Author's note.
1). Feedback from my readers is my fuel to keep writing. If you enjoy my work, please take the time to let me know in the comments or through an email. It does wonders for my motivation to write. Without it, my pacing usually suffers a lot.
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All Characters in the story are 18 years of age and above...
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Chapter Three: Unexpected gains.
Greg finished going through the list of missions just as the healer finished adding the herbs to the water she'd be using to wipe him down. As she had done on the previous days, she moved her hands in the air before quietly weaving a rune a few inches above the water. Unlike the rune that Greg saw earlier in the afternoon, this rune wasn't green. Instead, it was the bright red of superheated metal. An apt color given that it was meant to boil the water mixed with the herbs. The water would be heated to boiling before once again being cooled down to a lukewarm temperature. The healer would then take out the herbs from the water before it was ready for her purposes.
While the water was slowly heating up, the healer rose to her feet and turned to him. Leaning forward, she reached for his covers. As was the case every time she was about to heal him, she would first take away his covers before working on his body unobstructed. Her hands, however, paused midway when she noted that the covers were slowly moving to the side on their own. Greg may have appeared calm on the surface, his heart, however, felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest. Greg could only call it a light bulb moment. Rather than a well-thought-out idea, this was at best a gamble. And if the system was to be trusted, a potentially suicidal one. It had occurred to Greg that every time the healer came to heal him, she would usually start by pulling away his covers. For her, it wasn't anything sexual, just a part of her job. Greg, however, realized that this gave him a rare chance that he would almost never have. In any other situation, revealing one's naked body would have sexual connotations and probably end in a bad way for him. In this particular situation, however, it would just seem like the patient was trying to help her in her work.
Greg's body was still in a very bad condition and he felt really weak. Still, Greg struggled to push the covers off him as he wasn't sure the system would acknowledge the flashing mission as completed if the healer was the one to lift the covers off him. The healer stood back up, not saying anything as she allowed Greg to slowly remove the covers off himself. Part of the reason why Greg did not attempt to speak even as he pushed the covers off was because of the daredevil mission. An even bigger part of it, however, was because he couldn't trust his voice not to shake and betray the icy fear that Greg felt at that moment. Besides, trying to explain himself at this moment would appear far more suspicious than just silently uncovering himself.
As Greg slowly pulled the covers away, the woman had already started moving her hands through the air, weaving the bright green healing rune that Greg was all too familiar with. This time, however, something happened that hadn't happened before. In the middle of weaving the healing rune that she'd use in healing him, the healer paused. Greg, who had just finished pulling away the covers completely off his body, couldn't help but notice this. When his gaze moved up to the woman's face, he noted the fact that her gaze was drawn to something on his lower body. When Greg turned to look, he could feel the blood drain from his face and cold dread wash over him as he realized what it was she was looking at.
The core of the reason why Greg had been sure he could get away with pulling off his covers was because, in the present setting, it wouldn't carry any sexual insinuations that could invoke an adverse reaction from the healer. This justification, however, flew right out the window as Greg turned down to find the pillar that was his nine-inch cock standing at full mast! This was Greg's first time seeing his own boner in this body. In any other situation, he would have been pleasantly surprised by how long and thick his cock was. The large worm-like veins that spread out all over it only further emphasizing its girth would have filled him with deep male pride. The large, angry-red, mushroom head that stood like a lighthouse beacon would have made him smirk with glee. At this moment, however, they left him with a cold feeling as there was no way he could reasonably argue that he didn't know it was there when he pulled off the covers. I mean, how the hell could anyone miss this monster?
And yet... somehow... Greg had missed it!
Greg had been so caught up in analyzing the system followed by the complete and utter dread of pulling off his covers that, for the life of him, he couldn't tell at what point he'd gotten the hard-on. How that was even possible, Greg didn't know. Shouldn't being distracted have caused his boner to fade away rather than make it look like he'd swallowed a whole bottle full of Viagra pills?
But while Greg couldn't puzzle out this conundrum, one thing he did know was that this completely changed the meaning of what he'd done. Without the boner, Greg taking off his covers was him simply helping the healer in her work. With the boner, however, one could be forgiven for thinking that Greg had pushed his covers away knowing full well what he'd be revealing. One was an innocent act, the other was him flashing the nurse! An act that according to the system held a ninety percent chance of him ending up dead! And, as if that wasn't bad enough in itself, despite the blood completely draining from Greg's face, his dick continued to remain almost defiantly erect. Pulsing from time to time almost as a taunt to both he and the healer.
When the woman turned her gaze to meet his, Greg couldn't help but swallow hard. In the few seconds that she'd been studying the monster between his legs, Greg's mind had gone into overdrive trying to figure out what he would do to extricate himself from this situation unscathed, or at the very least, alive. The elaborate excuse that Greg had come up with, however, was completely forgotten when a slightly amused smile crossed the woman's face. "It seems that not all of you is broken," She commented in passing before turning her attention back to the healing rune she'd been weaving, seemingly having lost all interest in him. By now the incomplete rune had already faded and she had to start over.
