Build-A-Harem- The Island Collection

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  “You could start by building a fire,” Cassie suggested in a tone that danced between mocking and passive-aggressive, “you know, like we, as a society, have been doing for literally millions of years.”

  “Yeah, but-”

  “No buts,” Cassie interjected, “cooked fish or no dice, that’s the deal.”

  “But that’s not what-”

  “I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further.”

  I frowned at that, not least because for whatever reason that sent a little flare down into some part of my long-forgotten memories from when I was still a surface-dwelling pleb.

  “Oh, come on, how do you not know that one?” Jesse groaned disappointedly.

  “Let’s just go build a fire,” I replied after giving Cassie another little frown, “this better be worth it.”

  “Trust me,” Cassie said, shooting me a sly wink as she did, “I’m worth it.”

  Not going to lie, that confidence in her… abilities got me to turn around and start looking for an appropriate place on the beach for a fire, but there was a small amount of concern that what she had wasn’t confidence but rather vaginal hubris.

  “Don’t worry, Dax,” Jesse murmured out through the corner of his mouth as we walked along the beach, “startin’ a fire’s going to be really easy with the Toolbox.”

  “And how can you be sure of that?” I asked, welcoming the distraction after finding a spot that was far enough from the trees but not too close to the ocean and spawning in a three-foot-long log.

  “Let’s just say that I’m starting to unlock certain knowledge about that brilliant little device,” Jesse replied as he let the trout fall out of his mouth and onto the sand, “for instance, did you know that you can scan food?”

  “Ugh…” I trailed off before scanning the fish, “that would’ve been useful information before you ate all the fruit.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about that, I’m sure it’ll grow back soon.” Jesse said more nonchalantly than I liked, “Anyway, same thing as scanning, just think about it.”

  “What?”

  “Fire? The thing you’re building?”

  Suddenly my brain went into overdrive, wondering how much I should think about fire, how focused I should be, and if it was possible for me to accidently light the island on fire.

  Yes, I was slightly overconfident in my abilities, but it came along with a lot of concern, so I don’t think it was arrogance.

  I hoped anyway.

  “Just picture the log on fire,” Jesse suggested upon noticing just how freaked out I was, “nice and easy.”

  “Oh, alright, yeah…”

  “That panic you feel?” Jesse said, again seeing that I was still concerned, “That’s just your subconscious mind struggling to accept that you can make fire. As far as the internal ‘you’ knows, fire is an uncontrollable thing, and, without something like a lighter or a match, there should be no way for you to produce it.”

  Naturally, I was kind of thrown by how supportive Jesse was being, although I ended up accepting that, as much as I was forgetting from time-to-time, I was still in a game, and that being in a game had safeguards to make sure I didn’t have a complete mental breakdown.

  “Thanks,” I eventually said as I raised my hand at the log after a few seconds of calming myself down, “I needed that.”

  “Happy to help,” Jesse replied, sounding slightly less guru-esque, “now hurry up, I reckon it’s goin’ to get dark soon, and knowing how to make a fir-”

  Jesse didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence before I, in an act that surprised the both of us, set the log ablaze with only my thoughts.

  Okay, so maybe ‘ablaze’ is too extravagant a word, it was more smoldering with a few sparks here and there, but it was definitely something, and, after a few seconds, a generous flame started to break through the cracks in the bark and spill around the edges of the log.

  “That’s going to be more than I little useful…” I quietly said to myself as I made a mental note to start toying around with other elements if I got the chance.

  Probably would’ve been better to make an actual note, but I’ll get to that later.

  “So, now what?” I asked as I watched the fire slowly grow.

  “Cook the fish,” Jesse replied coolly, “spawn one in and skewer it or something.”

  I was about to take his advice, going as far as to spawn the fish in front of me as I had with the first wall of my house, but stopped just short of going in search of a stick.

  “Hey,” I said as I watched the fish floating just in front of me, “is that fish currently in the world or do I need to let it go first?”

  Jesse seemed confused for a few seconds after that, but then he finally caught my meaning, “Oh… Oh yeah, yeah it’s in the world.”

  “So…” I trailed off as I used my other hands to guide the fish over to the fire, “if I do this…”

  I didn’t need to finish my thought before, with an unrealistic amount of speed, the fish started to cook and, as an added bonus, my clothes started to dry.

  Now, I know it might have been just as easy to go and find a stick, but at the same time I was still experimenting and getting used to the system that was proving to be a lot more complex than I thought.

  “Can I smell what I think I can smell?” Cassie asked as she came over to Jesse and me.

  “You can,” I replied with a smile as the scales and head seemed to magically disappear the more the fish cooked, “should be ready soon.”

  “Oh, God that smells so good.” Cassie practically moaned before hugging my mid-section and looking around my body at my hand and letting out a surprised little sound, “Someone’s managed to get a Toolbox, have they? I thought they were all gone.”

  “Not for our hero here,” Jesse said with a smile, “he’s one of those Creators.”

  “A Creator?” Cassie remarked curiously, “Well, isn’t that something…”

  I shot Jesse a quick confused look, which he smiled and winked to.

