The System has responded to his desperate plea for help and issued him his first task, that had a chance of a negative.

  [System Task]: Avoid impure thoughts for one hour.

  Reward: +5 LP

  Failure Penalty: -10 LP

  Maluck stared at the notification. He was immediately screwed. Chloe existed. She walked around. She breathed. He was doomed.

  Knowing how important it was for him to get some LP—and absolutely not wanting to find out what happened if he hit negative LP—Maluck decided to prepare before hitting accept on the system task. First, he needed to get rid of any distractions.AKA Chloe.

  He turned to Chloe. “Hey, I’m gonna need an hour by myself. Do you mind heading to the coffee shop or the restaurant or… anywhere?”

  Chloe gave him a look. The kind of look that made it very clear she was absolutely thinking something inappropriate.

  “…Are you about to do something dirty? Maybe tug the old sausage? Give the dark lord some punishment?”

  Maluck groaned. “No! Absolutely not! But it’s really important that I have complete silence for the next hour. You could even say the fate of the entire company depends on it.”

  She folded her arms, still eyeing him with suspicion. “You sure? Because this really sounds like the kind of thing a guy says before he locks the door and—”

  Maluck immediately cut her off. “I swear on all things holy, Chloe, there will be no weird stuff happening. I just need to be alone for exactly one hour, no interruptions.”

  She sipped her coffee, considering this. “Alright, fine. But if I come back and anything smells weird, I’m quitting.”

  With that, she grabbed her bag and headed out.

  He accepted the Task as soon as she left the room.

  [System Task Active: Avoid impure thoughts for one hour.]

  Time Remaining: 59:59

  Reward: +5 LP

  Failure Penalty: -10 LP

  Maluck took a deep breath. ‘Alright, just one hour of pure, innocent thoughts. Easy.’

  He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the blank TV screen. Maybe turning it on would help? Wait, no. That’s a trap. Commercials have bikini models. Hell, even yogurt ads are risky these days.

  He stood up and started pacing. That was safe. Pacing was pure.

  ‘Okay, what’s something totally neutral?’

  He decided to mentally review tax laws. Nothing was less sexy than tax deductions.

  He started making a mental list of the tax exemptions he needed to put together for Soi. ‘Let’s see—restaurant bill, gym bill, hotel bill, lubricant and condo bill… ah, crap!’

  He tried doing push-ups. Good, good, exercise was productive. But after the third push-up, his mind wandered to Chloe doing stretches at the gym and—NOPE.

  He switched tactics, grabbing a hotel notepad and writing out math equations.

  198 x 69

  Wait. 69? That was the exact position Chloe had suggested this morning when she—STOP.

  Time Remaining: 28:17

  Maluck was breaking into a cold sweat. This was so much harder than it should be. He tried to think of safe, innocent things. Puppies. Grandma’s knitting. A rock. Just a plain, boring rock. School.

  Then his brain betrayed him. ‘What if Chloe wore glasses and had a librarian outfit—NO!’

  He faceplanted into the bed and screamed into a pillow.

  Time Remaining: 10:42

  He had reached a state of mental exhaustion. He stared at the ceiling, whispering the alphabet backward just to keep his mind occupied.

  Z…Y …X………..

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Finally, the timer hit zero.

  [System Task Complete!]

  +5 LP Earned!

  Maluck let out the biggest sigh of relief in his life. He had done it. He had fought the horny demons in his own head and emerged victorious.

  A few minutes later, Chloe walked in, holding a fresh coffee. “So? Did you save the company?”

  Maluck sat there, looking like a war survivor. “…Yes.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You look like you just fought a battle.”

  “You have no idea,” he muttered.

  She sat down and stretched. “Well, whatever you did, I hope it was worth it.”

  Maluck checked his system screen, saw the +5 LP, and clenched his fist.

  “Oh, it was.”

  ***

  After completing his first System Task—and basking in the glorious freedom of being able to have impure thoughts about Chloe again—Maluck decided to go for another one.

  [System Task Generated!]

  Objective: Compliment someone without it sounding flirty.

  Rewards & Penalties:

  ?If they simply say, “Thanks,” → +3 LP

  ?If they look annoyed and assume he’s hitting on them → -5 LP

  ?If they respond with, “Are you okay?” → -10 LP

  Uh, man, this was gonna be hard.

  Maluck stared at the system task, already feeling the pressure. He couldn’t compliment Chloe—she was literally the only person in the room, and that would definitely come off as flirty. Hell, even when he wasn’t trying to be flirty, she usually thought he was being flirty.

  He also briefly entertained the idea of just randomly walking around the hotel, finding someone to compliment, and seeing if that would give him some much-needed positive LP. But then he realized— nope.

  “Basically,” he said to himself, “if a hot guy says something nice, it’s charming. If a regular guy says it, it’s weird. And if I say it? Well, that’s probably just me losing negative LP points faster than a slot machine eating your quarters.”

