Love Collector Ch. 14

Oliver leaned against his car while checking his phone. His bank account confirmed what Tessa and the status notification had already told him. She'd paid him his daily wages on top of a hundred-dollar bonus, but the surprises didn't end there. The money for his last eight days of work was also present and accounted for.

Yesterday, his account had only a hundred dollars, which was all he had to last until payday tomorrow.

Today, he had $1,235.

For once, Oliver knew exactly what was happening. Time and money management was a heavily emphasized mechanic in many of his favorite dating sims. Chasing digital heroines didn't come cheap. You needed to buy them presents and take them out on expensive dates, requiring the player to find his avatar a job.

Therein lies the caveat.

You wouldn't play a game that made you wait two weeks before your character got a paycheck, would you? No, you wouldn't, and every game designer worth their salt knows that.

Characters in sandbox-styled dating sims could do as they liked with their time. Their bosses never gave them specific days they had to come in, and they got paid whenever they showed up because, from a gameplay perspective, it meant the player could choose to go to work, earn some money, and take their favorite girl out on a date all on the same day. All this with no delay and no fear of getting fired.

Today was a confusing mess as Oliver struggled to navigate all of the bizarre changes in his life as they cropped up, but this one didn't require much adaptation. This was a change he could immediately get behind. Everyone should be entitled to the sweat of their brow without having to wait fourteen days before they get it.

Money, for all its evils, positively impacted the human psyche when you were poor and didn't have much of it. Oliver was definitely in that camp and was feeling pretty good about his unexpected pre-payday windfall. Maybe he'd order a pizza tonight while he sat around trying to figure out what was happening to him? Might as well celebrate the day he developed insane dating sim-inspired powers.

Oliver stashed his phone away with a hesitant sigh and warily eyed his car. It didn't matter if the concept still unnerved him. He was going to use fast travel again. The convenience it offered outweighed his paranoia, so Oliver opened the door, waited for the map, and pressed the buttons to take him home.

It wasn't until after he'd done so and exited his car that he realized something about the fast travel power had slipped his mind. Something that should've been obvious but was pushed to the wayside amid his myriad other concerns.

A woman was leaving the apartments to walk her dog, a little dachshund with an ever-wagging tail. She stopped what she was doing and looked in Oliver's direction as he froze where he stood. His panicked mind went into overdrive trying to figure out how he would explain his teleporting car, but his fears were put to rest. The woman waved at him like nothing was out of the ordinary and went on her way, her well-behaved dog trailing after its owner with much excitement.

Oliver breathed a sigh of relief and cradled his forehead.

"Okay, people don't notice the car teleportation thing. Good to know." He muttered, entering the building and ascending the stairs before entering his home.

From his perspective, he'd only been gone for a little over an hour, yet Oliver's aching body felt like he'd pulled multiple shifts in that short time. He stared at his lonely bed, experiencing its siren's call. Not yet. If he laid down, he wouldn't get up until tomorrow- if that.

Tempting as that was, Oliver wanted to stay awake and try to piece everything together that had happened so far. He grabbed an energy drink from his fridge and sat down at his coffee table, permitting himself to lean over it like a slob. With a weary groan, he whipped out his phone and ordered a pepperoni pizza from the unfortunately-named yet amazing-tasting PizWiz.

--- Spent $15! ---

"Cool, more notifications. That's gonna be really motivating when I see bills come out, I bet. More importantly, what comes next...?"

He hoped the answer wasn't making a psychiatric appointment, as he really didn't want to start medication if he had to. Not between the potential side effects and healthcare being what it was. Oliver worked through his issues with a psychologist the first time around, and while that remained an option, he doubted they'd have an answer for his current problems that didn't involve a padded cell and a locked door.

Besides, he was already convinced that whatever was happening to him was as real as real could be. It didn't make sense, and it might not ever, but it was consistent thus far. He had no reason to doubt what he'd seen with his own eyes.

It was preferable to accept things as they were, so Oliver did. It's not like he didn't find the idea of living in a dating sim-inspired world unappealing; it's just that this was his second hour of experiencing it, and he had a lot to learn.

Oliver stared into the black screen of his twenty-six-inch TV, regarding his reflection. "Really wish I had a guide for this or something... shows what I get for skipping the tutorial, I guess."

Most games these days were overly reliant on a condescending amount of handholding to teach players basic concepts. Nobody liked it, but they all just shrugged and accepted it was the way things were. Painful as it was for him to admit, Oliver would've killed for some of that right about now.

A new message between him and his TV blocked Oliver's reflection.

--- You look like you're struggling. Would you like a tip? Yes/No ---

He stared into the text box with such relief that he'd never known was possible. In his emotional state, Oliver blurted out a phrase that no man had said before him. "Oh, thank God, this thing has Clippy..."

He pressed 'Yes' without skipping a beat, and the box changed its text to reflect his choice.

--- To check your menu, say, 'Open Menu'. If you still have questions after exploring and require more detailed assistance, access the 'Skill' tab and purchase the skill 'Your Best Bro'. Good luck! ---

"That's all?" Oliver stared at the screen until it disappeared without warning a few seconds after he'd read it. "Even Clippy would've been more helpful than that." He sighed. "Whatever. I wanted more, but that's still handy. Open menu."

