My companions begin to talk and I smile at them. I scan their minds and find that their memories of me have been touched by the drawbacks I've been saddled with. They remember me as a mute, though kindly, crafter who bravely goes out and wanders what is a surprisingly dangerous landscape for normal people.
My composite, as in total, build has immunized me to the lion's share of common threats in Minecraft. Even with the randomly spawning silverfish, one of which appears as my friends and I are eating and is dispatched with a look of disinterest from me and a death-inflicting glare, there's nothing on the surface of the world that can meaningfully harm me. Creepers, witches, and illagers are the only universal threats I'll be facing on the surface that are actually hostile. Endermen are a thing in Minecraft and they are dangerous, though not to me, but they are also not hostile by default and I don't intend to piss them off for no reason.
Some places in Minecraft; the ocean and the ancient cities deep in the overworld's subterranean regions, have distinct threats that would be hostile to me but I have no reason or incentive to go to those places. I'm not a risk taker, nor do I have some sort of jump-based reason to go to those places. I am happy to just… avoid them. Without a compelling reason to risk my chain I'm more than happy to simply chill for this jump. It's a year long, it might as well be a year long vacation.
For a normal person the overworld in Minecraft is rough. Even during the day some threats persist such as hunger and mobs that aren't deterred by sunlight like creepers and illagers. And at night the situation is downright apocalyptic with the darkness itself birthing an unending tide of monstrous terrors.
Some fit and/or clever people could fend off a single zombie, but they aren't always alone and other threats like creepers and skeletons are wildly more dangerous even if you only fight one. It doesn't help that some biomes stretch on for dozens of miles, particularly in this version of Minecraft and most people get tired and experience hunger. I haven't seen some of the wilder stuff like physics defying mountains and floating islands but I know they exist and if I get curious and explore I'll definitely see them.
My short term plan, punctuated by the distant and faint sounds of my minions attacking monsters that get a little too close to the mansion, is to turn the area around the mansion into a thriving community. I get up and retrieve everyone's plates using my powers. I walk over to the sink and begin to clean while my friends continue to chat.
I use a combination of magic and actual hard work to clean the silverware we just ate with. Nothing here is challenging and I listen as my maids and Amber converse. I have long speculated what sort of stuff I'd gain if I slept with my maids, and a part of me aches to have sex with someone new and thus experience new bursts of my powers. It helps that Amber and I have a protocol in place for this kind of thing so I can now pursue people a bit more ethically.
The lessons I learned from what happened to Amber are etched deep in me. I want to have a lot of sex, and to really stretch the slate of powers I possess that tie me to my long term goal of becoming a desire entity, but because I have a sense of ethics I have hesitated in the wake of discovering how stuff works with Amber and her mark. Funnily enough my drawbacks are making me hesitate a lot less, but I remember what Amber and I discussed back in Seattle and then in Honduras and make an informed, committed decision to stick to what we discussed.
I wonder who I should pursue first before Rowena, the head of my maids and the woman with jet-black hair, steps out of the dining room and approaches me. She flashes me a confident smile and asks if I need anything. I smile at her and shake my head before telepathically reaching out to her and asking if she can hear me. Her eyes widen in surprise.
"Whoa, is this what you sound like?" She asks and I flash her a brilliant smile before nodding.
"You can finally hear me! That's exciting." I remark, into her head. She relaxes and smiles happily at me.
"There's so much I want to tell you, Rowena. But first… thank you for being here." I begin, infusing emotion into my telepathic "Voice", not really acting but finding it challenging to sound emotional due to a drawback. She's not a part of a party or a guild, this is personal, one-on-one communication.
Telepathy has a lot of interesting uses. Especially since I'm quite adept when it comes to telepathy. With it and a few other perks of mine I can do a fair deal more than merely communicating mind-to-mind. I could actually use this to help people who've met me remember meeting me though this is less powerful than a perk designed for that purpose specifically.
During the last few days of my time in Chronicle Amber and I went to great lengths to establish a protocol to go through before I added someone to my harem. We wanted to make sure that whoever gets a mark, assuming no pressure and the time to talk things through, has an understanding of what they're agreeing to. I guide Rowena to my room, telling her I want to "speak" to her in private. When we're in my room I dispatch a silverfish and groan internally. I can tell I'll be tired of that by the time we leave.
