Rick stared right at Nurse Maya.
His eyes were locked onto the translucent blue holographic screen floating right next to her head which looked like something out of a high-end video game, complete with sharp golden borders and crisp, glowing text.
He then focused on Maya and quickly the screen with the Quest update changed and a new panel slid open next to Maya's face.
[Target Acquired: Maya Davies]
[Age: 24]
[Carnal Calibrator (Lust Meter): 15/100]
[Devotion Radar: 0/10]
[Body Count: 0]
[Alert: Her birthday is coming up tomorrow!]
Rick's eyebrows shot up.
Her body count was a big fat zero?
She looked like a naive rookie, and the system just confirmed it.
Her lust meter was already sitting at fifteen. He was sure grabbing her ass and playing the helpless guy with confidence had actually worked. It had actually lit a spark in her subconscious.
'Or girls are horny all the like us guys as well?' Rick chuckled thinking about it.
"Maya Davies," Rick unconsciously called out her name as he read through her details.
And this made Maya jump, who placed her clipboard like a shield over her heavy breasts. She stared at him, her eyes widening again in pure shock.
'Oh! Crap. Now I will have to make up stuff again,' Rick wanted to slap himself.
"How do you know my last name?" Maya stammered, taking a step back, "I never told you my last name. It's not even on my badge!"
"Oh! Maya! Maya!" Rick didn't miss a beat and let out a heavy, patronising sigh. He leaned back into his pillows, looking at her like she was such a clutz.
"You literally just told me two minutes ago, Maya," Rick lied smoothly, keeping his face entirely deadpan.
"No, I didn't!" she protested, her cheeks flushing red again, "I just said I was Nurse Maya!"
"You said 'I am Nurse Maya Davies, and you are in the intensive care unit'," Rick countered, throwing her exact earlier sentence structure back at her, "Did the ten-tonne truck hit me, or did it hit you?"
"Or how else I would know it?"
"You don't think I am your stalker do you?"
"I had the truck hit me..."
"Then lay there in the pool of my own blood."
"The paramedics brought me to this very hospital."
"And if this much coincidence was not enough, you got assigned to be my attending nurse."
"That..." Maya wanted to argue back, but his words made sense. It was too much of a coincidence, "But then how?"
"Maybe you are tired sweetheart. It is clearly messing with your short-term memory."
Maya did not know what to say. The sheer confidence in Rick's voice made her doubt her own reality. She had been incredibly tired and on top of that she was flustered ever since he grabbed her ass.
Had she actually blurted out her full name without realizing it?
"I... I suppose I could have," Maya muttered, biting her bottom lip nervously.
"Exactly," Rick smirked. He tapped his finger against the metal bedrail, "Now, come here and give me your phone number, for all the inconvenience I had to go through just now."
Maya's head snapped up.
"What? No! Absolutely not! That is strictly against hospital policy!"
"Hospital policy," Rick scoffed lazily, "Oh come on Maya! Do you know how hurt I was when you called me a Stalker..."
"I never did..." Maya was quick to refuse.
"But you implied, didn't you... Now to make it up, don't you think you owe me a couple of dinner dates and movie nights?"
"How long do you think my fragile heart can take the burden of being called a stalker?"
It was pure, toxic gaslighting and blackmail. And Rick didn't feel a single ounce of guilt.
Meanwhile, drowned by his words, Maya stood there, completely trapped by his intense gaze.
Her chest heaved, straining the buttons of her scrubs. She looked at fingers and then back at him.
Slowly, with a defeated but deeply flustered sigh, she pulled a pen from her pocket. She stepped forward, leaned over his bed, and scribbled ten digits onto a scrap of paper from her pocket.
She shoved it into his hand. Her fingers brushed against his, hot and trembling.
Ding!
[Quest Completed: Charm the Flustered Nurse]
[Rewards: +100 System Points, Beginner's Gift Box, +10 Carnal Calibrator (Maya).]
Rick watched her stats update in real-time. Her Carnal Calibrator ticked up from 15 to 25. She was already a quarter of the way to completely submitting to him, and he hadn't even gotten out of bed yet.
"Good girl," Rick whispered, folding the paper.
But before Maya could reply, the heavy wooden door of the hospital room swung open.
"What exactly is taking so long in here, Nurse Davies?"
A sharp, commanding voice echoed through the room. It cut right through the sexual tension in the room like a bloody scalpel.
Rick looked up, and a woman stepped into the room, and the air temperature instantly felt like it dropped ten degrees.
She woman looked like she was in her late thirties.
She wore a crisp, tailored white lab coat over a dark grey pencil skirt that hugged a very wide, mature set of hips.
Her legs were clad in sheer black tights, ending in sharp black stiletto heels that clicked aggressively against the floor.
Her dark hair was pulled back into a severely tight bun, exposing a sharp jawline and high cheekbones.
She wore thin, wire-rimmed glasses over piercing, ice-blue eyes.
She was an absolute goddess oozing with strict, mature authority.
"Dr. Vance!" Maya squeaked, instantly standing at attention like a soldier, "I... I was just checking his vitals!"
But Dr. Elena Vance didn't look impressed.
"I can see he is awake, Nurse Davies. I can also see you standing entirely too close to his bed while blushing like a schoolgirl," Dr. Vance said coldly, snatching the clipboard right out of Maya's hands.
"Go check on the patient from Room four. I will handle Mr. Smith from here."
"Yes, Doctor," Maya squeaked. She shot Rick one last, flustered look before scurrying out of the room, shutting the door behind her.
