by Logan Link
I glanced at my character sheet, trying to find a way to quickly dispatch the three stronger, higher-level enemies who were hiding behind better cover at the far end of the gun shop.
“I could use… Gravity God?” I thought aloud, rereading the description text to my only Power.
Power: Gravity God. Cost: 40PP. When cast, you may run up and down floors, walls and ceilings without dropping, so long as you constantly maintain momentum. Lasts 10 seconds per cast.
A plan quickly came to me as I started to hear louder gunfire. What was this? I looked up and saw that the enemies were also adapting to the turning tide, switching to heavier firepower.
Full on machine guns, and stat-damaging grenades like EMPs.
OK, better come up with that plan quick, Dan…
“Ruby, can you tag enemies on your own?”
“For myself? Sure, I can do that,” she answered. “I can also tag enemies for the squad, based on my own NPC targeting profile.”
“Perfect, do that for me,” I replied, focusing my attention on the gun. Killing enemies was not just filling my XP bar, but also filling the weapon’s XP bar — so weapons could level, too.
This crash course in combat and weapon management was looking handy.
I considered my plan again and whispered to Ruby to get ready. “Tag everyone who’s still alive. Tank the damage if you have to, I’ll give you my medkit. But if we do this right, I’ll get them all in just a matter of seconds.”
“That sounds impressive,” Ruby said, her voice spiced with skepticism.
“Now!”
I activated Gravity God, watching the icon turn into a timer for the ten seconds it was active. Then I ran from my spot in one corner to Ruby’s nook, ready to race up the walls.
Closing my eyes for fear that I might just slam straight into the wall, I was clenching, feeling bullets whiz past me harmlessly while the rules of gravity shifted for me. Eight seconds left.
I was now running up a wall! Fuck, more than that, I was now running along the ceiling, dangling from the top while still maintaining momentum.
Ruby had tagged the enemies for me.
“Fucking die, fuckers,” I growled as I focused my bursts of submachine gun fire right at these enemies, whose cover was now useless.
You hit Yakuza Shopkeeper for 34 damage. Critical hit! You killed Yakuza Shopkeeper
You hit Yakuza Initiate for 20 damage.
You hit Yakuza Mobster for 17 damage.
You hit Yakuza Initiate for 45 damage. Critical hit!
You hit Yakuza Mobster for 21 damage. You killed Yakuza Mobster.
There was just one enemy left. He was now backing away, trying to find new cover while I ran up and down walls, floors and ceilings, but then I heard Ruby’s voice in my ear.
“He’s getting away!”
“Huh?” I turned to look at him, briefly losing my momentum as I missed a step. I fell right down to the ground, unable to stop my fall.
You took 4 fall damage from World
She was right. He was gone, having run out. Wait… so enemies can teleport in, but not out?
That was interesting. So this wasn’t such a wasted experiment after all.
The first enemies we killed had already vanished, transformed into little loot boxes, but the latter kills were still there. I walked around the gun store floor, admiring the headshots I managed to somehow dispatch enemies with while running up a ceiling.
Focusing on my DEX was a pretty nifty thing, after all.
“Hey, let’s loot everything and get the fuck out of here before anyone else comes,” I absently informed Ruby, only to slam right into her.
She was grabbing me, looking fierce. “No,” she murmured, heavy with flirtation. “Let’s do something else first.”
Ruby was glowing pink, a label floating above her head:
Ruby state: PASSIONATE FRENZY. When in PASSIONATE FRENZY, Ruby enters a state of desperate lust, and will stay in that state until satisfied.
As she pulled me down to the floor and began to tug away at her clothing, I knew I was really starting to enjoy this game.
6
“Careful,” I said gingerly, as Ruby began to hungrily paw all over my body. She straddled me, pinning me down as I lay below her. A loot box floated harmlessly inches away from my head.
“Why?” her eyes flashed lust.
