Poll World [LitRPG][Reader Polls]

(Paid vote chapter!) (Gen now has 35 viewers!)

Gen woke up surrounded by mini-iguanas. The fusioncrack iguanas had been summoned to help strategize, but… She hadn't considered she had any way to unsummon them short of killing them, and she obviously knew they wouldn't be fans of that. So now her tiny room was even more cluttered with reptiles.

Morna had wanted to party the night before as usual, but after the very long, exhausting event, Gen was mentally fried. The finale ending was not in her favor, and it had soured her mood. Objectively, she knew she was level 1, and it was her first city event ever, so she shouldn't have expected to win, and her getting second place in an event with hundreds of thousands of people was statistically amazing, but… She really wanted to win anyway.

Sighing, she pushed Jasper off of her, and he sleepily cuddled into the iguana pile nearby as she left the room. Without any specific objectives, she expected the whole lot of them would sleep the day away, except for when their inexhaustible hunger woke them.

Stepping into the hallway, she saw that the club building had changed somewhat. The room, which had a dozen doors the club members could use to enter their own rooms, now had posters randomly around the area with motivational messages and cheesy images like a cat hanging from a ledge while yowling, Hang in there!

Closing her door behind her, she started inspecting the posters and saw several other club members also going around reading them while laughing. Eavesdropping on their conversations, she quickly learned that the posters were the result of Aubrey's event reward. Her performance had been lackluster and she'd never even gotten to use her signature finger guns, but apparently the little she had accomplished had justified upgrading the headquarters with randomly transitioning motivational posters…

Another change was a digital bulletin board on the center wall. Several people were interacting with it, and she quickly learned that Pali had earned this upgrade. His overall impact was also limited, and she wasn't sure if his killing the technically allied level-5 Daryl in their quest to get a leaper zombie sample had counted for or against him in the final calculation…

Either way, the bulletin board was at least more practical than Aubrey's posters in that it was mirrored in several rooms and could be synced with people's phones to give announcements, statuses of club members, and pretty much any other information people wanted to add to it. Currently, it seemed to be monopolized by a series of poorly drawn images mocking G2n. The images featured a stick-figure G2n telling people to clean, put their stuff away, not to break things, to throw away old food, and ironically not to misuse the bulletin board…

Gen stifled a laugh and heard a cough behind her. Turning, she saw G2n with an annoyed expression. Straightening her face, she said, "I think they'll get bored with it quickly."

He looked resigned as he shook his head, "If I've learned anything while in this club, it's that idiots have an unlimited degree of stamina."

"Somebody say stamina!?"

Morna jogged in through the door in workout clothes, and her eyes locked onto Gen. Running over, she grabbed Gen's arm. "C'mon, Gen! It's exercise time! You said you'd work out with me once the event was over! Annnnnd it's over!"

G2n grabbed Gen's other arm, keeping her in place, "No, Gen told me we would work with her dungeon core once the event was over."

Gen looked between the two, feeling exhausted.

Almost begging, she said, "Can I have a break day? A lot has happened, and things were so busy that I still haven't come to terms with existing… My polls aren't even resolved yet!"

To punctuate her statement, she heard a familiar Ding~!

LEO's voice entered her mind. Gen, with the event done, I was really hoping we were going to get a break from these annoying tie-breaks… The work never ends… Annnyway! So we're between a Sci-fi Kitchen and an Exotic Garden. Well, your glutton of a companion would probably eat any ingredients before they even reached the kitchen, so we'll go with the garden!

There was a brief pause, and LEO's voice returned as he groaned, You again!? What is this… Oh, a two-parter… I hate these… Double the work for me! Whatever, here you go!

Morna started shaking her from her zoned-out state! "Did your polls resolve! What'd you get??? You were second place, so it's got to be cooler than my reward!" she pointed at a pair of new black sneakers she was wearing.

Gen held up a hand, collecting herself, "Can we go to the conference room? I've got a lot of questions, and afterwards we can figure out a schedule for you guys to monopolize my time."

