The Sixth School.

***

Chapter Eighty: Choices…

“Stop!” Came the stern order from Olivia.

Greg, who was already gritting his teeth in exertion, his face beaded with sweat, held the position he was in, barely getting the words out through the strain. “I can hold out a few breaths more,” He declared. Despite his determination, however, a swift kick by Olivia to the back of the one leg he was standing on had him almost face-planting on the floor of the cave. Luckily for him, his hands reflexively shot out just in time to keep Greg from finding out if his nose could support his body weight. “What the hell do you think you are doing?” Greg couldn’t help but growl at his familiar in anger.

“Keeping you from hurting yourself,” Olivia answered him, not the least bit bothered by his flare-up. A sigh left the familiar as she crouched down to his level. “I understand your desire to become stronger, Master. Believe me, nothing would make me happier than to watch you grow more powerful than even your teacher. The harsh reality, however, is that it takes time to reach those heights, and injuring yourself by doing more than your body can handle isn’t going to make the process any faster. What you are currently doing is like trying to help a seedling grow faster by pulling it up from the ground. Not only is it not helping you, but if you keep at it, it’ll hurt you in the long run,” she reasoned with him.

Greg’s jaws clenched as he looked away from Olivia. Frustrating as it was to admit, she was right. Greg had advised Shalia not to be too hard on herself over her past mistakes. Instead, she was to learn from them and be better as a result. He, however, was having a hard time abiding by his own advice. Every time he thought to relax and take things easy, he’d remember what it felt like to turn around knowing that he was leaving his teacher for dead. Even now, the feeling left him with a deep hatred for his lack of power. Outside of the times when he was learning with the healer and when he engaged in his more lascivious pursuits, there was always a voice at the back of his mind reminding him that he wasn’t yet strong in any real sense of the word. That if he was put back in the situation he’d been in, he’d still have to abandon her to die.

Frustrating as this feeling was, however, Greg wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t hear the truth in his familiar’s advice. Ardent as his desire to grow stronger was, if he just wrecked his own body in the process, it would be counterproductive. Besides, it wasn’t like the familiar had taken it easy on him during this body conditioning session. His body was aching all over from the grueling exercise he’d been put through. Olivia may be asking him not to take it too far, but she hadn’t been against upping the ante when Greg had made known his desire to grow stronger faster. Just a week after their fight with the abyssal creature, Greg had been forced to go up from the CONDITIONING BRACELET that made it twice as hard to move around to one that made it three times harder to move any of his muscles. And now, just three weeks later he was wearing one that made it four times harder. Greg had been forced to buy a charm from the Magic shop that would lower his body temperature to keep him from sweating all the time.

Greg shifted into a sitting position in the middle of the cave. This was the cave that belonged to his uncle. After a whole year, they had finally found a use for it. After putting the dark crawler’s carapace in a storage ring and airing it out for a few days to rid it of the smell, the cave had become Greg’s training ground. His image as the town hero made it impossible for him to train anywhere in town or around it. After all, if people saw just how inept he actually was at fighting, they’d raise questions that he wasn’t that interested in answering. While Greg wasn’t attached to the glory that this reputation gave him, he also wasn’t blind to the benefits it afforded him. Greg didn’t know what fantasies of him the women in town had come up with. But with how things had been going, Greg was certain he’d soon be able to clear the mission given by the system when he became an acolyte of lust. It had only been four weeks since the event and yet, the counter on his mission had gone from thirteen to sixty-nine.

His office had become the equivalent of a cheap porn production where everything seemed to be an excuse to get to the sex part of the interaction. Greg had gotten an exercise in seeing how straight a face he could keep when hit with all manner of ridiculous ailments from the women who visited him. The more tame of the women would pretend to feel some discomfort in their breasts and ask him to feel them up to see if he could find the problem. The more daring among them would find ways to draw his attention to their thighs, which they were all too happy to spread even when they were wearing nothing underneath. One bold girl had even complained of a ‘fire’ inside her pussy that she just couldn’t quench. Greg had been all too happy to flood her womb with his seed to help her quench it. Most of these women had other women as their chaperones. In some cases, Greg had been forced to knock out the chaperones using the formations on the seats. But when most of the women chaperones were just as taken by him as the ones in their care, Greg had found himself in the middle of more than a few threesomes.