"So you and I have known each other for a while." I begin, projecting my thoughts to Rowena. She nods, but I can see in her eyes that she doesn't get my full meaning. She thinks we've only known each other for a few months as that's when we met in terms of this world's backstory. I let out a quiet laugh, able to express myself verbally in ways that are not words but muted by the "Silent Protagonist" drawback.
"No, we've known each other for two decades. You just… don't remember." I explain, before projecting snippets of interactions we've had into her mind's eye. Her eyes go wide as she feels these memories seep into her.
"I… That's me, but it's not me." She remarks, breathlessly as she absorbs these memories. I can feel her mind struggling with this.
"I can help you remember more, if you wish. I can help you remember everything." I quietly tell her, my mental voice taking on an almost sinister quality. This isn't by my choice, it just innately sounds sinister to say it like that, to my displeasure.
I watch Rowena's eyes narrow as she wonders what to do. At the same time a part of me wonders if I have enough in my kit, particularly when fused with the curious effects of the womb tattoo, to help Rosalind and Zumurrud remember me when I next meet them or if the reason that Amber can remember is tied to her nature as someone who has minor fiat-backed protections independent of the tattoo and the tattoo just strengthening them. Rowena eventually nods and I smile at her.
"I have the ability to help you remember but… It's gonna sound crazy. If we have sex you should be able to remember our history." I explain, speaking telepathically to my friend. Her surprisingly pale skin goes beet red and I have to stifle a smile.
"Do you just want to have sex with me?" She asks, skeptically. I surprise her by nodding even as I transmit more words to her.
"I like sex. You're beautiful and I'm handsome, and I know you're at least a little attracted to me. But I'm not lying." I explain, opting for the full-transparency approach.
"I am a being of desire. I like sex. I want it. But sex with me comes with benefits and not just 'Oh you feel good' benefits either. By having sex with me you become more skilled at the things you're the most skilled at, and sex with me can nourish people. In exchange you get a mark, this mark," I state, before filling her mind with an image of Sapphire's womb tattoo. "But we can dull it with magic. And you'll be able to remember our history." I tell my companion. She looks at me for a moment before speaking.
"Have we had sex before?" She asks. I shake my head.
"Sex is the key. If we had had sex before now you'd remember everything." I inform her, grateful for my ability to substitute speech for telepathy. She doesn't ask me how I know this, and I can sense her belief in me and in the person she remembers meeting and saving her some months ago. She is quiet for a while and I respect that.
"How do you know I'm attracted to you?" She asks, and I wonder how far I should take my explanation. I consider different approaches and when I reach the longest, most direct approach, my good plan perk goes off, thus encouraging honesty.
"Okay so I'll go ahead and opt to tell you everything. It's a lot, though, so maybe sit down?" I ask her, causing her to sit on my bed and look at me curiously.
"I'm a jumper. That doesn't mean anything to you right now but it will in time. That term essentially means I 'jump' from world to world. In my case it's not by choice and I have limited influence over it. Normally I stay in a setting for a decade but in this 'jump' I'm only here for a year which means we're only here for a year." I tell her, before showing her my grimoire and opening it up to the page that denotes my build.
"These are my abilities. I can also shapeshift," I tell her before taking on my beholder form and surprising her, and then nearly immediately going back to my human form. "I can also do a lot of other things. I do have powers related to sex and this one here lets me know who is attracted to me." I explain, referring to Love List Cupid. I can actually do that with it, if I am just narrow in my search criteria when I ask it to search for people interested in me. I then move my finger up to the list of things I got from Generic Bard and Adult Essences and point at the mansion item.
"This item is the source of our relationship. You are one of the maids linked to this mansion. The maids, Amber, and you, are in my life because of this and whenever I go to a new place you come with me. You are real people, and I do care about you, but this is why we're connected. It links us across realities." I reveal, causing her heart to race as she reads the item's description. This is actually not something I've shown Amber, though I have explained it to her. I point at the description for the "Harem" freebie in the adult essence build section.
