Chapter 7: Chapter 7 – Natalie: Smart, very smart

It struck me, as I sat on my couch next to a boy with my arm around him, that this never-in-my-wildest-dreams-thing -that-I-would-have-thought-I'd-be-doing-today-occurrence was only the fourth weirdest thing that had happened to me in the last hour or so. Even more mind boggling was that the third weirdest thing was the introduction into my life of an impossible video game like system that seemed like a nonsensical concept conjured up by a hack writer.

The second weirdest thing? That I'd pretty much willingly flashed my bra at that boy.

The weirdest thing of all, though, that I was very much visualizing myself taking off all my clothes for him. All my clothes. And believing that he'd, somehow, appreciate what he saw, that he'd be looking at me with hunger in his eyes like he'd described that girl he imagined playing strip poker with. And that these thoughts of me showing off for him were definitely causing things to stir for me down there.

"So," I said, my voice husky, "should we continue with the final dare - uh, I mean quest - that you gave me."

My heart raced, nervous that he'd say yes and even more nervous that he'd say no.

Hugh swallowed. "I would like that so much."

I withdrew my arm from around him and prepared to stand up.

"But," he continued, "I think that would lead to me giving you more quests after that, and I think that those quests might take things really far. And, honestly, at the moment, taking things far sounds really, really good to me."

I knew exactly what he meant.

"I'm kind of worried, though," he said, "partly because we've already gone farther than I've ever been and partly because I'm concerned about possible consequences of moving too fast."

I nodded.

"I'm absolutely not going to tell you not to do the quest right now," he said. "I can't tell you that. If I told you that, parts of my anatomy that are fighting for control of my actions would totally rebel."

I took a breath, frustrated that he was leaving the decision to me. The worst part was that he was right. I was getting very close to giving away the keys to the kingdom to literally the first guy who'd ever shown a bit of interest in me. Not exactly my proudest moment.

I got up and moved back to me bed. "You're right. Slowing down is good. What do you suggest doing instead?"

"Well, you leveled up, right? We could figure out exactly what that means for you and discuss any options you have?"

My quickened pulse started to slow as we moved from dangerous territory into more calm, rational waters. "Good. That's a good idea."

He told me how to pull up my status sheet, and I did so.

Of course, I had to tell Hugh everything about what was shown on the screen. His eyes lit up when he heard my class, but he didn't really comment on it. I was too scared to ask about what it meant or what he found so interesting. He noted that the number of experience points needed to reach Level 3 was the same for me as it was for him. The only big changes from his screen and mine were the lack of an accounting of the number of system users and the free skill point on mine.

"What does it mean that all my stats are zero?" I asked.

That didn't make a lot of sense to me since I clearly already possessed physical and mental attributes. It was also kind of insulting that it told me I had no skills.

"Most litrpg starting stats are an attempt by the author to quantify how smart or strong or whatever the character is compared to the average person," he said. "When an author is particularly lazy, though, he might choose to start all attributes at zero and have the stats only show the difference between what you've added and the baseline. Again, it's lazy writing, but what can you do?

"Anyway, it looks like you can choose one attribute to increase just like I can, but, more interestingly, it seems like you might be able to pick a skill."

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"How do I do that?" I asked.

He told me to concentrate on the Free Skill Point that was available, so I did. A blue box popped up.

ue box.

After I told Hugh about the message, he said, "That's interesting. Sounds like the system is going to unlock skills based on which attribute you choose."

"Okay. One of the main reasons I'm doing this is to increase my intelligence, so I'll do that." It struck me that the driving forces behind my original decision, doing better in school and helping him, was rapidly being joined by wanting to find out where all this would lead.

"Uh..."

"What the problem?" I asked, holding off on distributing the point.

"I thought the plan was to test out how much difference an increase actually makes. I mean, I'd give that lazy author a lot more slack if he at least made some effort to quantify things after the fact."

I really just wanted to get on with it, but he made a good point. Knowing how much my intelligence increased would give me some idea of how many more levels I needed. "Fine. How are we going to measure it?"

After booting up my laptop and doing some research, we found a bunch of sites online that tested IQ. Hugh suggested that I take three of them and average the result, so he ended up spending the next hour and a half reading on his phone while I did just that.

105. Just slightly above the dead middle. Honestly, that was better than I was expecting.

Hugh, thankfully, respected my privacy enough not to ask my actual score; he was just interested in the difference.

Increasing the mental attribute was done similar to how I'd tried to increase my skill. I focused on the free point and then concentrated on making it increase my MEN stat. I didn't feel like anything changed, but, when I pulled up my status screen again, the free point was gone and MEN was at 1.

Okay. Back to testing.

An hour and a half later...

"Twelve IQ points." I felt pretty good about that. I went from just a little ahead of middle of the pack to officially "above average or bright." And I'd been able to tell the difference in taking the tests. They'd been noticeably easier. Hugh and I agreed, however, that some of that increase was probably due to just me being more experienced in taking the tests, but, still, it was reasonable to conclude that the better part of ten points had to be directly because of the stat increase.

With that accomplished, I immediately checked out my choice of skills.

x.

Well, that wasn't much of a choice.

"Are you disappointed?" Hugh asked.

"You know, not really." According to my recent research, IQ is a measure of reasoning ability, which would help a ton with my coursework, but the other element to performing well in academics is the simple ability to memorize data and regurgitate it on tests. "I think that, unless other options were just extraordinary, this skill would have been high on my list of ones to choose."

I couldn't wait to find out what I'd get when I reached Level 3 ... until I remembered that the things I was going to have to do to gain that experience were likely to be even more embarrassing and, apparently, maybe arousing. I so didn't know if I was ready for that.

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