"Oh right, you wouldn't know."

Lecture pose.

"Monsters, the kind that give you experience points anyway, are a sort of byproduct of the symbiosis between wild magic and biology. They are essentially wild magic getting confused and mimicking something alive. Killing a monster unbinds the wild magic and some of that power feeds into you through your adventurer card. And some monsters can only be dealt with that way because they don't have sex organs. But wild magic is very sensitive to reproductive potential, so most monsters shape themselves for it unconsciously. Every monster has a core of crystalized mana. If you manage to crack the core while the monster is still alive, the mana will stream out and leap toward the nearest human like lines of force into a magnet. Nearest or whoever has the highest Ardor anyway. And the mana will form a circuit with the human and drive the monster into a lustful frienzy. If you're up to the task, you can just let it fuck you, closing the circuit, and it will cum itself to death, which leaves you with all of the wild magic converted into experience points."

"...that sounds... hmm. Like it calls for strategizing best done in private, I think. Which means a hotel room of some description which means money which means some combination of odd jobs, prostitution, and the Flesh for Flesh hack. I'm fairly sure you're happier about prostitution than I am about being horribly maimed but if I abstract away the safety concerns I'm not actually completely sure of it, so I think I'll leave that question up to you."

"I'm totally cool with the prostitution option," she says. "I mean, the newness-ness is kind of a concern there too, but, like, only in the sense that it kinda dings my pride to charge someone for the experience of watching me cum my brains out and pass out without contributing on purpose to their satisfaction. That might just be me being weird. I'm sure you could find someone who'd be interested even while I'm so off my game. I should put my free stat points into Moxie. That should help. Unless you want to drag me out back and fuck me up against the wall until I can stay coherent with a dick in me."

"...I'd consider it, if we had a hotel room, which leaves us back at square one again. How cheap are hotel rooms? We could do odd jobs or the maiming hack to get a hotel room to get you into a state where you can sell sex without any harm to your pride?"

"My pride will survive if you don't wanna. I mean, they barely have porn in this world. And actually getting to touch the girl while you watch her cum her brains out is worth a lot objectively even if it seems like a heartbreakingly low standard to me. Probably if you asked around you'd get mobbed."

"I'd hate to ask you to practice your craft to a lower standard than you prefer! That would be—well, if I was the one who had to do something I'm good at badly in public, I'd look into getting maimed first."

Coventina laughs. "Well, its not zero tempting. But between slight embarrassment and agonizing maiming, being live porn wins hands down."

"Fair enough."

With a plan in hand, Laurent finds that if anything Coventina was underestimating her appeal. As soon as he starts paying attention, he can overhear multiple adventurers already speculating licentiously about her and her lewd regalia. Probably all he would have to do is name a price.

"Were you serious about involving me?" he asks her. "It's not that I exactly object, it's just I genuinely don't know whether we gain any practical benefit that way. And I don't know how."

"Trying to respect the thing where I'm your cheat item," she reminds him in flirtatious tones.

"If you'd rather not be involved at all, I can handle it myself. I guess it depends what kind of first impression you want to make on your fellow adventurers."

"I think I want to make the kind of first impression where everyone is paying much more attention to you than to me."

Aw. That's kinda cute.

"Fair." She takes a bracing breath. "Wait here then, I guess."

Coventina goes over toward whichever clump of adventurers is talking about her in the most complementary ways, and introduces herself. It takes her about twenty seconds before she's sitting on a bare-chested warrior's lap while his girlfriend fondles the goddess' breasts. It takes about five minutes before the couple is shoving a bag of coins into Coventina's hands and dragging her, flushed and giggling unsteadily, out of the hall.

He steps out after them, not intending to follow them as far as a private space if they make it all the way to one, but wanting to be sure he doesn't lose track of where they've gone.

There's an inn at the end of the block. It's not quite in sight of the guild hall but it's close. The couple half-carries the moaning and giggling goddess into the modest townhouse-ish inn.

It's good that she's having fun. He can wait by the guild hall until she comes back.

Actually, on second thought, he's thought of a question for Luna that doesn't immediately reveal that he arrived in this universe half an hour ago. He goes back inside.

"Excuse me, do you have another pamphlet explaining what each of the stats is all about?"

"I do indeed. Here!"

She hands over a laminated sheet.

