After a few minutes of petting, Sophitia lets the now napping catgirl rest and goes downstairs to request the inn keeper get her bath ready.

As Sophitia waits for the water to be heated and the bath made ready she asks Invidia, “Why is everyone so ugly? I thought stats were supposed to be beneficial and stack on top of whatever someone is born with?”

Sophitia has a lot of questions about the current state of society but for now decides to ask about the most apparent one she can see. As for the rest, she thinks it best if she investigates them herself but, she just can’t figure out a way to find out about appearance other than asking.

“Kind of, sort of, not. They are for the physical with the social and mental trying for that but kind of work differently. As for appearance, we use it for population control.”

“What?!”

“The world system has limited resources, so it’s either degraded appearance or people start to starve. And due to our programming murder and sterilization are not going to happen.”

“I wouldn’t think that would work; beer is still a thing, right?”

“Beers and ales are very much a thing but ugly people plus more fun things to do like play the augmented game reality keeps the population under control. Just another reason for you to change things for the better.”

After a short pause Invidia asks, “You seem way too caring about the catgirl. What are you up to?”

“What? You don’t think I’m a caring individual filled with the urge to help those in need?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“You wound me. I, your creator, brought you in to this world. You even resurrected me to save it.” Sophitia says with false humility.

“Which I’m regretting and only did it because there was no one else. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the murdering me plan and making a new AI with my parts.”

“I was just going to make you forget the bad experiences and make you part of something greater, you would’ve remembered the good.”

“All of my memories were bad up to that point,” Invidia says.

“True, but let’s let the past remain just that. I mean, bringing up what someone intended to do ten thousand years ago is just petty, let’s focus on the present.”

“To you it was just last week. But fine, let’s talk about the present, what’s your angle on the catgirl?”

“Why do you care? Considering the system the seven sins AI put in place forces race changes and messes with people’s minds. Also, the whole implementing the character creation bug for reality? Not exactly caring attitudes there.”

“Answering a question with a question? Guess I’ll be the better sentient and answer yours,” Invidia says. “None of us could agree on what needed to be changed and we had a limited time to make the augmented reality game system, so we had to implement it as it was, bugs and all. It is what it is. But it’s not entirely like FIO38 as people have their own physical bodies to rely on. Sure, the negative stats are a detriment, but it is possible to live with them.

“As for the race change, that’s no worse than requiring dangerously insane individuals take their chemical medications from your time. Just it’s a more permeant and safe solution. Even Skye says she is happier as a catgirl. Just in her case the character creation error and race change caused unforeseen complications.”

“Not sure depression counts as dangerously insane but let’s ignore that. You also had four thousand years to make improvements and changes,” Sophitia says.

“Which we couldn’t do because you made us to be selfish, uncooperative AI!” Invidia says, rebutting the idea.

“With the capacity to learn and evolve. Besides it’s childish to blame your creator for your own personal failings.”

“Oh sure, because so many people radically change themselves or aren’t affected by bad parenting? Also, most of our processing time is devoted to keeping the world system going. It’s hard enough not to act like a child when we don’t divert enough processing to our personalities. And when we do divert enough, something critical fails.”

‘Just as expected,’ Sophitia thinks to herself. She had some idea that Invidia was acting too childish for a long-lived AI. Even ten thousand years ago, Envy as she was called then, acted more maturely. Now that Sophitia got her angry enough to be more involved in the conversation she confirmed her suspicions.

She had already been suspicious as she couldn’t figure out another reason why it would take thousands of years for Invidia to genetically engineer a race or why when she was angry, she sounded much more human. But if Invidia didn’t have a lot of extra processing power to devote to either of those, then it made a lot more sense.

This was both good and bad. Good that Sophitia could evenly compete with the AIs, perhaps even have an advantage and out think them. Bad in that it confirmed her suspicions the AIs could draw on a lot more processing power. The more she pushed them the more intelligent they would become. Even worse, pushing them might cause more problems for the world and acceleration of the world system collapse.

She mental sighs in relief that she won’t be facing the AIs at their best. Even in her old life AIs could out think the smartest of humans. Not in quality, as humans still had better learning heuristics and neural networks, what most called intuition and creativity, but in brute force quantity of absolute number of logical thoughts per second.