***

In the conference room, Gen stood at the front. G2n had his hands folded while he waited to give organized information for her questions. Morna had her feet propped on the table while leaning dangerously far back in her chair.

G2n glanced at her, "You're going to hurt yourself."

Morna shook her head, "Nope! My reward shoes negate fall damage, watch!"

With a push, Morna fell directly backwards and smacked her head into the ground, and let out an agonized cry as she started rolling back and forth in pain. G2n stared at her with pity, "Your new shoes clearly say they prevent fall damage when you land on your feet, not your head…"

Morna was teary-eyed as she righted her chair and sat back down, momentarily subdued. G2n focused back on Gen and asked, "What questions do you have?"

Gen wrinkled her brows, she was sure she'd forgotten some, but one was foremost in her mind. "During the event, I suddenly started getting someone else's poll results. Rosalina, the lady who got first place. I thought LEO was just spazzing out, but I got her results again. Are we linked or something?"

Morna pointed an accusatory finger at her, "What! You got a foil!? That's not fair!"

"A foil?"

G2n helpfully supplied, "It's somewhat rare overall, but not too uncommon in big events like the zombie one. Basically, LEO will pair up two people, and their viewer polls will be combined for the duration of the event. Now that it's over, Rosalina's reward polls are likely the last ones you'll see. In each poll, you should have gotten a breakdown of what your viewers voted for and what Rosalina's viewers voted for… It's almost like a competition between viewers to see if they can swing the event in their actor's favor."

Gen considered that and shook her head, "I never saw any breakdown, it looked like normal polls resolving, but they'd have Rosalina's name instead of mine…"

G2n paused to think about that, but Morna, to the side, had produced a candy bar and was snacking as she answered with her mouth full, "She probably just doesn't have viewers, what a loser!"

Gen looked at G2n for confirmation, and he shrugged, "It's possible… A sizeable amount of the population doesn't have any viewers at all, but they rarely get much traction in events. Without a viewer, you don't receive polls normally. Only the standard polls for things like city events appear, and LEO has to break the poll each time, which, at least according to comments online, annoys the hell out of him."

Gen realized something, "Wait, so if it was just my viewers voting, shouldn't they have been helping me? I'm pretty sure the whole lich thing was their fault!"

G2n shrugged, "Maybe it was an accident? The poll options aren't always obvious, which ones are the most effective, and sometimes bad-sounding options are better than the obviously good ones."

Morna laughed from the side, shaking her head, "No way! They probably did it on purpose!" Pointing at Gen, she said, "Either your viewers hate you or Rosalina was just more likable!" Gen frowned. The possibility that her viewers weren't on her side was certainly an alarming one, she'd been concerned after the flamingo poll, but…

Morna kept talking, "Don't worry, Gen, once you finish my workout routine, you'll be so sexy that your viewers will be absolutely loyal like mine!"

Gen stared at her. "Didn't your viewers vote instant death for you?"

Morna laughed, "And it all worked out, didn't it?"

Gen couldn't argue with that, so she moved on to her next question, looking at Morna. "During the event, you and Solomon were talking about recycling abilities. What is that?"

Morna waved her hand dismissively, "It's something losers do! Why throw away what LEO has blessed you with??"

G2n ignored her as he explained, "Recycling is a service available at ability testing centers. Basically, you can permanently sacrifice an ability to generate a poll to get an augment for one of your other abilities. Or you can sacrifice five augments to get a new random ability. Experienced scenario delvers will accumulate multiple abilities and augments over time, but are limited in how many they can use at once by their level, so by recycling, they can refine their builds."

Gen nodded. She hadn't thought about it, but it made sense. If you could do one scenario per month, and each time you got a new finalized ability, that meant in a year you'd have 12 whole abilities, and someone like Susan, who had been doing scenarios for years, might potentially have hundreds of abilities, but still be limited to using only seven at a time.