  “Fish is done,” I said, somehow knowing that it had been cooked all the way through, before lifting it above and away from the fire, “just give me a second to cool it do-”

  “No need,” Cassie interjected after jumping and snatching the still searing fish from the air, “my skin’s heatproof.”

  “Hence the haircut.” Fern said, finally deciding to join us, “She has to keep cutting it because she stands too close to fire, which, in my opinion, is why the ship went down in that storm.”

  “For the last time,” Cassie snapped before picking off a piece of the freshly cooked fish and tossing it in her mouth, “I was nowhere near that fire. This is amazing by the way, thank you.”

  It took me a moment to realize she was talking to me on account of the fact that I was still wrapping my head around the ‘heatproof’ thing, but I eventually managed a smile and a nod.

  “How many generations down?” Jesse asked as Cassie went on eating her fish.

  “Six,” Cassie replied, immediately understanding his meaning, “how’d you know?”

  “Only a handful of races out there are heatproof, and you don’t exactly look like any kind of lavaform,” Jesse said smugly, “and while you are pretty tall for it, there a few things here and there that just scream ‘dwarf’.”

  “Is it my beard?” Cassie joked.

  “Mostly it’s the cute button nose and the ears,” Jesse replied with a chuckle, “but yeah, the beard helps.”

  For a few seconds there I was actually wondering if Cassie did have a beard and if I just couldn’t see it for whatever reason, and then I mentally slapped myself for not picking up on the fact that they were obviously messing around.

  Anyway, while Cassie went on eating I gestured for Jesse to follow me a little way up the beach, “Be back in two seconds,” I called over when both Fern and Cassie gave me concerned looks, “just have to do some… stuff.”

  Neither of them seemed convinced, but they weren�
��t interested enough in what I was doing to avoid the opportunity to have another little argument amongst themselves.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Jesse asked once we were out of earshot, “You realize you’re about five seconds from genuinely starting your harem, right? Your… christening, so to speak.”

  “I get that,” I replied, having only really just ‘got that’, “I’m just wondering about something you said before.”

  “Which would be..?”

  “You called me a ‘Creator’,” I said, making a sort of stern face as I did so, “what does that mean?”

  Jesse had to think on that for a moment, or he just didn’t want to talk to me about it, either way it took him a few seconds to say “It’s a justification.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “For the game,” Jesse clarified, “it’s easier to create a mythos around you than it is to just have a game that’s so Meta it disappears up its own asshole.”

  I chuckled at that and pointed between Jesse and me, “And this is what?”

  “This is what you have instead of a walkthrough or a fairy named Navi.”

  “Okay… I don’t see what Avatar has to do with this…” I trailed off confusedly.

  “No, not the blue monkey people-wait, how is that the thing you retained?” Jesse practically barked, clearly offended not just by me getting his reference wrong.

  “I… Hmm, I don’t know,” I let out with a huff of amusement, “stuff seems to be coming back in pieces. Anyway, that’s beside the point, what am I supposed to do as a ‘Creator’?”

  “Roleplay, Dax,” Jesse chuckled, looking past me and over at the fire as the sun started to glow orange on its way to the horizon, “roleplay like your life depends on it.”

  I didn’t get the chance to ask him what he meant before someone had slapped me on the ass, causing me to spin around on the spot and see Cassie waiting with a cheeky grin.

  “So, we doing this thing or what?” she asked.

  “Doing…” I trailed off as my slow brain struggled to figure out her meaning before exclaiming “Yes!” just a little too loudly.

  “Alright then,” Cassie replied after giggling at how enthusiastic I was, “lead the way.”

  “I… yes, mmhm, will do.” I stammered before walking past Cassie and towards the jungle in the rough direction of my house.

  I’m not sure what had caused me to be such a stuttering mess, especially after how I’d been mostly fine with the cat girls in the loading screen, but I’d hazard a guess that it had something to with the fact that what I was doing at that time felt real.

  Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t slipping away and blurring the lines between reality and game, what counted as reality in Re.Generation anyway, but there was something about the world I was in that felt so much more real than anything else I’d experienced.

  Even with all its sci-fi and fantasy elements, it was real and, as a result, so was the sense of accomplishment, and I was starting to love every second of it.

  Anyway, after a few minutes of aimless wandering, courtesy of me having absolutely no idea where the house was, we eventually found my little cube home which Cassie was not really all that impressed with.

  “You’re a Creator, right?” she asked as she looked around the front of the small wooden structure, “So why do you live in… this?”

  “I… I don’t normally entertain. Want to see inside?” I replied as quickly as I could without sounding too desperate.

  She was somewhat hesitant, which I honestly couldn’t blame her for, but she let out a sigh and nodded, “I suppose a deal’s a deal…” she trailed off as she followed me inside my tiny house before looking around concernedly, “Okay, I don’t know what your plan was, but there’s no way in Hell that I’m doing this without a bed.”

  I went to argue then stopped myself as I realized that not only was it fair of her but that I wanted a bed as well.

  “Alright, that’s fair, just… um… Give me two seconds.” I said before practically running out of the house and into the jungle, hoping that I’d magically find a bed out there.