It took a few seconds for Greg to fully relax and settle his desire to go on training. When he did, he opened his eyes, a resolute look in them as he nodded to his familiar. Several formation plates were already spread out along the edges of the cave in a large circle. The purpose of these was simple, to keep contained any burst of mana or magical resonance that might be generated from what he was about to do. Taking the time to look at the small window at the edge of his vision Greg waited until it enlarged to cover most of his vision before once again looking at the very first page of the system.

———

WELCOME TO THE SIXTH SCHOOL!

NAME: Roka.

RANK: Acolyte Of Lust (69/100).

MAGIC POINTS: 6.4M.

LUST POINTS: 35.7M.

———

It gave him a thrill of excitement just to look at the final number, seeing a months-long effort finally come to an end. In truth, Greg had attained his thirty million lust point target a little less than a fortnight before. It had thus taken a herculean amount of willpower and patience to heed his familiar’s advice and not immediately cash it all in for rewards from the system. According to Olivia, while they might not know what rewards he would get from the system, they were certain to be powerful. With this in mind, it was therefore rather important that he be in the best possible condition to receive whatever it was. Two weeks ago Greg had still been recovering from the repercussions of handing control of his body over to Morpheus and still in a weakened state, hence the advice to wait. To have such tantalizing rewards dangled over him for almost two weeks straight had been absolute torture, but finally, Greg had managed to see it through.

With a smile Greg couldn’t repress, he navigated through the system to the MISSIONS COMPLETED tab and looked at the long list of Feats Of Lust that he had managed to achieve over the last year. The list had grown steadily for most of that time and then rapidly over the last four weeks. After all, this was when Greg finally started to collect his ‘payment’ from his teacher for the Maelstrom Ascension manual. Also, while the individual women of the town didn’t give feats of lust as a result of their low danger rating, the numbers achieved in one small location contributed to a few feats of lust. The last time he’d looked at the list, there had been twenty feats in total. Looking at it now, there were thirty-eight feats.

If Greg wanted, he could merge a list of ten feats involving the healer only. Three things, however, kept Greg from doing so. The first and most obvious was the fact that he didn’t have anywhere near the number of lust points he’d need to merge ten of such feats. Just putting together three of her feats had necessitated that Greg save up for months trying to get thirty million lust points together. Ten such feats would require that he get over a hundred million lust points if he didn’t want to turn green with regret at having to let go of the rewards that he couldn’t purchase. Waiting for the months that it had taken to gather thirty million lust points had already been a trial in itself. Waiting for years to gather a hundred million lust points was just not something Greg could picture himself doing.

Secondly, was the threat to his life from Fate. The options before Greg were essentially two. Either to make do with weaker rewards that could arm him against whatever Fate was certain to throw at him next. Or two, to stay unarmed hoping for a much more powerful reward from the system. Had the recent events not taken place, Greg would have been tempted by the latter proposition. After being chased down and almost killed by an abyssal creature, the equivalent of a fifth-tier mage according to his teacher, Greg wasn’t willing to be caught flatfooted again. He’d take what he can get now even if it was just a sword, rather than remain unarmed hoping for a bazooka in the future.

The final reason came from Olivia. In plain words, the reason she believed Greg shouldn’t go for merging ten feats involving the healer was because Greg was weak. If the world’s sharpest sword were to be placed in the hands of a toddler, it would be just as much a danger to the toddler as it would be to anyone the toddler swung it at. According to her, anything that would cost a hundred million lust points from the system was probably far too powerful for Greg to be able to handle, let alone control at his level of power. Thirty million lust points for a first-tier mage was already pushing it but still manageable. Perhaps later on when he was much more powerful, Greg could go for such powerful rewards. But as of now, whatever he got for a hundred million lust points was just as likely to harm him as it was to help him if he wasn’t powerful enough to wield it properly.