"By having sex with me you join my harem. A few others are in it, and they can also remember everything even when one jump ends and another begins." I tell Rowena, who lets out a quiet laugh. She is quiet for a while before looking at me.
"I need some time to think about this." She tells me, and I nod at her. I don't have to push or pressure her, I know in my heart that letting her make an informed decision is 100% the right move. She quietly leaves my room and I stay here for a moment before opting to go and explore the mansion.
I refamiliarize myself with its layout, and note that the number of rooms has not shrunk despite it expanding to accommodate my mother and father relative to the last jump. That's a fun quirk and I wonder if there's a way to force it to expand in number, especially since it seems to have subtle fiat-backed features that I didn't plan for it to have like it being self-powered. If this is a true harem housing item; one that expands to accommodate new harem members that'd be really neat and that might well be what it is since it's intended to be fun housing for a harem jumper.
I head down to a basement-like area and I find the alchemical workshop. It is a small space but I recognize the items; the brewing stand, the bottles, the water, the cauldron, it's all there. A small chest is located next to the brewing stand and I open it up only to see plenty of supplies from nether wart to glass and redstone dust, and even gunpowder. I look through the contents of the chest and nod in satisfaction. When I'm done here I make a mental note that this is the only new item that isn't in my inventory and quietly head outside.
My undead warriors nod at me and I nod back. Most of them are idly exploring the area around the mansion and a few mill about in houses. I know that some are still underground, working on mapping out the region beneath the mansion and the general underground area. I quietly head to the tunnel and make my way down it until I reach the cave my undead miners reached and open the door with telekinesis. I look inside and note that only a few more monsters have spawned. Annoyingly, however, one of the monsters is a gigantic creeper, a massive green-skinned, armless, creature that if allowed to explode will definitely harm this cavern. It's an "Elite mob", one of the creatures a drawback guaranteed that I would encounter. It doesn't notice me yet and I'm glad that it's a creeper and not something with ranged attacks. Seeing one of these monsters makes me wonder if the undead ones will be hostile to me, but for now I don't have to find out.
I focus and push the elite creeper to the edge of the cavern with a forceful telekinetic shove. It's bigger than most creepers, standing a full seven feet tall, but it's nowhere near heavy enough to resist a full force telekinetic shove from me. It is sent stumbling through the air and hits its head against a stone block on the edge of the cavern before landing facedown. I create a forcefield that exists to trap it with my telekinesis and begin to push the monster against the back end of the cavern. The creeper, still on the floor and on its face, turns its head to look at me and frowns. It tries to get up but I keep it down, vaguely sensing its efforts to push back against me. Under normal circumstances I think a part of me would feel bad about this but I am, thankfully, affected by drawbacks that prevent that.
I open the forcefield a touch and produce a mystical flame. I telekinetically guide the fire I have created from my hands through the opening in my psychically created field and seal the barrier shut again before lighting the creeper. It begins to try and wiggle out of my grip as it flashes and glares at me but I hold it down until it explodes.
The explosion rocks my forcefield, though isn't quite powerful enough to break it, and blows up a portion of the cavern the creeper was in, causing smoke to begin to fill the space as objects are set ablaze. I open the door behind me as I undo the forcefield. With a gesture I aim at the smoke and condense it before pulling it towards me and then out the door into the open air of the tunnel. I then turn back and snuff out the fires, doing so telekinetically.
I quietly smile as I check my inventory and note the new collection of emeralds in them. At the same time a silverfish appears beside me. I instantly squish it with telekinesis, killing it instantly. On the bright side at this rate I'll be an expert at efficiently dispatching enemies with essentially one hit point by the time I leave. It's also a little nice that I can use telekinesis to exterminate things in one hit without regard for anything like HP. From here I go back up to the surface and join my minions in slaying monsters. I am especially quick to ice creepers and to defeat the one witch who spawns during this time.
When the sun rises all of the local undead begin to burn. In minutes they are all burned to a crisp and my minions collect their remains and place them in scattered treasure chests.
This begins a stint of jumper time that lasts a week. During the day I am out foraging, and I take Amber with me. She has played Minecraft and knows the bare basics, and whenever she's hungry I am quick to buy some food using my store and give her some bread. We begin the cautious process of mapping out the area, and eventually stumble across our first example of an amplified feature when we head directly south of the mansion for what must be a few hundred blocks.
