Waifu Catalog Beta Tester: Free to Play Skyblock

After Week 2

Gil cursed throughout the full process of straightening out his leg. The experience of being thrown physically through the portal had jarred the mending leg badly, compromising the healing process.

He fished through his bag and pulled out one of the pouches of healing leaves. Gil's leg wasn't quite healed, but he also didn't want to waste a full pouch. Instead he pulled out a pinch of the dried leaves and shoved them into his cheek; he'd seen Tetsu do something similar, after all. The healing leaf mixed with his saliva, making a potent and extremely bitter liquid that Gil forced himself to swallow.

He gagged multiple times, but Gil didn't have the luxury of wasting these precious leaves, and he'd been both told and shown that they worked best when mixed with liquid. The best he could do was drink water constantly to wash the foul taste out of his mouth.

"Sorry Snow." He said to her once he was situated. "It really was too dangerous to bring you along. Maybe next time. I'll tell you all about it once my knee stops hurting so damn much."

While Gil did his very best to meditate through the pain, Snow gathered up his things and sorted them out. She refilled his canteen multiple times, waiting for an explanation. Snow very much wanted to pester him, but if she understood correctly she would have all week to pry answers from Master Gilbert.

Not knowing what else to do, Snow unpacked the Hunter's Survival Kit. She didn't know anything about it, save that it was a handmade backpack that had appeared a few hours before Gil returned. She had waited all this time, and simply didn't want to wait any longer.

She found six pouches full of leaves like the ones Master Gil had shoved into his cheek, though one was full of bright red leaves instead of greenish-brown. A glass rod that Snow couldn't imagine a use for, a pair of bottles of dark blue liquid, a rather sharp knife, and two dense brown bars that smelled faintly of cured meat. At the bottom was the strangest item: an iridescent cube.

Snow plucked up the cube, and heard a voice in her head.

"Open Hunter's Clothes?"

"Oh. Yes please," Snow answered the voice out loud. "I can set them out for Master Gil. His robe is in absolute tatters."

The cube flashed, and seconds later materialized a full set of Rim Elm standard protective gear. Once everything was laid out and wiped clean, Snow carefully stripped Gil naked. After all, the clothes may be damaged but the blood might wash out.

"No rush, they're probably ruined anyway." Gil said with a shrug. "Suck my cock? I need to relax after all that excitement, and I don't want to jostle around too much."

Snow smiled playfully.

"Well Master Gil, if that's what you'd like I can do it," She agreed, "but you did promise to tell me what happened."

"What?" Gil asked, "Do you want me to tell you while you're sucking my dick?"

"It's nice to chat while working." Snow answered defensively. "If you don't want to, that's ok I suppose."

"We'll save it for when you're cooking dinner, okay?" Gil promised, "I prefer to focus on the experience, and we have nothing but time."

"Oh all right." Snow agreed, "if you insist."

She knelt down and kissed it gently.

"May I begin, Master Gil, or would you prefer I made it hard first?" Snow asked sweetly, letting her breath tickle the head of Gil's cock.

••••••••••

"It really does seem like a nice little town." Gil explained, "I promise I'll bring you along next time."

"I'd like that." Snow said, looking up from the pot of boiling salted meat. "When do you intend to do so?"

"Soon, probably?" Gil hedged. "I don't know if I want to go back there as I am. I need to get at least a little bit stronger to really get a handle on the area."

"Those seru creatures did sound absolutely dreadful." Snow said sympathetically. "The poor things probably just want to live their lives peacefully, and that horrid mist comes in and turns them into monsters. Just awful."

"I don't know if they actually think much." Gil admitted, "they just seemed like living tools to me. Both in how they were used and how they acted."

"Well a living tool would probably like to be used properly," Snow argued, "I certainly wouldn't like to be used to hurt you, and I'm just a maid."

"I guess so." Gil agreed. "The ones in Rim Elm at least will probably get to rest for a while. I don't think the villagers are very keen on them."

••••••••••

"Nope. They're definitely too small for me." Gil grumbled. "The gloves, the boots, the pants. All of it. Even the silly little crown."

Gil finally decided to pull on his new hunter clothes after a fairly insubstantial meal of salty meat broth. He hadn't managed to get much food before leaving the Seru world, despite the young shop keeper's promise. Unfortunately, the hunter clothes were far too small.

"You try them on." Gil ordered.

"What?" Snow asked, scandalized. "Me, wear men's clothes?"

"They aren't men's clothes if my theory is correct." Gil explained, "you opened the box, so it's all tailored to fit you. Besides, you've been naked half the time you've been with me."

