Capture Target

Haaaa… that was a good nap.  So, where were we --

…Oy.  Oy!  What’s with that look?

Hey!  I can totally focus on things other than sex!

I know that look; you don’t believe me.  Well then.  This portion of my story shall include no hot things.

…Or, well, thinking about it, minimal hot things.  No sex, no rape, no addiction to pleasure, none of that.  Just because you doubted my integrity.

Oh?  Fine!  And what do I get if I win?

Hehehe, you’re on!

Now then, when last we left off, I had just gathered the last item I needed in order to counter Takeo’s attempts to trap me from the oncoming second land mass.  Or at least, the last one that would take any effort.  I had gotten the yin-yang recipes, and I got the cauldron from the minotaurs.  The only item I needed beyond that was some amazing shoes, and I knew just where to get them.

See, the ‘blessings’ from the gods tend to ‘encourage’ you to become sluttier in one way or another.  But there’s a bright spot!  Get enough blessings from the gods, and you can go to any legal church, pray, and get a special, limited-use, divine-tier item!

…Which also makes you sluttier!  Guys get something different.

When playing Alchemical Corruption 12, you could go to the church whenever one of the girls that was in your party had obtained three or more ‘unused’ blessings.  You then ‘use’ three blessings to get a semi-randomly generated item.  There were some complex rules regarding item generation that really aren’t important right now.  What’s important is that the description of the process said that the gods granted the girl their ‘truest need’.

Which always made it hilarious when they got a ballgag or a dildo or something.

These items were always stupidly overpowered, had limited uses, could only be used by the one who got them, and always led to a permanent reduction of stats.  No exceptions.  For example, one of the items that I always got was a pushup bra that temporarily increased strength to the point of instantly killing any non-boss enemy.  …However, every time you used it, it increased the characters breast size by a cup or so, reducing their normal strength.  Furthermore, it could only be used five times at most before it vanished into pretty sparkles of nothingness.

No, I’m not joking.  The game has an overdone animation made specifically for pervy divine items disappearing after they’re out of uses.

The animation takes like thirty seconds and probably took more out of the budget than it should have.

Regardless!  The fact that it gives characters the items that they most want, meant that, when I prayed, I prayed for a specific item.  One that would allow me to abuse the time slot mechanics of the world.  I got -- ah!  Aaaaah, you almost got me!

No, I’m not telling you what it is, because it’s hot!

What -- no the previous examples I shared don’t count!  They were to explain the world and the setting, that’s different.  So I guess you’re just going to have to go without knowing what I used to travel to as many locations as I wanted in a single time slot!  You’ll just have to live without knowing what brilliant, divinely-granted item --

…

Fuck.

Yes.

It was platform heels.

Shut up, you don’t know what they do to the wearer, so -

Fuck!

Yes, yes, fine.

  They shorten my tendons.

Shut up.  I know you didn’t say anything, just -- make your face stop talking.

Hmph.

To tell you more concisely, what I got was a pair of platform heels with roughly eight inch heels, and another four inches of platform on top of that.  A full foot of combined height.  They let me, three times, go to as many locations as I wanted in a single time slot.  Each time I did, it would shorten the tendon of my feet, forcing me to wear increasingly high heels at all times.  After the first use, it shortens its wearer's tendons by around two inches.  The second use, more like five.  After the third use, it reaches seven inches.

Thankfully the platform heels are magically easy to wear, but the same does not apply to heels worn afterwards.  That said, two or two and a half inches for everyday wear was something I thought I could manage, even if it would make hiking more difficult later on.  …Probably.  And, to be frank, I was tired of my ‘short for a japanese woman’ height, so a day of an added full foot was something I was quite eager for.

Now, the plan.

In order to circumvent Takeo’s lengthening blockade, I needed to worm a path around his own lands.  It would take eight slices of land to reach that.  That alone sounds fine, until you remember that in order to claim any land, you need to catalog ninety percent of every item you can find in there, you needed to successfully use alchemy to create a certain number of items with ingredients sourced from that land, and you needed to make enough money off of those items.  On top of that, all land claims needed to be contiguous!  You couldn’t skip spaces!

In the game, the average rate for an NPC to gain a block of land was once a month, whereas players would get about two a month.  If you were speedrunning, once a week was what you wanted.  I didn’t have access to the wiki or my notes from my past life, so I couldn’t quite match that.  I had to go more slowly, so I was averaging around two or three slices of land a month.  It came out to a little better than one every two weeks.

And I needed to claim eight pieces of land before Takeo claimed two.  And he was moving at the average ‘player’ rate -- two per month.

On top of that, if I moved fast one day, then it was entirely possible he’d notice and respond.  As I was about to prove, there are ways to temporarily speed up if you’re willing to burn your resources.  So I wanted to claim all eight pieces of land in a single day.

