SMASH or PASS

Couple of minutes later...

"Of course, I’m joking~ but you should be more careful about those stuff regardless~" I couldn’t help but remember her slight chuckle.

She might be right... Maybe I need to tune it down a bit—

Pfft. Nah. There’s absolutely no way this could go wrong.

...Probably.

Week 2 total encounters: 21.

Week 3 total encounters: 38.

Total SP: roughly 500.

The academy was the most efficient SP generation environment I’d found. Every encounter was free. Every woman came to me. The farm took three days for 70 SP. The academy generated seven times that in three weeks of encounters where the women provided everything except me.

I wasn’t SMASHing any of them. The noble women were too expensive in SP and too connected. One vanishing noble daughter meant an investigation. The common women weren’t worth acquisition cost when passive contact bonuses generated income without removing anyone. Nobody disappeared. Nobody was collected.

I was farming. Pure farming. No harvesting.

...Yet.

◇◇◇

Dorian stopped talking to me in week three.

We were assigned sparring pairs in Combat class. The professor paired me with Dorian.

"I respectfully request a different partner."

"Denied. Pairs are random."

He walked to the mat. His eyes were flat and cold as he looked at me.

"You’ve turned this institution into your personal brothel." He spoke quietly. Nobody else heard. "The Lysander family sent me here to learn. Instead, I watch a commoner collect women between lectures."

"Nobody’s forcing anyone. They come to me."

"That makes it worse." His mana projection slammed into the practice target. Stone cracked. "You’re exploiting biological reality. 99:1 means desperation. You’re profiting from it."

"Interesting moral stance from someone whose family has breeding contracts with three noble houses."

His jaw tightened. The aristocratic mask held. Barely. Underneath the composure, something was building. Not just disdain. Something hotter. Something that would eventually need an exit.

"You know what my family told me when I enrolled?" he said, his voice still quiet. "They told me to represent the Lysander name with dignity. To form appropriate connections. To demonstrate the superiority of noble training." He looked at the cracked target. "Instead, I’m sharing a lecture hall with a commoner who’s turned the academy’s female population into a subscription service."

"I didn’t design the ratio."

"You’re exploiting it. The ratio creates scarcity. Scarcity creates desperation. Desperation creates opportunity. And you’re harvesting every ounce of opportunity this environment offers." He picked up his bag. "That’s not intelligence. That’s parasitism."

His next projection cracked the target further. The instructor called for moderated output.

Again, FUCK that guy.

◇◇◇

Cassius found me after class.

"You know what they’re calling you."

"I’ve heard."

"’The School Whore.’ That’s the polite version." He rubbed his neck. "The noble families are filing complaints. Their daughters are supposed to be securing alliances, not getting fucked in their study rooms."

"Their daughters are adults making choices." I didn’t really give a shit about that part. But whatever support my argument I guess.

"Their daughters are investments. The families see depreciated value." He sighed. "The ethics committee has been receiving complaints. They’ll summon you."

"Let them."

What can they do...?

...A lot.

Alright, this may be getting a little bad.

Cassius sat with me during lunch the following day. He’d stopped using the escape route map. There was no point. The women weren’t chasing him anymore.

They were chasing me.

"Can I ask you something personal?"

"Sure."

"Do you enjoy any of this? The women. The encounters. The schedule."

I considered the question. "Some of them." All of them.

"Which ones?"

"The ones who want to talk. The alchemy prodigy who argues about reagent ratios. Amelie from the tea house who’s actually genuine. The fishing village woman who told me about her hometown." I paused. "The ones who are people instead of appointments."

"And the rest?"

"The rest are math." Hot math.

He looked at me for a long time. "That’s the saddest thing anyone has ever said to me about sex."

"It’s not sad. It’s accurate." Maybe? I don’t really give a shit. I just wanted to preserve my connection to him. He has been a helpful idiot so far.

"Those aren’t mutually exclusive." He stood. "For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a bad person. I think you’re a person who found a system that rewards bad behavior and you’re too smart to ignore the rewards." He picked up his tray. "That’s worse than being bad. Bad people don’t know better. You do."

He walked away. I watched him go.

"Oh really? Fuck you too." I said to the empty room.

