Build-A-Harem- The Island Collection

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  “It isn’t laser?” I asked, finally looking at the gun and realizing it didn’t have any of the bells and whistles of the Captain’s.

  “Yes, because I’m going to give you somethin’ that valuable for a few hundred drachmae,” Seastrider replied sarcastically with a roll of her eyes before scooping the pistol off the bed and sticking it in my free hand, “but honestly, this should do you just fine.”

  I was somewhat disappointed that I hadn’t gotten some awesome space pirate memorabilia, but she had a point. It wasn’t like I was exactly fighting anyone on the island, and at that point I would’ve been surprised if I’d had to use it outside of a few practice shots.

  “Thanks,” I finally said, looking over the gun in my hand, “I’m glad we could do business.”

  “As am I,” Seastrider agreed surprisingly genuinely before heading over to her bridge and starting her walk back up onto the ship, “and I hope next time you have somethin’ a bit better to trade than a few sacks of meat.”

  “Aye,” I replied, letting loose an urge I’d unknowingly suppressed right up until that point, “might even convince you to join this little group o’ mine.”

  “Heh, aye, maybe,” Seastrider scoffed disbelievingly before dropping down onto the deck, “who knows? We might even end up sailin’ the high seas together, gatherin’ up folk for your ‘group’.”

  She still sounded somewhat sarcastic, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d actually been considering that or at the very least thinking about it.

  “See you around, Dax,” Paige called from the ship as the crew pulled the bridge back in, “hope you’re still here when we next find our way to your little harbor!”

  “Heh, don’t worry,” I shouted back as the ship started to turn, “I don’t think we’ll be goin’ anywhere any time soon!”

  I didn’t get a response to that, either because Paige was too busy roaring out orders to unfurl this and loose that or simply because she’d gotten a severe look from the Captain I didn’t know, but I was confident that she’d at least heard me and, as such, didn’t think I was ignoring her.

  What? I don’t like people thinking I don’t care about them, sue me.

  Anyway, before long the ship had pulled out of the waterway with a whole lot more speed than when it had come in and was back out to the open sea, leaving me to look at my new pile of things, including the gun and drachma that I had in my hands.

  In that moment I was feeling pretty powerful, which undoubtedly had something to do with the adrenaline coursing through my veins following the sex and, well, panic.

  Still though, there was something about having a gun and a bit of gold to my name that made me feel… free I suppose.

  It’s funny though, looking back at that it was nothing, almost literally compared to what would come later, but I was still as good as a noob and really didn’t know any better.

  I knew I wasn’t rich of course, I wasn’t an idiot.

  …Okay, so maybe I was a bit of an idiot, still though, I was having fun and that was all that mattered as far as I was concerned.

  Sex, money, and guns…

  I’m a much simpler man than I’d like to think.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Right…” I trailed off, turning my full attention to the gold pouch that had finally started to weigh on my arm somewhat, “What am I supposed to do with you?”

  “Could try putting it in a savings account,” Jesse joked as he came out of the jungle to my right, “you know, plan for your future.”

  “Very funny,” I replied sardonically, “seriously though, what do I do with it? It’s not like I have a safe or anything.”

  “Have you even tried scanning it?” Jesse half-heartedly chuckled, “Or did you need my okay to do so?”

  “For your information, I’ve been a bit… distracted.” I said before scanning the pouch and watching it disappear with a flash of gold sparks made me jump damn near ten feet, “What the Hell was that?”

  “I imagine that it has something to do with the fact that you just absorbed money into your arm,” Jesse replied, “probably just to make it clear to you that it ain’t like other stuff.”

  “I’ll say,” I said with a huff of amusement as I pulled up the screen, “three hundred drachmae… Is that any good?”

  “For a bunch of meat that you can spawn infinite amounts of?” Jesse asked mockingly, “Yeah, I think that’s pretty good.”

  “Fair enough,” I chuckled before going to work scanning the rest of the stuff, unlocking dozens of recipes as I did, “you reckon they’ll be back soon?”

  “Hard to say,” Jesse replied as I broke down the bed, “might wait for a specific event, might cruise on by twice a week. The world’s pretty organic.”

  “About that,” I said, turning to him with a mildly excited expression, “you said something about space before?”

  Jesse sighed at that and smiled, “I ain’t goin’ to give anything away, but yeah, space exists.”

  “Good to know,” I replied before turning to face the rough direction of the house, hiding the fact that I was kind of desperate for him to elaborate, “good to know…”

  “Don’t worry,” Jesse said, “I promise there’s a whole lot o’ world down here to explore before you go gallivantin’ up around the moon and such. Speakin’ of, I take it things went well with your new friend?”

  “Heh, you could say that,” I replied as I started my lazy walk towards the jungle, “how’d you know?”

  “Well, you’re not dead or crying about how they beat you and took all your stuff,” Jesse practically laughed before quickly catching up and walking beside me, “and you haven’t stopped smilin’ since I got here.”

  “Haven’t I?” I asked, acting like I was surprised, “I don’t know, guess I just had some fun.”

  “And what you’ve been doing with Fern and Cassie hasn’t been fun?” Jesse asked confusedly.