“Well, because I’m sort of bleeding from my shoulder and sides,” I winced. “So are you. Don’t you want to take care of that first, before, uh, we do anything?”
“Nope,” she laughed, lifting her dress up to reveal her panties were soaked.
Oh God, talk about instantly regretting my fretting over my HP. I was so into this. I was super into this. I could feel the weight of Ruby’s slender, fit body as she began to needily grind herself against my thighs, the soft fabric of her panties registering against the front of my jeans.
This game was fucking amazing.
I minimized all open windows in my PLEX to clear as much of my vision as possible so I could see this absolutely gorgeous redhead who was horny as fuck for me.
Ironically, as real as it all felt, this was when my mind started to realize I was still in a game — after all, what sort of hot as fuck babe kills people and then pins you down desperately wanting to fuck your brains out in some sort of post-murder haze?
Her [PASSIONATE FRENZY] tag was time-limited to twenty minutes. I didn’t even need that long, but hey, all the better for me.
As she undressed, revealing fucking perfect breasts with the most perfect coin-shaped rosy pink nipples, I was already wondering if I was going to have to remove the VR headset right now once I inadvertently start splooging my pants.
“Fuck, Dan, stop thinking and just fuck me,” she whispered in my ear, pulling back to give me a show of those perfect breasts, then grabbing me by the back of my hair and yanking my head forward.
Our lips collided, and we made out with more passion than any real life woman had ever done for me. This was porn-level sexy. This truly was a passionate frenzy, and the liberties she was taking helped get me in the same mood, too.
Fuck, I wanted her — I wanted her bad. It was crazy that in this game, women as hot as Ruby were the baseline. To think I was complaining about wanting to pay 750 credits for sex with her earlier.
Given how immersive and real the game experience was, the price I paid for the game box would already be worth it the moment I fucked anyone, let alone Ruby.
No wonder some guys were just stuck in the noob zone, forever drooling over hot stripper babes in Liana’s joint. Who needed to do anything other than bone hot babes?
Ruby was all mine now. My companion in all senses of the word.
I began to hug her close to me, her neck bared to me for me to treat her with kisses that made her shudder. She was so extremely horny for me that with every kiss I left the side of her neck, she began to squeeze her perky, huge tits against my best, and grind her butt even harder against my groin.
“Don’t tease me like this, Dan,” she whispered needily. “Just fuck me, okay? Please? Please fuck me.”
Did I say this game was fucking amazing yet?
Just hearing her say those words made me shudder, and I had to bite my lip.
Oh, her hands were already starting to reach for my cock, undoing my jeans with impressive grace. It made sense. She did have high DEX too, after all.
“Does that high DEX mean you’re really flexible?” I whispered to her.
“Bend me over and you’ll find out.”
“No,” I grunted, my hands resting at her waist. “I want you to ride me. You’re in my squad, you serve me. Show me what sort of a good girl you are, Ruby.”
That expression of dominance seemed to please her deeply, as her [PASSIONATE FRENZY] tag resetting for another twenty minutes.
Perfect.
She grabbed both her hands around my cock, cooing in admiration as she felt how hard I was in her grip. Then she lifted her head, so o
ur eyes met.
I had never seen hornier eyes than that, ever.
This fucking game, I tell you.
“Here’s what I want you to do,” Ruby said. “Lean back and let me show you what I can do for you.”
Then she lowered herself down to me, as I entered her in one swift, fucking fantastic stroke.
I was already rippling with pleasure. I couldn’t believe my luck. I couldn’t tell if this was just extreme pleasure on a level I had never experienced before, or if this was the game enhancing every sensation for me — you know, for gameplay immersion purposes.
Ruby was grinning wickedly as I moaned and trembled, overwhelmed by how good she was. I couldn’t even think of anything except her name, except the sight of her body.
Her huge breasts bounced as she rode me, and then she grabbed my hands, pulling them up so they could cup those perfect spheres.
Holy fuck, I couldn’t handle this. If I was going to fucking cum in my pants in real life right now, so be it, because experiencing this alone was well worth it.
