A New Kind Of Grind

"Roxy!"

"I'll live," I said weakly. "Haruna, I hate to impose, but my glasses are broken, and I'm nearsighted. I don't suppose you can-"

"Of course," Haruna said firmly, accepting the pieces of metal and acrylic from me. They glowed blue in her hands, and then, gently, she set my once-again-whole glasses on my face. "There."

"Thanks," I said. "What do I owe you?"

"Your word that you will stop picking fights," Haruna said firmly.

"I don't suppose I can bargain you down to fifty gold, can I?" I asked. "As much as I didn't enjoy the taste of cobblestones and my own blood, I do have to note that I got enough XP from those guys that I'm just about knocking on Level 2's door. If I get jumped enough, I won't need to be carried through any delves to hit Level 5 and unlock Mystic Artificer."

"Akane, your roommate's optimism is stunning," Veronica said dryly, before turning to face me. "The amount of XP necessary to advance in level increases by a factor of ten with each level; it would take ten muggings like today's for you to reach Level 3, and something tells me you are unlikely to survive that particular grind, let alone the hundred to reach Level 4, and the thousand to reach Level 5."

Veronica had, of course, escorted me home, and now that I had my glasses on, I could tell what the hell she looked like.

From the neck down, she was in armor made from steel plates, which made it overall a bit tricky to get any real read on her figure and how she was built. Above the neck, however, she wasn't wearing her helmet, and it was plain for all to see that she was...

Well, the facial structure was classically beautiful, but her skin was unnaturally, deathly pale, matching perfectly with her bone-white hair. And in a tone that made it clear to me that oculocutaneous albinism wasn't totally to blame for this, her irises gleamed a bright cherry red.

"Roxy, please don't be so cavalier about your life," Akane pleaded. "You're a Wizard, not a Fighter, and you are not equipped to get stabbed and be fine with it."

"Indeed you are not," Veronica added. "My healing was thorough, but there's only so much I can do. You'll need to rest for a few days and not do anything strenuous, if you don't want the stomach wound opening back up."

"Alright, alright," I said. "I made a bad call and got stabbed, and now I'm confined to bedrest for a few days. I get it."

"I take it she won't be any shape to milk the cowgirls?" Usagi asked.

"Dad!" Akane exclaimed.

"She's got a point," I said. "The cowgirls do have to get milked, one way or another. It's pretty important to know if I can or can't keep doing that."

"Probably not?" Veronica guessed. "If I'm being entirely honest, despite being Akane's friend and study partner, I don't actually know what milking a cowgirl entails, but... handling livestock is probably a bad idea in your condition."

"Very well," Usagi said, nodding and turning around, walking towards the cowgirl room to, presumably, start milking them.

"I guess I'm gonna spend a few days living on my phone," I said with a shrug. "Oh, that reminds me, through a few layers of logical leaps, that I finally have the half on completion for that commission."

"I'll go get it from Usagi," Haruna said. "Akane, you help her to her room."

"Is now really the time to be worrying about paying for commissions?" Veronica asked.

"One, we aren't exactly doing anything urgent right now," I said, before wincing. "Ow, it still hurts to walk. Mn. Two, what I commissioned was some enchanted clothing that would boost my Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina, and I can't help but feel like that last bit is going to be very helpful in recovering from serious injuries."

"Ahhhh," Veronica said, nodding. "That... may be useful, yes."

"For a total of four gold, it goddamn better be."

---

Funnily enough, despite being a LitRPG protagonist- well, the protagonist of my own life, at least- who's always on that grind, I took to laying in bed and dicking around on my phone all day with unsurprising grace. After all, I wasn't "always on that grind" because I was a type-A go-getter overachiever who was determined to get absolutely everything in the world. No, I was "always on that grind" because I had two jobs, only one of which actually paid any money, and thus needed to be "always on that grind" so I could survive.

And as for the grind of self-improvement, half of that was thinking magic was cool and being able to learn more about it and get my practice in while hanging out with a hot chick whose personality I generally vibed with, and the other half was my desire to become a delver specifically so that I could delve up a small fortune and retire early, and stop having a real job.

Right now, though, I could safely ignore all that. Lay in bed for a few days, then back to my routine of milking cowgirls and lifting crates, and throw in some fucking of the cowgirls, and I'd max out my stats in a month or so.

I hummed pleasantly. Fucking cowgirls was something I very much looked forward to. Between that and the easy availability of porn on Dorn's nascent internet- I wondered, briefly, if Akane knew this busty elf who claimed to be a Guild member living in Dornhelm, and if so, whether she could introduce me- I was starting to get pretty horny, which...

"Ow, fuck," I hissed, abandoning my desire to sit up.

I absolutely would not be humping any pillows right now, let alone a cowgirl. I might be able to manage jerking off, like actually using my hand to bring myself to orgasm, but...

...well, I've never successfully managed that when I was of sound body, and right now I'm not even that, so...

Someone knocked on my bedroom door, and I sighed.