Glad to have the answers she wracked her brain for other open questions and came up empty. She was sure there were more things she wanted to know, but at least now the biggest question of what was going on with Rosalina was answered.

Shifting gears, she asked G2n, "What rewards did you get? You were also on the top-ten list, so it should be better than Morna's shoes."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Morna howled in outrage from the side, "I love LEO, but he seriously robbed me! Why wasn't I on the list!? I was the 2nd to last survivor on our team! I killed Katana girl and everything!"

Gen turned to her and asked, "Wait, what happened to your Sarah-robot? You got it in the UFO and you were all excited, but I never saw it again…"

Morna went silent and mumbled something she couldn't hear. G2n helpfully relayed the information as he said, "Apparently Morna's robotic companion wasn't as impact resistant as she was, and after she jumped out of the UFO with it, it exploded when it hit the ground…"

Gen stifled a laugh, and Morna put on a pouting expression as she yelled, "I demand a refund! What type of robot can't handle falling a few thousand feet!? Very least, it should've come with a warranty!"

She kept complaining loudly, but G2n started talking about his rewards. "I got two of them, one was a new consumable item that lets me reflect a single attack…" He looked wistful as he said, "Would've been useful when Susan killed me… The other one…" He shook his head.

Morna's mood reversed immediately as she laughed and said, "He got an advanced cleaner bot for the clubhouse!"

Gen looked around the place, which still looked like a mess with a deeply ingrained level of dust and grime. "Where is it?"

Morna laughed again, "It's still in the first room! Everything is so dirty it's having an existential crisis! It started scrubbing and me and some people got curious how much it could handle, so we started dumping trash cans all over it! The place is even dirtier than before!"

Gen looked at G2n in pity, but she pitied the cleaner-bot wherever it was even more… They would have to see if the stamina of idiots could outlast a single-minded machine…

Morna pivoted as she said, "You still haven't told us about what you got! You were in second, it's got to be even better than Hon's!"

Gen recalled Hon had gotten third and couldn't help but ask, "What did he get?"

Morna shook her head, "No! Stop distracting me! Tell me what you got!"

Gen sighed, "Well, one is a two-parter… My viewers selected to upgrade my swimming pool, and now there's a poll to see how to upgrade it."

Morna nodded excitedly, "You should install a pool in the clubhouse! You're level 1, so it'd be small outside of an event, but it'd be funny if you wait until G2n goes into his room at night and then put a pool right outside his door!"

G2n stared at her, "..."

Briefly entertaining the thought, Gen shook her head, "The second one, I don't actually know what it is. It's a house upgrade, all it says is Exotic Garden…"

Morna jumped up, "What is wrong with you, Gen? Do you have no sense of priorities!?" Pointing to the door, she said, "Field trip to Gen's house!"

G2n and Gen watched her go, but neither of them moved. Turning to G2n, she asked, "What did Hon get and old Gen, for that matter? I heard about Pali's and Aubrey's rewards, but I don't really know anyone else in the club that well."

"Gen did decently. She eliminated some high-level antagonists, and Jasper's special zombie body was destroyed because of her, but her overall impact on the event wasn't that high. She got a bulletproof instant sleeping bag…"

Gen nodded, it wasn't a reward she'd be interested in, but from what little she knew of the sleepy club leader, it suited her.

G2n kept talking, "Hon got two rewards. One was a clubhouse upgrade, which added a vehicle cloner to the garage. He has his motorcycle already, but it allows him to duplicate anything parked in the machine five times over, so technically we have five respawnable motorcycles available for club members… but I've temporarily suspended its operations before people start getting into accidents all over the place. Especially right after an event, people get too reckless and forget that there are actual consequences out here in the overworld… His second upgrade is a two-parter like yours, except it's for his motorcycle. If you see him, he's climbing up the walls in excitement for what his viewers are going to pick…"

Gen looked at the door, "Do you think she realized we're not following yet?"