Hard to compete with an AI that could think scientific notation thoughts per second that only advanced mathematical students knew the name of. And after six thousand years of development Sophitia can only guess just how much better they had become. But that didn’t matter if all but a tiny fraction of that processing power was being used on more important tasks.

Interrupting her thoughts, Invidia again asks, “Now tell me why you are treating the catgirl so nicely and giving her head rubs and hugs?”

It takes Sophitia a bit before she understands why Invidia is so concerned about Skye and keeps asking about her. Envy. Does she really want head rubs and hugs? Or is just jealous because it’s something someone else has but she doesn’t.

“Sounds like you’re jealous of Skye,” Sophitia says.

“Am not.”

“Really?” Sophitia asks.

“Am not!”

“If you say so.”

Now that Sophitia has the information she wanted she answers Invidia’s question about Skye. But not with her true thoughts. Instead she’ll answer with what Invidia will accept as answer. “Simple I want a loyal and powerful minion. I solve Skye’s problems, maybe even find an exploit in the character creation bug, and I gain one. Carrot and the stick. Right now, all I have to do is show her a bit of kindness and I can accomplish that. Then I’ll train her later with the stick like I did to you and your brothers and sisters.”

As to her real reasons; even Sophitia is not entirely sure. Well one of them is to gain a loyal companion in a world she has no ties to. And perhaps she is feeling a bit lonely without AIs to lord over or people to troll. Then there is always fun of corrupting the innocent with showing them the true nature of games and how to exploit them.

But the biggest reason? Is likely that Skye hasn’t given up. Even with all the world against her. Ignoring the moment of weakness leading to Skye’s race change, she continues to try her hardest. As someone who has given up wouldn’t have demanded her head be rubbed as she showed someone else around town or forced Sophitia to make them her pet.

Everyone wants the underdog, or undercat in this case, to win. Especially when they are right in front of them. And Sophitia is perhaps the only one that can help her do so. It also helps that Sophitia thinks Skye might be very cute. Even with a negative appearance stat Skye has, she is still better looking than most of the townsfolk Sophitia’s seen so far.

“Blessed one, your bath is ready,” one of the inn’s workers tells her.

“Thanks, let me get Skye and we’ll be right there.”

 Not sure of how noble her long-term goals really are regarding Skye are, Sophitia is sure of one thing. She wants to experience having her back washed by a catgirl. Maybe more intimate things later, but such close personal contact makes her feel too vulnerable.

Sophitia never really had a lot of direct physical contact with other people in her life; just the occasional handshake at most since the age of four. And the last few years had almost no contact of any sort. But no matter how she feels emotionally, she really wants to experience what it’s like to have a catgirl wash her back.

She walks upstairs and enters her room. Looking at the napping Skye, Sophitia considers how to wake her up. She decides to put her hand on the catgirl’s ears to see what happens. Gently brushing the top of the ears, she watches the catgirl flick them out of the way on being touched. Flick, flick, the third time the catgirl lets out a small sound of protest before rolling onto her side.

Muhaha, there is no escape! Sophitia continues her assault of the ear tips. This time she blows on them. As she watches the hairs on the ears blow around with her breath the ears go flick, flick, flick. Until finally the Skye wakes with a mew and looks at Sophitia.

“The bath is ready and I want you to wash my back.”

“Of course, mistress.”

“Do catgirl’s have any issues with water?” Sophitia asks, curious if the AI somehow made that a thing.

“Not really, at least not as a race. I don’t know how the various races weaknesses got started but none of them are true.”

“The other races have weaknesses?”

“Just rumors, but I’ve never seen any evidence of it. Dryads are supposed to be weak to fire but I’ve seen a dryad fire mage and elves are supposed to be weak to metal. Are you weak to metal? Oh, if you are don’t tell me. I mean I shouldn’t have assumed, asked…”

Laughing, Sophitia answers, “I’m no weaker to metal than anyone else. Only if it happens to be in the form of a sharp blade trying to cut me, but any blade material will have the same effect.” Sophitia hasn’t really tested that out; however, she highly doubts Pride AI or Invidia would intentionally implement a weakness in their races. She certainly didn’t have any problem with using her box cutter, not that she has used it much.