On the morning of my fourth day in this world Amber and I study a mountain. It looms enormously overhead and is one example of a place touched by the "Amplified" drawback. It is supernaturally gigantic, and stretches hundreds of blocks up. Partway up the mountain I see snow begin to cover the stone blocks that compromise the surface of the geographical feature. When I crane my neck all the way I can see floating islands high above the two of us.
Caves dot the side of the mountain and I can only imagine that they are filled with monsters. Amber is a living person and thus undead native to this world will be hostile to her. She's strong but I still don't relish the thought of her risking her life, especially since she'll be the sole recipient of the aggression of the monsters barring ones like creepers coming at her. We study the mountains together and eventually decide to come back here when she is properly armed and equipped.
We fly together to the floating island and spend the morning making a makeshift base, even going as far as placing one of the sarcophagi I have collected in the shack we make. When we're done we head back.
At night I rest in the mansion and relax with Amber, and I slowly approach each of the maids. In time they all know the truth about my nature as a jumper and my offers to sleep with them, allowing them to remember their full lives in past jumps. I don't mind no immediate acceptances. I have no reason to rush and a small part of me is proud that I stuck to my convictions rather than taking the easy route. I also do light crafting and build up an arsenal of weapons and armor for my minions, my maids, and for myself.
Some days after the first full week night has fallen on the grasslands that surround the mansion. I am in the middle of patrolling the place with my undead warriors when my super senses allow me to hear distant, faint sounds of fighting. I curiously give myself my orcish senses, mixing them with my sense-enhancing perks for the first time since I have attained them, and I am surprised when the scent of a woman, a human woman, fills my nose. I order a group of undead warriors, now all armed with simple leather armor I made by purchasing leather and then crafting it into armor on my crafting bench, to follow me and we race off towards the sounds of battle.
We traverse the landscape, killing creepers and the occasional witch whenever we find them. We're not heading due south of the mansion, we're heading to the east of it and we wander for several miles as the sounds slowly growing louder. My minions do not have limited stamina, a nice side-effect of being undead, and I do not have limited stamina; also a pleasant impact of undeath, and so we speed across the dark, dangerous wilderness. I frown as I note the lack of villages. This whole region seems… deserted, even by Minecraft's goofy ass standards.
After a few minutes the sounds of fighting do not stop, indeed they only seem to intensify, as if more monsters are attacking. It's like they have no clue what is going on and the importance of something like light in this world…
My companions and I climb a small hill and when we reach the top we can finally see what it obstructed when we were beneath its peak. On the other side of the bottom of the hill lies a small shack and a battlefield. A woman with red hair wields a shield and a damaged sword and is valiantly fighting back against both a pair of skeletons and a number of zombies, including three armored ones, as well as a pair of gigantic phantoms; two elite mobs. She successfully cuts down a zombie with a solid thrust of her sword, but as she cuts it down a monster spawns some distance behind her. A creeper that she coldly dispatches by turning around, swapping weapons, and firing an arrow at. The arrow seems to light the creeper on fire as it begins to glow and flash and promptly explodes far from her.
The woman also looks human, which is weird since I know "Who" it is. The woman standing against a group of undead monsters is "Alex" the original female player character and "Steve's" counterpart. She is a regular-looking person fighting a small horde of undead monsters. More monsters begin to spawn as she fights, and I order my servants down the hill to fight alongside her. I rush faster than my followers do and I end my charge by driving a simple wooden sword through a zombie's head. The creature groans in pain before vanishing. I telekinetically push the monsters approaching Alex away, doing so with dramatic body language to signal that I am the one responsible for this before looking at the redheaded woman and nodding. She silently nods back and we both turn to face the skeletons.
They are unable to target me since I haven't hit them, and fire arrows at Alex. She raises her shield to protect herself, but it's not necessary since I raise a hand and catch the arrows in mid-air with telekinesis. I cancel out their momentum and then let them fall. My undead warriors reach the bottom of the hill as one of the phantoms lets out a deafening screech and dives for Alex.