
“What have you done, Vinnie?” Velvet cried.
Vinnie turned to her. “I think I’ve snow-fucking-whited her,” he cried, as the guards closed in.
Chapter Seven
Riddled with guilt, Vinnie had to admit that this had been his best day in the game so far. Being dragged to Hartsfelt jail, unceremoniously bundled into a cell, a swift beating thrown in for good measure, couldn’t take the gloss off of it. Plus, in all the confusion, Vinnie had leveled up. True, he’d kind of poisoned the best-loved princess in the area, and yes, she’d seemed very nice. But you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, so he was putting the princess’s demise down to collateral damage, a sort of wrong-place-wrong-time event.
Plus, he hadn’t poisoned the apple, had he?
He sat in the corner of the cold, damp cell, wondering how long it would take to sort everything out. He had two points to allocate, and after his recent beating, he decided to boost his health. He’d given up worrying about virility, that attribute had got him into enough trouble as it was. His sheet looked very healthy, in comparison with the morning.
Attribute (Value x Esteem modifier = True Value)
Health: 2 x 1.2 = 2.4
Stamina: 3 x 1.2 = 3.6
Strength: 2 x 1.2 = 2.4
Agility: 3 x 1.2 = 3.6
Intelligence: 6 x 1.2 = 7.2
Mana: 60 x 1.2 = 72
Virility [Cumulative True Value]: 4.32 x 1.2 = 5.18
Perception: 0
He only remembered he’d opened up the perception attribute when it was already too late but wasn’t overly worried. It was health and stamina all the way for him.
He never wanted to go back to old Vinnie, ever.
Boredom made him look through all his menus. He had to get to 1000 XP before he reached level 4. At level 5 he opened the attribute compassion. By the look of it, at level 10 certain sexual technique skills could be learned. It all looked promising, apart from the obvious predicament he found himself in at the moment.
He checked his cock for the umpteenth time since he’d passed 5 in virility. It hadn’t grown much past the magnificent length it had achieved before, albeit briefly, at 2 virility points, but he had to accept it couldn’t keep growing—the thing would be dragging along the floor by level 10 if it did.
The extra strength point had got him the majority of his biceps, triceps, quads and the like back, so that was nice. In fact, he was raring to get banging. He just needed to get out of jail.
The rattle of a key in an iron lock tore him from his muse.
He looked up to see Velvet standing at the bars to his cell. She dragged a stool over and sat, her tiny skirt riding up to reveal delightful turquoise panties. His magnificent cock stirred and enquired as to the availability of a little action, but Vinnie subconsciously pointed out the cell’s bars.
Not discouraged, his dick decided to get a full boner and create a fairly awkward silence.
“So, you got your mojo back,” Velvet said, her tone heaped with regret. She leaned forward. “Listen, Vinnie,” she hissed. “They found a fresh grave at Grandma Lorkin’s place. It’s her, Grandma Lorkin. She was murdered.”
“Probably Cresta, she’s the one that poisoned the apple, and I thought she was nice.”
“You need to get some perception, without it you can’t judge character.”
He mulled his predicament. After all, he was technically immortal, being a player. “What can they do to me? Kill me?” He grinned. Velvet was looking foxy—though that was probably the wrong word for a rabbit hybrid. He was just about to ask if she fancied a fumble through the bars when he noticed how pale she’d gone. “What’s wrong?”
She leaned in, her knuckles nearly white as they gripped the bars. “You don’t understand, do you? The king can strip your esteem, like, forever. He’ll have you dragged to the capital, and when he gets you in front of him, he’ll take your esteem down to minus 10
, 20, and 30, whatever. You’ll be a bag of bones, unable to live, unable to die, without even enough energy to…leave.” She winked like Cresta had done. It appeared to be some form of code for talking about outside the game.
“What?” Vinnie said, his bone-on rapidly deflating. “That’s just horrible.”
“That’s why I’m going to spring you.” She looked around, brought out her sack of holding and slipped out a pie in a baking tin. Angling it through the bars, Vinnie caught on immediately. He plunged his fingers in hunting for the inevitable metal saw.
