Castaway: Baek Jaeseong

Coming back to reality after so long, I had a mountain of things to take care of. While I'm away in another worldline, time in the real world doesn't move. For me, that is an extremely convenient feature.

Most of what needed doing was administrative work that came with being party leader. Party leaders and clan leaders get buried in tedious paperwork, because the Dungeon Association demands an absurd number of reports from them.

Even if you don't clear a single dungeon, you still have to file regular status reports on the party—and it's more of a chore than the diary homework they used to dump on us over elementary school summer break. You even have to write meticulously about every party member's health. That's how the Association keeps its Dungeon Hunters on a leash.

After I finished the backlog, I checked what this last trip had actually earned me. I'd had a tremendous amount of sex in Soul Community, so I was expecting a considerable jump in my stats.

Strength had broken into the mid-three-hundreds, and Agility was knocking on the door of three hundred. Intelligence sat in the two-hundreds; Luck was still stuck in the mid-one-hundreds.

Overall, the numbers had climbed hard. And the higher your stats go, the more each additional point starts to shine. Below 100, raising a stat by 1 only costs a single bonus point. Cross 100, and it suddenly demands 10.

I was sitting on roughly 600 bonus points. That meant I could raise a stat by 58.

Dump it into Strength? Agility or Intelligence wouldn't be bad either… Luck's a weird one, though. Raising it never really feels like anything changes.

Things like Strength and Agility, where you feel the difference immediately, are the satisfying ones to invest in.

After turning it over for a while, I decided to sit on the bonus points for now. I could always dump them ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the instant I actually needed them, so there was no reason to agonize over it here. If I ever found myself empty-handed in a moment that mattered, I'd be beating the floor in regret.

Credits held: over 90,000. Just looking at the number was reassuring. Credits were handy for unlocking abilities or picking up new skills, and you could buy items with them besides. Some items even burned Credits to activate. For me, Credits were as good as cash in a wallet.

Now that I know there are items that eat Credits to fire, I should be thrifty with these too. Problem is, Credits only come in from things like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠quests and achievements, so they feel hard to stockpile. Isn't there some other way to earn them?

If I could farm Credits steadily, I'd feel a lot less precious about spending them. Unfortunately, I didn't have any such method at the moment.

Next I checked the inventory. The item coupons I'd gotten as quest rewards jumped out at me: five C-Rank Item Coupons and five B-Rank Item Coupons. A C-Rank coupon went for 1,000 Credits apiece.

I used all the C-Rank coupons first. A C-Rank coupon spat out a random item anywhere from D-Rank to B-Rank.

Two D-Rank items, two C-Rank, and one B-Rank. Perfectly respectable rolls. The B-Rank Watching Eye was an item I already used constantly.

Both D-Rank drops were tools for anal sex: an enema set and a set of anal plugs. I needed both of them.

The plugs had an auto-clean function, which meant you could go straight to anal without an enema first. That was, without exaggeration, a revolutionary item.

Anal is great. The annoying part is the prep. This thing wiped that drawback clean off the board.

Not that the enema set in front of it was useless. Enema play, even with no anal on the agenda, was a magnificent game all by itself. Watching a woman's face flood with humiliation, I could barely restrain the urge to photograph it and keep it forever.

So I needed both.

The C-Rank items were a little stranger. What caught my eye was the one with the overlong name: Valud Merchant Union Service Application. Its effect was unusual—put simply, it was an internet shopping mall. The line that really mattered, though, was the last one in the description.

The Valud Merchant Union's service can cross worldlines, but in that case an additional fee is charged in Credits.

Use this, and I could buy goods across worldlines. Meaning I could purchase real-world products in Solari World. In bulk. The reverse would work too, of course.

This was an item that could instantly haul the Walker Merchant Guild up a whole tier. It was almost bizarre that something like this was only C-Rank. It did have the drawback of burning actual cash, but even accounting for that, it was still tremendous. Next time I went to Solari World, I was definitely putting it to work.

The other C-Rank item, Happy Candy, was harder to gauge from the text alone. It said the pleasure was on the level of narcotics, but I'd never done drugs, so that didn't tell me much.

The candies came in a small bag, maybe twenty of them. Ordinary plastic wrapping. From the look of it, they could have been the cheap candy a stationery shop sells for pocket change. I peeled the wrapper off one and put it in my mouth.

"!?"

A bright tropical-fruit aroma bloomed through my mouth. Mango, starfruit, guava, pineapple—every crisp, sweet scent I loved seized my tongue and my nose at once.

Along with the fragrance came a pounding in my chest. My heart hammered. Like a teenage boy falling in love for the first time, blood raced through every inch of me. At the same time a warm, snug fullness settled over my whole body, and I was seized by the urge to sink into an armchair I could melt into.

I lay down on the bed. I didn't do a thing—just folded my hands over my stomach and closed my eyes. I could almost hear a stream running through a clear ravine deep in the mountains. An oriole sang along with the water.

The scent at the tip of my nose shifted from sweet tropical fruit to pine, thick with that deep woodland green. A cool breeze seemed to brush my skin.

