"Only I can see 'em. They show up in front of me in purple text and I can accept them, decline them, flick them out of my visual field, sort of like I'm using the kind of interaction-system my world has for interacting with, uh, small objects that do everything."

"Fascinating. So it is a - purely internal-to-you mental projection of some kind?" Also he's separately curious about the 'small objects that do everything' but he can add that to the growing stack of mental notes to follow up on later, it's not the actual top priority here. "What...is the quest? What objectives do we need to meet for it?" 

"Hidden objective. That's standard for - big quests. You don't have a guide to everything to do, it just teases you with the fact it's possible. The Quest is just called "Player 2". ...but with my context that's sufficient to be pretty sure it means you can get the powers, if we finish the quest."

"...That is so incredibly uninformative about what we actually need to do next to make progress on the quest!" 

"Welcome to the erogame. When in doubt about what to do next I usually try having sex."

"...Yes, I had also just been thinking that having sex would be the obvious thing to try. ....If I had to hazard a wild guess on what might be a future objective, just based on - my sense of the erogame's style so far - maybe we will at some point need to both have sex with a Heartstone, at the same time? Or with the Shadow-Lover. I am not sure which would be worse." 

"It's not going to want you to have sex that'll suck! It'll want you to have sex that turns out great! It might be scary and cathartic, or something, but it won't be unpleasant. First erogamer rule: no ruthlessly having sex you don't want for the greater good. The erogame won't like that and won't play along."

"That does seem like it would fit with the theme. It is a bizarrely specific and somewhat inconvenient theme but at least the erogame is consistent." 

"Would you really rather have sex magic that didn't want you to like it?"

"No! I agree that would be worse! ...I am maybe just feeling petty and resentful because magic that depends on sex is not something where I can bring my existing skills to bear. I am more used to magic that depends on math and spatial ability and such." 

"Well, if you manage to become Player 2, then you can get better at sex magically."

“- Of course. That makes perfect sense. - Can I then also magically become better at math? If I decide that I want to have sex with it? That could solve several of my problems.”

"You're very single-minded. I like that in a man. ...it can make you better at some math things if it's for sexy reasons, like, I got better at math visualization earlier because I was doing it to flirt with you."

This is oddly flattering and pleasing to hear. Huh. 

".....This feels like a ridiculous question to ask but would the erogame plausibly give me magical abilities to fully solve and verify the solutions to all of the remaining technical questions related to creating the god I was planning to create, if I decide that I would like to have sex with it?" 

"Gonna guess no. More like, it'd give you quests to acquire a harem of brilliant mathematicians who once you work through all their romantic and sexual problems can figure out your god thing."

“That would also work! It would honestly be even better!”

Leareth is feeling so happy and hopeful right now and it really, really shows.

"Well, there you go, then, it'll do that. You'll have to seduce them all in convoluted and satisfying ways, and then make all their wildest dreams come true, and then they'll be recruited to work on your research project.

Are you sure that, uh, there should be gods?"

“…..I have honestly not spent much time considering the possibilities where there are not gods. I - suspect it is mixed? And it would be very helpful to have comprehensive data on worlds with and without gods - and ideally also worlds with more or less helpful versus actively terrible gods? - so that I could try to analyze and fully understand all of the effects.”

"I don't think I've been to a world with gods before, but I'm sure it'll throw them at you as long as you want to go fuck around in them."

"As long as I literally 'fuck' around in them, I imagine?" 

- and then Leareth's expression turns serious again. 

"So - what do you think are our actual next steps, here? We need to do some quests that will be on the route toward fucking the Velgarth gods until they behave better, but...my understanding is that they are still your quests and so presumably need to follow the constraints of what is sexy to you personally. Any ideas?" 

She flops thoughtfully. "I'm feeling very called out by Velgarth so far, honestly. So far my main quests are an emotionally damaged sadboy who needs to be nursed back to health, and then a supervillain who is afraid to get close to anyone because the gods will murder them. Probably next I have to help someone come to terms with their emotionally distant father. 

I don't suppose gods have fathers?"

"...Not that I am aware, no. You are welcome to poll all of my staff on whether they have emotionally distant followers and would like the help of a mysterious sex-related power in resolving that." He makes a face. "Or - I am wondering if we will have to go see the Tayledras next. By 'we' I mean you, actually, Vanyel would likely extend an invite if you asked but I am almost certainly not welcome there and I would not like to risk it either way." 

"Oh, you know what else, the plot definitely involves fucking the magic horses at some point. There's just no way it doesn't."

"What sorts of objections did they have when you had been proposing it before?"