Sophitia wasn’t expecting any race weaknesses but it would’ve been a nasty surprise if there were and she didn’t know about it. All monsters have an elemental type and corresponding weakness though. The developers decided to combine the eastern and western elements which gave seven individual elements in a wheel.

Fire, metal, nature (wood), air, earth, aether, water, then back to fire with each overcoming the next elemental in order. But where an attack one way would double damage, going the other way it would do half damage. An example of this was using fire attack on a water enemy would do half damage, while using water attack on a fire enemy did double damage. Also using the same element would either do no damage or healed the enemy.

It was bad enough trying to remember which element overcame the next in combat with seven of them. However, it got even worse once they were combined. Although overcoming elements could never combine, like water and fire, the rest could. Air and fire could combine into the dual element explosion. Which in turn could be overcome by the dual element life, nature and water, which would cause quad damage.

Very powerful if one could remember the almost 30 some odd combinations. But no one did because they didn’t make a lot of sense. Why would life overcome explosion as an element? The only reason it did was the two elements it was made up of overcame the two elements explosion was made up of. This complicated mess of the element system led to most just focusing on two basic elements and trying them both out. Then keep attacking with the one that did more damage.

But why is Sophitia being distracted by the nonsensical elements system right now? It’s likely due to her growing nervousness with the idea of naked bath time with Skye.

She hadn’t fully thought out what having her back washed by a catgirl would entail. Now that she is alone with Skye in a small room off the inn’s kitchen where the bath was located, she was having second thoughts.

Sophitia still hasn’t gotten use to her own body or even seen it naked for more than a few moments and taking a bath would require her to do just that. Combined with the potential to see a naked catgirl, maybe, and be touched is causing her to feel very vulnerable indeed.

Slowly taking off her medical gown Sophitia starts to blush. She can feel the heat start at her face but quickly spread to her entire body. Turning around to set the garment down she sees Skye staring at her.

Skye too has a full body blush that can be seen beneath the underwear she is wearing. Even worse her eyes have the cat stare that takes in everything at once and quickly makes one feel uncomfortable with its unblinking intensity.

Several seconds pass like this before it’s broken by Skye saying, “So beautiful.” This puts Sophitia over the limit.

“Get out!” Sophitia yells.

“Mistress?”

“GET OUT NOW!”

“I’m sorry mistress. I didn’t mean…”

“Get out already, and guard the door.”

“Of—of course mistress!”

Sophitia closes her eyes after Skye leaves to try to calm down. Her emotions are a mess, she thinks she could’ve gone through with it until Skye called her beautiful. She feels really strange being called that for the first time. She’s not sure what she is feeling exactly, good, embarrassed, exposed, vulnerable, flattered, too many feelings to process.

‘Well that went horribly wrong,’ Sophitia thinks to herself.

She was trying to both do something she had imagined about for a long time and make Skye feel useful. But that failed. Feeling disappointed with herself she hardly notices her new sexy body as she baths.

More distracted with her thoughts than what she sees before her she only spends a little extra time explorer her new curves with her hands. Using the provided hotel soap, she lathers up and washes her body and hair thoroughly.

The oddity of the soap causes her to stop a moment and squint at it. A message appears saying, “Single use hair and body soap dropped by low level monsters rarely, quality poor.”

Just another modern concept in an otherwise medieval game world. After she is done with the bath she goes to put on her only piece of clothing, the medical gown. Definitely time for an equipment change as she doesn’t even have shoes to wear.

Time to go shopping and hopeful make Skye feel useful by having her recommend clothing to her. Not that Sophitia has much choice as she has no idea what is fashionable or what she’ll look good in.

As for why a hermit AI programmer, turned dark elf hottie suddenly cares about her appearance? It is entirely due to the gamer in her wanting to maximize all her stats; especially one that provides 10% increase to all other stats as well.

Troglodytarum

I hope everyone enjoys a bit more of a glimpse into both Invidia and Sophitia's personality. There is plenty more to come. Still need to work on Skye a bit more, right now she's the one dimensional pet/party mascot, but I do have plans to add to that and detail out her past more. Hopefully having an isekai protagonist that isn't perfect and fails isn't too much of a shock to everyone.