Penny's Adventure in Wonderland

The Dog Girl looked at Luka with a worried and fearful expression as she used Victor as a shield, making the person in question raise an eyebrow. This girl is extremely weird: she gets scared at first when a sword is pointed to her face and then her expression makes a 180° switch as soon as Luka apologized, and now she is once again frightened when Luka announced himself to be a Hero Apprentice… Besides, why would she use the Hero Apprentice's companion out of all possible shields?

Victor flipped her hands from his back and said. "He already told you that he was sorry for scaring you, why are you hiding?"

"Well… He said he was a Hero Apprentice… Mama told me that Heroes are evil people that would take me away from Mama forever…" The Dog Girl spoke, making Victor raise an eyebrow.

"Yeah, but why are you hiding behind me?"

"...?" Penny stared to Victor's face with a questioning expression and in silence, not able to answer his question. Victor sighed and commented as he shook his head.

"Luka won't hurt you, don't be afraid."

"...Are you sure? Really sure? Really really sure?" Penny asked with a curious tone. Luka nodded in answer as he extended one hand forward.

"I won't hurt innocent people, you don't need to hide from me." Luka said with a soothing tone, which made Penny switch her gaze from Victor to Luka's hand. After a couple of seconds of staring at his hand, Penny slowly approached Luka and gently placed her tiny hands over his palm, as if she was 'giving her paw'.

Victor couldn't help but chuckle as he saw Penny's tail wagging left and right and associated the scene in front of him with the image of a dog owner playing around with his dog.

"See? I am not hurting you now, am I?" Luka asked and Penny quickly nodded. After everything was settled, Luka smiled and pointed a finger to Victor.

"By the way, his name is Victor."

Penny turned towards Victor, who simply gave a nod with a blank expression back at her. "'Sup."

"Nice to meet you! I'm Penny!" Penny introduced herself once again, making Victor raise an eyebrow. "...So I heard…"

Suddenly, an idea came out in his mind. "Hey, Penny."

Hearing her name being called out, Penny looked straight at Victor's eyes. "Yes?"

"I saw that you are pretty strong… You see, there is one thing at the bottom of the river. It's a metallic chair with wheels, do you think you are able to bring it back here?"

"It's easy!" Penny shouted in excitement before she removed her rag and threw it on the ground. After doing that, she ran across the rocky shore and jumped in the water.

Both Luka and Victor looked in her direction for a dozen of seconds in silence before Luka glared at Victor. "Couldn't you just buy a new wheelchair? She's only a kid!"

"That wheelchair costs more than 4'000 Gold." When Luka heard the cost Victor had paid, he felt his saliva remain stuck in his throat and began to loudly cough.

Fortunately, Penny followed through her words and carried Victor's wheelchair behind her as she swam back to the shore. She quickly reached Victor with the wet wheelchair being dragged with one arm. It was fortunate that he switched wheelchair this morning, because the wooden one would be ruined immediately. This metallic one was sturdier, although the cloth used for the seat was completely wet and required time to dry.

"I found it!" Penny shouted at Victor as she brought the wheelchair to him. Victor smiled as he took a grasp of the wheelchair and turned it upwards, on its wheels.

"Thank you, I really need this." He replied, although he didn't make any movement to reach for the wheelchair's seat. Meanwhile, Luka squeezed his shirt, manually drying it from the water accumulated in, and said.

"Well then, shall we take our leave?"

"...Nah."

"Hmm?" Luka looked at Victor in surprise. "What do you mean?"

Victor reared back his good leg and put an arm over it. "We finally found a river with clean water, I'm going to use this opportunity to have a nice bath. It's been a week, and the sweat accumulated in the whole week is starting to get annoying."

Luka looked back at the river, and shrugged. "Sounds like a good idea."

"Besides, you lost your traveling bag."

"...?" Luka blinked in surprise as his mind started to lag. A dozen of seconds later, he quickly patted his back and looked around, before his gaze ultimately fell in the horizon at the river's direction. "...Fuck! What do I do now?! I had everything in there!"

Victor sighed and replied. "I told you that I would take care of necessary expenses, so you can stop worrying about this. I can buy anything you need, including map and compass. You simply have to relax for now."

"..." Luka hesitated a bit, but nonetheless he shook his head and sighed. "Seriously, I'm truly grateful for that."

Sometimes Victor could be hateful, but there were times where he was thankful to the Goddess for sending down on the world such a great person to assist him in his adventures… Unlike Alice.

"Thank the Founder that I brought someone like you along with us, I don't know what would end in my stomach if that wasn't the case."

Speak of the devil, and they will arrive. Luka felt his heart skip a beat at the sudden presence at his side, and turned around to see the familiar figure of Alice slithering at his side.