Pixia, from my collar: "He’s not wrong."

"I know."

"Does that change anything?"

"Nope."

"Noted~"

◇◇◇

Week 4. I’d lost count of individual encounters. The system hadn’t.

The notification appeared during History of the Covenant.

Professor Valen was discussing the Ashenmere trade embargo.

[MILESTONE ACHIEVED]

[Host has engaged in physical contact with 100+ unique female targets.]

[Calculating reward...]

One hundred women.

In four weeks.

At an educational institution I’d enrolled in to learn mana theory and combat fundamentals. The system didn’t comment on the irony. The system didn’t comment on anything. It processed data and dispensed rewards with the mechanical indifference of a vending machine that didn’t care what you fed it as long as the coin was correct.

I checked the notification details. The milestone was "physical contact with 100+ unique female targets." I wondered if it was not sexual contact specifically. But physical contact. Extended physical proximity sufficient to register as a breeding-class interaction. The system’s definition of "contact" was broader than the academy’s definition, and significantly broader than what the ethics committee would consider "interaction."

Probably not. Again, all that system cared about is me fucking people.

The title itself was simple:

[TITLE UNLOCKED: WOMEN SLAYER]

[Females from the race [Human] are always [+50%] attracted to you. As a result, they will generally be much more friendly and helpful towards you.]

"...!!?"

Plus fifty percent. Attraction. All human women. Everywhere. Permanently.

"Pixia."

She peeked from my collar. "The shiny thing just pulsed. Something changed."

"Title. ’Women Slayer.’ Plus 50% human female attraction. Permanent."

She cycled through expressions. Confusion. Understanding. Disbelief.

"Of course. That fucking parasite rewards sleeping with women by making it EASIER to sleep with MORE women. A feedback loop." She went quiet. "I must tell you again that the civilizations that used tools with this design didn’t survive the consequences. That’s not a metaphor. They literally didn’t survive."

"Is that a warning?"

"It’s a historical observation. Do with it what you want."

The +50% hit in real time. Not gradually. Not in stages. Immediately. Like someone had turned a dial and every woman in the room recalibrated simultaneously.

Professor Valen, mid-sentence about the Ashenmere trade embargo, lost her train of thought. She looked at me. Blinked. Adjusted her spectacles. Continued lecturing. Her eyes drifted back twice in the next minute. She caught herself the second time and forcibly redirected her gaze to her notes.

The women in the lecture hall shifted. Some leaned forward in their seats. Some crossed their legs. Some did both. The movement was subtle but visible if you knew what to look for: two hundred bodies adjusting their orientation toward a single point. The way sunflowers track light without deciding to.

"Huh..."

Whatever make getting SP easier I guess.

However, why do I have a bad feeling about this...

No. It’s a power. I should use it.

I cannot be weak.

◇◇◇

Pixia and I experimented with the title effects a little.

It wasn’t mind control.

It wasn’t a compulsion either.

It was attraction, amplified. The natural baseline, boosted by half. Every woman who’d found me slightly interesting now found me noticeably interesting.

Every woman who was already interested was now struggling with the intensity. The ones who’d been actively pursuing me looked like they were fighting the urge to stand up mid-lecture and cross the room to fuck me.

The effect wasn’t limited to the academy. Walking home that evening, I passed Rose’s bakery. She was in the window arranging bread. She saw me through the glass and dropped a loaf on the floor. Rose, who’d been selling me bread for two months with cheerful efficiency, DROPPED something. She picked it up, brushed it off, and waved at me through the glass. Her wave had more energy than any wave she’d ever given me. More intention.

At the guild, Yenna processed my quest credit form at window three. Professional as always. But her tail wagged while she stamped the form. She called me "No-no~" instead of "Noel" for the first time since I’d registered. Which was kind of weird...

"Your quest credits are accumulating nicely," she said. "You’ll hit Iron rank within two months at this pace." She slid the form back. "Is there anything else you need?"

"That’s all."

"Are you sure? I have some higher-tier postings that might interest you. I could walk you through them. Personally." She leaned forward slightly. "After my shift."

Yenna had never offered personal assistance. The +50% was rewriting social physics across the entire fucking city.