It was a far less convenient method for sizing company clothes than having them resize to fit any wearer, but Gil supposed that was only for people paying the big bucks. Gil suspected that this whole experience was just a giant asset flip, so he couldn't expect anything too fancy.

"I've been naked because I am your maid," Snow said indignantly, "it's acceptable for me to make myself available for my master's pleasure."

"As your master, I'm commanding you to put on these clothes." Gil insisted, "If you're going to travel with me, we may find places where it's inappropriate to insist on dresses. Many worlds have the majority of women wearing pants, or even more revealing dress."

"Oh really?" Snow asked slightly too innocently. "Tell me about one of them?"

Gil opened his mouth to answer, and found that he couldn't. He could only vaguely remember even his own past lives when he deliberately thought about them. He couldn't picture some of his prior colleagues or harem girls in a skirt without smirking, but the worlds they originated from grew fuzzier the more he focused on them.

They probably wore pants, but what kind? Material, cut? It was all a blur

"Look, if it makes you feel better, think of it as dressing up to titillate me." Gil groaned, regretting that the rest of the Corruption Fruit had rotted after an hour. Snow was much easier to manage when she was down for anything.

"Well… alright." Snow said, "I suppose I can try it."

Rim Elm didn't have any female hunters, a fact that Gil still found strange and alien. Apparently the Company AI felt that if they did, skin tight pants and a corset would be part of the uniform.

https://imgur.com/a/e3nYuSs

Gil didn't worry too much; he knew damn well that impractical looking armor provided by the Company usually included minor force fields and luck boosting charms. Just enough to bring it up to par with more utilitarian, less marketable gear. Even the black metal tiara was probably as good as a helmet, while leaving her face exposed. The Company really hated face-covering headgear on anyone but no-name mooks for some reason.

Gil made a big deal of inspecting Snow, who stood at attention with a furious blush. He fondled her ass, which looked quite nice in the painted-on pants.

"I think you will be able to go with me to a relatively low danger world if you're wearing this." He said. "It'll be better if you learn how to defend yourself, though."

"Defend myself?" Snow said, shocked. "You want me to learn how to fight? I don't know if I could hurt a person."

"Don't you want to be a good maid?" Gil asked, "across the multiverse, maids are bodyguards or assassins almost as often as they are bed warmers."

It was honestly a bit strange, but true. Gil had met some extremely dangerous maids in his day.

"No… no, I don't think I do want to be that kind of maid." Snow said, looking down at her feet. "I'm sure I'd feel just dreadful."

Damn. So there is a limit to the "be a good maid" thing, Gil thought. It's not that big a deal, but it is disappointing.

"Alright then." Gil said, "then you'll need to exercise so you can run. I don't want you getting hurt, and I definitely don't want to get hurt protecting you."

••••••••••

Gil wanted to have Snow do jumping jacks, crunches, and several other exercises alongside him. He cursed that proper exercise technique of all things was considered dangerous information in need of purging. His technique would probably be off, but it would have been better than nothing.

Poor technique paled in comparison to poor nutrition. A few bowls of broth made from boiling heavily salted meat and a few slices of pemmican was not what an active body needed to build muscle. It would probably do more harm than good for a slim guy like him; he didn't have much fat to burn, and Snow losing her hips to no benefit would be tragic.

The company fruit was almost certainly a superfood, but he only had four left. He decided to get by for the week on the dried meat and use the fruit as a big meal the day before he left. Without meaning to, he found himself fantasizing about the kinds of feasts he might have the night before portal day in the future.

That led quickly to him telling Snow all about the many foods he'd eaten across the multiverse. She was particularly interested in some of the more esoteric food from more advanced societies.

"I mean, no, they aren't all that good to be perfectly honest." Gil admitted, "but the point was to be quick and easy for someone who doesn't know how to cook to prepare them, while also being shelf stable."

"Like the pemmican?" Snow asked, "but then why did it need the microwave box? Wouldn't that make it harder to cook?"

"Cup noodles tasted way better than pemmican, that's for damn sure, and just about everyone had a microwave anyway." Gil assured her. "Tell you what, if we are ever in a modern era setting I'll grab a few. They last a long time without spoiling, so that might be a good idea anyway. We can just boil water and pour that into the cup. It'll probably come out fine."

••••••••••

Gil went over every tab of his app as the week went by. He was rather disappointed to find that time stopped in the Seru world only one day after he'd left. It meant that Zeto's seru was only about 60% captured. If Gil wanted his pay day, that meant going back to The Lands Shrouded in Mist at least once.