"You're… back?" Victor commented with a raised eyebrow at the surprising appearance of Alice, while the reason why he felt like that approached her with a wagging tail.

"Hello! I'm Penny! Who are you?"

Alice's expression softened by a big deal compared to how she looked against Luka and Victor, and casually introduced herself. "I'm just a traveling gourmet."

"Ohhh, what is a gourmet?" Penny curiously asked as her tail didn't stop wagging left and right in excitement.

"I'm someone who travels the world and tastes every kind of food existing; wouldn't eating the same kind of food every day make you want to look out for more, after all?"

"That's right!" In understandment, Penny quickly nodded. "I usually eat raw animal meat and drink from Mama's breasts, but sometimes I find delicious fruits and fishes around here!"

"Delicious fruit, you say?" Alice's interest peaked, while Victor frowned a bit. However, it wasn't about Alice's interest, but something else.

Luka caught his change of expression and approached him at the side. "Something's wrong?"

"Not really… I just got surprised that she is still drinking breast milk… I mean, she seems to be around 12 or 13 years old…"

Alice caught up their conversation with her sharp ears and turned towards them. "This Dog Girl might look like this, but she is less than 3 years old."

"Hold up, what?" Victor stared up to Alice with surprised eyes.

"While your race's age remains around 80 years, the monsters have a varying lifespan. Sometimes they range from 500 up to 1'000 years, or even beyond. However, there are particular monsters with a very short lifespan.

Dog Girls can live around 10 or 15 years, and this breed has at most 10 years of lifespan in total. Still, it cannot be compared to Candle Girls, whose bodies can easily melt away in weeks if they are not taken care of, although that is a more particular case because they are undead, and thus can switch bodies after they die."

"What? That's horrible…" Luka was taken aback at Alice's words and looked at Penny with a new light.

"That might be the case for you, but this has been a genetic trait in Dog Girls for so long that they don't care much anymore. It is just a matter of perspective in the end. Otherwise, I would just be pitying a lot of monsters because they cannot live beyond 1'000 years like me." Alice replied back with a casual tone.

"Still… This is kind of sad…"

"Just let her enjoy her life, there is no need to add worries on her back." Victor commented. His voice attracted the attention of Penny as she came closer to him, making him raise an eyebrow.

Penny held a curious expression as she patted Victor's shoulder, rubbing her hand across his shirt's texture. "...Woah… This cloth feels nice! Can I have one too?"

"...?" Victor blinked a couple of times before he shrugged. "Well, you got my wheelchair back and saved me from worrying about getting stranded in an unknown piece of land. Wait a moment…"

After some seconds, a small book appeared on his hand, taking Penny by surprise. She turned her eyes to the book as her irises sparkled with curiosity.

"Wow! How did you do that?" Penny asked Victor, while he casually opened the book.

"Just a small trick. Anyway, look here and see which kind of clothes you like the most." He passed the book to Penny, which she picked up with both hands and put on the ground. Her wet hands gradually ruined the pages on the book, but it was a magazine, so it took some time before the water turned a page into a mess.

"Oooh!" Penny let out amazed sounds at each page she turned around, her eyes shining brightly with all the clothes she was seeing on the magazine. While she was busy, Victor turned towards Alice.

"So, why are you here? I thought you didn't want to show yourself to other Monsters." He asked.

Alice simply crossed her arms as she lost the soft expression she had when dealing with Penny, turning back to her cold self. "The agreement was that I would not show in fights against Monsters to not scare the monsters into thinking you are my property. Although I would also like to avoid meeting with Monsters in general, there are cases like this, where the Monster in question doesn't even know about my existence.

She should be around 1 or 2 years, maybe in between; although they grow fast, I doubt her family taught her everything in that time after she was born. Her not reacting to my presence is already enough proof to back up my statement."

"Fair enough." Victor casually commented. After that, he materialized a spear from his inventory and grasped it with both hands, gradually getting up on his good foot. "Well, I will clean myself up at the river. Penny, tell me later when you have finished to pick your favorite dress."

"Okay!" Penny didn't raise her eyes from the magazine as she kept looking at the various dresses on the book, while Victor started to walk to the river with the help of the spear.

Walking will be good for him. Staying in the wheelchair until he can finally fix his leg will make it harder later to get up. As his body went in the river, his clothes and armor pieces got from the hypnotized guard back at Ilias Village gradually disappeared until he remained with only his underwear and the bandaged leg.

He wasn't from Japan, so he didn't really care about getting seen naked by girls. Still, that didn't mean he would show his junk around a 1 year old Dog Girl; that was just fucking sick.