An angry yell was heard in the distance, and G2n smiled, "I think she just did."

***

Several minutes later, Gen was leading them into her room. She'd warned them to be quiet in case Jasper and the others were still sleeping, but when she opened the door, the seven mini-iguanas were missing. Her previously isolated room now also had an open doorway leading directly into a dirt area. Gen headed to the new location, followed by G2n, while Morna paused a moment to jump up and down on her bed.

In the garden, Gen immediately squinted as a bright light shone from above. Covering her eyes, she looked up and saw a massive light above on a track that was slowly moving across the ceiling to simulate a sun. The room itself was much more expansive than she had first expected. It was almost a whole acre of barren earth with occasional rocks scattered around. One of the larger rocks had been claimed by the iguanas as they all lounged in the sun, relaxing in the fake sun's warmth.

Morna commented from the side while kicking at the dirt, "Kind of dead for a garden…"

Gen nodded and squinted at the floor, hoping for a description.

Exotic Garden: Generates a plant each month, chosen by polls. Plants can be cultivated within the garden, and individual areas can have their climates and conditions altered to suit a variety of species. One random bonus plant is provided to start.

Gen saw an interface menu appear and could alter individual areas to have different growing conditions.

Glancing at her friends, she asked, "So when it says plants, does it mean like normal plants, like a lemon tree or something LEO-esque like a zombie mushroom?"

G2n was inspecting the dirt at their feet, but he answered. "Potentially either. Houses are supposed to be safe places for actors, so none of it should be outright dangerous, but I wouldn't be surprised if you got something poisonous or explosive."

Morna was evidently also reading the garden description as she asked, "Where's your random plant?"

Gen looked around and saw nothing. "Maybe it's not spawned yet?"

G2n shook his head, "It should've been present upon the room's creation based on the description. So one should be around here somewhere…"

Gen looked again, but failed to find anything until she had a thought and her eyes focused on the iguanas with their slightly swollen bellies.

"Jasper!"

***

Several minutes later, they'd located several small seeds and what looked like the remnants of some sort of melon that the iguanas had devoured.

Inspecting a seed, she got a new description.

Refreshing Melon: Tangy and sweet, this melon hydrates and cures heatstroke! .05 plot points.

Gen's eyes widened, "So they're actually like items I can take into a scenario?"

G2n was staring at it as well and said, "Looks like it. It's not tagged as consumable, however, so it wouldn't regenerate after its cool-down is completed."

"How much is something like this worth?"

G2n shrugged, "I'd have to do some research. There's a market for it, but people are really picky about how they assign their points for equipment, so most people don't waste slots on food even if it has a bonus effect."

Morna scoffed from the side and pulled out a lunchbox, "Are you kidding? I always bring this baby with me!"

Gen squinted at the item and got another description.

Random Snackbox - Consumable: Generates a random snack item. Cool down - 1 hour. .5 plot points.

G2n stared at the box with derision, "That thing is awful… You're level 2, so it uses a quarter of your available slots…"

Morna yelled, "But it synergizes!"

She pulled out another item from her inventory, a juicebox.

Random Juicebox - Consumable: Generates a juicebox of a random flavor. Cool down - 1 hour. .5 plot points.

G2n scowled, "Do you even know what synergy is? Those don't synergize! They are just related in that they give you meal options! Are you really using half your slots on useless stuff like that?"

Morna shrugged, "Don't be mad, I'm better at min-maxing than you! And they absolutely synergize, if I get something salty like chips, then of course I'll need a drink to go with it! You want me running around a scenario with dry mouth? And I only bring them into scenarios because one time I almost starved to death! Events are fine because I know I can buy food!"

From the side, Gen asked, "You had these in our first scenario?"

Morna nodded, "I ate and drank everything before we met up, and the scenario was too short, so they hadn't recharged yet." She paused, "Twen wouldn't appreciate it, but Gen, I know you will! Here's the rest of my combo!"

