After breakfast Skye leads Sophitia to the only tailor shop in town. Entering the shop Sophitia is pleased to see it is full of functional and utilitarian looking clothes. She still wants to max her appearance equipment bonus but at the same time she is not yet ready to go full battle bikini.

With the hp-shield providing full body protection and monsters restricted from actually hurting people it meant equipment was entirely for looks and equipment bonuses. Most of the townsfolk wore video game like clothing which had dubious practical value but looked stylishly medieval.

The one adventurer she saw with metal armor had a single shoulder spaulder that might stop a dull butter knife but not much else. And Skye was wearing a low cut, thin leather armor that did little to provide protection but would look cute on her if the system wasn’t messing with people’s appearance.

Entering the shop, she is greeted by an older man, “Welcome to Young Adventurer Outfitters. How can I help you?”

“I lost most of my gear and require replacements. If you have a starting package, let’s begin with that,” Sophitia says in an offhanded tone.

Noticing Sophitia’s appearance, “Of course blessed one. But are you sure you’ll be fine with such plain beginning equipment?”

“Would you rather I go naked or wear the same dirty clothing every day?” She asks in a haughty voice.

“N-no of course not, I’ll get the beginning set for you right away.”

This whole scared of her thing is getting old fast. She’s fine with being called blessed one or mistress, it makes her feel somewhat like a rich celebrity, but the scared of her part she could do without. It reminds her of the stories she heard about medieval society. What sort of power do blessed ones have over these people?

“Hey Skye, why is everyone afraid of me?”

“Mistress? Because of your high appearance and religious backing. You can destroy a person’s reputation or professional renown with a single negative reputation event,” Skye says.

“Is such a thing a big deal?”

“Yes, without a good reputation or professional renown it is impossible to take quests or sell crafted items. It’s why I could only hunt vermin and sell junk I found to make a living. It was not a very good living.”

Sounds sort of like an honor system or social credit system. Lose your good reputation and be shunned. But it gives her an idea to make people less scared of her.

“Can the people I review see what I write about them?”

“Of course, it’s part of the blesseds’ duties to judge the non-blessed and help them improve themselves.”

By punishing their wrong think and rewarding cronyism. Only now it has nifty, easy to use graphical menu system instead of word of mouth. How convenient. Sophitia can see how this has obviously been abused.

Seeing no reason not to abuse it for her own benefit, Sophitia starts writing reviews of the people and businesses she’s interacted with. She can assume from peoples’ reactions that the current blessed only use it to destroy reputations.

There is another, more powerful, way to use it. However, it takes a whole lot more work, but it should be worth it. In her former life there was the concept of webs of trust. Which were loosely similar to social networks only it was for AIs to securely interact with one another. For a short time it was thought to be a great way to implement cryptology and security.

But as any social engineer or con artist will attest, trust makes a poor replacement for real security. Within months it was found by using a specific game theory strategy it was incredibly easy to poison a web of trust and take it over.

The same strategy she decides to use right now in making reviews. Most amusing of all, she doesn’t even have to lie. Just write a truthful review, make it boringly neutral for every interaction she has, and include as many people in it as possible.

The key to allowing this strategy to work is in the number of connections it makes. As most of the connections are neither positive nor negative the web of trust doesn’t pay much attention to them. Until most of the webs connections are these neutral interactions controlled by her. From there it’s easy to make the web do whatever she wants it to do.

The strategy was called the ‘politician’ as it’s very similar to a politician who gives meaningless answers but would try for many handshakes to gain as many votes as they could get. Unlike real life where people would quickly become jaded and a little skeptical of constant meaningless answers, webs of trust never did.

As for why Sophitia was going through all the trouble of exploiting the reputation system and writing reviews in it instead of just shaking hands? It was simple, it was way easier than grinding reputation normally.

One of the more annoying ways developers extend the life their games is with meaningless grinding of reputation to open new content. So naturally, FIO38 went all out in making it as tedious and time consuming as possible.

Needless to say, she had no interest in doing tens of thousands of meaningless repeatable quests just to raise her reputation. It should also ease her way with anyone new she encounters. Well, it should once they read the reputation notes and get use to her.

As for the reviews themselves they are all written with polite disinterest. After all, when the default reaction to those with power is fear then politely disinterested is a welcome improvement. Better even than someone trying to help as that help often comes with a hidden price or expectations.

Writing reviews also distracts her from the constant glances the tailor keeps sending her way as he gathers up the beginning set of clothing. Some she’s sure are just taking her measurements for clothing, those being the squinty eyed ones to bring up system information. The rest are obviously him taking as many mental pictures of her as possible, likely to be used later.