Actually, he had sold almost everything he was dressed in. The total he gained from the clothes was 139 Gold, he even sold the dagger he got with Fredrick's money at the easy price of 300 Gold. As for his armor, that wasn't cheap at all, since he got 3'610 Gold Coins from the entire set, bringing his current coin count to 9'711.

Because of that, as he sat down on the river's bed near the shore, with the water reaching his stomach, he began to upgrade his system even further, buying the Super Purifier upgrade, the Platinum Mine, and unlocking a new series of money-farming producers while bringing his money back to 2'711. Along with the Super Purifier, he had also obtained an achievement that was called 'Super Upgrader'.

[Current Production: 1483 Gold/Hour]

[Basic Production: 1023 Gold/Hour]

[Current Multiplier: 1.45x]

[Automatic Wood Cutter: (1 Gold/Hour)]

[Automatic Stone Retriever: (2 Gold/Hour)]

[Coal Mine: (5 Gold/Hour)]

[Copper Mine: (10 Gold/Hour)]

[Iron Mine: (15 Gold/Hour)]

[Steel Mine: (30 Gold/Hour)]

[Silver Mine: (1 Gold/Minute)]

[Gold Mine: (5 Gold/Minute)]

[Platinum Mine: (10 Gold/Minute)]

[Sapphire Mine: 10'000 Gold]

[Cobalt Mine: 20'000 Gold]

[Ruby Mine: 30'000 Gold]

[Emerald Mine: 50'000 Gold]

[Pure Crystal Mine: 100'000 Gold]

[Diamond Mine: 500'000 Gold]

[Cleaner: (+0,05x multiplier)]

[Purifier: (+0,05x multiplier)]

[Polisher: (+0,05x multiplier)]

[Refiner: (+0,1x multiplier)]

[Super Purifier: (+0,2x multiplier)]

[Super Refiner: 30'000 Gold]

"That is really great…" Victor commented with a genuine impressed voice. He could make 1'300 Gold Coins per hour, that is indeed something great; so great that it could make any villager grab their forks and torches and hunt him down if they knew…

For the moment, he dematerialized his spear and started to wash himself. Apparently, Luka and Alice remained with Penny rather than bath with him, but he didn't care at all about what they wanted at the moment anyway.

Pouring fresh water over his head, Victor began to scratch the hell out of his head, feeling a sticky liquid in his nails. That was his scurf, which he got rid off immediately after. Soon enough, he bought an anti-dandruff shampoo at the price of 120 Gold and used a small bit of it on his head.

For now, he won't have any problems with scurf for some days…

After cleaning himself up, he walked to the trees that stood just before the rocky shore and used it as a hiding place to dry his body with a bath towel bought for 92 Gold Coins, and then he bought a new set of clothes after selling his wet underwear for 33 Gold.

By the time he was ready to come out, he was left with 3'183 Gold Coins. The next hour had already passed while he was bathing peacefully, so he got his hourly share of money from the tycoon system. He also used a total of 300 Gold Coins to buy two more inventory spaces because he felt like it.

As he approached the group once again, Victor noticed the unusual attention coming from both Alice and Penny as he stumbled closer to his now-dry wheelchair. Once he sat there, he dematerialized the spear he used as a support and looked at them with a casual expression.

"What?"

Penny approached Victor in front of him and began to sniff the smell near him. This time, not just her tail, but her fluffy golden dog ears flopped a bit. "You smell good!"

"What did you use to smell like this?" Alice asked with an interested tone.

Victor simply materialized a blue shampoo bottle he had stuck in his inventory and showed it to Alice. "It's called Shampoo, basically liquid soap."

Alice picked it up and looked at it, before she frowned a bit. "...What kind of symbols are these? Is this some kind of decoration?"

Victor raised an eyebrow. "What decoration? There are no decorations on it, except for the color."

Alice sighed and stopped observing it. "Nevermind. Since there's time to consume, I'm going to use this opportunity to bathe too."

"Don't use too much of it at once, it's bad." Victor gave her a small warning about the shampoo bottle as she put down her satchell that contained some of her stuff, and unlike Victor, she completely removed every piece of her clothings before she placed them on the ground.

To be fair, she was dressed with only a pair of skimpy bras and a mini skirt the entire time. The concept of being embarrassed without clothes is very questionable for her.

Meanwhile, Penny tugged on Victor's new red shirt, attracting his attention. She lifted her magazine and pointed at a blue dress with a white apron directly taken out from a child's cosplay of Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

A snort escaped from Victor's mouth at the extreme irony of Penny's pick as he held back a laughter. Between all the possible clothes, she had to pick that one…

In curiosity, Luka and Alice looked at the picture, but they didn't see anything funny about it. The greatest impression about it was the 'realisticity' of the 'drawing'. Well, Victor had always been taking out weird stuff, so they left it as something that came from his hometown---which was technically not wrong.