She pulled out a small carton of gelato and a picnic blanket.

Random Gelato - Consumable: Generates a container of a random gelato flavor. Cool down - 1 hour. .5 plot points.

Picnic Blanket of Plenty - Consumable: Fish, bread, anything edible. A portable miracle! Any food placed on the blanket will be doubled upon activation. Duplicated food disappears if removed from the blanket prior to consumption. Cool down - 24 hours. .5 plot points.

G2n stared at her silently, but judgment was clear in his eyes.

Gen considered the items. As far as strategy was concerned, they definitely weren't what she would pick… but they were fun items just to have for personal use. Curious, she asked, "Did you get those as rewards or did you buy them?"

Morna pointed at the blanket, "I got that as a reward, but the other three I had to buy! Despite Twen's negativity, they were really expensive, so obviously they're high-quality!"

G2n shook his head. "I can't tell if you're just baiting me, but just in case, I have to inform you, just because something costs a lot doesn't mean it's good! Second, those things are expensive because people want them in the overworld! Anyone would want them, they just wouldn't bring them into a scenario where something like body armor or a gun would be more useful!"

Morna stared at him and smiled, "So you're saying you're jealous?"

"..."

Switching Perspective~....

***

Rosalina had had a busy day. For the first time in a long time, she'd closed the bar. She'd been just barely scraping by, working double shifts and covering for the unreliable crew that supposedly worked for her. Now, though she was rich!

1,000 emmys… it was enough to settle her debts and have a healthy chunk leftover for… She wasn't sure what to do with it.

Her polls had resolved, and her bar had started self-repairing. She hadn't even realized how wrecked the place was until lightbulbs started re-igniting and the chips, scrapes, holes, and broken furniture all started knitting themselves back together right before her eyes!

She'd heard of self-repairing items. You could buy a tabletop that would auto-repair scratches or a chair that would glue itself back together, but an entire bar that auto-repaired everything inside of it… She'd done some basic tests and determined only the bar itself was repaired and not the random items on her person, but it was still very impressive and would save her a hell of a lot of money on repair costs.

Her current bar setup was cheap and garbage furniture, so even fully repaired, it still looked rough. But with her newfound savings, she had some ideas for upgrades…

The other item, Eavesdropping Radio, was already proving its effectiveness. Sometimes it was just playing her random conversations or juicy bits of gossip concerning people she didn't know, but more often than not, it was letting her hear the conversations of a specific person.

Irving.

As LEO had warned her, he'd taken his loss very hard, and while she hadn't been the one to actually eliminate he still found a way to blame her. Somehow, he'd invented a story of her conspiring with the antagonists to eliminate him, and that's how she'd gotten first place.

She knew his type and facts and reasons were never going to be sufficient…

She considered whether she could do it all again if she'd still have taunted him and decided that she definitely would have. Fuck Irvine!

From all her eavesdropping, she wasn't too worried yet. His master plan seemed to amount to having people come bust up her bar, but the new self-repair functionality made it a non-risk.

She smiled, still she wasn't the type to just let someone walk all over her…

She eyed her contact list, she'd made a number of new acquaintances during the event, and she wasn't above asking for a favor if it would be mutually beneficial. As she planned out her scheme and placed some orders for the bar, she finally had a moment to relax as she sat on her couch with a fresh keg in front of her. Her only ability allowed her to rapidly ferment things, so her daily routine to wind down was to make fresh beer in the evening while scrolling on her phone.

The new radio was behind her, and she was eavesdropping on a heated argument between two people she didn't know about the pros and cons of bringing food items into a scenario.

She only half listened. It had been a long time since she'd run a scenario. The threat of death was constant in those, and with no viewers, if she died, it would be permanent…

She'd briefly hoped that her mysterious temporary viewers would stick around, but after searching online after the event, she learned about foils and realized that they were gone now, with the event over.

Glancing at her phone, she saw a new notification.

Viewer Count: 1