Chapter 17: Relationships

While those three have been progressing nicely, they are not the only ones. My intelligence, for instance, has continued to see steady as well as impressive improvement from my knowledge gathering efforts. And now sits at a hefty 17 points, not that far away from raising my brain's processing power by another 100%. I really can't wait for the day it rises to 20. It will speed up my work an absolute ton when it finally does.

Besides my intelligence attribute going up, my perception has gone up a bit as well, just not to the same extent. Reason being that I hit a bit of a slump for a while until I came up with the bright idea to rig up several pitching machines with turret targeting modules. Once I had those sucker shooting baseballs at me while my eyes were shut, it began increasing, like the rest of my attributes. It simply took me getting hit in the face a few times before I got the hang of things.

Unlike my intelligence improving at its usual fast pace, my charisma attribute has seen marginal improvement by only increasing by a piddly 2 points, raising its total to 7. Not really unexpected given how much time I spend on trying to improve all my other stats. That said, I was hoping to see a bit more improvement than that, but whatever.

Unfortunately, as that is, it isn't anywhere comparable to my luck, which has seen exactly zero improvement since I was reincarnated, and man, have I tried absolutely everything possible. I've experimented with all sorts of luck related activities to get it to improve, ranging from playing poker and slots to even getting grandma to buy a bunch of lottery tickets for me when I went out with her to play bingo with her and her friends.

After doing very many luck related activities for quite a long while, I came to the painful conclusion that luck was inherent and could not in any way whatsoever be improved through training like the rest of my attributes. I was hoping things would be different from the games and it could be improved through effort, but alas, it is what it is.

Luckily, it can still be improved via the system either by perks and quests rewards. There could be additional ways it can be raised with, but those are the ones I know of from the Wastelander games.

Alongside my attributes increasing substantially, my skills have also seen a significant increase all across the board, with my highest skill surprisingly being my heavy weapons skill, which sits at a colossal 97 closing in on 100 rapidly.

I expected either my repair or science skill to take the lead and be my highest skill with both of them sitting at 95. But I guess my interest in heavy weapons has made enough of a difference that my heavy weapons skill was able to take the lead from those two. Going to the gun range with grandpa John to practice and try out new techniques also helps with that, not to mention the blunt heavy sword I use frequently to train my melee skills.

Continuing on from my highest skill to my lowest skill, that spot is unsurprisingly occupied by my piloting skill. Not a big surprise there considering that is a skill that only really goes up with experience to my knowledge and seeing how young I am, I haven't had the opportunity nor the pleasure to get behind the wheel in this life, yet. Beyond that, I also haven't invested much effort in reading about the different driving and piloting techniques I have access to, so that contributes to its low number.

In addition to my skills, agility, intelligence, perception, and strength attributes coming a long way with charisma and luck excluded, my hand to hand combat abilities have improved to the point where I can pretty much match grandpa John in sparring, even when he's going all out. Unfortunately, grandpa John isn't in his prime any longer, thus my accomplishment isn't nearly as impressive. Too bad, I would've loved to have had a spar against him when he was still roaming the wild wasteland.

Nonetheless, with him being a bear of a man and a veteran wasteland explorer with numerous life and death battles under his belt, I would say it's still quite an achievement, especially so for my age.

With hand and hand covered, that wraps up my physical abilities.

Next on the list… I suppose I'll cover my relationships. Starting things off, my and Alice's relationship has continued to progress as expected, with the two of us getting closer and closer each and every day. We have even gotten to where she is sleeping over here now, quite frequently at that. She would probably sleep here every night if she could. However, her parents drag her home every so often under the guise that she needs to see her sister, though it's painfully obvious they just want to see their little girl.

Now that I've arrived at this point, Alice's mom and dad had another baby and what would you know it was another girl. Over the last 4 years, because of an increasingly busy schedule, I haven't really interacted much with their new kid, Bella, like I have with Alice. Despite that, the kid appears to like me enough. I know that because anytime I show up, the rug rat runs over to latch on to me, so that's good. The little gifts I bring her every time I come around probably help with that.