It wasn't surprising at this point that a new screen popped up out of nowhere. This new screen was essentially a pause menu by the looks of it, and there were five different options he could choose from. 'Status', 'Heroines', 'Inventory', 'Quests', and 'Skills'.

Everything seemed simple and straightforward. There wasn't anything that stood out to him that Oliver couldn't immediately understand. That was a welcome blessing, but it disappointed him that 'Help' and 'Settings' were missing from the lineup. If there wasn't a skill that let him mute the music being broadcasted into his brain, then there would be some problems in the very near future.

"Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Might as well see what I can figure out for myself before looking for that best bro skill."

Oliver pressed the status button and was greeted with, unsurprisingly, a status menu.

---

Oliver Chase

22 Years Old | Birthday - March 15th | Virgin

Height - 5'3ft | Weight - 125lbs | Length - 8in | Girth - 5in

Likes - Dating Sims, Visual Novels, Masturbation, Gaming, Anime, Manga, Edibles, Mia

Dislikes - Stacy, Loneliness, Past Self, Current Self

Stats

Strength - 0 | Style - 0 | Spark - 0 | Smarts - 0

Cash - $1,220

Lovers

Heroines - 3 | Girlfriends - 0 | Wives - 0

Skills

N/A

Kinks

(Click to Expand)

---

"Awesome, even more questions..." Oliver lamented the saddening lack of pizza in his life and poured over the screen multiple times.

Plenty of the information on display was self-explanatory, if questionable. He couldn't hazard a guess as to why the length and girth of his dick were proudly on display, and then he remembered these powers of his were inspired by sexually-charged games and shrugged it off. All the little factoids presented were painfully on point, but those weren't what interested him the most about the status menu.

That would be the 'Stats' and 'Lovers' categories.

A frown spread across Oliver's face as he looked at the numbers on display. "I know I'm not much to look at, and I'm definitely not fit or anything, but I would've thought I had at least a point or two in 'smarts'... what's this about 'spark,' though? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Oliver curiously tapped the display with his finger, poking the word. In response, a pop-up appeared with the clarification he sought.

--- Spark represents raw creativity and all its untapped potential. With it, one becomes a dreamer of dreams, and without it, one dwells in a world of banality. Find a tutor or perform creative activities to increase this stat. ---

"So it's just another way of telling me I'm stupid. Got it." Oliver nodded. "Can't say I'm all that creative, either, but why call it 'spark'? It sounds like someone was desperate to have all the stats start with 's'. What the fuck would my unimaginative ass know, though?"

In any case, finding out he could tap on the different parts of the status menu and get a solid explanation was a good discovery. Knowing that, he tapped on 'Lovers' next.

--- Current number of heroines whose routes have been unlocked, of heroines in a steady relationship with you, and of heroines legally married to you. Various skills may be applied to increase the second without causing conflict between heroines, while various skills must be used to legally increase the third value. ---

Oliver took a deep breath and closed his eyes as he tried to process what he'd just read. It wasn't going very well. "So... I really am incentivized to chase more than one girl at a time, then. God, this is fucked up. And what the hell does it mean by 'application of various skills'...? If it means what I think it means, then fuck that. I... I really don't want anything to do with that kind of shit anymore, and besides, Mia is all I care about right now. Moving on, I've got an idea."

Out of sheer curiosity, Oliver tapped the expand button under the 'Kink' section. Given how accurate his likes and dislikes were, he wanted to see how it stacked up. The corresponding pop-up was the length of a moderately sized Wikipedia article, a fact that already spoke to its authenticity.

"Maids... robot girls... kemonomimi... monster girls... all of the deres including but not limited to tsun, kuu, and yan..." Oliver dictated, nodding his head.

There was practically no archetype of anime girl Oliver didn't care for, and his list reflected how wide of a net his porn-addicted cumbrain now cast after rotting for so many years. Towards the middle of the list were the things he wouldn't openly admit to, whereas the stuff at the bottom of the list caused a deep sense of shame to fill his heart.

"Hate to say it, but everything checks out..."

Especially the bit about harems and polygamy being the first two items on the extensive list, which probably had something to do with the reason his powers were structured the way that they were. Oliver didn't see a way that would work out without some seriously sketchy behavior on his part, however, and he was already starting to fear the kind of thing he might find in the skill tab that might facilitate such an arrangement.

It wasn't currently worth his brainpower. Not when there was still so much information to look through.

"All right. There was lots of good stuff there, along with some not-so-good stuff. At least now I know for sure that I have stats in need of training and that my powers are pushing me towards developing a harem. I don't think there's much else I can glean from my status menu, so... wait a second, how exactly do I go back from here?"

By accidentally speaking the phrase 'go back', Oliver triggered the main menu to pop up again. "Ah, there we go. Makes sense. One down, four to go."

He was already in this deep, so Oliver tapped the button labeled 'Heroines' on the status menu.