FITNESS
Improves physical strength, physical stamina, and body-shape. Reduces physical damage taken.

ARDOR
Increases overall sex drive, speed of arousal, responsiveness to stimulation, and reduces recovery times. Amplifies the pleasure caused by sexual techniques.

GRACE
Improves reflex speed, physical precision, hand-eye coordination, and sense of balance. Improves muscle memory and reduces the effects of startlement and flinch.

MOXIE
Reduces overall squick reflex, increases pain tolerance, and lowers unendorsed inhibitions. Improves control of body and ability to cast without incantation or gesture.

SANITY
Improves reasoning, intuition, and mental alertness. Reduces the effects of all forms of intoxication, natural, artificial, and magical. Increases working memory, imagination fidelity, and attention span. Increases magical stamina.

ALLURE
Amplifies all behavioral and non-fitness aspects of attractiveness. Increases overall perception and empathy. Amplifies all mind-affecting skills.

He reads this over, and then reads it over again, and then compares it to his card and his memory of the goddess's, and then reads it over a third time. Interesting stuff. He thinks he knows where all his stat points are going for the foreseeable future. Unless there's a cap, he supposes, in which case when he maxes out Sanity he'll have to decide which one comes second.

"What other useful pamphlets are there that I haven't thought to ask for?"

There is a specific pamphlet about each of the nine classes, but not one for him.

There is a more general pamphlet about common skills and what stats they require to purchase. Requirements for unlocking a skill and requirements for purchasing a skill do not seem to overlap. Most skills require one of your stats to be above a certain number before you can purchase the skill. Apparently, you can also purchase the same skill multiple times to make it more powerful, but this is usually considered an inefficient use of skill points.

There is an explanation of elemental affinities, which boils down to spells of that element making you less tired by the percentage of your affinity. Perfect affinities are extremely rare, so Coventina's 100% Water affinity is probably because she's a goddess. 100% Affinity allows one to cast spells of that element for free.

There is also a pamphlet on basic wilderness survival, and one which seems to be full of advertisements for blacksmiths and leatherworkers and alchemists.

Laurent has time to read them all. Coventina does not reappear promptly.

It's a good thing he has pockets to keep all this stuff in.

Are there clocks around? If he can track time closely, he's going to look for her after an hour and a half. If he can't, he's going to read through all the pamphlets again trying to familiarize himself with details, and possibly asking questions of Luna if the pamphlets don't answer them—things like "can elemental affinities be increased, and if so how" and "can I unlock skills in any way other than seeing them used, or is that what I get for picking the jack-of-all-trades class"—and then, if she still hasn't appeared by the end of that investigation, he'll go poke his nose into that inn down the street.

There's an hourglass in the guild hall. There's a sundial outside.

Elemental affinities are approximately what the wild magic thinks of your personality. This is too simplistic an explanation to be strictly true, but yes, one can increase or change their elemental affinities through various interactions with said elements, but no one knows how to do it reliably. Gaining a basic understanding, on his own, of how to do something will unlock a skill for him, same as for the other classes.

When he pokes his nose into that inn down the street, he is easily able to locate a closed door from which sex sounds are faintly emanating.

Okay, as long as she's still having fun and has not e.g. been kidnapped, he can leave her to it and go back to memorizing and analyzing available information about the magic system. He wishes he still had access to modern technology; he'd be making so many spreadsheets.

If asked, Luna has blank spreadsheets. On paper. But they're slightly expensive and Laurent still doesn't have any money, because Coventina still isn't back yet.

He spends a little while debating with himself whether the spreadsheets are a worthwhile expense, ultimately decides they aren't, paces the street in front of the guild hall for a bit, observes that he's getting hungry, and checks the list of odd jobs to see if there's anything that looks quick and straightforward enough that he could feasibly do it, get paid, buy food, eat the food, and by that point hopefully Coventina will have finished if she's ever going to.

The highest paying odd job is for breaking down a section of damaged city wall so they can rebuild. It involves swinging a pickaxe at hard stone for six hours. The next best payout is for sawing away a fallen roof near the city wall so they can rebuild. The one after that is for dragging a carriage that lost its wheels ten blocks from this spot to this spot.

Pretty much the only listed job that doesn't require high Fitness is this shady-looking ad for an alchemical test subject. Nothing interesting either. They want to test a baldness-cure.