  No such luck though, but then I had an idea.

  Without wasting another second, I pulled off my shirt, scanned it, spawned in three of them, tied off one’s arm and neck holes, stuffed the other two inside, and finally tied the bottom.

  “Not soft enough…” I muttered to myself after rubbing my new pillow on my face, “I need more.”

  A few seconds later I’d found the right balance of full without bursting, five shirts in one by the way, then scanned it in as a new design, which I then duplicated and tied together as best as I could.

  It wasn’t amazing, but after about ten minutes I had found the right formula to make a bed out of shirts, which turned out to be five layers of fifteen shirts tied together in a rough square.

  Yes, I was very proud of myself.

  Yes, I am aware I shouldn’t have been.

  “You may want to jump out for a second,” I said as I pulled on a shirt and stepped into the house where Cassie had been waiting patiently, “last thing we need is for us to both get trapped in here.”

  Cassie was briefly confused, then let out a sigh and stepped out past me, leaving me to get ready to lay down my bed which, in my head, was going to fit perfectly.

  I was wrong.

  Very wrong.

  CHAPTER 9

  The last thing I remembered before spawning the bed in was feeling really confident in my spatial awareness skills, followed by me being woken up by a very concerned Cassie about ten feet away from where I thought I was still standing.

  “What happened?” I asked, my mouth feeling sort of loose and out of place.

  “You made that appear and then… well, picture a trampoline that actively launches you away.” Cassie replied before tucking some of my hair behind my ear, “Good news is that you were only out for a couple of minutes and it doesn’t look like you suffered any major injuries.”

  “I s’pose that it is good news,” I groaned, deciding not to tell her about the pain in my everything, “are you okay though? I didn’t hit you or anything, did I?”

  Cassie shook her head and smiled, “I was out of the way, thanks for caring though.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t know,” Cassie replied with a shrug, “from what I’ve heard about the Creators they didn’t exactly treat people well.”

  I wanted to ask her more about the Creators, especially the part about her using past tense when referring to them, but was stopped as a tingly wave that started in my left hand reverberated throughout my body.

  “Are you okay?” Cassie asked as I involuntarily shuddered.

  I didn’t answer at first because, if I’m being honest, I really didn’t know, then I noticed something, “I… I really am…” I said, sending a sort of mental scan throughout my body in search of any sign of pain and finding none, “Heh, benefit of a being a Creator I suppose…”

  “What is?”

  “Nothing,” I quickly replied after remembering that I’d pretended to be fine before, “just had a bit of a moment.”

  Cassie looked at me for a few moments after that, a frown playing across her face like she knew I was lying, before smiling and tapping me on the shoulders, “Right then, guess it’s about time that you and I went and broke in that bed of yours.”

  It took me a moment to understand her meaning, minor head injury and all that, but when I did I grinned, I grinned like a kid in a toy aisle.

  Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best analogy to use given what we were about to do, but it fit.

  Anyway, without saying a word I, practically launched up and started towards the house with a chuckling Cassie right behind me, stopping only when I reached the doorframe and saw that the bed I’d created had filled the house waist-high with shirts.

  The structural integrity of both the house and the bed appeared to be holding though.

  So, fulfilling a dream I’
d had for years, I jumped into the house with a bed instead of floors, forgetting the girl behind me until I’d rolled onto my back and saw that she’d slowed down and was walking towards me the same way she had at the beach.

  “Oh, good God I love this game…” I whispered through my teeth as I watched what little sunlight there was left surround Cassie in a brilliant aura of orange.

  “So,” she said once she was within a few feet of the house and I’d shuffled back, “seeing as you’ve done well enough to uphold your end of the bargain, it’s only fair that I do the same.”

  I wish I could say I said something rakish or charming to that, but all I managed was a gulp so big that it made my throat hurt a bit.

  “Don’t worry,” Cassie practically whispered as she sultrily climbed onto the bed and started crawling towards me, “you don’t have to say anything.”

  “G-good,” I managed to stutter before Cassie started making her way up my body, kissing me every few inches before reaching my neck and straddling me, “because I think I’d just ruin it.”

  “Shut up then.” Cassie murmured in my ear before pushing her lips to mine as her hand made its way down my side and into my pants where she lingered on my thigh.

  For a while Cassie’s fingers traced so lightly that it felt like she was barely touching me and sensually electrocuting me at the same time, but eventually she decided to stop torturing me and moved her hand over to my rock hard cock and began to gently stroke.

  Unsurprisingly, I had to really fight the urge not to just finish right then and there, the buildup alone being enough to make her soft hands feel like lightning rods of pleasure.

  I was managing it though, and as I finally managed to regain full control of my body and grabbed two handfuls of her ass I couldn’t help but feel her smile in the brief moments where our lips separated mid-kiss.

  She began to stroke harder and faster, her enthusiasm getting the best of her as I squeezed and caressed her ass, but after a few moments of playing a bit too dangerously for my liking, she rolled off of me, taking her hand with her, and shuffled off her pants.

  I didn’t need to be told to do the same, and after getting my pants off just before her I practically leaped on top of her and started kissing her neck and chest while at the same time trying to get myself in position.