Greg’s eyes went down the list of feats as he ruminated on a rather important question, what theme did he want his rewards to take? This was something that Olivia explained to him months ago, right after his threesome with the now former Town-head’s wife and his daughter. She’d told him that while he’d never be able to determine what rewards the system would give him, he could instead choose the theme that the rewards would take if seven of the ten feats had a common underlying theme.

———

THIRTY-EIGHT FEATS OF LUST ACCOMPLISHED.

Ø Brought the Town-head’s wife to her first-ever orgasm right under the nose of her husband.

Ø Brought the Town-head’s wife to multiple orgasms right under the nose of her husband.

Ø Lost your virginity to Alena.

Ø Took Alena’s virginity.

Ø Creampied Alena.

Ø Came on the Town-head’s wife right under the nose of her husband.

Ø Creampied the Town-head’s wife right under the nose of her husband.

Ø Impregnated the Town-head’s wife right under the nose of her husband.

Ø Brought Shalia to orgasm with your words alone.

Ø Gave the Town-head’s wife her first oral sex experience.

Ø Had sex with the Town-head’s wife in the sight of her daughter.

Ø Had sex with the Town-head’s wife in the sight of your mother.

Ø Creampied the Town-head’s wife in the sight of her daughter.

Ø Creampied the Town-head’s wife in the sight of your mother.

Ø Took Shalia’s virginity in the sight of her mother.

Ø Took Shalia’s virginity in the sight of your mother.

Ø Had sex with Shalia in the sight of her mother.

Ø Had sex with Shalia in the sight of your mother.

Ø Creampied Shalia in the sight of her mother.

Ø Creampied Shalia in the sight of your mother.

Ø Brought Alena to ten orgasms in one sexual encounter.

Ø Brought Alena to twenty-five orgasms in one sexual encounter.

Ø Came in Alena’s mouth.

Ø Came in Alena’s Mouth ten times in one sexual encounter

Ø Came in Alena’s Mouth twenty times in one sexual encounter

Ø Came on Alena’s face ten times in one sexual encounter

Ø Came on Alena’s face twenty times in one sexual encounter

Ø Aroused more than two hundred and fifty women at a single event.

Ø Aroused more than five hundred women at a single event.

Ø Aroused more than a thousand women at a single event.

Ø Slept with ten married women from the same town.

Ø Slept with twenty-five married women from the same town.

Ø Slept with fifty married women from the same town.

Ø Impregnated more than ten women from the same town.

Ø Impregnated more than twenty-five women from the same town.

Ø Impregnated more than fifty women from the same town.

Ø Cuckolded more than ten men from the same town.

Ø Cuckolded more than twenty-five men from the same town.

PICK FEATS TO MERGE.

———

From what Greg could see of the list there were two main themes he could focus on. One that appealed to him more directly and one that was more expedient. The first focus and the one that sparked the fires of his lust most, was taking other men’s women. Several of the women that Greg had slept with were already married women. This was reflected in the fact that a good number of the feats listed, especially those involving the Town-head’s wife, had this as the underlying theme. Greg wouldn’t object to getting powerful rewards that would help him engage in more of this guilty pleasure of his.

On the other hand, several feats involved affecting large groups of people. Be it the feats that involved him bedding fifty women from the same locale, or the ones about arousing large crowds of women in one go. The latter of which had occurred as a result of appearing before the town as a warrior after Olivia had fought off the threat that the town faced, saving a lot of the men in the process. Greg hadn’t even been thinking of arousing anyone at the time. Had Olivia not told him about it afterward, he wouldn’t have even thought to check. While the first option would allow him to indulge more in his lustful desires, the second option would be a game changer. If Greg could affect large crowds at a time, then the speed with which he could accrue lust points would shoot through the roof.

“If you want to grow powerful faster, then it’s not much of a choice, is it?” Olivia, who could feel the internal debate Greg was having with himself, chimed in with her thoughts.

