“Welcome home, sweetie!” Brenda greeted her son, the moment he closed the door behind him. She emerged from her part of the house and looked him up and down. “How are you?”

“Great!” he responded truthfully.

“You look like it… you look really healthy. Going outside gave you a bit of colour.” She nodded a few times to herself.

John had gotten the slightest bit of a tan, but what she was noticing was certainly everything the increased Stats had done to him. It must have been just mild enough not to trigger any alarm bells with her or Gaia was preventing her from doing so.

“Hope it was fun? Did you hang out with that girl some more?” Brenda asked.

“G-girlfriend,” John corrected and his mom happily clapped her hands together. “We finally got together today.”

“Oh my, I’m proud of you! Just make sure you don’t take the rose-tinted glasses for granted, alright sweetie?” she walked over and gave his chin a motherly pinch. “It's easy to fall in and out of love when you’re young, so think a lot about what you see in her, alright? And bring her over sometime soon!”

“I will ask her,” John promised and yawned. “Can I grab something from the fridge?”

“Yeah, there should be leftovers. I still cooked for two. Old habits and all that.” Excited, she tapped from one foot onto the other. “Oh, I just have to tell your father about this! You go ahead and eat and play your video games. Sounds like you earned it.”

John wasn’t too sure what to make of the way this news spread so quickly from one parent to the other. Besides that, he was happy to follow his mom’s recommendation. Taking the leftovers with him, he vanished in his room.

The smell of his room was rancid, after hanging out with Rave for two days. The scattered objects all around, the accumulated dust, none of that had ever bothered him. Now he imagined Rave coming over and seeing all of it and he immediately turned red. “I’ll have to clean this up,” he thought and put the backpack down. He was vaguely aware of the bottle of hair removal in there. ‘Is there a similar product for other areas?’ he wondered. He wasn’t a fan of the armpit hair or anything below the neck really. He could have been a fan of a beard, if he was capable of growing one.

Permanently removing all of that would be nice. To rub his smooth skin against Rave’s, to feel as much of her as possible, it was a fantastic mental image and remembered sensation.

“I’ll start cleaning up my life tomorrow,” he thought out loud. He had gone through enough today. Time for video games, food, and Youtube videos about the importance of tadpoles to the ecosystem.

While his PC was booting up, he opened his Character Sheet again. Nothing new there, just the Skill Evolution Point still lying around. What an SEP was useful for, he might as well find out right now.

Tapping the counter caused a couple of + signs to appear next to a select few Skills. None of the Passive Skills were available and neither were Observe, the two I.D. Skills, Enchant or Craft. He tried Create I.D. anyway, just to see what the system would return.

‘My choices are Masturbation, Possession, Sneaking and Mana Power Attack,’ he listed to himself.

Sneaking was out immediately. He had not used it at all over the last few days and his Stat choices had not moved in the sneaky direction. This was likely going to be a dead Skill he just had lying around.

Masturbation should be out immediately, but there was a greater than 0 chance it could upgrade into something that made him even better at sex. Not a pressing issue and Rave seemed pretty satisfied with what he was doing to her, so he put that aside after considering it for a second. Maybe once he had his combat build more figured out. He couldn’t have sex if he was dead.

The choice really came down to Possession and Mana Power Attack. Both were the backbone of his strategies.

Mana Power Attack certifiably sucked. Possession was pretty useful even in its current state. Problem was that he had no idea what the SEP would do exactly. Would it upgrade an aspect of the Skill or just create a better one? Would it tag on a new effect? Why was there no tooltip explaining this?

The computer was booted up now and called distractingly with the whirls of its fan. John, however, resolved not to let decision paralysis immobilize him for a week again. He would make a choice before he started gaming.