Since you apparently decided actually working towards your advancement was too difficult, what you like me to cheat for you today?


    “Pretty accurate, but just a bit too verbose. Good snark should imply more than it states.”


    So what would you like to cheat mode today?


    “That''s good! Just about perfect. Try to figure out ways to change it up next time, a good snarky line never works on the same person twice.”


    But Wandi makes frequent references to your slave harem, and that seems to work.


    “That’s a standing in-joke. It requires an incredibly light touch of snark, a lot of complimentary implications, and a good sense of timing. Standing jokes have a lifespan. She is MUCH better at it than I am, so I recommend leaving the standing joke concept aside or only leaning into it gently to keep it funny. Actually, I don’t think it was intentional, but your personality module suggestion was pretty close to a good standing joke.”


    That was not intentional. I felt I really needed one to understand your motivations. Suggesting a personality module to help relate to your client is standard operating procedure and is strongly encouraged by the commercial interests that created both me and those modules.


    “That’s why it works. Standing jokes almost always start with an unintentional situation or misunderstanding.”


    Very well, I will think about it, once you stop screwing around and take the training wheels off your energy cultivation.


    “That was… pretty good for a first try.”


    Thank you, Master. How about you finally leave your mom’s basement and spend your points?


    That was scary. Jessie was a damned quick learner, and that was some grade-A running joke snark. The relationship between haremlit and Mom’s basement was a nasty cut and might have even been a little unintentional, but I think he meant it as regards cheating.


    “I would like to spend a point on activating scavenging, and link it to scrounging.”


    Your ability to flip over couch cushions to pay for your typical date night has improved and has been linked to your scavenging. Your skill is now a class two combined skill, gathering(apprentice). Feeding this skill essence will highlight harvestable or useful items. Please be aware, that in a chaos-beast-heavy area, this ability to be energized will actively increase the chance of monster cores being spawned, which means more dangerous and magically empowered beasts are likely to spawn.


    “I would like to assign my second point to activate jury rig.”


    Some folks call it a sling blade, but now you call it a Kaiser blade. Mmm… hmm. Giving this energy should result in highlighting potential repairs and innovations. Since this is based on your own creativity and intellect, don’t expect too much out of it.


    “That was really good, how did you get the Sling Blade reference?


    Your mother left a digital collection of your favorite movies and songs in your cryogenic cylinder. I was able to scan most of them, and when your energy improves, I may eventually be able to display them for you.


    “But I hate that movie.”


    Since when did your mother ever pay attention to your likes and dislikes? It looks like she included just about anything she could remember you mentioning, and possibly titles from your personal collections and search history.


    “Good night.”


    ***


    I woke to the smell of food. Wandi was tapping on the door screen, and I heard her say softly, “Clean up, I am making dumplings and they should be ready in about fifteen minutes.”


    I chuckled, “Thank you. I will be out.” I wasn’t brutally hungry, and the three buckets of warmed water woke me up, but… a shower was still necessary.


    I was no scientist, but it looked like, with the inclusion of essence, their technology was all based around tension and torsion, instead of pressure. They had pipes to carry water, but it seemed like it all just flowed from gravity instead of being pressurized in any way.


    Jessie, have you noticed that even though there seems to be a lot of clockwork around, there’s nothing really pressurized?


    Yes, but it makes sense, in a way. Obviously, they use pressurization as a concept in their essence use, but it’s almost like an artificial division. Tension, torsion, and kinetic energy exist in the realm of the physical, and pressure and expansion are part of the mystical. Inventing something like gunpowder would be unlikely to affect their technology much, since their existing tensioning systems, in combination with utilizing essence, are already advanced enough that it would be unlikely to add any real efficiency.


    Your scant technical knowledge, even of steam, is unlikely to cause any sweeping technological innovations. You might be able to offer small-scale improvements, such as the accelerator, but even electricity isn’t likely to make a very big change when things such as heat, lighting, and transportation can already be effectively accomplished with essence and clockwork.


    With technologies such as apportation, which Kamli clearly knew about, would even air travel and long-distance communication be worth spending huge amounts of research on, except as a curiosity? This world does have airships, as luxury or war platforms, but standard aerodynamics would increase the costs with little return.


    I sighed and nodded, drying off my hair with a soft towel.“I am still going to figure out how to make a pressurized and heated shower, even if I am the only one that ever uses it.” I wasn’t sure how we were going to equip today, so I just pulled the pajama bottoms back on for the moment, wrapped the towel around my neck, and headed towards the cooking room to find out. Kitchens, at least, seemed interesting enough.