Greg’s lips pressed together, quietly acknowledging that she was probably right. The temptation to go with the option that would satisfy his lustful desires was very real. Greg, however, knew that he was a marked man. To indulge his desires only to end up dead at the hands of Fate would be Shortsightedness at its finest. Besides, it wasn’t like the Feats of Lust were going anywhere. The longer he lived and survived, the more lust points he’d be able to accrue. He could still save up enough points to merge another set of ten feats with taking other men’s women as the focus. Until then he’d just have to make the smart choice.

‘Anything to add?’ Sending mana to his eyes, Greg mentally asked Morpheus just in case the being had something that he hadn’t considered. According to Morpheus, all communications between them were secured against any kind of prying even from his familiar Olivia. Greg therefore wasn’t concerned that his action of seeking a second opinion would clue in his familiar that he didn’t blindly trust her. Being able to crosscheck with Morpheus on any given topic was part of the reason Greg’s slight mistrust of Olivia hadn’t turned into full-on paranoia. Greg wasn’t deluded into thinking that Morpheus cared about him all that much. Morpheus, however, needed Greg to survive and grow powerful if he was going to help the being gain a new body. Morpheus had thus more reason to see Greg survive than whatever nebulous reason Olivia’s true self had for spreading the system she created.

‘Only the powerful have the right to indulge their desires,’ Came the simple reply from Morpheus.

A sigh left Greg. With Morpheus essentially reiterating what Olivia had just said, the issue was essentially settled. All that remained was for him to pick the right set of Feats to merge.

———

Ø Aroused more than two hundred and fifty women at a single event.

Ø Aroused more than five hundred women at a single event.

Ø Aroused more than a thousand women at a single event.

Ø Slept with ten married women from the same town.

Ø Impregnated more than ten women from the same town.

Ø Impregnated more than twenty-five women from the same town.

Ø Impregnated more than fifty women from the same town.

Ø Lost your virginity to Alena.

Ø Took Alena’s virginity.

Ø Creampied Alena.

———

MERGE!

As soon as Greg clicked on the button to merge the ten feats, they turned a glowing bright gold color before vanishing from the list of feats accomplished. The first time Greg had cashed in a Feat of Lust, it had involved the healer, a seventh-tier mage. The result had been four reward cards placed as an option before him. The next time he’d done it, it had been a feat from arousing several mundane women at his father’s send-off party. That time, he was only presented with two cards. This time, however, after merging a total of ten feats, three of which involved a seventh-tier mage, Greg was presented with a total of six cards with different rewards on them.

The first of the six cards had on it what looked like several arcane symbols arranged in the shape of an eye. Under it were the words, MANA SIGHT. Greg wasn’t certain if it had any deeper implications, but taken at face value, it seemed that this card would give him the ability to directly see mana. From his year learning under the healer and the numerous conversations he’d had with Olivia in that time, Greg knew that different mages had varying sensitivity to mana. Some were so sensitive that they could pick up on the slightest fluctuations of mana while others wouldn’t be able to pick up on any mana-related phenomenon if it wasn’t already easily detectable. Greg, however, knew that in both groups, neither could actually see the mana itself. In a sense, Mana was a lot like wind. It could be felt and the effects could be seen, but ambient mana itself wasn’t visible.

Greg was left unsure how to feel. Given that this reward was appearing after merging ten feats with three involving the healer, he knew it had to be good. He, however, didn’t have the requisite knowledge that would allow him to understand just how useful or not this would be for him. Still, with five other options yet to be gone over, Greg put aside his questions for now and moved on to the next reward card. On this second card, there seemed to be a depiction of a man with a sphere all around him. Greg couldn’t understand what the image was trying to convey until he read the words on the card. LUST AURA.

Greg immediately recognized this as the first of the skills that involved affecting large masses of people in one go. He also happened to be familiar with this ability, not because of the description on the card but because more than once, Olivia had activated it with him around and he’d gotten to feel it directly. In much the same way looking at the abyssal creature caused one’s sanity to start fraying, being exposed to the familiar’s lust aura evoked the feeling of lust in one whether they intended to feel it or not. Still, despite what he knew from experience, Greg read the short description on the reward card.

