Chapter 2

It was late the following afternoon. I was leveling my hardcore barbarian again, up to level 55. Progress was starting to slow down. I'd already finished Nightmare Act II. Champion Jailor Wasps damn near killed me, when I ran into a second boss crowd.

I saw the rose colored writing in the corner.

[CherryBomb] Amulet helps a lot. Thanks again

I was too busy to reply, barely keeping my ass alive in a whacked out rare timed dungeon. Run-run-run. Not something I usually tried while playing hardcore. Those places were death traps. I had a ton of interruptions, both in game and in RL. It was over an hour before I had time to respond to Cherry.

[AceHole] Glad you liked it. You upgrading anything else?

No reply. Maybe she was pissed at me for ignoring her for so long. I hit the auction house to see how my bank was doing.

[CherryBomb] Sorry about that. Party play, crazy times. You should have been there, could have helped a lot

[AceHole] I don't play open or with strangers. Especially not hardcore

[CherryBomb] We're not still strangers are we?

[AceHole] No

[CherryBomb] You didn't tell me that Attack Speed and Crit Chance together were stupid expensive

[AceHole] They're not. Shop a little. You can get some decent stuff for under $400K

[CherryBomb] As if. At $200K I'd be broke again

[AceHole] I hope you're kidding

[CherryBomb] I wish

Cute girl. Great tits. Total noob. Gold was too easy. How could she not be able to afford the basics? She did have decent gaming skills, but was horribly short on game knowledge. I smiled to myself. Legendary tits made up for a lot.

[AceHole] Got some time? Do a little softcore farming?

[CherryBomb] Cool. Where?

[AceHole] WhimseyShire

[CherryBomb] No shit? You got the staff?

[AceHole] Upgraded to Inferno. Ready in 5? I'm gonna stock up on pizza, Coke and Kleenex

[CherryBomb] :-) Invite when ready

It was slow going. She'd never been there before, and these were some of the hardest fuckers in the game, in a cartoon setting. We wiped out the first Elite pack, and she went to click on the Happy Cloud.

[AceHole] Stop. Don't. Not yet

[CherryBomb] Why not? We share evenly right?

[AceHole] Clear level first. Then loot after switch to MF gear

[CherryBomb] Magic Find? Does it help?

[AceHole] Silly Noob. My MF buffed is 304. It helps a ton

It took us another 40 minutes to clear the rest of the level. She died three times, and I died once. She did a good job of staying alive and rezzing me, I'll give her that. It normally takes me less than a half hour to do the whole thing solo. We still needed work, but by the end we were getting the hang of working with each other.

[AceHole] Now. Let me swap out gear and we'll hit the loot

[CherryBomb] My pack's almost full already

[AceHole] Should be. Portal to town. Dump pack. Grab MF gear. Loot. That's the way we farm places like this

Everything I'd looted was trashy, but I did get one decent rare. Probably worth 40K or so. Not worth the effort so far, but we weren't done. I had picked up maybe 25K in loose gold. I grabbed my MF gear, and portaled back. I had to wait several minutes.

[AceHole] Took your time

[CherryBomb] I'm not good at figuring what's good or not

[AceHole] Link the rares to me, and I'll tell you. Not now though. Let's loot

We ran the level. I picked up nine rares, including one good one, one excellent one, and a remarkably useful legendary. The girl was good luck.

[CherryBomb] I'm full

[AceHole] We're done. To Town

In town she spent another 15 minutes with me explaining what would sell and what wouldn't. She had a lot of stuff, but nothing as good as my best three. Too bad.

[AceHole] Take this. Take this. Take this.

I dropped the best of the loot at my feet. I didn't need it. Nothing would upgrade my personal gear, and I had plenty in my stash to auction for the next few days.

[CherryBomb] One is a legendary

[AceHole] Great boots. Use them

[CherryBomb] Sh*t. This is all great stuff! You just picked these up? Is it because you have better MF

[AceHole] All picked up this run. MF is shared, so you should have had better luck

[CherryBomb] Two of these are upgrades to my gear!

[AceHole] Because your gear sucks. We'll get you better

[CherryBomb] You gotta leave soon?

[AceHole] Yeah. More RL bullshit. Sorry. I'll show you better farming later. We'll work on your DPS too

[CherryBomb] Do you have 5 more minutes for me?

Damn. It was always like this. You help somebody out, and they keep beggin' for more. She should be happy I gave her the extra loot. The legendary boots would sell for a couple of million easy, maybe three. Sigh.

