I Will Never Fall
What is favorability, exactly?
Affection, lust, admiration, friendship, goodwill, trust, respect. Possessiveness, obsession, the hunger to own someone, the hunger to conquer them. The definitions pile up, but they all amount to the same thing: the total sum of how much another person likes you.
My ability, Your Heart Is My Strength, runs on that sum. It takes other people's feelings and forges them into power. You could call it the power to walk all over anyone who likes me.
When I put it that way, I sound like a complete piece of trash...
And if you had a power like that — and you could see their favorability staring back at you — what would be the most profitable way to use it?
Simple. Repeat whatever they like until the numbers climb.
If they want affection, tell them you love them. If they want you all to themselves, tell them they're the only one. If they want submission, take a knee now and then.
Put crudely: you seduce them.
The problem is that I can't actually do everything that would raise their favorability.
Sex slave. Training. Imprisonment. Mind control. Body modification. Enthrallment. Monsterization.
How the hell am I supposed to go along with any of that?
So I refuse the dangerous demands and fill the meter some other way.
The youngest Sword Star, known to the world as the "super high-school-level Sword Star." A monster who single-handedly beheaded a fire giant that emerged from a massive gate, and who doesn't take so much as a scratch even when dozens of armed High-ranking Awakened come at her all at once.
Na Yuni looked down at the tracker she'd locked around my wrist and asked,
"Unni, wasn't today supposed to be the day we become a couple? You promised last week."
You lunatic. Is that even a real question?
If you take my virginity you'll kill me for not being a virgin anymore. It's all right there on the status window.
And high school girls are a hard no. That gets censored...!
"I've thought about it, and I don't think I can."
Na Yuni's expression went rigid.
Na Yuni's Trust has decreased by 25,200.
Current Advantage: +474,800
Danger.
One refusal, and more than twenty thousand points of my safety margin went up in smoke. If I keep pushing her away, all the favorability and combat power I nearly killed myself building up will flip. She'll be stronger than me.
"Don't worry. You're the only one for me, Yuni. So just wait a little longer. The only things standing between us are the law and time, right?"
Na Yuni's Affection has increased by 3,200.
Na Yuni's Control Desire has increased by 15,700.
Why did the control desire go up more?
And this lunatic wasn't even the only one...
"Why do you refuse tentacle-orgy non-virgin NTR pure love? There is nothing in this world that grants greater pleasure."
Get out.
"I want to get pregnant with your child."
I'm a woman. You're a woman.
So why are you talking about body modification plans like that's not a problem at all?
"Become my lunchbox and thrall. I promise you eternal life and infinite happiness. In return, I shall grant you three hundred and sixty-five days of paid leave, holiday bonuses, and a ten percent performance bonus."
I almost went for it for a second there. No.
She's planning to eat me. Literally.
Think of it as "wait training" that I generously bestow upon these lunatics.
They'll just have to wait until I'm dead, though.
Couldn't I just soothe them, date like a normal person, and have an actual relationship?
I wanted that too.
If Absolute Corruption weren't stamped right onto my status window.
And if these lunatics weren't the strongest beings in this world.
I would've just gotten popular the normal way, lived up to people's expectations, and made a decent living.
So why is this happening to me?
Nobody's eating me out. Nobody's putting anything in.
Protect the polar bear at all costs.
I'm not becoming a mommy.
I'm not going lesbian.