Nascent insight into the aspect of lust.

While short and to the point, the few words floored Greg. After their encounter with the abyssal creature, Greg discussed the beast’s ability to rob one of their sanity simply by looking at it. At the time Greg had already guessed that this was the creature’s aspect and had been remarking about how strong it was. His teacher, however, had corrected him and told him that the creature didn’t really have that deep an understanding or grasp of the aspect of madness. What it had displayed was only the most basic understanding of it’s aspect. The only reason both Greg and his familiar seemed to be affected was because they were at a much lower tier compared to the creature. The analogy she had given was of a ten-year-old, when compared to an adult they are really weak, to a toddler, however, they might as well be juggernauts. But if a nascent understanding of madness had been so potent with the abyssal creature, how powerful would a nascent understanding of the aspect of lust make him?

Greg smiled like a child who’d gotten two Christmases in one year. He was really tempted to just forget everything else and pick this option. He, however, turned his attention to the next card before he was overtaken by a moment of impulse. The third reward card had on it the image of a long crystalline vial with a crimson-red potion inside. The name of the item was rather long but it told Greg all he needed to know. MID-PURITY LIFE ORDER PROMOTION ELIXIR. Greg wasn’t certain what the ‘mid-purity' part was all about. He, however, had once spoken with Olivia on the subject of life orders and the fact that different life forms occupied different positions in this ranking. At the bottom were the life forms that had no thought or instinct, such as most plants. While on the other end of the scale were deity-like beings that could warp the very fabric of reality.

Greg had gotten the chance to understand this more viscerally first when he met Morpheus’s mother and secondly when Morpheus beat the abyssal creature. When Greg was dragged before Morpheus's mother, he could very sharply remember the feeling of being an ant before a colossus of a being. She didn’t have to wish him any harm, even a random sneeze from such a being would be enough not just to crush him but to erase his very existence. When Morpheus had taken over to kill the abyssal creature, Greg had been in the back seat watching everything that happened. Though Morpheus had killed the abyssal creature in only two moves, Greg got a glimpse of how beings at such a level fought. They didn’t throw punches or kicks or cast spells at their foes. No. They twisted the very laws of the world around them to attack their enemy.

When Morpheus extended his hand towards the abyssal creature, he didn’t somehow drag the thing back using telekinesis. Instead, he'd warped the very law of distance, erasing the distance between them and making it so that no matter how hard the thing was flapping its wings, it didn’t get any further from Greg. With the same ease as one turning over their hand, he’d then gone on to twist space in such a manner that the being was crushed like a bug. It wasn’t that Morpheus had created such pressure around the creature that it was crushed. Instead, he had changed the very laws around the creature making it so that the normal space it occupied shrunk while it stayed the same.

One rank promotion is guaranteed. Further ranks depend on the individual taking the potion.

This was the simple instruction left on the card. Greg didn’t need telling to know that a treasure that could grant a promotion to one’s life order was a treasure that no amount of money could buy. Even a ninth-tier mage would probably go crazy to have this small vial of crimson fluid. The instruction was both exciting and daunting at the same time. A single guaranteed promotion was already promised which was exciting. There was, however, also a hint that one had the chance to go for more than one rank using the potion. A proposition that Greg was already determined to see come true. He harbored no delusions that he would rise to an equal life order rank as Olivia’s true self, let alone that of Morpheus. Still, it would be a significant improvement with every rank that he managed to increase.

The fourth reward card depicted the image of a man standing in the middle of a crowd with many of the women in the crowd turning to look in his direction. Looking down at the label on the card, Greg saw a familiar type of reward. TITLE: RESONATING CHARM. This was the second reward that had to do with affecting large numbers of people. The explanation attached to the card confirmed this. The more women that are drawn, the more women will be drawn. It was a bit of a convoluted statement, but Greg suspected that he understood what it was trying to convey. It was much the same concept as a snowball gathering more snow as it rolled downhill. If Greg was correctly understanding the implications of the title, then the more women in a crowd that were attracted to him, the more attractive he would become to other women around at the time.