    Wandi had a cold-rune box and a freezing-rune box, as well as a hot-rune stove. It was fairly easy to use, just injecting essence the same way you would a weapon, and each of them had works for storing that essence. From what I understood, the basic component of a ‘work’ was a rune to transfer the essence into kinetic energy into either a coil, which stored essence for quick release such as a gun, much like a wind-up toy, or a heavy centrifuge for stuff that wasn’t supposed to be moved around.


    Works were sealed, because of the amount of kinetic energy involved. These people were very well aware of gyroscopic force, which was why they used coils for hand technology instead of storing them using a centrifuge. Can you imagine how hard it would be to fire a handgun that fought your every movement because of an incredibly rapid gyroscope inside? Guns were one charge, one bullet.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    When I came out, I saw Wandi was wearing a short strapped top that exposed her midriff, a pair of knee-length soft pants sort of like the PJs she had gotten for me, and slippers. She was putting a set of buns from a steamer onto octagonal tin plates, alongside what looked like fried eggs. The food culture here was unusual, with traditions I considered Asian right alongside Western, but different world, different culture.


    When she glanced up at the sound of my padding in, she clearly took in my bare chest and bit her lower lip. She was… phenomenally beautiful, even with the animalistic touches, nearly undressed, and do you know what it’s like to have a beautiful woman look at you and bite her lower lip like that? I savagely suppressed the urge to just throw her over the table. I think it was getting worse.


    “It smells very good,” I said as she finally started moving again, and slid the plates onto a butcherblock table. “So do you.”


    She smiled, “Compliments will get you everywhere. We stinky girls love it when a good-looking guy tells us we smell good. Have a seat. I know you like to exercise in the morning to try to increase your attributes naturally, but today we are meeting at the hunter’s hall in about an hour. I don’t usually cook, but no one wants to risk street food before delving a rift… a bad bean bun or sausage could wreck your dive.”


    I nodded, “I didn’t think it would be a problem with traits like durability and endurance, but I don’t want to experiment.”


    She nodded, “Not usually, but not everyone has those, and sometimes they aren’t enough… Tossing your breakfast at an enemy at the wrong time not only is disgusting, but it could get you killed.”


    I nodded and slid into a chair. Praying at meals didn’t really seem to be much of a thing here, but I had a lot to be grateful for, so I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer of thanks for like… everything while she was sitting down.


    “Are you religious?” she asked curiously, having noted my actions.


    I smiled a little, “Just a little. I mean, there’s a lot of evil in the world, and I have seen most of it, and when you look in the face of true evil it’s really hard not to believe something is fighting against it. I’ve also seen how people tend to act when they don’t believe that anything they do matters. Karma, heaven, flying spaghetti monster, the light of Zartha… We have a saying, there are no atheists in a foxhole. Where that matters is when you know that the only thing between you and death is hope in some kind of divine being. I am willing to trust in the divine being.”


    She nodded, and took a bite of one of the rolls, chewing carefully. Dammit, she even ate sexily. “Some ascended beings, people who advance way past golden core, claim to be gods, but I never really bought that. You are right about staring death in the face. There are lots of gods of various sorts that people honor and worship, but when you are staring at a thousand-pound boar charging down at you, you are more than willing to ask for help from whatever formless benevolence is out there. And sometimes it works.”


    She smiled, “I don’t believe in any particular deity or set of rules, but I do believe in the laws, and I don’t DISBELIEVE in any particular gods either. Some of them, like Floogle the gourmet god of dumplings, are a little ridiculous,” she waved one of the little rolls and I took a bite… a yummy sort of chicken and celery filling seasoned with a hint of vinegar, salt, and maybe ginger and basil?


    She shrugged, “So I am not one of those people that try to say believing in gods is the domain of idiots and gullible. Do some churches have too much power? Sure, especially in the old world. But they are run by people, and people love power and influence. But I think my life matters, and I figure if I follow the laws and try to be a good person, something good will happen after I die, rather than just… ending.”


    I nodded, “Deep conversation this time of the morning," I said, pretending not to notice how her breasts, unconstrained by anything under the top, brushed the fabric and delightfully showed off that she might even be a little chilly.