Not like she’s going to melt by being looked at but it does get annoying. And she knows she can look forward to a lot more of this attention. Sighing, she realizes that she’ll have to figure out a way to get use to this. Maybe she’ll practice random poses in front of Skye while she uses her soul piercing cat stare.

The final set of clothing has 3 sets of plain white sports bras and panties, 2 warm looking socks and 2 lighter socks for the underwear. With the outerwear being composed of two white tunic blouses, two soft leather trousers, one skirt, and a medieval style cloak.

Sophitia holds up one of the bras and it seems way too big for her. She can’t be that large, can she? She also wants to try it all on and get rid of the medical gown as soon as possible. So asks, “Do you have a changing room?”

This seems to puzzle the shopkeeper for a bit before he says, “Ahh I see, you’ve never worn commoner clothing before and want to see how it looks on you. I understand. Normally, viewing rooms are only for higher end shops, but I do have a small room and a large mirror for you to use. Give me a second to set it up.”

Not quite what she was asking, but close enough. Turning to Skye, she asks, “Can you help me find other things I should wear? I’ve never worn clothing like this before.”

And predictably, Skye took it the wrong way. “You want me to help you choose your clothing? Surely, you have better fashion sense than I?”

Sophitia is sure she does not as T-shirts and jeans were her most formal wear from her previous life. “I wish to change my style but I’m not familiar with all the possibilities. Can you show me what you think I might look good in?”

Skye nods and takes Sophitia around to different places in the small shop. Although not a huge selection there is still a surprising amount of options to be found if one looks for them. Skye picks out a jacket that at first Sophitia thought was for a kid and too short for her.

Before she realizes it’s a cropped top jacket meant to only cover the top of her torso. She then picks up shirts that are also long sleeve cropped tops with frilly cuffs that make her think of medieval pirate clothing, sexy female pirate clothing. Sophitia is not sure she is ready to show her belly button to the world but takes the shirts and compares them to the tunic blouses anyway.

All the gear provided with the starting kit were without bonuses, but the cropped top jack and shirts all had +10 appearance. Sighing, Sophitia pushes the tunics away and gets four of each of the cropped top items.

As for why so many of the appearance increasing equipment. The answer is simple, she’ll need them to raise her base appearance stat permanently.

After digging through some dresses for a bit Skye finds one she seems to like and hands it to Sophitia as well. Sophitia can’t really tell what it looks like, all she can tell is it’s just one piece of clothing with an amazing +30 appearance. Guess she’ll have to try it on to see what it’s like.

Skye continues to look around with a frown on her face for a bit after that before she finally picks up something small. Then puts it back. Then picks it up again. Before Sophitia, curious at what has the catgirl’s attention, looks over and sees that Skye has a black choker in her hands.

Just as Skye put’s it back Sophitia asks, “What’s that?”

Letting out a startled mew, Skye says, “Nothing. Well it’s something for me, but I can’t afford it.”

Does her catgirl want a collar? That is way too cute to not get her. “I’ll buy it for you. I need to make sure no one takes my pet after all.”

That was apparently the right thing to say as Skye starts purring before she picks it up again.

“Thank you, mistress,” Skye says, which can barely be heard above the purring.

The shopkeeper comes out from the back of the shop. Then says, “I have the back setup for you to change and view your clothes. If you’ll follow me?”

Both girls follow him back to a small room with a mirror in it. Before the shopkeeper speaks again, and says, “I’ll take my leave. Although I would like you to permit me to provide you with a full starting adventures kit if you’ll allow me?”

Not sure what he means, Sophitia asks, “How do you mean?”

Replying, he says, “My wife and brother-in-law run a general adventurers’ store and cobbler’s shop. Finest in the town. If you’ll allow me, I’ll bring them over with the rest of the kit you’ll need.”

More profits and reputation for family huh? Seeing no reason not to allow it Sophitia says, “That would be great, thank you.”

Entering the small room with her new clothes Sophitia tries them on. She’s glad the sports bra doesn’t have a clasp as she has no skill with them and is just a one-piece stretchy material. Quickly putting the underwear on she sees the shopkeeper had picked out a good fit for her.

What she wasn’t expecting was both her bra and panties shrinking on her slightly and cupping her new curves slightly better. She plays with another bra to see that it is body heat activated fitting for a perfect fit. Even the pants and cropped top shirt does the same shrink fit when she puts them on. Although neat, the tight-fitting clothing feels weird to her as she is used to wearing loose t-shirts and boxers.