"O… Heh… Okay…" Victor went through his system's store and bought the blue dress along with the white apron, and included a pair of black shoes, blue papillon, and long white socks with light blue strips; basically, he bought the entire set--resized--for Penny.

Along with that, he gained an achievement that went by 'Cosplayer', which could be obtained by buying a full set of costume from a famous character. If he knew that he could get an achievement for that, he would have bought the plastic replica of the Praetor Suit from DOOM Eternal. Fuck, he could frighten anyone even when sitting on a wheelchair if he dressed like that.

Rip and Tear, until it's done!

It's kind of a shame that he wasted such a good opportunity for an Alice's Wonderland cosplay… Well, Penny did him such a big favor of recovering his wheelchair from the river and saving his ass from being pulled in God-knows-where.

"What are these things?" Penny's voice brought his attention elsewhere from his system. He closed the panel and looked at Penny, raising an eyebrow at her new appearance.

Now, along with her golden floppy dog ears mixed in her short hair that reached her cheeks, she is dressed in a blue dress that reached the upper side of her feet along with the white apron over her tiny torso, that fell down on the blue long skirt. She was holding a pair of long socks and a large plastic circle, curious about what they were.

Victor sighed and glanced at Alice. "Can you help her?"

Alice narrowed her eyes and looked down on Victor. "Why can't you do it instead? Having a broken leg shouldn't impede you that much."

"I am a 17 years old man helping a child that looks around 13 years old with 1/10th of that age in her life hourglass dressing up. That is wrong on so many kinds of existing and non-existing levels that being called 'Pedophile' and being jailed up for the rest of my life is the best scenario I could achieve in front of a judge.

Last I checked, Luka is not a girl, and I am sure he also agrees with my point of view." Along with his words, Luka nodded.

"Are you a pedophile?" Alice asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Of course not, you moron!" Victor replied back with an annoyed tone, which made Alice narrow her eyes even further.

"First of all, don't ever call me that again lest you want an early funeral. Second, if you are not a pedophile, I don't see anything wrong about it. It's not like she is asking to ravage her, she simply needs help with her new clothes."

"..." Victor felt defeat at Alice's rebuke. He opened his mouth, but no word came out from there. An exasperated sigh came from his mouth as he shook his head.

He glanced at Penny and gently grabbed the induments she was holding in her hands. The first thing that he pulled out from her unused clothes was a pair of panties… It's still a miracle this little girl knows about how to wear a rag…

A sigh escaped from his mouth as he gestured at his lap. "Get here, I'll help you wear your clothes."

"Okay!" Penny excitedly walked over Victor and sat on his thighs with her tiny body. He held up the small pair of white panties, which he extended far in front of Penny, and muttered.

"I never thought I would be saying this any time sooner, but… Spread your legs."

…

Victor Luis' (future) Trivia Book: Dog Girls

Dog Girls are beast-type monsters that strongly express human characteristics, also known as Beastmen. However, they are by no means different from other Monsters; just like everyone else, they have semen as part of their diet and have their 'moments of heat' more often than normal people.

They are also part of the kind of monsters with a short lifespan, with the oldest dog having reached the age of 18 before dying of old age. Because of that, their perception of time is very short. What feels like a day for them might feel like a month for a normal human: either they are forced to feel every single second that ticks or they won't even realize the day has passed without it being mentioned.

However, while their perception of time is different from humans, that doesn't mean that they see everything in a slowed down time. A second is a second, no matter the point of view.

In the long run, they might be asking you about when you will reach your destination, or simply act excited the entire time. But while the times of boredom are as long as they could get for Dog Girls, so are the times of fun.

Just like normal dogs, they like going on walks with their friends across the land or streets, depending on where they live. They are also very friendly, and Dog Girls have great success in psychotherapy, as they are able to understand other people's raw emotions just as much as Succubi understands lust.

However, while they have features exclusive to dogs, you have to take in account that their bodies resemble humans. They are omnivores, and also scavenger creatures; they would eat anything that is edible, but while their intellect is good enough to avoid truly dangerous substances such as metal and poison, you will have to teach them to eat real food instead of garbage so that they won't get sick.

By the way, they also have human tastes, so do the world a favor and stop buying 'Dog Food' for them. It is as bland for them as it is for you, and making them get used to it is a horrible act.

Speaking of food… No, I am not 'suggesting' you, I am 'ordering' you to not give them any chocolate; unless you want to murder them. Chocolate is poison for Dog Girls just like it is dangerous for normal dogs.

While her strength and agility are at the superhuman level despite their small and cute stature, they are extremely social creatures and are friendly with any kind of monsters and humans. There are very few cases of Dog Girls physically harming Humans, but they are all for good reasons or situations out of their control.