“What the fuck are you doing to my pie?” Velvet asked.
“Looking for the saw,” Vinnie whispered.
“What saw? I’m a rabbit. I’m going to dig a tunnel and get you out. The pie is so you have enough energy to scurry through it.”
“Oh,” said Vinnie.
Velvet rolled her eyes in frustration. “So much for the intel stat.” She recovered quickly, her devious look soon back in place. “Sit right here, dead central to the bars, and wait. When the moon crosses the window up there, you start eating my pie.”
“Eat your pie,” Vinnie repeated.
“And I’ll pop through dead center, drag you down my hole, and we’re home free.”
“Got it,” he said. “What then?” he added.
“Then? Then you go and find the Wanton Witch. She’s the only one who can save you now.”
“Eat pie. Wanton Witch. Got it.”
Vinnie was too scared to argue, scared to his very core. He didn’t want to lose his esteem. Velvet left, and he sat there, never moving, not even an inch.
Dusk fell. Vinnie stared up at the window as the sky blackened to night, holding Velvet’s ruined pie in his hands. The first slither of moonlight touched the window’s edge. It intruded farther, kissing the first bar. Vinnie waited patiently.
The moon passed along to the next bar, and the next until it took up the whole window.
Vinnie started eating Velvet’s ruined pie. Shortly after, the ground in front of him started to jump a little, then, like a real-life horror movie, Velvet’s hand broke through, quickly spreading soil in all directions until a little round mound of heaped earth surrounded a perfectly circular hole.
She popped her head through, assessing Vinnie.
“You should fit, but just in case, gimmie your wrists.” Vinnie dropped the empty pie tin, then held out his arms. She reached out of the hole, binding his wrists with a rope. “Dive in, and I’ll pull you through. Just shove with your feet.”
“Won’t that…hurt?”
“You wanna be stripped of all your esteem?”
Vinnie shook his head.
Velvet vanished.
Ambling to the edge of the hole, he sank to his knees and dove in, smashing his head on the tunnel’s end and near screaming in pain, immediately bent into an unnatural shape, the tunnel nowhere near as deep as he anticipated.
He hadn’t known what to expect, possibly a few hundred yards of excavations, struts and tallow lamps, maybe a set of rails and a wagon. Vinnie didn’t really have a lot of experience with jail breaks, but he was fairly sure the tunnels should be quite complex, and the open ground on the other side should involve dogs and searchlights.
So he was quite surprised when he was dragged out of the hole about eight feet later, untied, and treated to the moonlit sight of a dirty, but fully naked Velvet, panting away and out of breath.
She looked down at his swelling cock.
“Really? Now? Esteem?”
That single word right at the end did it. Esteem was now Vinnie’s new watchword. Velvet pulled him up. They were in a narrow alleyway. One way looked out onto the main road, and the other wound upward away from the town. Velvet led him up, running, ducking onto the next road up, shooting into an alleyway over, and onward and upward. She didn’t stop until they traversed one last slope, now above the town, only then did she slip into a little copse and crouch down, retrieving a sack from under a bush.
“Stashed it earlier,” she said, taking out a bottle of water. Draining half, she passed Vinnie the rest. “My brother’s cottage is just up there; he’s not around this month. We can wash up and get you ready there.”
“I thought I had to find the Wanton Witch?”
Velvet laughed. “That’s why we’ve gotta prepare. You don’t go see the Wanton Witch; she’s gotta want to see you.”
“Oh,” said Vinnie, wondering if he should tell Velvet who he was. Surely that would get him in to see the Wanton Witch.
System Alert: Talking outside the game or out of character results in an immediate esteem stripping of 5 points! That’s twice you’ve been warned.
Five? Vinnie cast aside any thought of revealing his identity.
After they’d rested a couple of minutes, Velvet nodded to him and pulled him through the copse. They came out in a grassy vale, the faint silhouette of a quaint little cottage up ahead. He caught sideways glimpses of Velvet’s nakedness, her white fur shimmering in the moonlight, streaks of dirt somehow making her even more alluring. Her pert boobs barely bounced as they strode along, they thrust outward, defiant, challenging the moonlight and dressed with the cutest of nipples. Her fine white down ruffled in the breeze.