Remembering how thoroughly Vahn had thumped him, Gil wanted at least a little bit more power at his disposal before he went back there. Either that, or a big pile of vaguely useful trash to sell at the Rim Elm trading post.

If Gil was right and Vahn was a dungeon crawling RPG protagonist, then he'd be running off into the Mists soon enough to start some kind of grand journey. If so, Gil's best chance of getting his own Ra-seru was to serve as Vahn's companion. He wasn't committing to that without the ability to defend himself.

The Queen's Forest had puttered on without them for the last two weeks, possibly because nothing interesting happened in that world without Snow to serve as a target. If there was a plot to follow there, it wasn't time sensitive.

Gil was pleased to find that the Stamp shop gave him credits the moment that he'd marked Sim Seru 008. With his new Stamp Credit total of 10, the 10 credit options had been revealed to him.

Canvas (10 stamp credits): You gain purely aesthetic control over your stamp. This allows you or an approved retinue member to use it to create or erase markings upon stamped retinue members. You may apply and erase by holding the stamp to a retinue member's skin and focusing. These stamps may resemble tattoos, makeup, body paint, etc, as long as it is an ink or pigment applied to the body.

There were a few possible uses for this, but it seemed like more of a quirky little side thing. He might buy it if he found himself in a place where special tattoos represented one's place in society or something, or if he picked up a professional makeup artist who could work magic with it. It wasn't a priority at this time and might never be.

Extra Stamp (10 stamp credits): Purchase a one use stamp which works as a stamp binding, but loses all power after being used once. Extra stamps, as a class, count as a separate binding, allowing them to capture an additional person in a world. They do not reward stamp credits upon successful capture.

The first binding that Gil could buy? Definitely worth considering. The Seven Dwarves mission would be easy if he felt like spending ten stamp credits, for example. Pop in, stamp all of them, fuck off, come out with an easy couple of credits and a shop unlock. Even if the dwarves sold for peanuts, Gil would be pretty happy with that outcome. He wasn't going to do it until he had squared away the food problem, or wanted an off week for whatever reason.

Either way, there were still a few Stamp perks that Gil could unlock with patience. He would buy the extra stamp if he saw a really juicy target, but he really wanted to know what Tattoo Storage, Symbolic Tattoos, and Power Tattoos did. 4 more worlds and 4 more stamps to find out. He could live with that. If one of them turned out to be really damn good, Gil could buy them. If they were all flops, he could ridicule the designers in his notes and run to the bank with three extra stamps.

The Beastmaster Sphere Shop was present, but fully grayed out. He didn't have any corresponding credits, so he could only see the perk names. He was curious, and spent a long while speculating, but he didn't really know what any of them would do.

Wonder Trade (5)

Beast mode (10)

Nuzlocke Rules (10)

It Can Think (20)

Monstergirls (20)

Cryptid Capture (20)

Fast Ball (20)

Love Ball (20)

Heal Ball (20)

Lure Ball (30)

Monstergirls, for example, could transform captured monsters into humanoids, or help him capture monster girls, or let him fuse his existing retinue members with monsters to make monster girls. He just didn't know. It was fun to speculate for a while, but he was bored before long. It's not like he could have very deep conversations with Snow on the subject. She didn't know how The Company operated, and she didn't know the meaning of the word Nuzlocke any more than he did.

He hemmed and hawed for a few days, but eventually Gil caved and purchased Evac. There was way too much utility in being able to flee back to the Skyblock for a token cost. The chances of it failing to pay itself off eventually were basically zero.

••••••••••

Gil was saving both of his existing worlds, one for when he was a bit beefier and one for when he needed an easy week, so naturally he opened a random portal. Snow had managed to clean the mangled linen through days of concerted efforts, but in absence of a needle and thread Gil was stuck in his tattered robes.

Snow insisted on coming with him this time unless there was clear and present danger; she was incredibly bored. Eventually Gil relented, reasoning that Creature Defense could keep her safe from many threats. If someone tried to hurt her, it might even serve as a wake up call to learn a bit of self defense.

As a concession Snow was wearing her protective gear, just in case the destination seemed risky. She had gotten used to them, barely, but still blushed furiously at the thought of being seen publicly in such a "scandalous" outfit.

"Alright. Are you ready?" Gil asked.

Snow nodded, eyes alight with excitement. Gil tapped the button, and the Portal opened. He tapped another button, and checked his quest log.

Fair Barovia.

Steal 1 dream pastry

Reward: 1 credit, Addiction Defense