I kept my eyes shut and thought about nothing. There was nothing I needed to think about. I just closed my eyes and let the aftertaste carry me.

"What are you doing lying in bed in the middle of the day?"

Sujin's voice. I cracked an eye and glanced sideways, and there she was, holding a neatly folded stack of my underwear.

She tucked them into the dresser drawer, one pile at a time, then lay down beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world. Her scent smelled impossibly sweet.

I caught her face and kissed her. Sujin didn't refuse me at all.

"You look like you're on drugs."

She laid that sharp observation out with no filter whatsoever. Without a word, I handed her a candy. She took it and tilted her head.

"What's with the candy?"

"Try it."

That was all I said. Sujin didn't bother with any further questions. She peeled the wrapper and put it in her mouth.

The round candy hit her tongue, and her brow twitched hard. I could see her pupils spinning. She sank into the candy's sweet pleasure the same way I had a moment before. Her body ran hotter than usual—exactly the way it did during sex.

"What is this? Don't tell me it's drugs?"

After riding that intense high for a while, Sujin finally managed to get the words out. I shook my head without speaking. The item text said it delivered narcotic-level pleasure. It did not say it was a narcotic.

At that, Sujin lunged in and threw her arms around me.

"I want it so bad right now."

Her words sent a spike of fear through me. It already felt this good. If we had sex on top of this, how much better would it get?

The thought brought fear and curiosity in the same breath. Sujin and I locked eyes. I could feel our thoughts click into the same place. Neither of us waited for the other. We kissed.

"Just how many times did you even do it to be passed out for half a day? I thought a flood had hit the bed."

Lina looked up at me with a thoroughly unimpressed expression. Beside me, Sujin twisted a lock of hair with an embarrassed look on her face. I answered without a shred of shame.

"We only did it once. That once just felt way too good."

Sujin and I had only had sex a single time. By my standards, one round of sex meant one creampie. The instant I came inside her, I blacked out.

That was how good it was. Honestly, I thought I was coming inside an angel. The orgasm felt like it was sucking my soul out through my cock—in the best possible way.

"Huh? Once? Did you eat something weird?"

Lina eyed me with open suspicion.

I usually came at least five times, minimum. If I finished fewer than that, it was because I was doing several girls at once, or because we were cutting it short for time.

"I'll give you some later. You'll love it to death."

"Me too! Me too!"

Jisu plastered herself against my side and begged. I groped her ass as I told her I would.

"I've got something to tell you. A company called Hangang Interiors sent us a promotional packet. They're asking if we'd like to add a mini training hall onto the house. What do you think?"

Yeonji came over with a thin booklet in her hand. Across the cover, in red lettering, it read:

I took the booklet from her. First I'd heard of the company.

"Remodeling and interior specialists. Oh—they're a clan-house company."

"They seem to have a name in the industry. That's probably why they sent us the ad."

I flipped through the pages. It was packed with copy about luxurious interiors. Aimed at rich Dungeon Hunters, the catalog was stuffed with lavish, high-end products—though a few of them actually looked practical. One of those was the training-hall expansion.

"So they convert the basement into a training hall."

"You couldn't do serious training in it, but as a mini hall it seems decent. The reviews are pretty good."

Yeonji filled me in on what she'd dug up. Full ability work still meant renting a professional facility, but for light training it apparently didn't fall short. Parties and clans that lived and died on coordination, in particular, got a lot of mileage out of one.

The price was steep, but ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not bad. If it meant stacking our skills higher, that kind of investment didn't sting.

"Alright. Let's put in for it. We'll have to clear out of the rooms while they expand the place, though, right?"

"It's basement work, so we don't necessarily have to move out. But the noise is going to be brutal, so there's no real reason to stay home either. The job takes about a month—let's just book a hotel. Hotel vacation sound good?"

"Let's. While we're at it, why don't we actually go somewhere for a few days?"

The moment I floated it, the other women all cheered in agreement.

"That's a good idea. Wouldn't hurt to blow off some stress."

"A proper rest is good for the body. Let's go to the ocean."

Even Lina, our cool beauty, lit up at the word trip.

"I love the ocean too! Why don't we even charter a boat and go fishing?"

Jisu asked, beaming.

"You know how to fish, Jisu?"

"Nope! I don't know the first thing about it! It just looked fun on YouTube!"

And just like that, our party's trip was decided.

Picking the destination took a little more arguing. Everyone agreed on the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ocean; after that, the votes split. Sujin wanted somewhere with a scenic beach. Yeonji wanted somewhere quiet, with as few people as possible. Jisu wanted a place where she could actually fish.

I genuinely did not care where we went. So I split the difference: a spot where you could swim and fish, with few people, and a well-reviewed pension. The place that fit was an island in the South Sea.

"It's called Dangsado Island. It's small, but it's got a beach, and on the opposite side there's a spot where you can fish. The pension looks pretty solid. Good review scores."

Sujin, with that search-engine brain of hers, had found a destination everyone could live with. Nobody objected. The women hummed under their breath as they started packing.

I made my own preparations as well. I bought new swimsuits for my women. Naturally, the swimsuits I bought weren't meant to be worn. They were meant to be taken off.