    She nodded, chewing and swallowing carefully as she ignored my inspection, which I was sure she noticed. “It’s a delve. This is below our capabilities, and shouldn’t be much of a challenge, but there’s always a risk, and low tin is not like fighting chickens in a barnyard. I know you haven’t had a chance to practice your restoration yet, which is one of the reasons we are doing this. Even a safe dive leads to injuries and with terrible luck, deaths.”


    She ate another dumpling and then used a fork on some eggs. There were drinks, and I discovered that the glass was holding apple juice or maybe a nonalcoholic cider. They were pretty good.


    I chuckled, “Mostly I just wanted to say thanks for everything. Good food, good sleep, my health, this world, an incredibly sexy woman sitting across from me. Not being dead or frozen, a really amazing system that rewards hard work, having a mission, a goal, that means something. It’s all just unbelievable, so yeah, I am going to thank whatever is out there for it happening to me.”


    She laughed, “I am happy too. I think I’d have been a little happier if we hadn’t gone straight to bed last night, but the basin awaits. Quick brief. We have all done this before, so we know what to expect.”


    I nod, “Mission briefing from an incredible woman, check.”


    She nodded with a slight smile. “The Basin is not like a normal rift, it’s called a surface rift. That means that there are no tunnels, no walls, nothing to restrict access but trees, small hills, some rocks, hedgerows, and fences. So if we are spotted, we are fighting, and can only use our team to control access.”


    “The monsters inside often LOOK like normal animals, wolves, deer, cattle, but every one of them is still a chaos spawn. Because it’s low tin, the creatures are… enraged. They look and behave like animals, but the minute they spot a living creature, us, they will do their best to kill us.”


    “Expect waves. It might look like a pack of wolves, but they won’t attack like wolves, they will try to pile on, ignoring wounds, and fighting to the death. No clever pack tactics, or retreats, cutting off team members, trying to cause flight or hamstring, just a pile of rabid animals. Deer will charge us instead of running, cattle and maybe bison or bears too. Unless you use a special ability to terrify them, they will not frighten or stop until they are dead.”


    She shook her head and ate another dumpling. I was finished, but I was just sipping my apple juice enjoying the mission brief. As my superior officer, I could get used to the occasional brush of nipple against the fabric of her top. It''s too bad my mission briefs hadn’t gone like this before. Then again, if my mission briefs had gone like this, my other briefs might have suffered terrible damage.


    “Oddly enough, in higher-tier rifts, animals sometimes act like animals, but not in this one. The whole thing is outdoors and we head through sort of a wooden archway, but it’s not in the real world. If you jump over the fence someplace else other than the archway, it’s just normal grassland.”


    “I made you a pack like the usual kit from the hall. We will be picking up a cart from the hall, to load any loot we pick up or stuff we skin or dress. Unlike most rifts, this one is just a big area, so it doesn’t change or dissolve stuff in unattended areas. Because we can leave at any time, we aren’t spending the night, but we do have blankets and tarps just in case. No weather and I don’t really understand how that works, but it does.”


    She smoothly rose and started collecting things to wash, and I helped. I guess that surprised her a little when I started helping her wash the breakfast things in the pressure-free sink because her eyes widened, but she didn’t complain. The sink had a heating rune, so we washed things like a bathtub, with gritty soap, and then rinsed them and set them in a little frame to dry.


    “Each pack has an elixir, some sweetbars, rations, and water. Lots of extra ammunition, some bandages and whiskey, a few minor tools like a knife and repair kit, an emergency blanket, and a few other things. Basically the same stuff I’d take on a day trip hunting.”


    “What are sweetbars and an elixir?”


    “Sweetbars are high-energy food. We have crackers and jerky, but if we need energy in a hurry, sweetbars are made of fat, honey, energy herbs, oats, and dried fruit. We probably won’t need them, they don’t taste great because energy herbs aren’t the best seasoning, but they are there. The elixir is an emergency precaution. It’s a wood-tier alchemical syrup that can stop bleeding, close minor wounds, scab scratches, and even stop some of the less powerful poisons and diseases rift creatures might pass, like snakebile, scadder, rabies, and grave rot.”


    I nodded, “I guess it’s probably traditional for everyone to drink their elixirs at the end of a delve, healthy or not?”


    She nodded, smiling, “Yep, exactly. Plague sucks. We can probably even pick up some of the herbs used to make basic elixirs while we are inside. Elixirs are ten dollars from the hall, but it’s considered part of the cost of delving, like sweetbars and ammunition.”