Healers Suck!

by Charles Andrews

  Fuck! She was so into this that she was playing with herself while she did it. I’d had girls blow me before, but I’d never been with a woman who was so into it that she got off on it!

  I looked up to Tomas. He was almost on us. Looked down to Sefia who was getting louder and louder. No doubt Tomas could hear what was going on.

  Oh fuck. I was too close. I let out a roar and she seemed to realize what was going on. She devoured me one final time and then I was exploding and letting out years of pent up frustration in one fabulous virtual moment.

  It was right about then that her Holy Blast went off as she screamed right along with me, and the whole world was filled with a blinding light.

  13

  Blowout

  Okay then. I wondered if this was a result of something in the game system going wrong, or if it really was such an amazing experience that’d been so long coming, pun totally intended, that I lost it.

  I took a couple of breaths. Okay. I could still breathe. That was something. I also totally still had sensation running through my body. Particularly that overly sensitive sensation a guy gets when he goes from having the most incredible pleasure of his life to wanting nothing more than that pleasure to stop because it becomes too much.

  “Sefia, if you’re still down there could you please stop?”

  Something pulled off of me and I was treated to that equally odd sensation of my wet dick hitting the cold air after it’d been enjoying its time in a warm wet mouth. I shivered just a little and tried to redo my robes, but I ended up bumping my hand into Sefia’s head instead.

  “Whoops,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

  That’s right about the time that a completely different worry hit me. Specifically the worry that if Sefia was still down there and very much in the room then Tomas might also still be out there. And if he’d somehow retained the ability to see then it meant I was about to have a very bad time that I couldn’t see coming.

  I ducked more out of instinct than anything, imagining a sword moving through the air where I’d been standing just now. That was how close that asshole was. Only there was no whiff as a sword moved through the air above me. There was no indication that asshole was out there waiting to kill me.

  Well then. That was a relief. Though that didn’t mean he wasn’t still out there, waiting for a chance to take off my head.

  Get some head, lose a head. I guess it would’ve brought some karmic balance to the game universe if something like that happened, but it wasn’t a karmic balance I was interested in all things considered.

  “Is something wrong?” Sefia asked.

  “I can’t see,” I said.

  I noticed something pulsing at the bottom of my heads up display. Well then. I was blind to the world around me, but that didn’t necessarily mean I was completely blind if I could still see that heads up display.

  I focused on the blinking icon.

  “It means you’re blinded, genius,” Treanna said. “It should wear off in a little while, but whatever just hit really hit you hard.”

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Floating up and to your left,” Treanna said.

  “I’m right here in front of you,” Sefia replied.

  Well then. It looked like I was going to have to be a little more specific about who I was talking to. I decided that, for the moment, I wasn’t going to risk irritating the nice woman who’d been good enough to put my penis inside her mouth though.

  Even if it did seem like she’d gotten something out of it as well, if that explosion was anything to go by.

  “You bet your ass she enjoyed that,” Treanna said. “That was so hot watching her getting off like that. Looks like I was right about you!”

  I decided to ignore Treanna for the moment. I was more worried about Tomas.

  “Can you see Tomas anywhere?” I asked.

  “I can’t see if you can’t see,” Treanna said.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “Who are you talking about?” Sefia asked.

  “The asshole who was sneaking up on me and looked like he was about to chop my head off,” I said. “I can’t see him anywhere. I asked you to target him, but…”

  “Oh,” Sefia said. “I didn’t realize you were actually targeting someone, but…”

  The debuff must’ve been wearing off. The faint hazy outline of a figure appeared in front of me, and that figure was getting more and more distinct with every passing moment.

  “Okay,” I said. “I can sort of see the world around me now.”

  I peered around the place. Everything was still dark and hazy and more than a little indistinct, but I couldn’t be sure if that was because of the spell working its magic on me or if it was because the whole temple had always had a sort of dark and hazy and more than a little indistinct thing going for it.

  I blinked a few more times to try and clear my vision. Yeah I know the thought of blinking to clear my vision in a game was ridiculous considering the game was going to take that debuff off of me in its own sweet time, but whatever.

  It was a habit from the real world, and real world habit’s died hard in Crystalia.

  “Is that your friend over there?” Sefia asked, pointing to a wall on the other side of the temple.

  Well then. The more I could see of this place the more I was starting to realize that something amazing had happened while I was so busy concentrating on the feeling of…

  I think you know where I’m going.

  “What are you…”

  Then I realized what she was talking about. Actually there were a few things that I realized in that moment as I looked at all the damage that’d been done all around me.

  “Shit,” I breathed out.

  For one the altar had been completely knocked over. It glowed with a fitful magical energy, and lines had appeared on the thing. Only it looked like some of those lines had been busted up, and magical energy was puffing out of them as the thing pulsed.