  Maluck sighed, rolling his eyes at his own absurdity. If only the System made it easier to be genuinely nice without the awkward risk of sounding like a total creeper. Yeah, no. Time to find someone else to compliment.

  “Alright, I’m heading out for a bit,” he said, standing up.

  Chloe raised an eyebrow. “I just got back. Now you’re leaving? What’s up?”

  “No reason!” he said way too quickly, already heading for the door.

  Now she was definitely suspicious. Was it something she did? Nah, impossible. ‘I’m awesome,’ she thought, brushing it off.

  Meanwhile, Maluck was already roaming the hotel, scanning for potential targets.

  The gym? Nope. Complimenting someone on their form was basically a one-way ticket to being labeled a gym creep.

  The restaurant? Too risky. If he told a waiter they had great service, they might smirk and assume he was angling for their number.

  Then, like a divine gift from the system itself, he spotted the Activity Center.

  Today’s event? Knitting Circle.

  ‘Perfect.’

  Maluck walked in, immediately spotting a circle of elderly ladies, all hunched over colorful balls of yarn. The air smelled like lavender and Werther’s Singles.

  ‘Alright, just play it cool.’

  He spotted one woman who had knitted an impressively long scarf, looking like something straight out of a fantasy RPG.

  “Hey, uh, sorry to interrupt,” he said casually, peeking in. “I thought it was a different activity day, but—” He glanced at her work and nodded. “That’s a really nice scarf, by the way.”

  The old woman looked up, her eyes twinkling behind her thick glasses as she smiled warmly. “Thanks!” she said in a voice that sounded like it had been honed through decades of pleasant exchanges with shopkeepers and neighbors.

  She paused for a moment, then glanced down at the colorful scarf in her hands, the yarn slipping through her fingers with a soft click-clack of the needles. “You know, this scarf’s for my grandson, Billy. He’s about to graduate from college, bless his heart. He’s studying engineering, though I don’t quite understand it. All I know is he keeps telling me about ‘thermodynamics’ and ‘electric circuits’ and I nod, but really, I’m just waiting for him to ask me if I have some nice hot cocoa ready.”

  She chuckled softly, shaking her head. “Billy, though, he’s such a good boy. Always calls me at least once a week, even if he’s got his head buried in textbooks. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve made him a big batch of cookies after a hard day of studying. I think he’s just using it as an excuse to eat my cookies if I’m being honest.”

  She looked back at her knitting, her hands working with a steady rhythm. “But this scarf, oh, it’s gonna be special. I’m telling you, the colors match his school’s team, and every time he wears it, he’ll remember how proud I am of him. Of course, I’ll probably get a little emotional when he does.”

  Her eyes softened as she continued to knit. “That boy’s grown up so fast. It feels like just yesterday I was making him little mittens for his first winter. Now he’s got this big ol’ brain full of fancy science stuff, and he’s about to take on the world. Makes a grandmother proud, it does.”

  Maluck patiently listened to her ramble on about her grandson. If this was the price he was going to have to pay to accomplish this task, it was worth it. After the story was over, the System Task popped up in his mind.

  [System Task Accomplished!]

  +3 LP

  Maluck resisted the urge to fist-pump. ‘Nailed it.’

  He knew the System probably wanted him to compliment somebody who had a chance of taking it the wrong way, as if it were some sort of training exercise for his “harmless compliment skills.” But honestly? He really had no interest in doing that.

  “I mean, who needs that kind of drama?” he muttered to himself. “Compliment someone, and suddenly you’re either a creep or an unwanted romantic interest. No thanks, System. I’ll pass on this lesson in ‘How to Make Awkward Small Talk 101’.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, feeling the weight of his luck and the absurdity of it all. At this point, he’d rather face a fire-breathing dragon than try to navigate the minefield of giving a compliment without accidentally becoming a character in a bad rom-com.

  ‘Technicalities and old ladies with hearing problems for the win.’

  Maluck checked his LP count. Luck Points: 8. He was getting so close. Just 17 more points, and he could finally use the Fortune Tuner to turn his BP nightmare into sweet, sweet LP goodness.

  ‘Come on, System. Throw me a bone here.’

  Of course, the System remained conspicuously silent. Probably because it was still in Chastity Mode, meaning any request for an easy LP gain was going to come with some wholesome moral lesson.

  And after what he had been through? He hoped it wasn’t another Task that required purity of thought. That last one had been brutal.

  ‘I barely survived the last one, and that was with Chloe out of the room. If she so much as breathes near me, I’m gonna fail instantly.’

  So he needed safe LP gains. Something easy. Something that wouldn’t have hidden pitfalls, like, “Go rescue a kitten from a tree, but if it scratches you, you lose 20 LP.”