Rick didn't mind it. He was done completing the quest with Maya, and now his eyes were already glued to Dr. Vance.
She was scanning his medical chart, and her tempting red-painted lips pressed into a thin line.
Ding!
[New Quest Generated!]
[Quest: Fluster the Ice Queen]
[Target: Dr. Elena Vance]
[Objective: This woman thinks she owns the room. Knock her off her pedestal. Make her break that strict, professional composure.]
[Time Limit: 2 Minutes.]
[Rewards: +200 System Points, +15 Carnal Calibrator (Dr. Vance).]
[Failure Penalty: A sharp, highly painful electric shock directly to your groin.]
Rick read the penalty and his legs tightened.
'Fuck to the groin? You bastard,' Rick wanted to refuse the quest, But he was on a high. He had already survived a truck.
He wasn't going to back down.
Dr. Vance finally lowered the clipboard, and she adjusted her glasses, looking down her nose at him.
"Rick Smith," Dr. Vance said, her voice dripping with clinical detachment, "No internal bleeding. No fractured vertebrae. No ruptured organs. By all laws of physics and medical science, you should be in the morgue being scraped off a coroner's table. Yet, here you are. Awake."
Rick smirked. He leaned back, resting his hands behind his head, deliberately flexing his arms.
"What can I say, Doc?" Rick said, flashing her a cocky grin, "I guess I am just too stubborn to die. Or maybe I just rushed back to the land of the living because I heard St. Jude's hired the hottest doctor in the city."
Rick didn't break eye contact, and he stared straight into her ice-blue eyes, waiting for her cheeks to turn red.
But Dr. Vance didn't even blink an eyelash.
She just stared at him, as the room fell in silence.
Then, she slowly placed the clipboard down on the edge of the table.
She leaned forward, and planted both of her hands on the metal bedrails, caging him in. Her face was only a couple of inches away from his, and the sweet smell of her expensive perfume washed over him, but there was absolutely nothing inviting about her posture.
"Listen to me very carefully, Mr. Smith," Dr. Vance whispered, her voice dangerously quiet and utterly ruthless.
Rick swallowed hard, as the arrogant smirk slowly slid off his face.
"I do not care about your miracle survival," she continued, her icy blue eyes boring directly into his soul. "I do not care about your childish attempts at flirting. I am not a naive girl like Maya."
"While you are at this hospital, you are just a patient I unfortunately have to treat."
"Now... Let us be clear. If you ever speak to me, or my nurses, with that lecherous tone again, I will personally oversee your physical therapy."
She leaned in an inch closer, and Rick could practically feel her breath on his face.
"I will order the insertion of our thickest urinary catheter," she hissed softly, "And I will explicitly instruct the staff to perform the procedure without a single drop of anesthetic or lubricant. Do we have an understanding, Mr. Smith?"
Rick stared at her, and his mouth was suddenly completely dry. She wasn't bluffing. She was an absolute psycho, and she held all the power in this room.
"Crystal clear, Doctor," Rick quickly threw his arms in surrender. This was a losing battle he wasn't going to fight.
Dr. Vance straightened up instantly. The terrifying, murderous aura vanished, replaced by her standard, clinical coldness.
"Excellent," she said briskly. She picked up her clipboard, "I am ordering a full MRI and a psychiatric evaluation for you. So stay in your bed and better keep that flirty little mouth of yours out of service."
And with that, she turned on her sharp stiletto heels and marched out of the room. The heavy wooden door clicked shut behind her.
Ding!
[Quest Failed: Fluster the Ice Queen]
[Initiating Penalty.]
"Wait, shit... No...!" Rick gasped. But before he could steel his heart, a sharp, violent jolt of electricity suddenly exploded right between his legs. It felt like someone had just hooked a car battery directly to his testicles.
"Uggggh!!!" Rick let out a strangled, muffled scream, as he curled into a tight ball on the hospital bed, grabbing his groin, and tears instantly appearing in his eyes.
He squeezed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth as the agonizing pain pulsed through his lower half for five solid seconds before finally fading away.
"Fuck!" Rick hissed, panting heavily. He fell back onto the pillows, his whole body sweating.
The God of Mischief wasn't playing around with these penalties. The system demanded results, and it was going to punish him brutally if he acted like an idiot and failed.
Slowly, Rick forced his breathing to steady. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
He opened his eyes and looked at the translucent blue screen floating above him. He navigated the interface, pulling up the target data for the doctor who had just out rightly rejected him.
[Target Acquired: Dr. Elena Vance]
[Age: 35]
[Carnal Calibrator (Lust Meter): 0/100]
[Devotion Radar: 0/10]
[Body Count: 0]
Rick's eyes widened as he read through the details. Lust meter was a zero, Devotional Radar had nothing and even Body count of zero?
The strict, terrifying, mature Ice Queen in her late thirties was a virgin. Was the woman a monk in the high mountains of Himalayas? She never even thought of cutting loose and having some fun?
No wonder the cheezy lines of his did not have even an iota of effect on her.
"Agh!" Rick let out a chuckle, as he held his balls in his palms. Her lust meter was at absolute zero. She hated his guts. She had threatened to physically torture him.
But seeing that zero on her body count changed everything.
Rick smirked, staring at the closed wooden door. She wasn't just a rude doctor anymore. She was the ultimate challenge.
"Oh, Dr. Vance," Rick whispered to the empty room, a wicked glint in his eye, "I am going to bring you down on your knees, begging for these exact balls."
** ** ** ** **
[A/N: For every 50 Power stones, I will release a bonus chapter the next day! Keep supporting the story.]