  Even that pulsing was getting less and less bright with every passing moment. As though the thing was being drained of its magic by puffing that magic out into the atmosphere.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “I mean I might be up for it,” Sefia said with a smile that I could see when she got close enough to me, and she’d decided she was going to get very close thank you very much. “But now might not be the best time.”

  She leaned against me, and I got another notification.

  Social link level up!

  Current level: 3

  Your bond with Sefia is growing stronger!

  You Scratch My Back: 5% discount to all prices for training materials.

  Salacious Mentor: Sefia is now willing to provide her expert tutelage in any area you could imagine.

  I stared at that tooltip and wondered if it was something that had actually been written by a human, or if it was something that was procedurally generated by an AI that’d been force fed cheesy dialogue from a bunch of games from Japan where this sort of mechanic was a hell of a lot more common.

  Then I shrugged and dismissed the notification. It was nice that my social link was going up so fast with Sefia, pun totally intended, but there were more pressing things on my mind.

  More pressing than the way Sefia was pressing against me and practically purring.

  “Do you have any idea why she’s suddenly zero to sixty with me?” I asked, turning to Treanna.

  She shrugged and gave me one of those knowing smiles that said she had a pretty good idea of exactly what was going on and no intention of telling me what that something was.

  “You’re useless,” I growled.

  “You shouldn’t talk to your spirit like that,” Sefia said. “It’s bad luck.”

  “That’s right!” Treanna said, hands on her hips. “It’s bad luck! I might put a curse on you so nothing like this ever happens again! Ever think of that?”

  I looked between Sefia and Treanna and thought about how the two of them were tag t
eaming me even though one of them couldn’t talk to the other, and I suddenly found myself wondering if this situation was really as awesome as it seemed at first blush.

  “Getting it from all sides,” I muttered. “Just fucking great.”

  My vision was clear enough now that I could see the rest of the temple. It wasn’t nearly as hazy and indistinct now as it’d been just a little while ago when I walked into the place for the first time, and the reason for the sudden change in the lighting was pretty obvious now that I could mostly see as well as I did before I was hit with that blindness debuff. Which meant that I could see to the other side of the temple, and my mind hadn’t been playing tricks on me while I was mostly blind.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “Holy something,” Treanna said, eyeing the Tomas-shaped hole in the side of the temple. A hole that was big enough that sunlight was streaming in, and I could also hear the murmur of a crowd on the other side.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Sefia blushed. “I think I happened. We were in the middle of… And you asked me to… And, well…”

  I put two and two together. It was pretty easy to put two and two together as I looked at the damage that’d been done to this place. I’d been in the middle of getting the greatest head of my life, I’d told her to set off that Holy Blast ability, she’d been in the process of going over the edge herself, and the rest, as they say, was history.

  That Holy Blast spell must’ve hit Tomas with enough power that it sent him flying across the room, through the wall, and out into the streets beyond. I could only hope that the bastard died for his trouble considering he hadn’t come back in here yet to exact his revenge.

  “Holy fuck,” I said.

  “I mean in a way that’s what it was, right?” Treanna said.

  “Not if you go with the presidential definition,” I muttered.

  “What was that?” Sefia and Treanna asked at the same time.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just a little joke from ancient history, is all.”

  The murmuring outside turned to shouts. Shouts that were probably coming from Tomas, or at the very least from some of his friends. Either way I figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to be in this temple when they came in here for a little revenge.

  As though to back me up in my desire to get the hell out of here the temple buckled and cracked all around us. I looked around in a panic, worried that the whole structure was going to come down on us.

  Structures that could be destroyed. Now there was something interesting that I hadn’t seen implemented all that well in a game before.

  “I think you damaged more than Tomas with that spell,” I said, turning to Sefia. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I must join you on your adventures. It looks like you could use some help!”

  I blinked. “You’re going to join me on my adventures?”

  “Well of course I am!” she said. “Besides. We have a lot more to take care of. I don’t intend what just happened to be the last of the fun I have with you, brave Psionicist!”

  Psionicist. That sounded weird, but also kind of badass. The only thing that took away from the badassery was knowing I was still playing a class where I couldn’t do much of anything to my enemies, even if I wanted to.

  “Right,” I said. “Gather anything you need and we’ll head out.”

  “Of course,” Sefia said, holding her hands over her head.

  I wasn’t sure what the hell she was doing, but it became pretty obvious as her outfit changed in a wave that ran from the top of her head down to the tips of her toes.

  My mouth fell open when I saw what she’d changed into. I’d like to say they were mage’s robes, but honestly with as little as they covered it looked more like the old fashioned chainmail bikini that was such a popular trope in fantasy literature for so many years. Only it was made out of cloth instead of chainmail, so I guess that meant it was more closely related to a real bikini.