This title would be his second innate title and there was only one word to describe it, overpowered! Especially when one considers the fact that his first innate title was AROUSING. If the first title was a flame, then the second one was the fuel that would cause the fire to spread everywhere. There were, however, two unanswered questions that could turn it from a simply powerful title to one that Greg would consider game-breaking. The questions were how long the effect would last and over what area was the effect of this title effective?

If Greg left a crowd of women who were attracted to him, would the effect of the title be immediately lost? Or would it slowly fade over time? If the former was the case then the title would be useful in social scenes like at parties and in crowds but of limited use beyond that. If, on the other hand, the effect lasted for some time after he was separated from the crowd, then it could be used like a torch taken from one bonfire and used to light another bonfire. And just how far could he be from the crowd before the effect was lost? Did he have to be in the same room as the women drawn to him for the title to show effect? How about a large hall? What about a small town? A large one? A city? A whole region… Greg suspected that it wouldn’t be so exaggerated in effect. Still, it was daunting to consider just how large the snowball could grow to be.

The fifth reward card showed a man reaching through what appeared to be a crack in the air and grabbing something on the other side. PERSONAL POCKET SPACE. A brow arched on Greg’s face when he read the words under the image. He knew about storage rings and other devices of that nature, but a storage space that was attached to a certain individual as opposed to an enchanted item was a new one for him. But while it was a new one for him, it didn’t take a lot of thinking to understand how this could also be ranked among the other rewards that he’d gotten so far. To begin with, though he was only guessing, Greg doubted that a pocket space attached to an individual as opposed to an item was a vanishingly rare phenomenon. Perhaps the only people who might have something like it would be the rare spatial element mages. And even that, Greg doubted.

Even if one didn’t consider the convenience of it, the security that it offered was damn near unparalleled. External storage items could either be stolen, lost, or even destroyed. But so long as one survived, they could always keep with them everything that was already inside their personal storage space. And just as a cherry on top, this particular reward was uniquely useful for Greg as he needed it for a reason that most others didn’t, and that had to do with the system. The reason Greg always had a storage ring with him was because the things he bought from the system usually materialized inside the storage space of the ring. This was done to avoid the disturbance in the ambient mana that system items caused when they came into being.

If Greg ever found himself in a situation where he couldn’t have a storage ring with him, he would have been rendered unable to buy anything from the system, lest he expose its existence. A blunder that would almost certainly lead to his demise. With this personal pocket space, however, Greg would be free to buy anything he wanted from the system without fear of detection. The only points of concern that remained were two. The first is, how large exactly would the space be? Obviously, Greg would prefer it to be large instead of small as that way he’d be able to store more items inside. If it wasn’t, however, then Greg would have to use it only for his most important items. The second question to be considered, was if the size was static, or if it would grow larger the more powerful Greg became. After all, the higher the tier of external storage devices, the larger the space they usually had inside. If the same wasn’t true of this personal pocket space, then in this one respect, it would be inferior to artificial storage devices.

The Sixth and final reward card, once again showed a crowd of people. The people were depicted as black silhouettes, which only made the white mark on the back of their hands more prominent. SPREADING MARK. Upgrade the Lust sigil, allowing it to spread out from those you’ve personally marked. Greg couldn’t help but rub the back of his right hand as he was reminded of one of the two items that he bought from the special tier of the Eros shop. Based on the explanation Greg had gotten at the time, anyone he marked with the sigil would be treated like an avatar of himself by the system allowing them to collect lust points on his behalf. So long as they were within a certain distance of him, and they engaged in any acts listed in his Mission tabs, be they basic, intermediate, advanced, or expert, the requisite lust points would be credited to Greg.