For a few seconds, Greg just stared dumbly at the woman before him as it slowly sunk in. He didn't know the first thing about this woman before him other than the fact that she came by regularly to heal him, and once a day to clean him. To think her a psychopath that would kill him at the slightest provocation just because of a label from a system that he wasn't even completely sure actually existed was a bit unfair on his part. Especially when one considers how much effort this woman had put into bringing him back right from the brink of death. Clearly, the potential for danger is not the same as actual danger. Perhaps, in any other situation, the woman might have reacted negatively, but in this particular one, she just brushed it off entirely. A sigh of relief left Greg as he weakly laid on the bed and allowed himself to relax. His thinking shifted. Rather than act like this woman would kill him at the slightest excuse, Greg chose to treat this like a normal interaction. Until he got signs that things were going down a dangerous path, Greg would interact with the woman just like he would interact with any other person.
Before Greg could think up the next step in his interaction with the healer, a screen popped up in his vision interrupting his thoughts.
SOURCE OF MAGIC POINTS DETECTED!
CURRENT DISTRIBUTION OF INCOMING MAGIC:
HEALING -- 10%
CONVERTED TO MAGIC POINTS -- 90%
ADJUST?
The last line of text was in a different color from the rest of the text on this screen. As such, Greg knew he could click on it. It didn't take a lot of thinking on Greg's part to figure out what was going on. For the past three days, the system had been siphoning away most of the magical energy that was meant to heal him in order to start itself up. Now that the system was up and running, Greg had the option of readjusting the distribution of magic. If he wanted, a hundred percent of the energy being pumped into his body through the rune could be used to heal him. On the other hand, he could also slow down the rate of healing that he was receiving by adjusting the amount of magical energy being directed towards healing to even lower than the ten percent it was already at.
Greg clicked on the adjust button. A new screen popped up with a bar on it. On one end of the bar was the label, 'MAGIC POINTS', and on the other end of the bar was the label, 'HEALING'. The bar was divided into two parts. The larger of the two parts was cyan blue and on the 'Magic points' end of the bar. This part covered exactly ninety percent of the bar. The other ten percent of the bar was neon green and was on the 'HEALING' end of the bar. There was a small pointer on the bar resting exactly where the two partitions of the bar met. Greg intuitively knew that to change the distribution of the magical energy he was receiving, he'd have to move this pointer. The closer to one end the pointer was, the more energy the label on the other end would receive. As things currently stood, the pointer was a lot closer to the 'HEALING' end of the bar.
Greg was torn. A part of him wanted to channel a hundred percent of the magical energy into healing. Being constantly weak and in pain was not exactly a pleasant feeling. The prospect of being completely healed was really tempting, he couldn't lie. At the same time, however, Greg didn't want to raise any suspicions. Thus far it had been an uphill climb to heal him. If, he could suddenly be healed without any issues, wouldn't that raise questions? On the other hand, his second question of how to get Magic points had now also been answered, and Greg would be lying if he said that he wasn't seriously tempted by the prospect of garnering a whole slew of Magic points. Clicking on the pointer, Greg moved it so that, twenty percent of the magical energy would go into healing, and the other eighty percent would be converted into Magic points. Rather than going all-in on healing, Greg chose to slowly increase it. In so doing, his rate of recovery would increase, but not so drastically as to raise eyebrows. At the same time, whatever these magical points were, Greg could amass some as a result of the healing.
Greg had just finished adjusting the distribution of magical energy when the green light gushed forth from the rune on the healer's palm. Before, when the healing had been taking place, Greg's mind had usually been occupied by the sensations of his body during the process. This time, however, Greg was focused on the counter that kept a tally of the number of magical points he had. Given that this was all new to Greg, he wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. Still, his eyes did widen when he saw the rate at which he was earning magic points. The digits in the ones and tens place value were just a blur, the digit in the hundreds place value was a bit slower, but also changing fast enough that every three seconds, the digit in the thousands place value ticked upwards. In other words, Greg gained a thousand magic points every three seconds!
Greg was uncertain whether this was due to how easy it was to earn magical points or a reflection of just how powerful the woman before him was. Part of him wanted to believe that it was the former, Greg, however, couldn't shake the feeling that it was most likely the latter. After a minute of healing, Greg had twenty thousand magic points. By the third minute, the tally stood at sixty thousand and counting. However, it was usually by this point that the healer begins to struggle with maintaining her magical output and the same was reflected in the counter. By the end of the fourth minute, Greg's magic points total stood at seventy-two thousand. And by the fifth when she finally gave up, beads of sweat on her forehead, Greg had seventy-seven thousand magical points in total.