  “Damn,” Treanna said.

  Sefia blinked and looked just over my shoulder. Then blushed and smiled.

  “You like?” she asked.

  I glanced to Treanna. “You revealed yourself to her?”

  “How could I not when she was looking that yummy?” Treanna said. “I think this chick is going to make an excellent addition to our party!”

  I rolled my eyes and grabbed Sefia’s hand.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before this building falls on us or Tomas gets some of his friends together and comes in here to kill our asses.”

  14

  Next Steps

  “So it’s really quite simple when you think of it like that,” Sefia said.

  I shook my head and ducked to keep a tree branch from smacking me. I couldn’t be sure, but it felt like these tree branches were doing that a lot.

  I wasn’t sure if that was because the trees were alive out here and out for blood, or if it was simply that the developers had put something annoying in the fucking game that made it so whenever you were walking through a forest like this there was always a tree branch right in front of you ready to take you out.

  “Echoes of emotion?” I said, trying to wrap my mind around the idea.

  I mean it was simple enough the way Sefia explained it. I could read people’s emotions. Sort of. In a very rudimentary “captain I sense hostility from the aliens that just fired torpedoes at our ship” sort of way, but it was there and I wasn’t smoking something when I thought I could read people’s moods or almost hear their thoughts.

  It’d never occurred to me that I might be broadcasting some of my own feelings while I was receiving though. I never would’ve imagined it could be a two-way transmission, or whatever the fuck it was.

  I guess it was really code that was going back and forth between me and whoever’s emotions I was reading, and it turns out it went both ways.

  “So this entire time I’ve been walking around with my emotions broadcasting to everyone, and the fact that the primary emotion I kept feeling was horniness…”

  “Meant that if you ran into someone who felt an attraction to you then you were more likely to create a situation where your empathic abilities caused those feelings to bounce back and forth creating a closed feedback loop of that pure emotion,” Sefia said.

  “Which is a fancy way of saying that if I saw a pretty girl who was interested in me then that interest bounced off of the two of us until…”

  “Until this hypothetical woman wouldn’t be able to resist having a little fun with you, yes,” Treanna said. “That’s the practical upshot.”

  I mulled it over as I swatted at yet another tree branch that came at me. Meanwhile Treanna was bouncing from branch to branch and looking like she was having a grand old time in the forest. She also had that knowing smile on her face that said she was enjoying the hell out of watching me get this education.

  “Damn,” I breathed. “That’s… Wild. But how would it work on someone who wasn’t interested?”

  “I think you’ve already seen how it works on someone who isn’t interested,” Sefia said. “And it proves why you’re going to have to learn to be far more careful about broadcasting your emotions than you were today.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “You almost here?” Keli asked.

  The private message pulled me away from the little learning session I’d been enjoying with Sefia. And talk about an illuminating learning session. The game wasn’t kidding when it said her ability to share knowledge with me was going to come in handy.

  That was one social link I was really glad I’d stumbled on, that was for damn sure!

  “Yeah, we should be there soon,” I said, looking at a minimap I’d pulled up.

  It showed our dot, and then an arrow at the top of the square map that showed me the direction we needed to go to find Keli. Her portrait hung in the chat right below mine and Sefia’s. She’d been a little s
urprised to see an NPC joining the party, but hadn’t complained too much about having an extra body along to help with whatever it was we were going to do out here far from the town and Tomas.

  “…simple really!” Sefia said.

  I shook my head. Pulled my attention back to the pretty trainer who’d been in the middle of telling me everything I’d asked of her and I hadn’t been paying attention because I’d been too busy talking to the elf hottie.

  Sefia ducked a branch deftly as she turned and smiled at me. A branch smacked against her stomach, but rather than hurting her the thing seemed to bounce off of her. There was a slight sparkle where it hit, as though there was a magical forcefield of some sort there protecting her.

  Which made sense, I guess. If that stuff was going to provide any armor at all then it was going to be of the magical variety. Like its ancestor the chainmail bikini, there wasn’t a chance in hell that thing was providing any natural protection with as little as it covered.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I got a message while you were talking. Could you maybe repeat that?”

  “A message?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

  I paused and tried to think of a way to describe metagaming things to a woman who’d lived her entire life in this construct that was the game without realizing there was a game construct built all around her. Or that the entire game construct that she thought was her life had only been around for maybe a month or two at this point and everything she thought she knew was actually just a procedurally generated backstory created by the AI, or maybe a backstory created by the scenario designers if she was important enough.

  That seemed like a lot of heavy existential shit to get into, all things considered, so I decided it would be better to try and phrase it in terms she’d understand.

  “Someone is speaking to me in my mind using magic,” I said. “The mage we’re going to meet?”

  “Ah,” Sefia said. “Why didn’t you say so? You have to make things so complicated with your strange words.”