Greg could only imagine what using the spreading sigil in a large city would be like. All he’d have to do is visit a few brothels and spend a night or two marking the women there. Once that was done, all he’d have was to sit back and wait for the mark to spread like a virus. Anyone who slept with any of the whores would be marked with the sigil. And if they slept with anyone else, they would in turn spread it to others. At first, it would just be a few dozen people, then hundreds, then thousands, and if the city was large enough, hundreds of thousands and even millions. Greg could end up earning millions of lust points each day without having to even lift a finger.

Greg suspected, however, that these were little more than exaggeratedly optimistic fantasies. After all, the lust sigil as it presently was depended on his soul strength. Back when he got the thing, Olivia had informed him that Greg could only mark a maximum of two people beyond which he’d put his soul under serious strain. His maximum range back then had also been just this small town. Greg had trained his soul strength intensively since then, not to mention the fact that he'd ascended to the first tier as a mage. His soul was far more powerful than it had been back then, still, Greg doubted that he could mark a lot more than a hundred people without putting his soul under serious strain.

That, however, was only the case at present.

The longer that Greg lived, the more he trained his soul strength, and the higher the tier he climbed to, Greg knew that this number would also grow along with it. He was only at the first tier and already he could probably mark around a hundred people. By the time he got to the third tier, Greg suspected he’d be able to mark around a thousand people. By the fifth tier that number would probably be in the tens of thousands and if he ever made it to the seventh tier, the number could grow to hundreds of thousands. Of the six rewards, this was the only one that wasn’t immediately overpowered. With time, however, it could grow to supersede the other lust abilities in helping him collect lust points.

Coming to the end of the list, Greg couldn’t help but be glad that he’d heeded Olivia’s advice to save up lust points for this merger and not to assume that he would get a lump sum of lust points as one of the possible rewards as had been the case the last two times he’d cashed in a feat of lust. If Greg had gotten to this point and not had millions of lust points saved up to buy the options that he didn’t directly pick as his reward, he’d probably be unable to keep from bursting into bitter tears of regret. The other thing of note was the fact that just because he chose a certain theme from the feats he’d accomplished, didn’t mean that all the rewards would strictly adhere to that theme. After all, while three of the abilities he’d gotten this time would help Greg in a crowd setting, the other three were not in any way related to large crowds. In other words, Greg could nudge the system’s choice of rewards to offer, but couldn’t entirely box it in. This notwithstanding Greg wished he could pick all six presented choices. The instruction from the system written above the six cards, however, was very clear.

PICK ONE!

It would seem that more cards didn’t mean more rewards from the system. Instead, it just meant that he had a larger pool of options to buy from once he had picked his free reward. Without hesitation, Greg’s gaze moved to the one item that was his easy first choice among all the six items presented. Mentally tapping on it. Immediately, the card with the MID-PURITY LIFE ORDER PROMOTION ELIXIR glowed golden and vanished even as a crystalline vial full of a crimson-red potion started to materialize inside his storage ring.

Immediately thereafter, a new prompt appeared before his eyes.

ONE-TIME PURCHASES ARE AVAILABLE.

DO YOU WISH TO BUY MANA SIGHT?

COST: 12,000,000 Lust Points.

YES/NO.

DO YOU WISH TO BUY LUST AURA?

COST: 11,000,000 Lust Points.

YES/NO.

DO YOU WISH TO BUY THE TITLE: RESONATING CHARM?

COST: 9,000,000 Lust Points.

YES/NO.

DO YOU WISH TO BUY PERSONAL POCKET SPACE?

COST: 10,000,000 Lust Points.

YES/NO.

DO YOU WISH TO BUY SPREADING MARK?

COST: 11,000,000 Lust Points.

YES/NO.

Greg had already expected this option to be presented after choosing his reward from the system. He therefore wasn’t surprised by its appearance. After doing some bit of quick math, however, Greg couldn’t help but feel his heart drop. The total value of all five items was fifty-three million lust points, and he only had thirty-five point seven million lust points and some change. No matter how he cut it, Greg was only going to be able to pick three out of the five options…

***