  “I’m not saying that,” I replied, “it was just that it was really kind of unexpected and… taboo, you know?”

  “Yeah, nothing gets my motor running quite like the threat of a horde of angry ‘merchants’ storming the island where I live and razing it to the ground.”

  “Oh shut up, you knew what I meant.” I scoffed.

  Jesse shrugged at that and sort of half-smiled, “I guess, but at the same time it was pretty damn risky. Ain’t just your ass on the line here.”

  “I know that, I do, but… well, it’s not like anyone was actively telling me that I shouldn’t do it, least of all you.”

  “Heh, you’ve got me there.” Jesse chuckled weakly, “Still though, probably should’ve played it a bit smarter than going, what, fifty feet from the ship?”

  “Weren’t a whole lot of places I could go.” I replied before having a realization, “Wait a second, were you watching me?”

  Jesse sort of froze up for second, then tilted his head from side-to-side, “Eh, so-so. I mean, I’ve usually got at least some idea of where you are for the sole purpose that I have to take care of your stupid ass.”

  “That’s a great way not to answer my question,” I lightheartedly jabbed, “anyway, let’s change the subject.”

  “To something that is less about accusing me of being a peeping Tom?” Jesse joked.

  “Obviously,” I chuckled, “ain’t like I want to think about you doing that anyway.”

  “Trust me, Dax, I’ve got a lot better things to do than watchin’ you awkwardly slappin’ your meat around like an apprentice butcher.”

  I didn’t wholly appreciate that assumption, but at the same time it made me confident that he hadn’t actually seen me ‘doing the do’.

  Say what you will about me being a bit less than confident and maybe just a bit whiny, especially at that point, but I’ve always been pretty alright at the horizontal rumba.

  “So, subject change,” Jesse practically blurted out, “what do you want to talk about? Anything specific?”

  “The money,” I rep
lied almost instantly, “I didn’t feel heaps comfortable talking about it in front of the others, but… why?”

  “Why what?”

  “The two currencies? I know you kind of… okay, you didn’t really so much as explain as forced me to make a choice, and I was just wondering what the purpose of having two types of currency in this kind of game is.”

  Jesse hesitated to answer for a second then made a sort of pained expression, “Are you sure you want to know?”

  I tilted my head in confusion at that, “Why wouldn’t I want to?”

  “I don’t know, I just feel like it might… So, you’re on a road trip, yeah?” Jesse asked then waited for me to nod before continuing on, “Okay, so you’re fixated on the destination, right? You want to get to the place you want to get to and that’s it. The problem with that is you don’t end up enjoyin’ the journey.”

  “Suppose that makes sense…” I murmured, wondering just how much he could ruin by telling me why there were two different kinds of money, “Still, I want to know what I gave up. Like, why didn’t I just get both? Like you said, I can make infinite resources.”

  Jesse went to answer that, stopped, then made an amusedly surprised expression, “Heh, guess you could’ve…” he trailed off as he grew a slightly more upset look about him, “I should’ve probably thought of that…”

  “Eh, don’t beat yourself up, just tell me what the point of having drachma and credits is.” I said, trying to mask the fact that I was getting kind of annoyed about having to ask the one question so many times.

  “Alright, as long as you’re sure,” Jesse replied after a few seconds, having evidently not really heard me through his mild embarrassment, “the gold, like I said, is mostly for terrestrial stuff. Credits… credits are for when you go to space and meet all the spacefaring civilizations.”

  “And why would I go to space?” I asked somewhat excitedly, already mostly knowing the answer.

  Again, Jesse hesitated to answer, and then he sighed, “Because you’ll be able to build a spaceship.”

  “Fuck yes!” I exclaimed, punching the air as I did so, “God I love this game!”

  “Keep it down a bit,” Jesse chuckled, clearly amused by how happy I was, “we’re gettin’ a bit close to home, so you might want to keep the whole ‘your reality is a virtual construction’ talk to a minimum.”

  I was slightly frustrated that I had to suppress my urge to literally jump up and down, but I knew he had a point.

  Honesty? I think that’s when I started to really think about what the game was doing to me.

  I was getting… well, I don’t want to say ‘smarter’ because I’ve never really thought of myself as a dumb person, but that feeling that I was having to begrudgingly follow after Jesse was shrinking and I was really starting to see him as an adviser and not my lifeline in an unfamiliar world.

  I’d understood people’s points before that, sure, but it had always been more of a thing where I could understand where they were coming from and was just knuckling under to avoid any conflict.

  Suppose that’s what comes along with confidence though.

  Don’t get me wrong, I knew I was still sort of faking it until I made it, but even that was sort of proving to be enough to get me through the day.

  Hell, I’m positive it’s what got me to have some of the most rewarding, fun sex I’d ever had.

  Anyway, we’d somehow managed to get a bit turned around in the jungle during our conversation, benefits of paying more attention to what we were saying and not where we were going I guess, though we did find our way home.

  “Ho-ly shit…” I muttered as we came through the significantly thinned-out jungle trees and saw what the girls had been up to in our absence.

  It was awesome.