The only window I couldn’t just minimize or cast away was the global message log, which continued to pop info for me — info I handily ignored.
“It’s all about you, baby,” Ruby told me as she squatted over me with impressive balance, not needing to hold on to me as she bounced up and down me.
I had to give credit to the physics engine for making sex feel so natural and real… even if normally, guys like me didn’t fuck porn star grade women.
She was working me with her body, squeezing and grinding and riding, and I was already sweating from all the exertion. High CON didn’t seem to result in me having godly sexual stamina, but hey… I was happy to keep practicing at that.
Her moans replaced the sirens and alert sounds of the gun store, and I soon forgot everything other than the cyber woman making me feel more pleasure than anyone in real life could possibly have managed.
I closed my eyes tight as the pleasure and pressure mounted, reaching an unavoidable climax. My mind was working overtime, and I had to keep my eyes shut so I didn’t get yanked out of the game experience.
When I came, my whole body trembled. Ruby loved it, moaning loudly as my avatar emptied out deep into her. It felt real. It had to be real, right? I reopened my eyes and expected to feel some weird dissonance between my real body and my virtual self.
Nope. I was overthinking it.
She made me feel so good I was dizzy. With a smile, she jumped off me, collecting her clothes. “I see what you really intended here,” she smirked lightly. “You paid me to be a squad mate and a sex mate.”
“Sex mate? That doesn’t sound very natural,” I said, squinting at her. I was still overthinking it, expecting to see some Uncanny Valley shit go down, expecting to be turned off by her now that I had come.
Nope again. She was as hot as she was before. All those insecurities and mental blocks that guys went through during sex in the real world were clearly just all in the head — Ruby was made to serve each character.
Well, in that case, I was perfectly okay with it. My body was enjoying a pleasant ache, throbbing as I recomposed myself. “That was amazing, Ruby.”
“You were amazing, Dan,” she countered. “And no, I know what you’re thinking, you’re wondering if I mean that. Yes, I do mean that. For real. That was amazing.”
It was all too easy to doubt her. I didn’t do anything. I was just laying on the floor, thrusting upwards so she could treat my body like her personal dildo. And it felt fucking good, too.
“Some guys don’t like my passionate play,” Ruby told me, sounding almost a little sad. “I’m not the best for like, girlfriend stuff. If you want tender and sweet, I can recommend a friend, but that’s not something I’ve really mastered. I hope that’s okay.”
I scoffed. “Hey, come on. You’re the one I wanted, you know? I’d go for some cute girl next door if I wanted that.”
She seemed to perk up at that, now apparently carefree as she looted from the store. There were items in the loot dropped by the enemies we killed, but there was also all the weapons the store stocked.
Now that I was dressed and, you know, done with all the naughty play stuff, I brought all my minimized windows back into full view.
The first thing I saw was a notification showing that [ALERT STATE: 2] was now triggered, a de-escalation from the higher alert state.
My initial theory about fast travel was wrong. I saw that enemies could teleport in, but not teleport out. But I didn’t know if the game generated those enemies on the fly, potentially spawning endless NPCs — or if the game instead teleported existing characters from other locations and instances.
I had to find out, somehow. Maybe there was some way I could track the enemy I had failed to kill. My experience playing stealth games told me that an enemy you don’t kill was likely to run to his gang, alerting them to your existence.
My already low reputation score with the Yakuza was only going to get worse.
Ruby glanced back at me. “My inventory’s almost full. Do you want me to prioritize higher valued items, or higher level items?”
“Uh, higher valued, I guess,” I shrugged. “Most of the weapons I’m seeing here are way above my Ability and Skill ratings, so I can’t really use them anyway. Might as well just sell.”
“Got it, Dan,” Ruby nodded, resuming her looting.
To my dismay, most of the weapons here were level one or two weapons, worth dozens of credits at best. Still, pistols were neat because they didn’t occupy a lot of inventory space, and I estimated I could easily store about fifteen pistols, along with other similarly-sized weapons.
