The level notification appeared while I was still lying on my back staring at the ceiling.

  No stat screen this time, just a brief pulse from the ring and a simple pop-up at the edge of my vision.

  Level 4 reached.

  I blinked at it. Then closed it. I was beginning to understand that the ring leveled through sexual activity the way other csses probably leveled through killing things, and the young dandy had apparently been worth enough experience to push me over a threshold. I filed this under How Novel and waited for whoever was coming next.

  She arrived maybe twenty minutes ter.

  Mid thirties, confident, the kind of attractive that comes from knowing exactly what you want and being direct about getting it. She looked at me lying naked on the bed and at my cock resting soft against my thigh and said "Oh, that's a pretty thing" with the appreciative tone of someone who collected pretty things and knew quality when she saw it.

  "Thank you," I said. "I'm Jack."

  "I don't care," she said, already undressing. "I requested the new one with the unusual equipment."

  That was fttering in a specific way I was still processing when she climbed onto the bed and took my cock in her hand and stroked me to full hardness with the practiced efficiency of someone who knew what she was doing and was on a schedule.

  She tried the conventional approach first.

  She got maybe two inches in and stopped. Her expression did something complicated. Not pain exactly. More like the specific face of someone recalibrating their ambitions in real time. She shifted her angle and tried again and got perhaps an inch more and the sound she made was somewhere between determined and uncertain.

  "It's very wide," she observed.

  "The head especially," I agreed.

  She considered her options for a moment. Then she looked at me with the decisive expression of a woman who had not gotten to her thirties by backing down from logistical challenges and said "Other way then" and repositioned.

  The Morning Dew had been running freely down my shaft the whole time and she used it with the matter-of-fact practicality of someone who had encountered magical lubrication before or was simply too pragmatic to ask questions. She worked her ass open against my tip and then pressed back and took me with a long slow exhale that turned into a low sound, then a less low sound. She was seated at my base with all twelve inches inside her and making a noise that I was fairly certain the entire building could hear.

  My first instinct was panic.

  My second instinct was to check whether Cum Shot had somehow discharged inside a person, which would have been a genuinely catastrophic development.

  My third instinct, arriving about two seconds ter when I registered that she was not injured and was in fact making the specific sounds of someone having an excellent time, was to rex.

  She was just loud.

  Extremely, thoroughly, architecturally loud, in a way that suggested the other patrons of this establishment were getting an inadvertent update on proceedings whether they wanted one or not. She rode me with complete commitment, the sounds she made escating and then escating further. The ring drank charge from the encounter in long warm pulls that sat distinctly different from the dandy's contribution, a different quality entirely, warm and bright where his had been warm and rich.

  When she finished she finished the way she had done everything — completely and without self-consciousness, shaking through it and announcing it to the general vicinity at a volume that I was fairly sure reached the street.

  I came shortly after, the ring absorbing most of it, the rest of my brain occupied with the realization that was arriving quietly in the background.

  This was the first time I'd had sex with a woman.

  I y there after she'd rearranged herself and was catching her breath and I examined that fact with genuine curiosity. It had been good. She had been enthusiastic and skilled and the charge quality was real and substantial and the ring was extremely pleased.

  But there was something I'd noticed while she was riding me. Something about the view. The dandy had been above me the same way, same position, same general arrangement, but in front of my face there had been his cock, hard and bouncing with each movement, and I had found that specific detail significantly more engaging than I'd been prepared for.

  I think I prefer someone else's dick bouncing in front of my face, I thought, with the calm crity of someone discovering something new about themselves without judgment.

  The woman patted my thigh. "No soreness at all," she said, sounding mildly surprised. "Usually a size like that I'd feel for a week."

  I thought about Morning Dew. About the way it healed everything it contacted. About the way it had been running freely down my shaft the entire time she was riding me.

  "Magic," I said, which was technically accurate.

  She looked at me with curiosity but didn't push it, got dressed, left a coin on the table, and walked out with the steady gait of someone who had no soreness whatsoever.

  They told me I was done after that.

  I washed up, dressed, and found a small room with a cot that the woman at the front desk had apparently included in the arrangement. I y down in the dark with the ring humming deep and satisfied at my base and five silver coins sitting on the small table beside me, which was five more silver coins than I'd had this morning.

  I went to sleep almost immediately.

  Level 5 reached.

  I woke to the notification sitting at the edge of my vision, patient and matter-of-fact, and I y there on the cot in the morning light and stared at the ceiling and thought about what it meant.

  Apparently a Vitalist Sex Mage gained experience through sex.

  How novel, I thought, with complete deadpan sincerity.

  I'd gained two levels in a single night by doing something I would have done anyway. The system had decided that my specific form of professional activity constituted sufficient grounds for advancement, and who was I to argue with the system. I closed the notification and sat up and looked at the five silver coins.

  I had absolutely no idea what five silver bought in this city. I didn't know if it was a week's meals or a night's lodging or a down payment on a horse. I knew it was more than zero, which was what I'd had yesterday. I knew that the work that had produced it was work I was apparently going to be doing regurly based on how the ring felt about career pnning.

  I turned one of the coins over in my fingers.

  The woman's comment was still sitting in the back of my mind. No soreness at all. She'd said it with genuine surprise, the specific surprise of someone expecting a consequence that hadn't arrived. And I knew why it hadn't arrived. Morning Dew, running freely down my cock the entire time, coating everything it contacted, the healing properties working on her the same way they worked on my own cuts and bruises. She'd been healed in real time by something she'd had no idea she was being healed by.

  I thought about that.

  I produced Morning Dew constantly at high charge. Constantly and in significant quantity. The ring running hot meant I was always leaking, always producing, the luminescent slick running down my shaft and dripping wherever I happened to be standing. In the forest I'd watched it make flowers push up through soil in real time. I'd watched moss become extravagant. I'd eaten it myself and felt the systemic healing work through me fast and thorough.

  Could I bottle it?

  The question arrived with the particur crity of an obvious idea. I produced copious amounts of the stuff. It healed wounds, closed cuts, addressed soreness, probably did things I hadn't discovered yet. It grew pnts. It had properties that an alchemist or healer would probably consider extraordinary. If I could collect it and contain it, then sell it, I would have a revenue stream that didn't require me to work at a brothel every night. Which had been fine but was probably not a long-term career pn. At least not one I was interested in.

  The practical question was collection. The ring absorbed everything by default and I had to override it deliberately to preserve anything. But I'd gotten good at the override. I could control what the ring took and what it didn't. In theory I could produce into a container and let the ring take nothing and fill a bottle in one extended session.

  I sat with the idea for a while.

  The ethical dimension was also sitting there waiting to be examined. Was there something morally complicated about selling a healing substance to people without telling them what it was or where it came from? I turned that question over a few times. The substance worked. It genuinely healed. The people receiving it would benefit. The source was unusual but the effect was real.

  I thought about the woman st night saying no soreness at all with surprise and pleasure.

  I thought about someone with a genuine wound, a cut or a burn or something worse, being handed a small bottle of something that closed it in minutes.

  The ethical problem, I decided, was probably the disclosure question rather than the substance itself. Whether I had an obligation to expin the origin of the product I was selling. Whether magical healing salve, do not ask questions was sufficient beling.

  I sat on the cot in the morning light with five silver coins and turned that question over.

  Then the ring pulsed and my stomach growled. I decided that breakfast came first and ethics could wait until I had a better understanding of what five silver actually bought in this city.

  I pocketed the coins, picked up my club, and went to find out.