What I had was a pair of heels that would let me go to as many areas of land as I wanted in a single time slot, a cauldron that would let me craft up to five items in the field every time I enter an area, destructive bombs and healing potions.

Without the heels, I could enter into an area of land four times per time slot.  That means the same are four times, or four different areas, and that impressive number of ‘four’ was because of our rather fancy shoes.  ‘Infinite’ traveling was utterly broken if you did it right.

So the plan was thus:

With a pack full of bombs and potions, I would go to the first area on our target list.  I would use the bombs on anything that was too strong, and the potions to heal me when I needed to; I would catalog every item I could find, and craft the five most expensive items I could out of what I managed to gather.

I would then reenter this area and repeat, until I was certain I had enough I had crafted enough items of enough value to claim that slice of land.

I would then repeat that with the next slice of land, and the next, and the next, all eight times.

Shimizu would be wearing our best pair of shoes -- which would let her visit four areas in a single time slot.  She would meet me at the end of my second, fourth, sixth, and eight areas, to resupply me and pick up what I’ve crafted.

So, at the second area, Shimizu would go there with the intent to visit me ‘when I was done with the second area’, and when I was finished with the second area, I would have the intent of ‘meeting with Shimizu before I continue’.

If either of us hadn’t had the matching intent, then the time slot would have ended.  If Shimizu wanted to visit with me ‘when I was done with the second area’ and I never entered with the second area with that matching intent, then I would have just continued on to the third area and Shimizu’s time slot would have ended.  By the same token, if I entered the second area with the intent of meeting up with Shimizu, and she never showed up, it didn’t matter how many times I could move to a new area.  The time slot would have ended.

So, when we meet up, Shimizu would resupply my potions and bombs, and I would give her the items that I crafted.  She would then return to the town, drop off the items to Sumiko and resupply her bombs and potions, and then go to the next meeting.  At that meeting, she would tell me if Sumiko thought we needed more items from any specific area.

She could do the math at a desk -- well, so long as she worked around her massive milky quad-bust -- whereas I was only doing some basic field calculations.

…And she’s smarter than me.

On top of that, Sumiko would go and prepare the various crafted items for selling.  Label them, note the ingredients and side effects, any other modifiers like my alchemical blessing, things like that.

I would go and resupply on my own… but the platform heels I was wearing came with an annoying caveat; I couldn’t ‘return’ during my infinite trips into the wilderness.  Returning would end its effect, and end the time slot.

So, in a single time slot:

Sumiko spent maybe three hours, five at the absolute most, figuring out numbers and selling items.

Shimizu spent more like six or seven hours hiking back and forth over a rather large area of land as a supply caravan.  Either going to me to give me potions and bombs while picking up the goods, or going to Sumiko to give her the goods… while getting more potions and bombs.

And I spent at least sixteen hours, probably more like a full twenty or twenty five, doing work that was simultaneously mind-numbing and incredibly stressful.  I had to catalog every item and every monster.  I had to gather every item I could.  I had to figure out and craft the most expensive items I could manage.  I had to do all that while not dying and without breaks.

See, the time slot system of temporal management can be abused… but it doesn’t particularly like being abused.  And I was pushing it hard.  Spending nearly a full day of time in a single time slot?  Having multiple people with varying rates of time meet up to ensure a proper and even conveyance of goods and supplies?  Sometimes reentering an area dozens of times, just so that I could use the field cauldron more?

Yeah.  I felt the urge to take a break grow… but I knew that if I took one, the time slot would end.  And I couldn’t afford that.

This kind of mechanics abuse was much easier when it was in a game.

I kept at it, though.  I technically didn’t need sleep until I went through enough time slots, and the Yang-Yin potion of Destruction and Creation was an amazing salve for my stamina, but the sheer amount of stuff I did -- I don’t remember that day too clearly.  I remember the start fairly well, and I can remember clearly up to about the… oh… third or fourth area… but after that, it’s all just a haze.  A thick, soupy haze of exhaustion with flashes of panic when my lack of focus put me in danger.

By the time I was finished, and we were set to have all eight areas, I was done.  I couldn’t even think straight -- I’m pretty sure Shizumi had to talk me through heading back to the dorm room, and she might have had to literally carry me back.  My mind had just too much stuff going through it, and frankly I’m not sure how I even managed it.

The one thing that I really needed to calm down was --

-- ow.  Ow.  Okay, good, thinking more clearly.  …What’s with that look?  It hurt!

Yes I slapped myself, but I was about to lose our bet!

Obviously.  Why wouldn’t it be worth it?

Even if it feels like I’ll need to get some tooth straightening done now, I managed to avoid mentioning how I was so fucking wet and horny that I couldn’t think of anything but getting a cock rammed into my snatch!

…

FUCK!