“Ooh, check this out,” Ruby called for me. I followed to her, my eyes tracking as her finger pointed to a display cabinet with a glass window the game told me had low Durability.
“I can shoot it, I guess.”
“Yeah. Get what’s inside!”
There was a whole case of compact explosives and their detonators. These alone were worth way more than the pistols, and they also came with exponentially huger damage ratings.
With the case of six plastic explosives, I could sell half, and keep half.
Explosives didn’t really have Ability or Skill thresholds to use, but a tooltip told me:
Neo-Plastic Explosives:
DPS: 450. Warning! Causes AoE damage.
Requires STR 2, DEX 2. Base damage increases with every point in the Explosives skill (DPS = Base DPS + (Explosives * 5% of DPS)). Throwing range increases by 10% with every rank in STR.
I stood a safe distance away just in case the glass spraying all over the room from Ruby’s attack might damage me by accident. “Go!”
She fired away, exaggerating what it took to destroy a simple glass display cabinet, since she emptied both clips before she heard me shout, “Okay, okay! That’s enough.”
The redhead vixen grinned at me. “Just wanted to test, you know.”
“I should have also made it extremely clear that since the cabinet was full of explosives, you should be really careful about shooting at them,” I added, wincing at the thought of being maimed by a chain reaction of explosions.
Well, the explosives were now mine. Weighing a set of Neo-Plastic Explosives x5, I realized they were heavier than I thought — and when they were equipped in hand, the game immediately showed two new pointers: a throwing arc, as well as an explosion radius.
If I accidentally fucked up with these explosives, I’d probably take the whole row of shops down with me.
“So I, uh, just put that in my inventory, and it’s safe?” I asked Ruby.
She shrugged. “You can hold them all day if you want. But it’s probably a good idea to leave before more goons arrive.”
“Yeah, about that…” I said, letting her yank me towards the exit, as I thought about the game’s NPC spawning system. “Will more goons arrive?”
Ruby waited until we were back on the main street, power-walking conspicuously in the direc
tion of Liana’s strip club, before answering. “Of course. What do you expect?”
“Well, if enemies can teleport in, I’m surprised they can’t teleport out,” I said, thinking back about the Yakuza goon who left the shop before I could kill him.
A lightbulb pretty much went up in my eyes. My PLEX should have made a ding! sound too, that would have been great. We stopped in our tracks.
“What?”
“It’s tied to the Alert State, isn’t it? Going into a high enough Alert State means members of the same faction can be rerouted there by the game. I guess this only applies to NPCs, never actual players. Am I hot or cold? Hey, can I even talk to you about game mechanics, or does this like, break your conversational logic engine?”
Ruby just started looking more confused. “I’d rather not be out in the open with the Yakuza after me, Dan.”
“Hey, I told you I was going to get you out of this noob zone. At least once we’re free of the limitations of low-level life, we’ll be able to do whatever we want. And the Yakuza we’ll piss off there will, you know, be the real deal. Not this noob zone nonsense,” I said, trying to reassure her.
As soon as I said that, and saw the terror in her eyes, I realized that even with my CHA and PRS scores, I should still watch the things I say.
Even hot sexy Ruby didn’t like the idea of much higher-level Yakuza enemies chopping her up to little pieces with their cyberpunk katanas.
“Okay, sorry I said anything,” I mumbled, resuming our power walk back to the strip club. “But am I right about the Alert State thing?”
“Yes,” Ruby said through gritted teeth.
Damn, I liked her a lot more in [PASSIONATE FRENZY] mode. Maybe I should get us in more shootouts. She’s only ever really uptight when we’re not shooting things.
I tried to speed forward but realized that power-walking was my top speed since I still had fairly limited STR and the weight of all the weapons I looted was already bogging me down.
Bringing the inventory screen up, I glanced past all the items I had gathered and looked instead for info on weight: