《Tower of Arnold: A Somnus Story》


 Chapter 1: Aptitude Tests and Hot Girls

    ¡°I¡¯m going to rule this piece of dirt one day,¡± Arnold Jacques said to himself. ¡°And I¡¯ve got a secret weapon.¡±


    That weapon laid in his very dreams:


    The Tower of Somnus, an online massively multiplayer video game set up by some aliens or something like that (he didn¡¯t really care to pay much attention to the politics side of it) to provide a space for the human race to grow into a galactic leadership role (probably). He¡¯d gotten the game in an absolute steal just a few days ago, and everything changed...


    He remembered the broker handing it to him.


    Then he handing her two hundred thousand credits.


    There he was, standing in some dingy shop in the eighth level of the arcology. On the other side of the wall he heard two people having a go at it with loud wails that sounded more in pain than in love. And in the broker¡¯s face he saw only the ashen, cracked visage of a woman whose life had been wasted away on the black market.


    Arnold hated being in such squalor, such filth. If he never had to set foot in these parts of the arcology ever again, he would be better off for it. But it was a necessary cost to obtain one of the world¡¯s greatest tools for experience and power.


    Right here in his hands... two subscriptions.


    ...


    ...


    A dark classroom. And then there was light.


    Because Arnold flipped the switch when he walked in.


    First one in, here to scope out the lecture hall and find the best seat possible. Today was the day that Arnold Jacques would ace his aptitude test and finally take his ultimate position:


    Arnold would become the valedictorian for sure.


    And he would be welcomed into the Ike Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of GroCorp, system just like his father. Finally, worth something beyond just his dashing good looks.


    The reason he came to the classroom so early was not to study, not to make some big effort at being the best--no, his family connections were enough to ensure that already--but because he was just so excited. Just a few more hours, and he¡¯d finally be out of this school system, out of the coddled world he¡¯d endured for his whole life up until now.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    With the power gained from The Tower of Somnus, Arnold would be able to conquer this place and make it just a little more bearable, perhaps. He simply couldn¡¯t wait to be an executive.


    He¡¯d been playing the game for a few days now, and it was wonderful. A gigantic, sprawling fantasy world he could visit every single night, where he could continue his path to power even while his mind rested up.


    Only problem was... He wasn¡¯t good at video games, and definitely not good at fighting. Hence the second subscription.


    He needed a friend, a partner, someone to guide him through the game until he gained the abilities needed to go on his own. It was an investment with massive, risk, but also an absolute guarantee of success, because never in Arnold¡¯s life had he never gotten his way. He simply tried to hard for that.


    After all, Arnold already had someone in mind.


    More students began to pour into the lecture hall and filled up the empty desks, but the person of Arnold¡¯s interest didn¡¯t show up, not as far as he looked.


    Where was she?


    Finally decided to skip town, maybe? Or a run went bad? Arnold knew she was in a bit of a dangerous line of work, so... This would be very, very bad if she didn¡¯t show up soon.


    Arnold began to sweat. Began to panic in many different ways. What if she died? What if his plan was just about to go into the gutter all in an instant? What if she just said no anyway? He realized he was already a hundred thousand extra credits out, and there was no way he was crawling back to that broker begging for a refund. He¡¯d rather jump off the arcology than do anything like that.


    The proctor began handing out papers. The aptitude test was beginning--


    And, right on time--


    There she was.


    A rushed, sweaty, panting girl with the eyes of a beautiful, hunting tigress.


    Kat Debs had entered the classroom, carrying with her the poise of a Greek statue and all the buxom of a classic Hollywood star, her precious torso bouncing around with every step. And for her size up front, she was still a remarkably slender woman, that perfect combination of robustness and daintiness. Even while sweat pooled at her armpits, even with her hair up in the most precarious of buns, her whole being just radiated competence.


    What Arnold wouldn¡¯t do to have a girl like that...


    And, soon, that might just transpire... Because Arnold always got what he wanted, and what he wanted was her.


    He knew she couldn¡¯t refuse a Tower of Somnus subscription. Nobody could, especially not someone as combat-prone as Kat. And if the game meant anything for Arnold¡¯s future revenue, it surely meant something for him and her.


    He stared as she sat down at an empty desk across the lecture hall and took a cursory glance around. Her eyes did not meet his, but he still did not look away.


    All he could think was that he was about to obliterate this aptitude test.... And he was about to win the woman of his dreams. This was about to be the greatest day of his life.


    They might be playing Tower of Somnus now, but they might as well start calling it the Tower of Arnold.

 Chapter 2: Valedicktorian

    After the exams, and after Arnold saw just how easy the whole thing really was.


    It was already guaranteed that he would take one of the top spots, but now his status as number one in the class was no longer in doubt.


    He was the son of a manager, after all, so he only had one real opponent: Anna, who of course was walking right up to him as he thought of her. Speak of the Devil, and she shall appear, his father always said...


    Her reputation preceded her--exceeded her, some would say. She had the nasty habit of looking down on every single person around her, regardless of status. She saw herself as superior, and the entire world knew it.


    Still, her approach was not without its benefits, not least of which to Arnold¡¯s eyes. She was a feast to men in the visual sense; her hips bounced back and forth as if independent organisms, her breasts as if rubber bouncy balls tossed about, struggling desperately to pry themselves loose from whatever tight-fitting bra she must have had on. All girls at the school wore the same uniforms, with dark, plain blazers and simple red ties, but Anna¡¯s chest somehow made itself wholly separate from this entire dimension of uniformity.


    God, what he¡¯d give to bed her, if not for her repugnant personality. Honestly, he imagined that if it got down to it, she¡¯d open her legs wide the moment he asked, because that¡¯s just the kind of girl Anna was, according to her reputation around school. From the day she turned legal at nineteen, she was all over the place. Arnold was just too dignified to give into that kind of path, or else he¡¯d probably be just like the rest of his asshole classmates.


    No, he was a nice guy, out here saving himself for Kat. Whenever she was ready, he¡¯d be too.


    And he knew he was about to be very, very ready.


    Before Anna and her curvaceous curviness could curve its way over to him, Arnold turned tail and beelined straight for Kat, who stood next to the desk where she took her test.


    She looked dazed, tired, and altogether not very confident. The sweat still dripped from her clothes, and he knew it must have been a runner job she just got done with. She was vulnerable, and she needed a strong man to sweep her off her feet.


    Arnold smiled on the inside, and poked his elbow into her side. Then he smiled on the outside too.


    ¡°Arnold, geez,¡± she muttered. ¡°Your elbows are so bony. Why don¡¯t...¡± She stopped herself and tried to put on a normal face. ¡°How did you think you did, Arnold?¡± She threw a smile and began to walk out of the lecture hall, into the hallway where everyone else was going for some reasons. Arnold, of course, followed her side-by-side.


    ¡°Does it even matter?¡± He replied with a little bit of pride. ¡°My dad is a senior manager. Even if I just drew dicks all over the page they¡¯d at least give me the second slot. I don¡¯t really know why they made Anna and I take the test. Everyone knows the result.¡±


    Arnold was just way, way too suave, and Kat was instantly absorbed into their conversation like she and her delicious body had nowhere else to ever be in this universe they called home.


    ¡°But how did you do?¡± Kat asked conspiratorially. ¡°I bet you¡¯ll get placed above your own mother. She¡¯s a bitch, after all.¡±


    ¡°I agree. What a bitch. She¡¯s nothing like you, Kat,¡± he said. ¡°I wish you were my mom instead.¡±This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    ¡°Uh... Yeah, okay.¡±


    He knowingly grinned at her, and she was sent into a blushing mess, obviously impressed by his amazing skills at humor. She¡¯d probably just killed some people on her most recent run, from the way she looked, but she was still reduced to a shivering mess just by his cute-ass smile.


    ¡°How about a favor if I manage to make valedictorian?¡± Arnold asked with a wink.


    Kat¡¯s blush intensified to meme-like levels. She could have been taken straight out of one of those popular moe animes and nobody would know the difference. ¡°I-I don¡¯t... Well...¡±


    He wondered if she understood that he liked her. Girls seemed like they were usually pretty obtuse to this sort of thing, so he wasn¡¯t sure if she got his signals.


    Yeah, dating and marriage across social classes certainly happened, but it always was supposed to be initiated by the lower in status, at least that¡¯s what his parents always told him. He had been waiting for Kat to realize his feelings for him ever since they met in their fourth year of school. Now that they were both adults, he still harbored that same affection--probably more since Kat¡¯s body had blossomed into a scrumptious dessert the likes of which kings would feast on after defeating the opposing army and forcing an unequal treaty on a smaller nation whose exports would go entirely to the conquerors.


    A favor... That¡¯s all he was asking for. It was up to Kat to make the first move so they could finally smooch and hopefully more.


    ¡°As long as it isn¡¯t anything gross.¡± She smiled back, batting her eyelashes at him, and Arnold gulped instantly. That was the kind of thing she usually did towards the other guys in class, not him. She¡¯d dated a few guys before, and he was always there to give his shoulder for her to lean on when things inevitably went sour, but she never directed those eyelashes in his direction. Not as much as as he stared at her.


    ¡°Say, Kat?¡± Arnold took a half step away from her and tried to steel himself. ¡°You looked distracted during the test. Did everything go alright on your end?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, the test was fine. I could outperform everyone but you and Anna on autopilot. It wasn¡¯t a hard test.¡±


    ¡°I mean alright with... you know.¡±


    ¡°Oh, yeah... With running.¡± She darted her eyes around the crowded hallway to make sure nobody was eavesdropping. It wasn¡¯t a closely guarded secret or anything, but she clearly didn¡¯t want to blab about it all the time. That¡¯s sort of why Arnold brought it up, though. ¡°I¡¯m fine. More or less. I had a run this morning and things didn¡¯t turn out all that well. I still finished it just fine, but I ended up in a fight with some trash tier street samurai. Luckily, I got here on time and I¡¯ll be a firm number three on the rankings.¡±


    ¡°Street samurai... My dad¡¯s told me stories about those guys. I don¡¯t want any part of that in the arcology. We¡¯ve got to keep that shit out.¡±


    ¡°They weren¡¯t players or anything. Don¡¯t worry,¡± Kat said. ¡°I can hold my own in a fight, and I can definitely outrun those clunky contractors. I¡¯m pretty decent in a tight spot.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s what she said.¡± Arnold¡¯s eyes flickered with appetite.


    Kat refused to make eye contact, probably because she was so attracted to him or something. Then, she playfully elbowed him in the ribs.


    Oh, what a great relationship they were going to have.


    Because even though she didn¡¯t explicitly say yes, she definitely meant yes about that favor. And that favor was the Tower of Somnus.


    Soon, he was going to have her supple mounds wrestled onto his bed, and he was going to make her the most powerful street samurai in the whole arcology. They¡¯d be an unstoppable team, and unstoppable under the sheets as well.


    Anna was fast approaching them, and he immediately tuned out that entire rant with her bitching bitchiness, deciding just to focus on the plans coming up in his life.


    Soon, they walked into the main auditorium, where the aptitude tests were announced in front of the whole school.


    As expected...


    ¡°Arnold Jacques: You are our new valedictorian! Congratulations!¡±


    He succeeded, just like he always did when he set his mind to it.


    He went up on the stage and stared right into Kat¡¯s eyes.


    Just you wait, babe. Just you wait.

 Chapter 3: Family Sucks

    If there was anything negative to come from becoming valedictorian of his whole graduating class, to immediately being placed in one of the top university positions in all of Ike Holdings, A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of GroCorp, it was his family¡¯s reaction.


    Or, rather, the lack of any reaction at all.


    He got home, his servants removed his jacket, and he went right over to his mother and father who were sitting on separate couches in the living room, watching two entirely different TV shows on their smartglass cyber devices.


    ¡°Good job, Arn--¡± his servant began, but he cut them off before they could continue speaking.


    ¡°Mom, dad, did you hear the news?¡± he asked excitedly.


    Both of them looked at him, and then one brief moment later, they returned to their shows without another word.


    He guessed it was a subject that would come up at the family dinner...


    Well, you know what? He didn¡¯t need their approval. He was going to be ruling over them soon enough, and he¡¯d do it without their assistance in any way. People in the lower classes had it so easy, with families that cared about them. So much privilege he simply was never afforded. Nonetheless, he would succeed.


    Arnold went upstairs to his bedroom, grabbed a box of tissues, and sat down on his bed to meditate and think about the things that had happened, the things that would happen.


    He thought long and hard about how well his plan needed to work for him to really go off. He imagined what it would be like, finally scoring with Katherine Debs, finally seeing the inside of those magnificent thighs her skirt always left uncovered.


    One time, after a rainstorm a few years ago, when they were on a field trip to the great organic dairy farms of Chippewa, the two of them were forced to take refuge under a tree after they both got soaked. They spent the time until the storm passed chatting, just killing time like friends do, but all along Arnold noticed something very important: The white shirt of her uniform was completely wet, and he could see her dark purple bra underneath.


    Let it be known that Arnold would never forget a moment like that, so long as he lived. One day, he¡¯d see underneath that purple bra, but he¡¯d never leave this defining moment out of his internal history.


    Eventually, the servant called him to dinner, and his whole family gathered in the dining room with an excellent meal cooked up by the house¡¯s Smart AI system. Yum.


    His mother and father sat at opposite ends of the dining table, with his extremely pale older sister Emmalee and his extremely tan older brother Braedyn. They were twins, born at the same time six years before him, and both born to be the ultimate members of the human race. Indeed, they were genetically engineered as test tube babies; their parents were early adopters of the designer gene fad and they were two of the earliest success stories in the whole Midwest region.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Arnold was the result of oral birth control¡¯s nine percent failure rate, so he didn¡¯t have any of the genetic benefits that Emmalee and Braedyn were given. He was smart, but he wasn¡¯t a genius; he was handsome, but he didn¡¯t have women and men begging at his feet for just a taste of his skin.


    They did, and they didn¡¯t use it for anything.


    Both of them dropped out of college before getting their degrees. They weren¡¯t hereditary employees, so they didn¡¯t need it, and their parents somehow supported it. They let them live at home and eat all the same meals even if they were pulling in income that wouldn¡¯t let someone survive even in the cheapest apartments in the arcology.


    Right now, Braedyn was training every day at the gym to try and get on the local rugby team and work his way into the majors by way of intramural success. It wasn¡¯t unheard of, especially not for a guy as washed-ab and hard-ironed as him, but it wasn¡¯t the kind of career path for the son of a corporation manager, that was for sure.


    His sister Emmalee was even worse off; by day she was always writing her little books on the internet and posting them on some site called Royals of the Road or something like that. He didn¡¯t know, because she always got really mad when anyone tried to read her stuff, like the bitch she was. The book was something about a boy who could travel back in time and had to relive the same lifetime over and over until he got lots of power. She got some money on Patreon for the story, but it wasn¡¯t enough to really bother mentioning. Then, by night Emmalee basically went to clubs or bars every single night without fail, like it was some sort of religious experience (ew, religion, but whatever). She always stayed over with some random guy, or occasionally some random girl, and so she was only home about three days a week anymore, at this point; those were her writing days, after all.


    It was a shame, too, about Emmalee. She was such a voluptuous, commanding presence with a perfectly freckled face and a figure that dazed women and men alike. Her body was perfectly crafted to lead a runway line or to fit into an executive¡¯s low-cut pantsuit, even if she would never come close to either of those things. She didn¡¯t deserve to be some common slut, and yet that¡¯s where her life led her because she, like her twin brother, didn¡¯t have much of any aim in life.


    Arnold was nothing like them. He was barely anything like his parents, who still hadn¡¯t even spoken to him about his getting a valedictorian position, by the way. They didn¡¯t expect much of him when their designer babies turned out so rotten, and that¡¯s where they were wrong.


    He wasn¡¯t going to be sold into the concubine of some richer family. He was going to climb the ranks and become a full-on executive of Ike Holdings, A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of GroCorp, even if he had to step on the heads of his entire family to do that.


    That¡¯s why he blew his college tuition on Tower of Somnus. That¡¯s why he dedicated his whole life to a commoner girl who only saw him as a friend. Because Arnold was the kind of risk taker who made massive, Gamestop-level dividends when his plans succeeded.


    The servant brought out the dinner, and it was Arnold¡¯s favorite, which means at least the Smart AI in the home remembered that he was worth celebrating. He got his valedictorian supper: cherry pie with whip cream, and a side of steamed broccoli. Yummy!

 Chapter 4: The Video Game From Space

    Arnold gulped. He wasn¡¯t used to being in such high pressure situations, and this one went far beyond high pressure.


    If he failed this, he failed his entire life. His whole plan evaporated in an instant the second he messed up.


    Kat worked part-time at Jawa Juice or whatever the place was called (sure, he could look up and see the sign, but it wasn¡¯t like him to pay that much attention to something so irrelevant), and so Arnold only had to wait outside of the store for about two hours before he knew she had started working and would be bored enough to get in a good conversation with him.


    So, acting like it was just some bizarre coincidence, he strolled into the cafe, hands in his jacket pockets and kicking the feet up to his new shoes he had just bought with graduation allowance (a mere fifteen thousand credits, because he was the youngest child that nobody cared about).


    ¡°Kat, what a surprise to see you here,¡± he said. ¡°I almost forgot you worked here.¡±


    She rolled her eyes. ¡°You come here all the time.¡±


    ¡°Nah, just a surprise.¡±


    ¡°...Okay.¡±


    He walked up closer and got all the way to the cash register. He leaned over and placed his elbows on the counter so he could see her up close and give her his signature Arnold-y grin.


    What a babe Kat was. Even in her work outfit, with that loose-fitting apron and a hat that covered up her otherwise lovely head of hair, her torso was just bursting at the seams trying to get itself out to the world. Her body knew it was one worth looking at, and the only person who seemed to disagree was Kat herself. She pulled back her inviting, perky breasts and leaned her own face forward, looking at Arnold with disapproval.


    ¡°Get off the counter,¡± she ordered.


    ¡°Yes ma¡¯am,¡± he said with a wink.


    ¡°One of these days, Arnold Jacques,¡± she said. ¡°One of these days, I¡¯m going to...¡±


    ¡°Going to what? Bed me?¡±


    ¡°Not in your dreams, Arnie,¡± she groaned playfully. Or... was it playfully? Was she rejecting him here and now? Or was it just some banter? He couldn¡¯t tell, and it was starting to make him extremely nervous.


    Was Kat into him or not?


    ¡°So, you remember that favor you owe me?¡± Arnold asked slyly.


    ¡°What are you talking about?¡±


    ¡°I got valedictorian, so you owe me a favor. Right?¡±


    ¡°Uh...¡± Kat looked upwards as if trying to recall a memory that was simply not coming to her head, but before she could realize the truth of its nonexistence, he butted back in.


    ¡°I think I have a good idea of what you can do,¡± he said.


    Her face went flush. ¡°Arnold, I...¡±


    ¡°You know how you¡¯re a runner right?¡± Arnold¡¯s question was so awkward, and he knew it. She thought he wanted to ask her out or something, because of that stupid bed joke he made a second ago, and he just ruined everything. What a loser. What a loser! Ugh.


    ¡°Yes. I do know how I¡¯m a runner, Arnold.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to college,¡± he rushed the words out as quickly as his mouth would allow them. ¡°Look, I know you¡¯re going to think that this is a dumb idea, but I found a broker and I decided it was the best option.¡±


    ¡°A broker? Arnold, what the hell are you talking about?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re going to see my tower-- Shit, that¡¯s not what I meant. You¡¯re going to see in a second, because I am in the tower now. I mean, I have a subscription.¡±


    ¡°You WHAT.¡±This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    ¡°I got an offer, so I took it. I got a subscription. Now I¡¯m in the Tower of Somnus and I¡¯m a player. Kat, I¡¯m a player.¡±


    Kat looked at him like he had committed a murder. ¡°How. Much. Did. You. Pay.¡±


    ¡°My dad transferred my college tuition into my personal account,¡± Arnold responded with what little strength he had left. ¡°I just need to raise a level or two and he¡¯ll be fine. I¡¯ll make all the money back and then some. Plus, watch this:¡± He held out his hand, and a very weak ball of fire swirled around in his palm. Magic Somnus powers or whatever.


    ¡°Oh my God, Arnold. You really did it.¡±


    ¡°One hundred thousand credits for a single subscription,¡± he admitted.


    ¡°God Arnold,¡± Kat shook her head in shame, her arms crossed in front of her bouncy, radiating chest. ¡°Why even bother to sit in for the aptitude test if you knew that you weren¡¯t going to college?¡±


    ¡°For you,¡± he said. ¡°I wanted to impress you by beating that bitch Anna.¡±


    ¡°Hey, screw you. Anna¡¯s a cool person,¡± Kat said. ¡°She might be a little mean on the outside, but she¡¯s honestly a decent girl when you get to know her.¡±


    ¡°A decent slut, more like. I hear the stories the guys tell about her in the locker room.¡±


    ¡°When are you ever in a locker room, pudgy?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a figure of speech.¡±


    ¡°Anyway,¡± Kat said, ¡°Anna¡¯s not a ¡®slut,¡¯ not that it matters to you anyway. She¡¯s had sex like, three times. I would know because... You know.¡±


    Arnold¡¯s eyes opened wide. ¡°¡®You know?¡¯ No, I don¡¯t know. Please enlighten me.¡±


    Kat shrugged. ¡°Yeah, it happened.¡±


    ¡°You couldn¡¯t have...¡±


    ¡°You know, after me and Danyel broke it off, I was so upset, and then I had just finished a running job near the library. Anna was there reading some book and I saw her and... we just hit it off pretty well. Then, you know.¡±


    ¡°My God, Kat. You slept with Anna.¡±


    ¡°Yes, obviously,¡± she said. ¡°I just told you that.¡±


    ¡°Still, you can¡¯t know if she¡¯s only done it three times, I mean, from what all the guys say--¡±


    ¡°No, trust me.¡±


    ¡°Kat, I have it on VERY good word that Anna is a total wh--¡±


    ¡°I took her virginity, Arnold, and that was like two weeks ago so it¡¯s definitely just been me and her, okay?¡± Kat¡¯s face was entirely red, both out of embarrassment at talking about this sort of stuff with him, at work no less, and anger for having to spell it out so plainly. ¡°Anna¡¯s a sweet girl. I don¡¯t really like her in that way, not really my type, but it¡¯s kind of nice having her tag along with me sometimes like a little puppy with a crush. I think she wants to take me out on a date after work, actually.¡±


    Arnold couldn¡¯t think of any reply that wouldn¡¯t make her angrier at him. She knew his opinion on Anna, and it wasn¡¯t something he would shake easily. Hearing that his own best friend, the girl he¡¯d been in love with for ten years, had shacked up with his worst enemy... really hit him hard. It also made his mind reel imagining two really hot girls just going at it, but now was not the appropriate time to be thinking of such sensual, skin-on-skin contact.


    But this wasn¡¯t a day where he could make any mistakes, so he moved on.


    ¡°She¡¯s still a bitch, anyway,¡± he muttered under his breath, failing to move on like he had hoped.


    ¡°Listen, you moron. I had sex a few times with a girl you hate, I get it. But I¡¯m not the one who spent my entire college savings on a video game from space. That¡¯s you.¡±


    ¡°Not a video game,¡± he corrected.


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    ¡°Two video games.¡±


    ¡°...¡±


    ¡°Yeah, so, the favor...¡±


    ¡°Arnold...¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve got to hear me out on this one,¡± he said. ¡°Don¡¯t jump to conclusions.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll assume you are a moron of gigantic proportions, but only until you prove me otherwise.¡±


    ¡°You see,¡± he scratched the back of his neck, embarrassed. ¡°Somnus involves a lot more fighting than I thought. Everyone hears the stories about the master crafters climbing level after level, but without a megacorp supporting you, that just doesn¡¯t happen. And since I¡¯m not going to college, I won¡¯t have Ike Holdings, A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of GroCorp, helping me out.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯ve played already?¡± Kat asked.


    ¡°Yep. A few nights in a row already. It¡¯s really fun. But... I don¡¯t know if I¡¯m actually any good at this. Right now I¡¯m fighting things with a sword, and I¡¯ve almost cut my hands off four times in three days.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s terrifying,¡± she said. ¡°And so you...¡±


    Arnold grabbed Kat¡¯s right hand with both of his and looked her straight in the eye. ¡°That¡¯s why I need you. You¡¯re my only hope of reaching level two. My only hope of making this investment worth it.¡±


    ¡°...¡±


    ¡°I bought the second subscription for you, Kat. I can¡¯t sell it back. If the corporation finds out I was selling on the black market, they¡¯ll fire my whole family. And I¡¯ll be killed by my own family if my dad finds out what I did with my tuition.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t help you pay that money back, Arnold. That¡¯s way out of my price range. Like, entire lifetime levels of out of my price range.¡±


    ¡°But you can fight. You can survive. And you¡¯re my best friend.¡±


    Kat gulped.


    And that was when he realized he had won her over.


    She was going to take his subscription.


    Everything going exactly according to plan. Soon, they¡¯d be together for good.

 Chapter 5: Refractory

    Arnold was watching a video by a pick-up artist trying to give advice on how to be more confident and how to make women know you¡¯re into them, when he got a loud beeping on his smartglass technology whatever. He paused the video and checked it.


    A message from Kat.


    She was ready to enter the game, ready to begin the path into the Tower of Somnus.


    Arnold was absolutely giddy. So giddy he could hardly get himself to go to sleep when he laid down on his bed and turned off all the lights. Just the thought of finally being in the game with Kat, where the two of them would work together and inevitably bond until they were inseparable and until they were constantly going at it in the domestic realm.


    Somnus did, in fact, have an intimate relations feature; he did very thorough research into that aspect before even buying the subscription. So they didn¡¯t even need to sleep in the same bed to be able to consummate their passions for one another, which would really help for their class divide bullshit.


    She¡¯d finally get one over on that bitch Anna, who he not only beat in the aptitude test, but would be soon full-on cucking. And he¡¯d get one over on his bitch mom, who forbade him from dating anyone whose parents were below manager level.


    Arnold was already one of the most handsome guys in the arcology. Soon he¡¯d be one of the most powerful as well.


    Finally, with visions of bare breasts bouncing through his head, he fell asleep and his early Christmas gift came early...


    He landed in the fantasy world, in a small village next to the great tower or whatever it was called, and Kat was already there waiting for him. And oh, boy was she waiting.


    Her schoolgirl uniform, her Jawa Juice uniform, gone completely, and replaced by the default warrior class armor. Though calling it armor was a stretch, because it functioned to cover up almost no part of her entire body.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    It revealed in taunting, almost begging ways the most vital parts of her body. Her legs, both of them, from ankle all the way up to buttocks, were all there in their shiny pale glory. The straps over her chest covered up her nipples, but only just. Everything else on her torso, from her cleavage to her supple little belly button, were on display. And those shoulders, man those shoulders...


    Arnold couldn¡¯t help it. He had to do it...


    ¡°Kat, you¡¯re here!¡±


    He ran to her with the greatest of speed and the most shining of smiles and literally glomped her with a hug, like the kind you would see in an anime or more likely an anime convention.


    He hugged her tight, with the pretense of excitement, which was real, but of course the underlying desire to finally feel this womanly skin against his own body, to feel the warmth of this woman in her scantily clad starter armor. Real it was. Warm it was.


    ¡°Mmm...¡±


    Then, violently, Kat pushed him off and he fell butt-first on the dirt. ¡°Get the HELL off of me and never do that again.¡±


    ¡°Geez, I was just so happy to see you. Can¡¯t friends have a hug?¡±


    Kat blushed. ¡°Not when I¡¯m... When I¡¯m like this, you know?¡± She held her body close, now, with incredible self-consciousness as to just how much skin she was showing off.


    ¡°Oh, don¡¯t worry about that,¡± he told her. ¡°You look gorgeous. Any man would kill to have you by his side with a style like that.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not why I¡¯m playing, though... If I wanted company from a man, I¡¯d just go to the eighth floor of the arcology and stand there until someone propositioned me.¡±


    Prostitution... Disgusting. Arnold hated the very thought of such impurity. He was glad that Kat had chosen the more dangerous, more exciting life of a runner than to ruin herself like so many women in the arcology did. It was a choice they made, and one they would someday pay for with shame.


    They were also too expensive to be worth it, in his opinion...


    ¡°So, want to get going?¡± Arnold asked. ¡°There¡¯s not really a tutorial or anything, so I¡¯ll show you the ropes.¡±


    ¡°Can I please get better armor first?¡±


    ¡°I told you, stop worrying! You¡¯ll do fine.¡±


    The two of them traveled around, doing RPG stuff and adventuring. They did a lot of stuff involving stats and systems, but Arnold didn¡¯t really think any of that was interesting, so he just sort of skipped over it mentally.


    Then...


    Then the alien came.


    Dorrik.


    That evil alien who would come and steal his girl.

 Chapter 6: Nice Guys Finish Last (But They Sure Do Finish)

    Tower of Somnus was a disaster.


    Arnold thought he could show Kat around and she would become smitten with him over time. With his mind and hers, and with her strength, they¡¯d become an unstoppable tactical team and advance up the tower without anyone ever being able to stand in their way.


    But things didn¡¯t work out like that.


    He was still on track, eventually, to bedding the babe of his dreams, but it would require a major detour at this point, and the entire reason was that despicable fool Dorrik.


    As soon as he came around, Kat suddenly shifted, like she was smitten for this weird lizard alien. Arnold would have her know, he was a founding member of the Zard Skwad, a very important scaley enthusiast group online that focused very strongly on promoting lizards in all their forms. Dorrik was a member of that sort of species, yes, but he wasn¡¯t a full-on fanclub person about it. What gave? Why was she into this guy?


    Jealousy raged within him, and it became almost impossible to play the game.


    Eventually, he just had to make some sort of excuse about how he had some early morning errands to run, and woke himself up early just to get out of the situation. But even that was a waste, because then his mind was just consumed with the idea that, as soon as he left, Kat and Dorrik were going nasty at it. The very thought of it sickened him, but he couldn¡¯t get it out of his head.


    Kat... Kat wasn¡¯t a slut, no. He had read online many different guides of how to tell if a girl is experienced and a good veteran or if she¡¯s just loose in more ways than one, and as far as he knew, she didn¡¯t display any of the telltale signs. Sure, she¡¯d been with a lot of guys recently, always the bad boys with bad attitudes like Jaiden, and Atwon, and Gheb, and then of course Danyel... And then he just learned about her and Anna...


    ¡°My God, is Kat a bitch too?¡± Arnold wondered aloud. ¡°No, no. She¡¯s dated a lot, but it¡¯s always pure relationships that develop naturally. She isn¡¯t the kind of woman to ruin herself. She¡¯s basically saving herself for me, just like I¡¯ve been saving myself for her this whole time, even though I definitely have had the opportunity to lay many times with all sorts of women. I just haven¡¯t been desperate enough to go with their unattractive, homely selves. I prefer a woman with some meat on her bones, if you know what I mean. Who am I talking to?¡±If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Dorrik and Kat probably weren¡¯t doing anything special. They had only just met, even if they hit it off well. Dorrik was dumb, and stupid, and fat, and not even attractive. Ha!


    Arnold hated Dorrik so much...


    So much that he couldn¡¯t stop thinking about him.


    Dorrik and his scale-covered, barely-covered body. He didn¡¯t need that much armor for how thick his scales already were, and oh boy they were thick...


    Arnold hated him. Hated him so much. Just... ugh.


    He imagined going up to the guy and just slicing him with his sword as hard as he could. It wouldn¡¯t kill him, not with his bountiful, luscious body, so dark and green and with such a long snout...


    He draw back his blade, and Dorrik would look upon him with fear and something of attraction, just at Arnold¡¯s sheer masculine energy. The musk exuding from his inhuman girth... With him fully at Arnold¡¯s mercy. And Arnold would take him without mercy.


    He¡¯d look up at the cowering beast and ask, ¡°Is that a subscription in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?¡±


    And then he¡¯d finish him off.


    Oh, what a dream that would be. Arnold felt gleeful just imagining what a world that would be.


    Instinctually, he reached for his box of tissues before realizing that he was just being silly. That box was for meditation, not for giddy imagination romps.


    He thought about going to sleep now and entering Somnus so he could get a head start on training to eventually kill Dorrik with his bare hands, but he decided it would be better if he got some dinner first, since he was in the mood for turtle soup, for sure. The sea turtle may be endangered now, but it was certainly tasty enough that it didn¡¯t quite matter.


    He put back his box off tissues and walked downstairs to the kitchen.


    But then, when he got down there, he saw a familiar face--and, more importantly, two very familiar pale orbs whose ¡°eyes¡± were essentially staring at him.


    It was that special woman putting her long-fingered hands on her tasty child-bearing hips, glaring at him just as much as her own breasts:


    Anna Donnst was here in his own home.

 Chapter 7: Getting Propositioned

    Oh, baby, Arnold knew this was a poor time to be meeting with one of the hottest girls in his graduating class. He had just decided not to meditate in his room, and he was still carrying a little bit of that, well, blood vessel dilation, if you know what he was referring to.


    And with that body on Anna... Her mounds were just mountainful, like the peaks of Everest, at least before the demolition crews in China went and flattened the whole Himalaya region in order to provide more land for factories and farms out west. She obviously wasn¡¯t wearing a bra, because her cute little nipples stuck out through the fabric of her designer blouse that was just thin enough to expose even the color of her areola for all to see.


    Even though, yeah, Kat may have taken Anna¡¯s virginity a couple weeks ago which probably proved she wasn¡¯t sleeping around with the entire class, but he was certain she had probably done ¡°hand jives¡± with a ton of guys or something like that. With wrists like those, who knows what kind of of job she¡¯d pull off.


    Man, those wrists...


    (Author¡¯s Note: If you use a computer frequently for your job, make sure to have good posture, especially with your keyboard and mouse; remember to exercise your hands</a> just like every other part of your body!)


    Anna was supple like a crafty tupperware lid, always getting lost and never quite fitting on like you wanted it to, but always giving you a reliable service, and in this instance her service was being a complete bitch about everything.


    ¡°Arnold, I¡¯ve been waiting here for twenty minutes while you jacked off in your room,¡± Anna said, ¡°and I REALLY don¡¯t want to have to wait any longer. Can we just get this over with?¡±


    ¡°I wasn¡¯t--I was just chilling out in my room!¡± he exclaimed. ¡°Why the hell are you in my house?¡±


    ¡°For the contract signing, of course,¡± she said, her breasts bobbing rhythmically with each breath she took.


    ¡°What contract signing?¡± he asked.


    She shifted her meaty legs with impatience. ¡°The contract for our engagement. What the hell else would I be talking about?¡±


    What? ¡°What?¡±


    Anna rolled her eyes. ¡°You can¡¯t weasel yourself out of this one. Your parents have already agreed, and since you are still in their legal custody, even in adulthood you must abide by their will or else be disbarred from your entire family legacy.¡±


    ¡°I... I-I Have no idea what you¡¯re talking about. No idea what... Oh my God...¡±


    ¡°They didn¡¯t tell you?¡± she asked.


    ¡°I... No.¡±


    Anna burst out laughing. ¡°They didn¡¯t even talk to you about it. That¡¯s amazing. You¡¯re such a pathetic worm that they didn¡¯t bother to tell you about your own engagement.¡±


    She was laughing now, but if he got his way, she¡¯d be moaning later--


    Or that¡¯s what he would think if he weren¡¯t saving himself for Kat, who was surely right about to come around on him.


    Anna stepped up close to him, and he could smell that fading virginal scent emanating from him. Yeah, she¡¯d been with a woman before, but it wasn¡¯t as true as having a real man go up inside her and release his inner self. So she had been half-taken, half-deflowered. And those petals were fast fading from her pores. Her remaining virginity would disappear on its own soon, and she¡¯d finally enter through that threshold of womanhood from which girls were made into mothers.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    ¡°What¡¯s the meaning of all this?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Your parents found out about Tower of Somnus,¡± Anna said. ¡°They¡¯re so furious they considered kicking you out of the family outright. But instead, my mother put a lot of pressure on them to finally sell you off to me. We¡¯re getting engaged, and you¡¯ll be spreading your legs for me whenever I ask.¡±


    ...They found out about Somnus...


    He didn¡¯t think they¡¯d ever know. He did such a good job of hiding the fact that his tuition fund was completely empty, he thought. But somehow they figured it out anyway, and they never even confronted him about it... They confronted HER about it instead.


    After all that Emmalee and Braedyn had done to disappoint the family, they were still in their parents¡¯ good graces for their artistic and sportal pursuits, somehow. But one mess-up on Arnold¡¯s part, and he was already being lambasted? What a waste!


    Even if he was right next to the second-hottest girl he knew, and apparently about to become engaged to her, he was furious about this. Everything in his life was so unfair, and he didn¡¯t do a single thing to deserve any of it.


    ¡°I¡¯m not marrying you,¡± he growled. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t marry you if it was the last thing I did. You have no right to join the Jacques family.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t understand,¡± she said coldly. ¡°I¡¯m not marrying you. You¡¯re marrying me.¡± He blinked at her blankly, and she paused before continuing her explanation. ¡°Your family doesn¡¯t have nearly the status for an equal marriage, so you¡¯ll be signing a consort contract. You¡¯ll be joining the Donnst family, but not as a primary husband. In fact, I probably won¡¯t ever have a primary husband, so that part doesn¡¯t really matter.¡±


    ¡°A consort... A concubine. I¡¯m not joining that kind of shit.¡±


    ¡°Well, you basically have to, unless you want to be on the streets,¡± she said. ¡°Your parents will remove you from the family registers next month regardless of our status, so becoming my consort is the only way you¡¯ll keep any of your current level of income stability. My family is very wealthy, so you won¡¯t have to worry about anything like that. In fact, I¡¯d like to invite you over to my house so you can grovel in front of my mother. We¡¯re having grizzly bear steak for dinner, so it¡¯ll be a great meal, though we didn¡¯t hunt enough to give any to you. You¡¯ll have to settle for buffalo.¡±


    Arnold stepped back. His mind was reeling from all of this. None of it could be true. Surely there was some kind of mistake...


    But then again, maybe this was an in, anyway. The Donnst family was very wealthy indeed, and they could help support him as he climbed the tower and got more EXP. He wanted to learn use a pseudopod and just go ham in bed with that kind of power, but he wasn¡¯t leveled up for one yet.


    ¡°So, after the dinner, how about you and me consummate our engagement with a little--


    ¡°Hell no,¡± she laughed. ¡°Like, no. Ew, gross.¡±


    ¡°Wh... Wha?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll be my consort exclusively for procreation for me and any of my female consorts,¡± she said. ¡°I mean, none of my children will be legally yours, but you¡¯ll do the brunt of the daily chore work in the household, and reproduction will definitely be involved in that.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re marrying me for my breeding skills?¡±


    ¡°No, I¡¯m not marrying you, remember? And I wouldn¡¯t say breeding SKILLS, since you¡¯re obviously a virgin. But you do have genes that would be nice to pass along. You¡¯re pretty cute, for a guy at least.¡±


    ¡°Thank you.¡±


    ¡°But I hate men. Just, repulsed. Ugh. I don¡¯t really want to be around you much longer, to be honest. Can we just get the signing done?¡±


    ¡°Oh, so you¡¯re just gonna diddle around with Kat the whole time while I sit there waiting to shoot my sperm into your cervix?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s anatomically iffy, and also pretty much yes.¡± She shifted uncomfortably. ¡°I mean, not with Kat, but with any woman I find. Kat and I... Well, she told me she wasn¡¯t really looking for anything serious with me right now. She told me she was interested in someone else, but I think she was just being p--¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s interested in someone else!¡± Arnold¡¯s eyes brightened intensely.


    It had to be him! Kat liked Arnold after all!


    Even though he was forced to sign the consort contract and become engaged to Anna, that bitch, he was much happier now than ever before. Everything in his life had just taken a very positive turn the moment he realized the truth:


    Kat was into him.

 Chapter 8: Arnold Gets Juiced

    Arnold put on double the axe body spray as usual before he left his home this afternoon. He was going to Kat¡¯s workplace, the name of which he still couldn¡¯t remember but it didn¡¯t matter because he was going to only be there for a second anyway.


    He circled around the juice shop cafe whatever a few times, peering through the windows to make sure Kat was working, and then staring through for a while just to calm himself down. This woman was just tantalizing as hell from a distance and he didn¡¯t want to pass up the opportunity to let his vision soak up her boundless expanse of breast after breast after butt after butt. As skinny as she was, she didn¡¯t deserve the sheer level of sphere-like roundness on her beautiful body, and yet she had it anyway because that¡¯s just the woman she was.


    Finally, he worked up the will to enter the shop and saw Kat¡¯s shining face up close. When she noticed him enter, though, her neutral expression didn¡¯t change, not to a smile or laughter or anything of the sort. That made Arnold feel all awkward, so he shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and slumped over sort of like he was one of those badass movie guys like Mr. Taxi Driver or the Joker before he became the Joker.


    He decided to come in swinging with confidence just like all the pick-up artist videos told him to, and before he could even let Kat speak, he spoke first:


    ¡°I don¡¯t like Dorrik,¡± he said with seething anger. ¡°He¡¯s just some dumb idiot alien who isn¡¯t smart and also has a Low IQ. Plus, I saw the way he was looking at you. He¡¯s so into you it hurts me. Ugh, what a creep, you know? He¡¯s gross.¡±


    ¡°They,¡± Kat corrected.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Dorrik is a they. Dorrik¡¯s species doesn¡¯t have the same gender stuff as humans, so they aren¡¯t a male.¡±Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    ¡°Oh, I guess Dorrik¡¯s an X gender or whatever, okay.¡± He made a bunch of exaggerated gestures. ¡°And I sexually identify as an attack helicopter, so I guess I¡¯m better than Dorrik.¡±


    ¡°Arnold!¡± Kat shouted. ¡°That¡¯s uncalled for. What the hell¡¯s gotten into you?¡±


    ¡°Dorrik!¡± he shouted. ¡°I hate him!¡±


    ¡°Arnold... I¡¯ve been doing some thinking, and--¡±


    ¡°I really think this whole Somnus thing was a mistake, too,¡± Arnold interrupted. ¡°Half the point of playing this game with you was so we could spend more time together without...¡±


    He stopped before he could finish the sentence. He felt terrible about it, and he saw Kat blushing like crazy.


    ¡°I just wish we could enjoy the tower better. You know, out here in the real world, there¡¯s always cameras everywhere recording my every thought and action and saying weird things to me in whispers, and there¡¯s always criminals chasing you around at every turn, especially really inconvenient moments. In the tower, we can just be ourselves, be... best friends.¡± He cringed hard at saying that last part.


    ¡°We¡¯re best friends no matter what,¡± Kat said. ¡°We¡¯ve been that way for ten years, and it¡¯ll never change, especially if you never confess like I¡¯ve been waiting for for years.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I guess we¡¯ll just be best friends forever...¡±


    He wanted to punch himself so hard. His vision blurred over, and if it weren¡¯t super unmanly and disgusting, he might have even cried.


    You know, now when he was being forced to become Anna¡¯s consort, he could never marry Kat so long as Anna didn¡¯t terminate the contract. Even if they finally fell in love with each other and wanted to elope, they couldn¡¯t. Part of him wondered if Anna did this on purpose just to get back at Kat for dumping her...


    There was only one thing he could do to ensure that Kat and Arnold could be together forever, and finally have lots of passionate sex while Arnold stuck his head in her boobies and stuff like that:


    He had to fight Dorrik and win in a muscle-on-muscle duel, just like his vivid imagination kept telling him to.


    He salivated at the idea of such a fight. Not only could he take that scaly, huge lizard down, but he could finally defend Kat¡¯s honor and win her passions.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to bed at five,¡± he said. ¡°You better join me, Kat, or else.¡±

 Chapter 9: The Bronze Age Mind

    Arnold had been waiting for TWO HOURS in this godawful MMO which he hated so much. This stupid fantasy world. All the aliens in the universe banded together to make a communication device or whatever, and it was just some fantasy novel written by some hack like Nobody103 or whatever. All the NPCs wanted to talk to him about magical systems for fifteen years and he cared about NONE of it.


    RPGs were for nerds who wasted away their lives with stupid pleasures that ruined their hunter gatherer mindset. He recently had read this really good book by the Bronze Age Pervert, some ancient author from the 2010s who really had a lot of great stuff to say. And what he realized was that men--masculine men--were not made for these gross ideas like ¡°science¡± or ¡°pleasure¡± or ¡°play.¡± Every time he looked at a video game, he was sinning in the eyes of his bronze age ancestors, and every time he spoke openly about his feelings he was basically becoming a homosexual, which, nothing wrong with that, but ew gross. After these revelations, he finally came upon the realization that this entire Tower of Somnnus was a stupid joke all along, and he was wasting his life playing it instead of just doing extra weight lifts at the gym in his sleep and getting ripped while the rest of his body rested.


    So he had been standing here for TWO HOURS before Kat finally showed up and actually did anything with him.


    Kat showed up to him with a smile, and also her trusty pseudopod. Yes, that¡¯s right, Kat had three hands now for some reason. That sounded really sexy but it also looked kind of weird.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    ¡°Sorry, I couldn¡¯t get to sleep on time,¡± Kat said. ¡°I was trying to put my little sister to bed, but she kept talking about Chrome C--¡±


    ¡°You should have just taken some Easy Sleep! That¡¯s what you¡¯re supposed to do.¡±


    ¡°That stuff is a little expensive, Arnold...¡±


    ¡°Then just ask me for money. My family is loaded so I¡¯ll just buy you whatever you want. Money buys happiness, after all.¡±


    He grabbed her by the wrist and began pulling her along with him as they advanced through the drab, boring fantasy world landscape.


    ¡°We¡¯re going to go monster hunting,¡± he told her, ¡°and we¡¯re going to stop these stupid monsters from cheating all the time like they always do.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure they¡¯re actually cheating, you know. They¡¯re just monst--¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re cheaters,¡± he corrected. ¡°And the only way to defeat a cheater, you know, is to cheat yourself. So we¡¯re going to sneak up on them just like they sneak up on us.¡±


    ¡°So it¡¯s okay to do it but only when we do it?¡±


    ¡°Now you have the hang of it.¡± Arnold gave a sexy wink. ¡°As long as the scrappy protagonists write at the end of the day, right is what we say it is. We get to edit out all the bad stuff, because all that matters is the victories and the conquests. I like to think of it as ¡®artistic and moral license.¡¯¡±


    He felt Kat shiver and try to yank her wrist away from him, but he refused to let go, and she ended up bursting out laughing instead.


    ¡°Arnold, you¡¯re such a... Hoo, boy, you¡¯re a character.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll be way more of a character after... There he is.¡±


    They had finally run into Dorrik.


    Time to kill that fucking lizard.

 Chapter 10: Confronting the Lizard

    ¡°You know, Kat,¡± Arnold said, ¡°technically we¡¯re sleeping together right now.¡±


    ¡°...No, Arnold, no we¡¯re not.¡±


    ¡°Uh, yeah we are. I¡¯m sleeping, you¡¯re sleeping, and we¡¯re together. We¡¯re sleeping together!¡±


    ¡°Ugh, ew.¡±


    ¡°What? You don¡¯t think it¡¯s funny? It¡¯s called a pun, Kat.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s... not funny.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re sleeping together, Kat! Sleeping together!¡±


    ¡°Arnold, please stop. You¡¯re being a creep.¡±


    Arnold held up his sword in a cool action pose. ¡°Oh yeah? I¡¯m a creep? We¡¯ll I guess you¡¯re just PMSing and bleeding all out of your clitoris or whatever.¡±


    ¡°That is anatomically incorrect, and also screw you. You¡¯re being a total dick and I don¡¯t even know why.¡±Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    ¡°Oh, so you¡¯re not PMSing? You¡¯re just being a BITCH?¡±


    Kat held up her pseudopod in an action pose. ¡°I¡¯m going to kick your ass if you say another sexist, demeaning thing about me. Let¡¯s just find Dorrik and--¡±


    ¡°We aren¡¯t waiting for your boyfriend,¡± Arnold said with great dignity. ¡°Yeah, I know about you and him.¡±


    ¡°Them!¡± she shouted. ¡°And I have no idea what you¡¯re talking about.¡±


    ¡°What, you didn¡¯t think I knew you two would be having wild sex every single time I wasn¡¯t around with you? Why do you think I have to escort you everywhere? Because you¡¯re always opening up your legs to every person who passes you by. You¡¯re just like Anna.¡±


    ¡°Anna is a great person, and just because the two of us didn¡¯t work out, it doesn¡¯t mean she¡¯s a bad person. And I won¡¯t stand for your insults anymore.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not what Anna told me,¡± he said. ¡°Anna hates your guts. She¡¯s heartbroken because you¡¯re a bitch, and she¡¯s a bitch but not as much a bitch as your bitch-ass self. Bitch.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what that word means,¡± a deep, masculine voice said offscreen, ¡°but I don¡¯t like it. Get away from the girl.¡±


    It was Dorrik.


    ¡°I hate you!!!!!!¡± Arnold shouted.


    Immediately, he charged at the stupid, hunky, beautiful lizard with his fully-erect sword aimed right at the lizard¡¯s weak point.


    This was going to be his moment for honor and glory. This would be the moment he won Kat over.


    Then Dorrik back-handed Arnold so hard he flew into the air and fell off a cliff.

 Chapter 11: Size Matters

    Arnold wanted to imagine sticking his dick inside of the vagina of Kat, which had basically been his sole goal for almost every action he took these past few months. The only reason he bought the game, really, was so he could make sure Kat was forced to fall in love with him, and then he could have all the best superpowers in the real world, to boot.


    All this time, he¡¯d been forced to play this stupid fucking RPG, all because he couldn¡¯t think of a better way to make that bitch Kat fall in love with him, because she only ever fucked the bad boys as well as that other bitch Anna.


    Right now, the best thing in the world would be to sit back and meditate, to imagine his throbbing hard ¡°little Arnold¡± entering Kat as she submitted to the superior will of the best Jacques family member--even if he had never experienced or even seen something like that in his life before, he understood it in essence and very much had the ability to think about it deeply.


    However, he couldn¡¯t.


    He was in too much pain to think about much of anything but the agony of existence.


    That agony, was, of course, caused by the fact that several limb-sized spikes stuck through his torso, a couple through his arms, and one right through his groin.


    Any amount of libidio he had, any semblance of an erection he could receive, was offset by the fact that his body was rapidly bleeding out and every single part of him screamed out in pain.


    You see, Arnold had been backhanded off a cliff by Dorrik during their extremely fierce, extremely fevered battle. Dorrik, that man who was definitely male, was also a fucking BEATER.


    (For those who are not well-versed in the lore of the classic hit anime Sword Art Online, ¡°beater¡± is the term for beta testers who were also cheaters; they were usually forced to play solo due to the discrimination against them, and Arnold too was very much in that pro-discrimination camp.)If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Dorrik cheated during their fight, and clearly that was the only reason why Arnold didn¡¯t kill the motherfucker and come out on top. Because Dorrik cheated, he¡¯d probably never see Kat naked on her back, not even once.


    Arnold was dying.


    A lesser man--an effeminate man who drank soy milk and made a big open mouth when talking about the Nintendo Switch--would stop right now to consider his life and wonder where things went wrong. Arnold refused to do any of that, not only because he was in so much pain that thinking about negative things was simply creating a brand new definition of suffering in each individual moment, but also because he wasn¡¯t a wuss or a homosexual, and deep in his heart he knew he was right all along.


    He was right, and he was infinitely pleased about it. Who cares if he was about to have his existence expunged? Who cares if his entire being was in utter exhaustion from the sheer nerve overload of every second? He was right all along about his thesis: Nice guys finish last, and the whole world is geared against the really good guys in this world. That¡¯s the thesis Arnold wanted to test with this whole ¡°have sex with Kat¡± experiment, and his results were finally in.


    He heard Dorrik and Kat fucking up on the cliffs, just moaning and panting and slicing their swords around for some reason. It filled him both with rage and happiness. That bomb-ass chick with the big titties poking out of every clothing item she ever wore, and that beefy lizard with scales from here to the end of the universe...


    Even as Arnold screamed in pain, he suddenly found it possible to imagine these situations of his in much greater detail than he ever would have expected.


    He began to synthesize the pain. Embrace it. Meditate with it.


    These were REALLY BIG spikes sticking out of him, after all. Stiff, rigid, tower-like spikes that entered his body relentlessly.


    No, he could not control his limbs, and he certainly didn¡¯t have a box of tissues with him, but he could finally feel his ¡°little Arnold¡± getting all excited, just thinking about the whole situation. The pain was beautiful, and so was finally knowing that Kat, all along, was a bitch who loved to do it with lizard men.


    He kept on thinking about it, imagining that bare arched back and that giant lizard tongue lashing around... Just so many fluids sloshing around on the cliffs and maybe some of them would drip down here onto where Arnold¡¯s viscerally destroyed body laid.


    What a great scene. What a lovely time.


    Oh, boy, Arnold never died better than he did in the ice caverns.

 Chapter 12: Subscription Mania

    Sleepless days, sleepless nights.


    Arnold¡¯s entire physique in the real world had changed. The bags under his eyes had bags under them. He had lost six kilograms in a week, and he had lost most all a sense of reality.


    His glasses disappeared at some point, but he didn¡¯t even notice it happened. That was just his life right now.


    Maybe he had go to see Kat since he died in the Tower of Somnus. Maybe he confronted her in the hallway of her workplace after spending twelve hours searching for her, but maybe he just imagined it all. He couldn¡¯t remember what was real and what was fake anymore, and he just had to go along with the assumption that everything was real, even the faint ghosts on the outlines of his sight that sometimes asked why he was still awake, why he was still alive.


    He was a sad and desperate wreck, and nobody gave a single shit about him because he was just a pathetic single-celled organism with the size of a human.


    He began to mumble to himself in a sing-songy verse: ¡°Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I¡¯ll go eat worms... Big fat juicy ones, eensy weensy squeensy ones, see how they wiggle away from me...¡±


    Today, Arnold wasn¡¯t feeling up to his normal routine of pacing around his room, attempting to meditate but unable to get his thoughts in order--it was like his mind was completely blank, and that made meditation simply impossible.


    He was supposed to meet with Anna for an engagement training ritual, but fuck that. He was just going to take a walk around the arcology instead.


    His designer clothes were all smelly and gross and not comfortable enough, so he rummaged through his closets for the most loose-fitting, soft clothes he had and wore those around town. His sweatpants said ¡°juicy¡± on the butt, and his hoodie was some ancient ¡°Pickle Rick¡± reference to some show Arnold had never even heard of, but that was all he had.


    In another attempt to make himself feel more covert, he pulled a baseball cap over his head. This one was also slightly an attempt to make his dad mad, because he stole one of his prized possessions--a first-printing, limited edition Make America Great Again hat from that old icon president guy. Arnold didn¡¯t care about the politics of the old United States of America, because it was so corrupt and uninteresting compared to the pristine style of GroCorp and the other conglomerates, but he had to admit that he really did like that red hat dude. He thought he pulled off the style pretty well himself, anyway.


    So with his MAGA hat, sweater, and sweatpants in tow, Arnold set off through the arcology, trying to wake himself up a little better so the nightmares of his micro-naps wouldn¡¯t come.


    All he wanted was either to die, or to be reborn.


    Right now, in his sleep deprived, mind-cursed state, he leaned towards the latter.


    Arnold needed a new subscription. He needed to get back into the Tower of Somnus, if it was the last thing he did. It would be the only way to erase... the feeling. The death, the literal death he felt in his own body that degraded while being impaled by a bunch of ice spikes sticking out of the floor.


    If Kat wouldn¡¯t help him, then he only had one choice, and that was to let his physical self take itself wherever its muscle memory would go. His mind, too shattered and too uneasy to understand what was going on, simply accepted as the body led itself in whatever direction of the arcology it was headed.


    For a while, he laid down against a wall of an alleyway and stared at a bag of garbage in front of him. It was a recycling bag filled with type 1 plastics. PET. He didn¡¯t have any pets, but he sure had a lot of PET. Plastic was wonderful. It really made the world go round. His parents apparently did a lot of things with plastic in their own lives, although they hadn¡¯t directly spoken to Arnold in over five years, so he wasn¡¯t sure exactly what it was that they did as managers for Ike Holdings, A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of GroCorp.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    Plastic...


    Arnold realized he was now munching on a rice ball wrapper that had blown through the wind (of the heavily air conditioned arcology), and decided that the alley wasn¡¯t as good as other things anymore.


    So he wandered around some more and eventually ended up... in a quite interesting place.


    Kat¡¯s apartment.


    Knocks on the door. Many knocks.


    He did those.


    But the figure that answered the door was not Kat. It wasn¡¯t the big-breasted mother of his future sons (and no daughters)... Or was it?


    ¡°Hello, Michelle,¡± Arnold said smoothly.


    ¡°Oh, it¡¯s Arnold!¡± Michelle, Kat¡¯s younger sister exclaimed.


    He couldn¡¯t remember how old she was. Eleven? Fourteen? Eighteen? His vision wasn¡¯t helping him sort something like that, but he wasn¡¯t sure it mattered anyway. Because he realized that Michelle was here to greet him like an angel whose [Author¡¯s Note: I¡¯m not gonna go there, sorry, that¡¯s too far even for me].


    ¡°Oh, Michelle, it¡¯s so nice to see you...¡± he stared at her for longer. ¡°Where¡¯s Kat?¡±


    ¡°Are you okay?¡± she asked. ¡°You look a little rough.¡±


    ¡°Where¡¯s Kat?¡±


    ¡°Oh, she went to sleep already, sorry.¡± Michelle shrugged. ¡°I never have any luck waking her up anymore once she¡¯s clonked out, so I¡¯m afraid if you need her you¡¯ll have to call her tomorrow. Can I take a message?¡±


    Arnold gave one of his patented cute grins. ¡°No matter. I can get my new subscription later. Michelle, what are YOU doing?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m just watching Chrome Cowboys. It¡¯s the episode where Morgan Harding gets kidnapped by the police who are--¡±


    ¡°Kidnapping, huh...¡±


    ¡°Yeah. They got kidnapped by--¡±


    ¡°Hey, Michelle, have I ever told you how much fun you are at parties and other social events? The ones we go on sometimes?¡±


    ¡°...Huh?¡±


    ¡°Michelle, Michelle, Michelle.¡± Arnold took his hands out of his jacket pockets and put one on her shoulder. ¡°Let¡¯s go on a date. We can see a movie together and eat at your favorite restaurant.¡±


    ¡°...Arnold?¡± Michelle¡¯s eyes widened, probably in excitement or outright giddiness. His heart began to rise.


    ¡°I¡¯ll treat you right,¡± he said. ¡°You won¡¯t have to worry about anything with your big brother around to protect you... and kiss you...¡±


    SLAP.


    Arnold heard the sound and felt his body be pushed back a few steps before the pain in his right cheek flared up.


    ¡°....Ow.¡±


    He focused his eyes on Michelle, who huffed at him angrily.


    ¡°What?¡± Arnold asked. ¡°Babe, I was just saying how pretty you are. Guys are gonna be so lucky one day when you--¡±


    SLAP.


    Again. The left cheek this time.


    ¡°You fucking bitch, you slapped me twice,¡± he muttered. He raised his own arm in a striking motion, and l--


    SLAP.


    A third slap that sent him tumbling to the ground.


    ¡°Ugh... Michelle... Mighty Michelle...¡±


    ¡°Get your hands off me, you creepazoid!¡± Michelle shouted. ¡°What, you think I¡¯m some vulnerable little idiot? I¡¯m not your replacement for Kat, and you¡¯re not some suave player. You''re disgusting.¡±


    ¡°I...¡±


    ¡°Get out of here before I call my mom!¡±


    He stumbled out of the area, hobbling over on the right leg that he hurt when he fell on the ground.


    Michelle would pay for this. She rejected his advances, rendering her just as much a bitch as all the other women in this world.


    He was going to call his goons and kidnap her and then probably beat her up while holding her for ransom. The price: a new subscription.


    That would teach Kat for not working fast enough.


    Yes, what a great plan.


    He smiled warmly at himself for being such a genius.

 Chapter 13: Am I A Simp?

    Arnold was whipped in the back, and, surprisingly, he did not enjoy it.


    It was just extremely painful!


    ¡°Agh!¡±


    Another lash and he fell over on the bed, writhing in non-sexual pain.


    ¡°Please, mommy, stop...¡±


    ¡°I told you to call me MOTHER,¡± Anna screamed.


    ¡°Please, mother, stop!¡±


    One lash, lighter this time, before, finally, Anna relented.


    He huffed in and out, breathing as much as he could to try and ease the pain, but it wasn¡¯t fading as fast as he would have liked.


    He¡¯d have run, but his leg was tied to the bedpost and nothing short of gnawing off his own leg would help that. He did, though, wonder if that might be the right path.


    ¡°I can¡¯t believe I married a dominatrix,¡± Arnold muttered.


    ¡°I am NOT a dominatrix,¡± Anna scolded. ¡°I take absolutely no sexual pleasure in whipping you. This is punishment for your absolute idiocy in everything you ever do. You hired MY soldiers to go out and kidnap Kat¡¯s little sister, because you are so mentally unstable you thought that would get Kat to love you. That¡¯s absolute zero IQ tactics.¡±


    ¡°Sus,¡± Arnold said.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Zero IQ plays, sus, don¡¯t throw.¡±


    ¡°Fuck!¡± She whipped him again just to punish him for his grossest action yet, which was making Among Us references.


    ¡°gg,¡± he whispered just out of earshot.


    ¡°I¡¯m punishing you until you become my obedient consort who doesn¡¯t do anything stuipid that will get us arrested and executed, and instead provides me the sperm I will someday need to bear many children. And I guess my wives, too, because I¡¯m going to have a lot of them.¡± She paused for a moment. ¡°I take no SEXUAL pleasure in beating you, but I do enjoy it quite a lot. I hope you hate it, Arnie. If you liked it, I¡¯d stop.¡±


    ¡°Oh...¡±


    She WAS dressed up in a dominatrix outfit, and an extremely sexy leather one, so he just sort of assumed...


    ¡°No more kidnapping children. No more being an absolute fuck-up. You are going to help me get my revenge on Kat and destroy her life systematically, but that does NOT involve the kind of gross moronity you have implemented. We are going to be SMART about how we torture her and slowly ruin her.¡±


    ¡°Wait, so this is like a villain team-up, isn¡¯t it? Like in Spider-Man 3 where Sandman and Venom meet each other and decide they need to kill the spider, but with Kat.¡±Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°No. We are not teaming up. In fact, I sort of want to kill you, too, but I paid too much money for this contract so we aren¡¯t going to do that just yet.¡± Anna cracked an evil smile. ¡°But I have a much better plan to deal with you...¡±


    Anna snapped her fingers and then a hidden door in the bedroom suddenly opened.


    Emmalee was here.


    His own sister.


    ¡°Hey Arnie,¡± Emmalee said. ¡°Haven¡¯t seen you in a while.¡±


    Emmalee was dressed in a thin, see-through blouse with her malevolent orbs hanging off her chest, wrapped up in tight lingerie like a Christmas present for a particularly tenacious young toddler with little self control. Around her waist was a metal chastity belt, connected by wire to the collar around her neck. She looked ravishing, and even though she was his flesh and blood, his own flesh filled with a little bit of blood. His tower of Somnus had risen.


    She smacked some gum she was chewing in that sexy Valley Girl way and frowned at him. ¡°I heard she made you her consort, but I didn¡¯t think she was serious about it. Now I¡¯m not so sure about...¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s here for punishment,¡± Anna said. ¡°He¡¯s going to sit there quietly in humiliation and suffering while he atones for hitting on a child and being a bozo creep.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s going to... watch us?¡± Emmalee asked.


    ¡°Yes, my darling. Does it make you uncomfortable?¡±


    ¡°A little bit...¡±


    ¡°Say it like you mean it,¡± Anna commanded.


    ¡°Yes, mommy...¡±


    ¡°Hey! Why does she get to say mommy while I have to say mother?¡± Arnold whined.


    Anna whipped at the bed and just missed his thigh. ¡°Behave!¡±


    Then, Anna walked over to Emmalee and carressed her cheek. She planted a kiss on her lips, and then moved around to different parts of the body.


    ¡°This is pretty fucking awesome,¡± Emmalee moaned. ¡°Way better than that time loop web novel I was doing.¡±


    ¡°Oh, you¡¯ll have all the time in the world for writing web novels when we¡¯re married,¡± Anna said, struggling to tear off Emmalee¡¯s chastity belt lock with her teeth. ¡°You¡¯re going to be the first of many beautiful wives, and you will never have to worry about anything in your life except for how best to pleasure me. And you¡¯re already giving me a lot...¡±


    Anna looked over to Arnold and gave him one of the most wicked smiles he¡¯d ever seen.


    She pushed him off the bed--he was still tied to one of the bedposts so he just sort of rolled onto the soft carpeted floor--and began ravishing Emmalee with all the moans and grunts and sexual fluids dripping off the bed that you would expect from a situation like this.


    It was a horrific, unforgettable sight, being forced to watch your own older sister be fucked thoroughly by your worst enemy, a total bitch who ruined your own life. And this was exactly what Arnold was forced to do at this time.


    He hated it. Loathed it. Wanted to be anywhere but here, anywhere but alive in this awful scenario.


    And yet...


    Secretly, deep down inside, he wasn¡¯t repulsed like Anna thought. He enjoyed it. He savored every bit of this, because for everything else, this was the closest he ever got to actually having sex himself.


    His ¡°little Arnold¡± agreed, and even though he could not use his arms or legs to move around very much, he still had a great time meditating to this wonderful scene of two really hot chicks totally doing it on the bed in front of him.


    One day, he would rule this piece of dirt, and both of these women, along with Kat, would bow down before him and do his every bidding. For everything, he never lost any confidence that his future would come. Because he succeeded at everything he set his mind to, even if those things weren¡¯t as quick to come as he sometimes would have liked.


    As his ¡°little Arnold¡± gave way to the one-minded pleasure of absolute confidence, he formulated the ultimate plan to succeed, to kill Kat, and Anna, and probably Emmalee too. He would involve himself in some of the most intense of corporate politics with GroCorp, and he would ruin the entire system if he had to. Sure, it would be hard for them to bow down to him if they were dead, but as long as they weren¡¯t too bloated, maybe it wasn¡¯t such a bad thing.


    It was time to fuck Anna over by contacting her own mother. He would ruin Anna¡¯s entire plan of revenge against Kat, if only to cause the right amount of chaos to bring himself more control. Yes, that was exactly the right thing to do.


    Arnold smiled with his patented cute grin that everybody loved.

 Bonus: Arnold Dreamed a Dream (When Hope Was High)

    I no longer dream into the Tower, because I am dead. Dead twice, now that my second subscription went away. I felt death twice and now every moment of my sleep is a dreaming nightmare. It¡¯s a nightmare of my own making and I can¡¯t avoid it.


    I love it. I have embraced death and pain and the fact that there is no way to gain the happiness I deserve without so much of it. I must die many more times before I can truly become a powerful warrior in this capitalist kafkaesque nightmare of a world.


    I love hope and getting that hope taken away from me. It makes me a little horny, even when all hope is literally lost because people like Anna and Kat and my parents and Dorrik all take it away from me. They are all bitches and bastards and fuckers. All horrible people who have no idea what it¡¯s like to be this overlooked, underprivileged piece of shit that everybody hates.


    I¡¯m hated because I¡¯m a white man in a world where that is nothing but a penalty. Nobody likes white men anymore. We¡¯re the evil villains of every story, and we get nothing but scorn in real life. I once read a story about an old hero in history named Martin Luther King Junior who sent a letter from a jail in Birmingham which is now a large lithium mine and all its buildings were completely razed decades ago. He talked about dreaming of a world where the world could come together and take direct action in active form instead of being passive supporters. He said that injustice anywhere was a threat to injustice everywhere, and that the moderates are even worse than the extreme prejudicers, because they are passively letting the status quo destroy everything. Well, I think that he is right but wrong about the target, because it¡¯s white men who are facing all of that problemation these days. The scourge of time has wreaked havoc and now I am one of the most overlooked, underestimated beings on the entire Earth.


    But the voices that sometimes call to me in my dreams but also in real life increasingly are telling me all about the truth of the matter. I¡¯m not irrelevant, but instead I am really fucking important. A Big Fucking Deal if there ever was one. Dealing with me is just a path to revealing how badly you have prepared in your life, because I will take down all of your defenses, even if it takes me time to melt you away. I¡¯ve done it many times before, and I¡¯ll do it many times in the future.


    Now, here in my dreams, I see the fruits of my labor, or my labor to be. Once I die a few more times and really get hot and bothered over that sensation of all my life exiting my self and my entire corporeal form dissolving, I will truly unlock the greatest power any white man can ever reach: horniness.


    Anna has been punishing me constantly for all my perceived fuck-ups, with a whole lot of whipping and a whole lot of having sex and forcing me to watch. She has married my sister Emmalee--not a consort but a real wife--and is currently courting two of her classmates which she used to flirt with back when we were students. Their names are Marissa and Anne and they are hot as hell. When they are naked they show off so much pubic hair, just all the way covering their entire vaginas and all those other irrelevant organs I don¡¯t care about sticking my dick into. So much hair that it turns me on like crazy. I just want to stick my head on those soft pillowy surfaces and take a nap while my little Arnold goes absolutely crazy.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    You see, Anna thinks I¡¯m being punished with all these attacks on my spirit and my body. She thinks I¡¯m being demoralized and humiliated, but she is wrong. It¡¯s just making me horny.


    Because that¡¯s my secret, self: I¡¯m always horny.


    My dream takes me through visions of boobies and butts. That bitch Kat appears naked before me, as she often does in my post-death dreams, but when I attempt to embrace her, her form dissolves away.


    It won¡¯t be like that forever, though. Because my dream then takes me into the Tower of Somnus itself. Not the game, since I have no subscription, but my subconsciousness¡¯s dreaming formation of this gigantic structure in this awful, horrible video game from space.


    As much as I disdain video games for how they have ruined the otherwise superior white male race, I must admit that the strength this MMO gives is immense and pleasurable. I gained a pseudopod in my levels, and I have used it for meditation ever since. I can now use my mouse and keyboard at the same time while petting my little Arnold as if it were a cute, happy puppy with my brand-new fake limb. I can log on the Bookface profile for Kat, look at her avatar (and not the rest since she blocked me and I have to open a private signed-off tab just to see the basic info), and go to town all while playing my online collectible customizable card game on my other computer monitor, all thanks to the magic powers I gained in the MMO.


    Sometimes I meditate in my dreams, but not this dream. Instead, I use this dream for conquest. I enter the tower and kill every being in my path. Soldiers, guards, shopkeepers, it doesn¡¯t matter. Men, children, bitches, it doesn¡¯t matter. They all give me EXP, and they all help me level up so that I can become stronger and less vulnerable on both a physical and emotional level.


    I finally skulk around and find Dorrik up on the second level. He, because he is a man and not anything else, cowers in fear, but I don¡¯t let him do that for long because I challenge him to a duel.


    We clash swords, but I have three swords while he only has one, and simple numbers mean that the destruction of this fat-assed lizard hunk is an assured outcome that is never in any doubt.


    He bows before me, begging for mercy, but instead I kneel down and grab his snout with my hand. And with my other hand I caress his chest, his scaly form that is just so ripe, so rigid, so firm. I move my hand down to take off all his armor, piece by piece until he is finally completely naked, and then admits that he was wrong about me all along, that he never should have defied my will because I, Arnold Donnst, was right all along about everything.


    I slap him and tell him to call me Arnold Jacques, because that is my real last name, and after I kill Anna the last name will just revert anyway. He complies and calls me Arnold Jacques again.


    He opens his legs wide and I move my head into his scaly dragon dick, taking my conquest with--


    Wait, this is homosexual, and I hate that shit. Gross.


    I wake up and remember that my murder trial is tomorrow afternoon.

 Chapter 14: The Trial

    Arnold cried and cried some more. He blubbered into his face and all the snot got everywhere.


    Normally, he was into snot play when it came to sex, because he thought it was kind of hot to involve snot in the equation after one or all parties involved had started crying, but this was not a sexual encounter. On the contrary, it was a trial for all the crimes he and Anna had committed in the past few months.


    And, indeed, they had committed a great number of them.


    He had personally murdered several people, although those murders hadn¡¯t quite come to light yet since he was mostly killing homeless people and he always had a really good alibi that he was just returning some holo-tapes at those times.


    But other than that, it looked like Estate of Chirstopher Haupt, former Employee of GroCorp v. Gregory Daniels, Anna Donnst, and Arnold Jacques, employees of Ike Holdings, A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Grocorp was a slam-dunk, open-and-close, shut-and-shutter case for the prosecution team.


    Anna looked completely fine about it.


    ¡°They¡¯ll never pin us,¡± she had told him before the trial. ¡°We¡¯ll get off scott-free, and then we can finally kill Kat for breaking our hearts. Mostly mine, because it was honestly a really good thing that your heart was broken, because you wouldn¡¯t have become as good a serial killer that way.¡±


    ¡°An alleged serial killer,¡± Arnold wisely corrected.


    But that last fact was neither here nor there, since it wasn¡¯t what was on trial. Unfortunately he did not have the same confidence as Anna that this case was anything but a certain loss.


    Mostly because, unbeknownst to her, he was the one who leaked all the important information to Anna¡¯s mother that created this situation in the first place. And then he had cooperated with prosecutors as much as possible in order to get his culpability in the crime reduced as much as possible. He may have sent a bunch of goons to kidnap Michelle and they nearly succeeded, but he wasn¡¯t the main culprit here. He was a hero, after all.


    ¡°How do you plead, Ms. Anna Donnst?¡± the arbiter asked.


    ¡°Not guilty, obviously,¡± she said with a smirk. She leaned back with a smug sense of satisfaction and an expression that said, ¡°I¡¯m probably going to lose this case but I don¡¯t know it yet.¡±


    ¡°And you, Mr. Arnold Donnst?¡±


    Arnold jumped to his feet and, just like the prosecution had rehearsed with him, he gave his most passionate appeal: ¡°I didn¡¯t DO anything! Anna got my dad a transfer of a bunch of cash and then she made me talk to some terrifying street samurai. Personally, I don¡¯t like that samurai stuff, because it¡¯s really scary and makes our arcology way less safe. I didn¡¯t even know what the charges were until you read them--¡±


    The arbiter shut him up and marked it as a ¡°not guilty.¡±


    He sat back down and saw Anna¡¯s disgusted, betrayed face. They weren¡¯t a team, and Arnold was making that known now.


    ¡°Okay, time to review the evidence against you then,¡± the arbiter said. And then in Arnold¡¯s glasses flashed gigabyte after gigabyte of incriminating documents that absolutely proved that they (and this Greg Daniels guy who was essentially irrelevant) were very much responsible for a lot of death and destruction.


    Well, shit.


    The prosecution had lied to him about that lighter sentence, he realized. All the evidence and testimony he gave to help incriminate Anna had just been redundant nothingness, because it looked like Anna¡¯s mother had leaked everything to the prosecutors herself.


    That conniving bitch. But, like, the cool kind of bitch. The kind of middle aged woman whose breasts were sagging and face was fading, but still exuded that cool, sexy poise that everybody on the planet begged for. She could make women and men kneel at her feet and begin licking without even saying a word, and Arnold would admit that he did indeed lick her feet upon her request when deciding to betray her daughter to her a while back.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Maybe this wouldn¡¯t end so badly?


    Oh, no, that Greg Daniels guy was just beaten to the floor and pissed himself.


    Oh, no, Anna was now catatonic.


    This didn¡¯t look like it was going to end particularly well.


    The arbiter looked completely bored by this entire situation. ¡°As punishment for the crime of murder and disloyalty to your employer, you shall each be stripped of all assets and assessed a fine of five hundred thousand credits. That fine shall be paid off via hard labor in the ice wastes of Houghton at the rate of three credits per day.¡±


    Oh, well, there was the rest of Arnold¡¯s life right there. The exact same punishment as Anna, despite all his backroom dealings. He was going to live in an ice prison where meditation was banned and productivity was the name of the game. Machines were unable to do the work because they were not adapted to the cold, but humans were able to survive if treated correctly enough, and that was exactly what GroCorp was going to make them do.


    Without his everyday doses of gene therapy, Arnold¡¯s handsome, beautiful physique would start to fade. He¡¯d get a beer belly despite malnourishment, and he would start to lose his hair since his genes had an 89% probability of early onset male pattern baldness syndrome without genetic corrections. His father, born in the era before gene therapy, had apparently lost most of his head hair by age twenty-five, and it was only advances in science that allowed him to get it all back.


    Arnold shuddered at the thought of his beautiful hair being touched in any way.


    He wouldn¡¯t even get to murder anyone else without getting caught...


    The arbiter raised up his gavel. ¡°May God have mercy on your--¡±


    ¡°WAIT!¡± an unfamiliar voice shouted. ¡°Give their contracts to me!¡±


    Ehhhhhh??????


    Everyone turned to look and see what sudden appearance character this was going to be. He secretly hoped that, despite the voice, it was Kat, realizing the error of her ways and deciding to free them all.


    But... it was just some dude. He didn¡¯t even recognize him. Boring.


    ¡°My name is Jasper Haupt,¡± the man said, ¡°and I want to execute these three for killing my father.¡±


    Arnold turned his head to Anna and whispered, ¡°Who is this guy again? Who was his father? I don¡¯t recognize him.¡±


    She didn¡¯t answer. She looked dead already.


    ¡°Sure thing,¡± the arbiter told Jasper Haupt. ¡°Send the money over and we¡¯ll let you kill them right here. Just, please let us stream it. I¡¯m trying to get my Worldstar profile up.¡±


    ¡°Alright. Stream me if you want; I don¡¯t care. I just want vengeance.¡± He swiped his hand in the air. ¡°You have your credits. May I have a handgun and three bullets?¡±


    The bailiff handed him a weapon. He didn¡¯t smile or have much of any reaction.


    The arbiter, however, smiled like it was Easter morning and he had caught the bunny in the act. ¡°Bailiff Burnette, if you could provide Mister Haupt with your side arm and inform the janitors they will be needed, I would be most appreciative.¡±


    Jasper paced up to Greg Daniels, who was still writhing on the floor, barely conscious.


    Then, in an instant, he wasn¡¯t conscious anymore.


    Arnold smelled the aroma of burning flesh. It made him miss his new murder hobby all the more.


    Next, Jasper stepped up to Arnold himself. He raised the pistol up to Arnold¡¯s forehead and stared deeply into his eyes.


    This was exactly what Arnold didn¡¯t expect out of this world. He had never failed at anything he had set his life on. He always succeeded, somehow or another, even if the path took more twists and turns than he was expecting. He had died plenty of times in the Tower of Somnus, but never before in his life had he expected that he would die on Earth as well. He didn¡¯t think it was even possible in the world of modern medicine.


    This... this wasn¡¯t the end. It couldn¡¯t have been. Arnold wasn¡¯t done with his plan to win over Kat. He was still a virgin after all this time, and he didn¡¯t even get his last meal. Not even a phone call like in all the movies.


    No, this wasn¡¯t the end. He didn¡¯t even do one final meditation this m--


    Click.


    Click.


    Click, click click.


    ¡°Huh...¡± Jasper looked at the gun with consternation. He pointed it at the floor, shook it a few times, and then pulled the trigger.


    Click.


    ¡°Well, shit, the gun¡¯s jammed,¡± Jasper said. ¡°Can I get another?¡±


    Everyone looked around the room, searching for any pistol in the vicinity.


    The arbiter shrugged. ¡°You want to postpone this?¡±


    Jasper sighed, and shook his head. ¡°I killed one of them. And I¡¯ve instilled the fear of God in these two kids. As long as they turn a new leaf and cease their heinousness, I guess that¡¯s revenge enough for me.¡±


    Without another word, he turned around and left the courtroom.


    Nobody spoke for a while.


    But Arnold realized that, yes, his entire life was destined for greatness, and that he could only reach that greatness if he followed Jasper¡¯s sage advice.


    The next stage of life had begun.

 Chapter 15: Arthur Beds Kat & Anna

    Knock, knock, knock.


    A familiar face greeted Arnold as the door opened...


    Katherine Debs.


    ¡°Kat,¡± he said, not making eye contact and clasping his hands together uncomfortably at his waist level. ¡°Nice to see you again.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Arnold.¡± Kat began closing the door again, but Arnold propped it open with his hand and took one step forward.


    ¡°Kat, I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    ¡°...Wha?¡±


    Arnold bowed his head at a deep angle. ¡°I¡¯m really sorry about all the stuff I did. If I offended you, I¡¯m really sorry about that.¡±


    Kat let go of the door and her jaw dropped. ¡°You¡¯re sorry?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. Truly.¡±


    ¡°...Why?¡±


    ¡°Well, after Anna and I were put on trial for murder, and also that one other guy but I already forgot his name, we were convicted immediately and then Jasper Haupt bought up our forced labor contracts in order to execute us... But he spared us. He said that we had learned our lesson, and we had the fear of God instilled in us. At the time, I didn¡¯t know what he meant, but now I do. I was a bad person.¡±


    ¡°Arnold...¡± Kat began to blush furiously.


    ¡°I learned that it¡¯s wrong to call women bitches. It¡¯s wrong to put others before myself, and it¡¯s wrong to get angry when people don¡¯t do what I want them to. I said some mean things about homosexuals and about men who drink soy milk, and I regret that those things may have been the cause of pain in the hearts of people around me. With the most sincere of sincerities, I must admit that mistakes were made.¡±


    There was silence in the doorway.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Then, Arnold cracked a smile. ¡°I know you¡¯ll never forgive me, but I just wanted to say that if I made you uncomfortable in any way, that I hope you¡¯ll find it in your heart to understand my regret for that.¡±


    Without any warning, Kat rushed him and gave him a tight hug. Her boobs, complete with erect nipples, plunged into his chest.


    ¡°I¡¯m so happy you¡¯ve grown as a person,¡± Kat whispered. ¡°I¡¯ve been waiting for this moment for so long.¡±


    Then she raised her head to face his and--


    Planted a kiss. Right on his lips.


    ¡°I love you,¡± Kat said. ¡°It¡¯s always been love in my heart, not anger.¡±


    ¡°Wait, it¡¯s all love?¡±


    ¡°Always has been.¡± Kat began grinding her hips against Arnold¡¯s pelvis. ¡°Now be a real man and fuck me.¡±


    Arnold hoisted Kat up and carried her into the house, past Michelle who was busy watching Chrome Cowboys, and into her bedroom. His ¡°little Arnold¡± was intensely excited, but also intensely patient as well.


    They entered the bedroom-- Only to find another surprise waiting.


    Anna Donnst, completely naked, sitting on the bed.


    ¡°We made up,¡± Kat muttered. ¡°But now we were just waiting on you.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not still girlfriends?¡± Arnold asked.


    ¡°No,¡± Anna said. ¡°All along, we realized we didn¡¯t love each other. We just loved you so much that our proximity to you made each other look attractive. Arnold, you¡¯re the one we want.


    Arnold dropped Kat on the bed and she immediately began to strip down to nothing. For the first time ever, he saw Kat¡¯s bare breasts out in view, and immediately he jumped onto the bed to suckle on her nipples.


    ¡°You admitted you weren¡¯t a good person,¡± Anna said, ¡°and so now we will reward you. You deserve this, because you have become a good person through your apology.¡±


    ¡°I deserve this,¡± Arnold repeated.


    Kat opened her legs wide, and then Arnold took off his pants.


    He...


    He kept on going...


    ....Oh my.


    His dick was inside a vagina. For the first time in his entire life, he was having sex, and it was with Kat.


    Anna hugged him from behind and began to kiss him in various places while he did the sexy stuff with Kat in front of him.


    All along, Arnold had been a jerk that nobody liked. But thanks to Japser¡¯s mercy, he had finally realized his mistake and fixed it. Now he was to be rewarded.


    The rest of his life was going to be amazing.

 Epilogue

    Twenty-five years later.


    Arnold sat back in his immaculate office chair, with his feet on the desk and his dick out because he no longer cared about wearing pants. In fact, he hadn¡¯t worn any clothes inside his office in years, just because there was nobody in the world who had the ability to stop him.


    After Arnold became the CEO of GroCorp, he essentially held all power in the entire Midwest. He rewrote the laws regarding public nudity and made broad exceptions that allowed him to do whatever the hell he wanted and get away with it.


    He smoked a cigar and puffed it all around the room. Tobacco used to be illegal to smoke in the office, but he changed that the same day he rescinded the regulation on how many Tower of Somnus subscriptions could be given out. It was supposed to be an exclusive club for the best of the best, but he decided it was much better to simply give access to every single person on the planet.


    Arnold¡¯s personal chef, Michelle Donnst, came into the office (also naked, as all his direct employees were) and delivered him his lunch--roasted meat from the belly of a Chinese giant salamander. There were only a few left, but they were very tasty.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    He turned his desk around to the window, where he looked outside the arcology and viewed the massive city around him. There were dozens of massive arcologies all around, but none of them as big as the one Arnold took residence in. The one he built after ten years of grueling labor by all the street samurais who were rounded up and enslaved for construction work.


    Officially, they named this massive structure the Peter Meijer Memorial Trade Center, but there was only one real name the place went by for those who lived in it, for those whose lives were improved by it: the Tower of Arnold.


    Eventually, one of his (naked) secretaries came into his office to give him his daily meditation, and he thought about just how much his life changed after he realized he was a bad person. All it took was that realization, and everything improved from there. He annulled his consort contract with Anna (but kept the surname), then took Anna as his official wife. Kat, too. And Michelle, and even Kat¡¯s mom. He and Dorrik were married inside the MMO, even if that legally didn¡¯t count, and all of his life problems were completely gone. All thanks to the mercy Jasper Haupt gave him.


    It was sad that he had to kill Jasper Haupt in his path to becoming CEO, but he hoped Jasper didn¡¯t hold a grudge from beyond the grave--it was only business, after all.


    He finished his meditation and decided to take a nap on his dark leather sofa.


    What a nice guy Arnold was. What a hero. He gave that trademark smile to himself and drifted off to sleep.


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