“Like what you see?” Velvet whispered.
“Very much,” said Vinnie, his voice an octave or two higher than it usually was. “Why are you helping me?” He needed to know, wanted to know. Surely they couldn’t all be bad, like that bitch, Cresta.
“Because I feel responsible. I should have known there was something up when you presented the quest.”
“Oh?”
Velvet grabbed his hand, pulling him up a grassy bank and onto a gravel trail, the tiny cottage just a few dozen yards away. “Grandma Lorkin always collected her supplies, and if she couldn’t, for whatever reason, her granddaughter collected them. She’d have never set a quest.”
“Why did you let me go then?”
Velvet turned to him, looking up, her lips shining in the moonlight, nose twitching, whiskers glinting. “My perception told me how daft you’d been. You were all cock and no brains, so I wanted to teach you an early lesson about balance. I didn’t think you’d get farther than fifty yards.” She turned away, opened the door and led him in. “I drew a bath before I went for you. It’ll be cold, but not as cold as river water. We’ll have to share. You wanna go first?”
Vinnie just wanted to kiss her. He was in the game, and for the first time, he wasn’t a complete weakling. He was in the game, and he was with a gorgeous rabbit. True, he’d never expected to say gorgeous and rabbit together without thinking of a small bunny, but he’d take it.
The cottage had a completely open-plan ground floor with just a staircase in the back corner which presumably led up to a bedroom. The bath was in the other far corner by a backdoor and a stove sat to one side of it. Vinnie scanned a central hearth for a strike or some such thing to light the fire, but everything looked a little foreign to him.
“I’ll light the fire. You take the first bath,” Vinnie said. “That is if I can find some matches or something.”
Your status with Velvet has altered. You have leaped from 0, indifferent, to 5, friendly. You might even get laid at this rate.
“Am I supposed to do that?” Vinnie asked. It had been bugging him. Surely if someone was friendly to him, he ought to reciprocate.
“You can’t,” she told him. “You need a couple of points in your perception attribute first. Once you have those, you’ll also be able to identify things you’re unsure about. Above four points you can alter statuses with other players. The more you get, the more you can see and do. At the moment, unless they alter something, you won’t have a clue what they think of you.” Vinnie heard the bathwater ripple and knew she’d slid into its welcoming water. “You’ll be able to find things like the strike to light the fire too. Look for a piece of metal shaped like a bow,” she continued. “There should be a lump of flint next to it. Bash one against the other right
by the kindling and hope for the best.”
Vinnie scanned around, and sure enough, a small silver-colored bow lay on the fireplace’s hearth and alongside it sat a piece of flint. He picked up the strike. It fitted in his hand like a knuckleduster. Holding the flint in the other hand, he did as Velvet instructed drawing one across the other right by the kindling. It sparked, the kindling caught, and that should have been the end of that, but it wasn’t.
To Vinnie, it was so much more.
He’d made fire. He’d created something simple, something practical.
He’d said he’d perform a task for someone, and he’d been successful at it. For the first time in his life, Vinnie had done something for someone else.
Meh! Not quite, he’d been cold, had been dreading getting out of the bath in a freezing room, plus he had already imagined getting steamy with Velvet in front of its roaring flames. But still, he enjoyed the euphoria of very nearly doing a completely selfless deed.
Baby steps, he knew baby steps were in order.
Still, he was proud of making the fire, which was now roaring away.
“There’s normally some wine by the stove, and I brought a loaf and some meat. You hungry, or did you gobble up all my pie?” Velvet called.
Vinnie walked over to the bath and stove, his legs giving way slightly as he thought about Velvet’s pie. Retrieving the wine, he was relieved to see its cork was half in and half out. After getting the fire started at the first time of asking, he didn’t hold out much hope of performing another menial task without complete disaster rearing its ugly head.
Just as he was about to get all practical and cut the loaf, the splashing sound of Velvet getting out of the bath saved him.