While I'm thinking of it, I should probably spend more time with her since it wouldn't be bad if I had a solid relationship with both sisters. It would also make it easier to acquire and take control of the undercity as my own when I begin my quest for conquest. Also, having another close ally that we can rely upon wouldn't hurt too. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. We'll be needing all the people we can get eventually to run this literal empire I plan on founding.

Hence, I might as well start investing in the girl and get her to start the training and studying her sister and I went through and are still going through to this day. It'll take some time away from my current activities, at least initially, but Alice can also help me out in that area as well and take a bit of the future workload off of me.

So if the stars align and she has a genuine interest in all the stuff, she would be required to learn and train in, and has the drive required to stick with it. Even while her sister and I are out in the wasteland, she may be a potential candidate for the organization I plan on building at the beginning that'll later be converted into a country. Hopefully she develops into a capable woman that I can place into a position of power later on.

All that said, I'll have to keep a close eye on her and see how her personality turns out before I even consider letting her join, let alone putting her in a place of power. Nevertheless, in the event that she isn't interested, she'll at least be a hell of a lot better off compared to her peers if she goes through the training and studying regime.

Moving on from that, I've been contemplating the idea of making a harem in the not so distant future. I wouldn't have normally considered it something in the realm of reality, but with how my endurance is progressing on top of me going through puberty already, my urges are pretty nuts right now. Thankfully, I have the mind of an adult and can just forcefully control and suppress my urges myself, despite it being quite the never ending battle.

Nevertheless, I'm certain I'll be needing more than just Alice in the future to satisfy my primal urges if things continue the way they're going. There is no way her stamina will be able to compete with my own superhuman amount. I can already envision a future where Alice is passed out on the bed, satisfied as can be, whilst I, on the other hand, am still raring to go.

That said, there is a chance I could end up wrecking my whole future with her by pursuing more women than just her alone. But I know her inside and out so I'm nearly 100% sure that she won't have that much of a problem with it, if any at all, as long as I keep her by my side and satisfied. 

And besides, having a harem of capable women who I can trust sounds like a huge asset. I could see that sort of situation being a massive help in running the nation I'll be building in the future, which I'm sure I'll be in desperate need of while I'm off conquering, solving the zetan problem, and dealing with whatever else requires my attention. As for who I'll add to this unestablished harem of mine, I currently have no one in mind down here in the undercity since I've yet to come across anyone around my age that would fit the bill.

However, all is not lost. I know of a few women that should exist out there in the wasteland that check all the boxes and are more than capable in their own right. One of them being a red-haired thorny rose in Vegas, part of one of the major powers there… Will I be able to obtain their hearts one day, who knows, but even if they don't work out, I'm sure I'll encounter more beautiful women in the future that'll pique my interest.

Aside from the possible destruction of my relationship via my own hands, I was thinking my own parents would have another kid. However, surprisingly they haven't, and seeing how they treat Alice as basically their own daughter, I guess they didn't feel the need to have another with her here nearly every day of the week. More attention for me, I suppose, not that I need it.

Onto other relationships, I've made a couple of good friends in these last five years, consisting of Big Tom who I met through my after school sport activities, specifically wrestling. The kid is surprisingly almost as big as me, hence why I call him Big Tom.

As to how Tom and I became friends, it's pretty simple, actually. Due to our large sizes, we weren't allowed to wrestle with the other kids. Therefore, with the two of us only allowed to wrestle each other. Hence, we quickly became friends after battling it out on the mats many times. It was also made easier by the fact that Tom didn't have any friends to speak of. Which, now that I'm thinking of it, is kind of sad.

In addition to Big Tom, I met and befriended a pretty intelligent kid when I was out and about at school with Alice several years back, named Bob. When I first encountered the kid, he was getting bullied.

Not liking what I was seeing, I stepped in and roughed them up a bit, putting a stop to it. Following helping him out, he seemed quite appreciative of the aid I provided him by putting his bullies in their place, and after chatting with the kid; I found out he was quite intelligent for his age.

Seeing potential in him, I decided to befriend the kid. Unwilling to see my newly acquired friend at the time get bullied again in the future while I wasn't around, I took him under my wing and set him up with Big Tom so he wouldn't be bothered any longer. After introducing the two of them and having Big Tom protect Bob, they took to each other and quickly became friends on their own.