[AceHole] I do have to go. But I can give you a few minutes. What do you have in mind?

[CherryBomb] Skype. Now

I didn't even have to log out. My old laptop was up, hooked up to my 24" display, Skype running. One button press, keyboard, mouse and monitor switched machines, and it was on my main 32". I made the call.

The window popped up, bigger today. Her cute face filled the screen. "That was nice of you to give me your drops."

"Not a problem. I would have sold them. You could use them. The boots are sweet, I'll admit. You'll have a hard time ever replacing those."

She grinned. "Well I think you earned a reward. Close your eyes."

I closed them, smiling. Tits, Lord, let her show me her tits.

"You can open them."

I opened my eyes and almost fell off my seat. She was sitting back in her chair. A top of the line Aero, the girl had good taste. I'm almost ashamed to admit I even saw the chair. She had one foot up on the desk, the other extended to the side. She was wearing nothing but a pair of adorable striped panties. This babe had a body to die for.

She laughed. "Breathe, Ace. Don't go dying on me. I still need in game help."

"Nice. Are you sure you're a gamer girl?"

"You got lucky. I was playing in my underwear today. Figured you deserved to know after such a good deed. I appreciate it all. The info on what's good. The help with the game play. And of course, the awesome gear."

She leaned forward, putting on a little less of a show. It might have been even more exciting, seeing her moving around, her breasts in motion, looking so natural. "These boots are worth over a million, aren't they?" she asked.

"Three to five, depending on your luck at auction."

She grinned at me. "Think this is a fair trade?" She asked, opening her arms and exposing her body to me.

"Please don't ask that. I can't afford a fair trade this time."

She laughed beautifully, her tits bouncing up and down. "No, I think you've given me plenty today, as long as you don't think I'm cheating you."

"Worth everything and more. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

I couldn't believe I was casually speaking to a nearly naked game girl. "You going to go back to farming?" I asked.

"I don't know. I was thinking of leveling my hardcore monk. You already passed me." She stuck her tongue out at me. It was so cute I wanted to die. Of course I couldn't let her know.

"Don't. Farm softcore. You need the gear. Write this down."

She leaned over the desk and started typing as I spoke. "Act one Inferno. Start at The Cursed Hold. Go to the Festering woods and clear the two dungeons. Usually good for two to three stacks. Portal to town. Go to and clear Halls of Agony. Clear Cursed Hold. Make sure you have five valor stacks. If not, do Leoric's Manor backwards. Good for one, sometimes two more stacks. Then kill the Warden, and Kill the Butcher. Go to town, and do Dank Cellar north of town, if it spawns. Got that?"

She was nodding. "Five Stacks?"

Noob. "Each rare Mob gives you a valor stack. The five stacks make your magic drops much better. Don't kill the Warden until you have five stacks. Once you have five stacks kill everything and open everything. Try it for a couple of hours. One run should take less than thirty minutes. The first few times will take longer, until you get the hang of it."

"Good loot?" she asked.

"Some. Lots of loot. You can vendor, you can salvage. You can auction. Do it for a few hours and you should have enough gold to buy things you need."

She finished typing and sat back, turning toward the camera. "You still here? Don't you have someplace to go?"

I grinned. "Yeah. But a few minutes won't kill me. I can't seem to tear myself away. I wonder what it could be?"

She laughed. "I'm sure. Perv. I'll let you know how the farming goes. I'm going to get dressed now. I'm not going to have you blaming me if you're late."

"Spoilsport. Leave the camera on. I've got Skype on my phone. Nice distraction from the meeting."

"Now you're being silly. Go on." She had her T-shirt in hand, and she turned it right side out before putting it back on. She looked at the camera. "Go! You're embarrassing me. I'm sure you've seen tits before."

"Once or twice. These are well above average. Like their owner."

She rolled her eyes, hit the keyboard, and the window went black.

When I logged in the next day, I saw the new friend request. I popped up the friends box. Three new requests. Two complete strangers.

Deny. Deny.

The last one was from CherryBomb. I thought about it. I did. For several long seconds. Which was a lot more than I usually spent. There was something about her...

Deny.

I was trying out some different skill combinations on my Barbarian, while farming Act III. It was good loot, and consistently difficult. Gave me a good feel for what was and wasn't working.

[CherryBomb] I'm a sad Panda. Nobody wants to be my friend

I quickly cleared the room and moved back to a safe distance before responding. She did deserve a response.