"Roxy?" Akane called through the door. "I've got dinner for you. Can I come in?"

"Plea-" I coughed and winced; I'd been taught how to project my voice from my diaphragm, and that just was not happening right now, what with having been stabbed in the belly. "[Magic Trick]," I cast instead, well aware afterwards that there was a more specialized telekinesis spell that I knew and could have cast, and simply hadn't because I didn't know it that well, and [Magic Trick] would still work.

The door opened, and Akane walked in with a bowl of thick, creamy vegetable stew, and wearing her house robe as she usually did at home. As someone who knew what Japan was, I was reasonably confident that what she was wearing was some sort of kimono, but I... wait. She knew I was from another world. That particular cat was out of the bag already. 

"Hey Akane," I said, examining the pattern on her robe- sky blue as a ground color, with white clouds seemingly painted or printed on. "The robe you're wearing- that's a kimono, right?"

"Yukata, actually," Akane said, shutting the door as she walked into my room, before grabbing the desk chair and moving it so she could sit near me. "I'm surprised you know what either of those are, though."

"Where I'm from, there was a nation called Japan- although in their language it was pronounced nihon- whose people looked a lot like you and your parents, and whose culture and language seem pretty comparable, too," I said. "Except for the part where you, specifically, eat like a pound of butter every day. Japanese people were generally lactose intolerant, and doing that would probably make them shit themselves to death."

Akane snorted. "It's more like a half pound, but I get your point. Well... Interesting. Are there any other nations from your home world that're similar to the ones here?"

"Well, Dorn is probably pretty similar to England, given that I'm not under the effects of a translation spell and I still seem to speak fluent Dornish," I said. "Or maybe Dorn is more like America... I have no clue what Dornish history is like. Is there some far-off motherland that Dorn is a former colony of?"

"Yeah, actually," Akane said. "Vega."

"Huh," I mused. "Anyhow... What's your homeland like here?"

"No clue, I've never been," Akane said with a shrug. "My mom left the Sunset Kingdom when she was twenty six, and I'm pretty sure she's not allowed back there."

"Ooooh?"

"So... she was a Level 3 Rancher, and her family was sworn to the service of a minor member of the local nobility- a knight, basically."

"Samurai?"

"That's the word for it in our language, yeah, but you're probably wrong about what it is. Anyway, Mom's job was to manage the flock of bunnygirls that the noble kept as a status symbol, and breed them very carefully for conformance with local beauty standards. Well, Mom's older sister was a soldier, and went on a delve with the noble, and came back with a Familiar Slot Unlock for Mom. See, normally, you don't get to take a real Familiar until you reach Level 5, but with the Slot Unlock, you could get the slot early."

"I'm beginning to see the shape of things," I said. "Haruna then took the most beautiful bunnygirl in the flock for her Familiar, and fled to avoid retribution from the terrible insult to her lord?"

"Hell no," Akane said. "Mom's own beauty standards were pretty different from Sunset standards, and Dad was an off-standard bunnygirl she'd been secretly keeping as a personal pet, who should've just been culled and disposed of. Still, even though Dad was a bunnygirl that the lord didn't want, she still didn't consider any of the bunnygirls to be Mom's property, so it was still theft. Mom knew this, though, so she popped some Class Unlocks- pretty cheap and common, but still not nothing for a peasant- and hopped on a merchant ship, doing maintenance work to pay for her passage.

"By the time she landed in Dornhelm, she was a Level 2 Blacksmith, and four months pregnant with me. Dad, meanwhile, was a Level 2 Mystic Artificer, and twenty three years ago, that was still enough to get some good work, if you knew what you were doing. These days, though, things are starting to dry up. Which is, uh... well, it's part of why I'm trying to become a Delver."

"Fair enough," I said, nodding. "Sunset Kingdom, eh?"

"I take it you know what nihon means?" Akane asked.

"It means Japan was to the east of its local great power, whereas your homeland was to the west," I said. "Hrm... So, is 'Sunsetter' the accepted adjective?"

"It's an accepted adjective, yeah," Akane said, nodding. "There're a few other variants, but nobody's going to think you're weird for saying 'Sunsetter culture' instead of 'Sunset culture.'"

"Makes sense," I said, before my stomach growled. "Oh right, food."

"You do need that to live, yeah," Akane agreed.

"I can't sit up on my own," I admitted. "Can you..."

"Of course!" Akane said, offering me a spoonful of stew.

"...I was going to ask for help sitting up," I said. "Mmph. Maybe a wedge-shaped pillow from your mom, if she's willing to take another commission?"

"Ahhhhh. Okay, that's... probably a good idea. Hold on..."

She set the spoon in the bowl, then the bowl on my desk, before helping me upright and scooting me back in bed to rest my back against the wall.

"Here," Akane said, handing me the bowl. "I'll go ask Mom about the pillow now, if you want?"

"Thank you," I said, nodding.

She left the room, and I turned my attention to the stew.

I'd been this close to asking Akane for help with the fact I wasn't well enough to masturbate.