  CHAPTER 13

  Okay, so maybe ‘awesome’ oversells what they’d done a bit, especially considering what we’d go on to do later, but what they’d done with the crappy little cube I’d left them with was a great start.

  From what I could see, Cassie had basically gone ahead and pushed the ‘house’ back into the trees where she had used her natural abilities and I guessed Fern’s eye to rip it apart and build a sort of ground-level treehouse.

  Granted, she’d pretty much just turned the one cube into a fancy shelter that ran along the trees with a couple of struts to keep it up, but it was certainly an improvement to cube-hut.

  Then there was the work Fern had done with the garden which, to my surprise, actually had me somewhat interested in gardening.

  The short of it was she’d extended the whole thing so that it was about three times the length and then put some kind of shimmering bubble around it.

  “What’s all this?” I asked in utter amazement, realizing only once I’d said the words that I had no idea where the girls were.

  “We had some time to kill,” Cassie answered, coming from around the back of the new shelter, “so we figured we’d get something done. You like it?”

  “Do I like it?” I scoffed before recognizing that that could be taken in a couple of ways, “Nice job, seriously. Where’s Fern though?”

  “She went off to find… something,” Cassie replied as Jesse left my side and went to check on the fruit, “some kind of wood elf ridiculousness.”

  “See, I find that offensive,” Fern announced before appearing from the beach-side of the jungle with her shirt lifted up and acting as a means to carry a bunch of sand, “you don’t see me calling your little structure ‘dwarf ridiculousness’, do you?”

  “That’s because it has obvious value.” Cassie muttered just loud enough for Fern to hear.

  “And so does putting sand around the pit,” Fern retorted as she started pouring sand around the pit, “you do understand that I never do anything without reason, right?”

  “Really, guys?” I interjected somewhat aggressively, surprising even myself, “Is this is what it’s going to be like forever?”

  Everyone, including Jesse, was stunned silent.

  I don’t know if it was the steadily more and more irritating arguing between the two of them or if it was simply yet another benefit of growing some damn balls, but I was done with the bickering.

  “Seriously, all you two seem to do is argue,” I continued, deciding it was for the best if I just ride out the wave of whatever it was that I was experiencing, “Hell, you’ve had a few times where you seem to be getting better and then it just goes to shit again.”

  Again, I was met with silence.

  “I get it, alright?” I sighed, “There was a degree of separation between you class-wise or race-wise, but the truth is the two of you are in the exact same position now, which means you have to start acting at least a little bit friendly towards one another.”

  I really didn’t know where it was coming from, I mean you have seen where I was before, half the time I couldn’t get through a conversation without bumbling over myself at some point, and somehow I was suddenly able to unleash a haranguing.

  It was weird to say the least and more than a little bit fun if I’m being completely honest. It was like I was some guy’s Dungeons & Dragons character and he’d just forced a bunch of points into charisma at some point.

  Anyway, Cassie, unsurprisingly, was the first to open her mouth once it became clear that I had well and truly said my piece, but she just as quickly shut it again.

  In case you hadn’t noticed, I wasn’t all that good at running a conversation let alone sustaining one up until that point, but even with all that force and fire and newfound confidence I too was struggling to find words.

  I couldn’t just let the conversation die like that though, especially seeing as I’d been the only one doing any damn talking, however, at the same time there didn’t seem to be anything else I could say without simply repeating myself.

  And that’s when Fern decided to save my ass.

  “I’m sorry,” the somewhat meek wood elf said, drawing the eyes of a very surprised Cassie, “I get that I
can be kind of hard to live with.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” Cassie replied, “I’ve been a bit of an angry bitch.”

  Then there was silence.

  Uncomfortable, unending silence.

  There was a part of me that was worried that they’d just said they were sorry for my benefit, or maybe simply to ensure I didn’t go on having a go at them, but there was another, louder part of me telling me that it was a start.

  For whatever reason I couldn’t actually say those words, but I suppose using my ‘new’ personality for something other than getting laid was a start for me too.

  I knew I wasn’t a new person as much as I knew that Cassie and Fern weren’t magically friends, though even with that knowledge it was good to see that we were making some progress.

  “So…” Jesse trailed off awkwardly from where he stood beside the fruit, “what’s wrong with all this?”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, thanking God that we’d finally been given an out from the self-reflective and shame-riddled mire I’d trapped us in.

  “It’s all rotten,” Jesse replied, “looks like it’s been left to sit in the sun and get attacked by a bunch of parasites and bugs.”

  Naturally, that concerned me, so I went ahead and joined him in looking at the fruit only to discover that it looked more or less fine, making me assume that Jesse had some ulterior motive for making me come over.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, not wanting to shatter the ruse that I thought Jesse had created.

  “That’s a magic barrier I put over it,” Fern interjected, having apparently grown tired of standing around awkwardly with Cassie, “it’s a sort of filter, makes it look like the food’s gone bad to animals and anyone who’s not in our… clan.”

  I didn’t fully understand the hesitation on the word ‘clan’ until I realized that, to Fern, it was that or ‘harem’, and it wasn’t like any of us had really sat down and had a conversation about the one we were going with.