Looking in the mirror she does admit they look great on her though. Sophitia does a few sexy poses and takes her own mental pictures for later use. Even going so far as to make sultry smiles at herself. She doubts this world has internet porn, so she’ll just have to use her own body for her enjoyment.

She is also amused by the equipment appearance buff she gets by leaving the top couple shirt buttons undone. She buttons the shirt up completely then undoes one button for +5 bonus, then two for +10 and then three for +15 before it disappears at four or more buttons.

After briefly trying on the skirt and cloak she finally comes to the odd bit of clothing that Skye had called a dress. With only her bra and panties on she picks it up and tries to figure out how to put it on. Holding it up, it looks like just a flat panel of cloth attached to a tube of cloth. She has no idea how to put it on or how it can be considered a dress.

That is until she notices the two strings at the end of the flat panel and realize those are to tie around her neck. Which means the flat panel is the dresses front with no back and the tube is the skirt. There is hardly anything to cover her, she thinks.

But she does want to see what she looks like in it. It takes a couple tries to get in to it and then tie the neck strings. Afterwards she looks at herself in the barely-there dress. And she looks amazing in it.

Well almost, the dress is obviously meant to be worn without a bra and Sophitia removes hers to get the full effect. Turning side-to-side she can see her bare side boob and completely bare back from neck to top of her butt. The skirt is a tight fit that hugs her hips wonderfully, stopping just above her knees. And just like the other clothing it changes to perfectly fit her and even has some kind of bust support she doesn’t understand but makes her look stunningly beautiful with only a little bit of jiggle.

No way is she ever going to wear this in public, but still she must have it for her personal play time later. She’ll also have to get a mirror or something she can look at herself with soon.

Changing back to her other clothing and pants she puts on her cropped top jacket and does one final look at herself before exiting the impromptu changing room.

“All done mistress?” Skye asks.

Sophitia nods and Skye for some reason looks disappointed. Did her cute kitty want to see her in the dress? Sophitia is not ready for a live audience to show that off yet. But she can at least put on her kitties’ collar for her.  

“Skye, let me put on your collar.”

“Please do mistress!”

After having it put on, Skye looks at herself in the mirror a bit. As she is doing that the shopkeeper comes back with his two family members carrying several more pieces of equipment. From what Sophitia can see, it is a large backpack, sleeping bag, and a box full of many things that look like camping gear.

And there it goes from medieval feeling to modern day reenactment again. On the other hand, Sophitia doubts she would enjoy medieval style camping so she is okay with this.

A man carrying a pair of tall boots walks to her and says, “I’m Jones the cobbler, if you’ll take a seat, I’ll put my finest boots on for you. I assure you they will look great and feel even better.”

Sophitia does so and the cobbler puts on her a pair of knee high, high heeled boots. As he’s putting them on, she worries about the two-inch heel. It looks solid enough on the boots, but will she be able to walk in them without problems she wonders.

She stands up and walks on them for a bit and is happy to find them very comfortable and no problem to walk in as the heel is fairly wide. Along with the additional +15 to her appearance they also provide a +2 to agility as well. Sophitia is very happy with using these boots.

The women, who is presumably the adventurers’ general store owner, packs Sophitia’s new backpack as she pays the shopkeeper. Unlike the two men, the women doesn’t say anything and appears to be a bit frightened of her.

Sophitia wonders if she should make the attempt to be friendly, but she really isn’t one for small talk and really doesn’t care about these people much. She’s never been good with people’s names and hasn’t even asked for them for example, and if she wanted to know, she could just bring up people’s info and find out. Shrugging mentally, she decides not to.

At the end, the total only came out to be 20 silver for everything. Which she guesses is a lot, especially for a level one as it’s the same as 200 days of inn stay. But for her, she made it in one sale and has plenty left so doesn’t seem like much.

Waving at Skye to pick up the backpack she makes ready to leave the shop. Skye picks up the backpack and puts it on following Sophitia out the door. As they are leaving, she hears a shout from within saying, “Wait blessed one; you forgot your old dress!”

She’s tempted to just say throw it away, as it’s just a medical gown, but as it’s ‘valuable’ junk she accepts it from the shop keeper before leaving. Maybe she’ll visit the temple and donate it for DP like the junk salesmen suggested.

Although she can max her current equipment appearance bonus by showing cleavage at this level, she just isn’t in the mood for it. So, she’ll buy some jewelry and makeup later. Besides she’ll need the bonuses after she levels up and increases her base appearance.

But before that she’s curious about what magic and combat abilities are available. Which means her next stop will be the trainers so has Skye lead her to them first.