Chapter 49: Daily Inconveniences
Max was quite satisfied with how the last four days had gone.
Ever since moving into the laboratory, most of his time had been spent standing over a cauldron, refining his technique one batch after another.
The results were impossible to ignore.
When he’d brewed his first batch, he’d managed to produce eight Minor Healing Potions from the allotted herbs.
Today?
That same amount of ingredients yielded ten, the quality hadn’t changed and they were still consistently B+. But Max wasn’t disappointed. If anything, he considered it progress.
Every extra bottle meant less medicinal essence wasted during extraction, better mana control throughout the brewing process, and more efficient use of every ingredient.
For now, Zerena had decided there was no point rushing into more advanced formulas.
Instead, she had him brew nothing but Minor Healing Potions over and over again.
Her reasoning was simple.
Master the fundamentals first.
Only then move on.
That meant practicing the things beginners usually struggled with—maintaining perfectly stable temperatures, controlling rune arrays for hours without interruption, managing mana flow with greater precision, and minimizing every tiny loss of medicinal essence during brewing.
Max couldn’t really argue with that logic.
The improvements were already showing.
His potion quality remained exactly the same, but each batch now produced more bottles than before.
By the time Zerena returned from the military camp, the smile on her face was impossible to miss.
Business had gone well, very well.
Selling today’s batch had earned them nearly four times what they’d spent on the herbs.
To Zerena, that wasn’t just profit.
It was validation.
"I bought duck," she announced cheerfully as she stepped inside, setting a paper bag onto the dining table with far more care than she’d shown the expensive potion bottles earlier.
Max barely spared the food a glance. His attention had already wandered elsewhere. As Zerena slipped off her shoes and bent slightly to place her bag beside the door, his eyes immediately locked onto her.
Then, with the sort of impeccable timing his body had become alarmingly consistent at demonstrating...
He got hard.
Honestly, his lower half had become something of an overachiever lately. Most people needed physical contact. Max apparently required little more than the vague possibility that physical contact might happen sometime within the next few minutes.
The last four days were largely to blame. Ever since moving into the laboratory, Zerena had become... surprisingly generous.
The system tasks had gradually stretched longer and longer, and somewhere along the way she’d stopped objecting whenever his hands wandered across most of her body.
At this point, he didn’t even need to ask anymore. As long as he stayed within the ever-growing list of approved territory, Zerena mostly ignored him. There were only two places that remained under strict military protection.
Her face.
And everything hidden beneath her panties.
Those borders, unlike the others, remained very firmly closed.
For now.
Max, naturally, considered that less of a permanent restriction and more of a long-term progression tree.
Her face was the only exception, and even that was mostly limited to kissing. Zerena still kept fairly strict boundaries there.
Everything else, however...
As long as it stayed within the system’s current requirements, she had more or less stopped arguing.
By now, Max could touch most of her body whenever he wanted during their daily sessions, and Zerena usually treated it with the same enthusiasm people reserved for filling out tax forms.
All things considered, life was going surprisingly well.
A proper laboratory, a steadily growing potion business.
A beautiful mature woman who reluctantly tolerated an increasingly unreasonable amount of physical contact.
A few months ago, his previous-life self would’ve dismissed that entire sentence as the plot summary of an impossibly unrealistic wish-fulfillment novel.
Yet somehow, it had become his daily routine. Better still, things only seemed to be improving. No new system tasks had appeared over the last few days.
Still, Max wasn’t particularly worried.
After everything that had happened recently, he had become fairly confident that if the system eventually assigned the masturbation task...
Zerena would grumble, sigh dramatically, complain about his ridiculous system—
and then reluctantly add it to tomorrow’s schedule anyway.
[Forbidden Act: Corrupt the Dignified]
[Target: Zerena Falkner]
[Description : Make the target masterbate and orgasm infront of you.]
[Reward : 200FP each time she orgasms]
[Time Limit : 10 Days]
[Remaining Time : 6 Days]
The reward itself wasn’t particularly impressive.
Normally, Max probably would’ve complained.
This time, however...
The task could be repeated.
For six whole days.
And thanks to Zerena’s relationship with him, the reward was currently benefiting from a 2× multiplier.
Which meant that by the time the task finally expired...
His penis was probably going to weigh enough to qualify as checked luggage.
Hopefully the rest of him would keep up.
Otherwise, future generations of historians might end up documenting him as the world’s first mage defeated by basic anatomy.
"They were asking for more potions," Zerena said as she walked over and sat beside him on the bed.
Without the slightest hesitation, Max moved behind her.
His hands settled naturally onto her shoulders, giving them a firm squeeze as he started massaging them.
By now, neither of them treated little things like this as unusual anymore.
"They said they’ll give us another recipe," Zerena continued, leaning back slightly as though she’d already grown accustomed to him hovering behind her. "And a few extra rewards if we can sell around a hundred bottles within the next seven days..."
"That’s a lot..." Max said thoughtfully. "But we’ve got seven days. We just need to spend a little longer on the system tasks each day, and we should be able to manage it."
As he spoke, his hands slowly drifted down from her shoulders.
Without even thinking about it anymore, they settled where they almost always seemed to end up these days.
He cupped her breasts, lifting them slightly as if absentmindedly judging their weight for absolutely no practical reason whatsoever.
"But there haven’t been any new tasks," Max continued, gently kneading them as he frowned in thought. "It’s just been the same ones repeating over and over again."
The system almost seemed determined to rewrite Zerena’s sense of normal.
Every day, it pushed the same absurd tasks again and again, as though patiently waiting for the point where her mind finally stopped asking,
’...What in the world am I doing?’
And instead quietly filed the entire experience away under something far less dramatic.
Daily Inconveniences.
Or perhaps...
Things I Apparently Have to Put Up With Now.
Little by little, it was chipping away at her resistance, making each new session feel just a bit less shocking than the last.