After sorting this out, Dante was about to return to the Eternal Universe when he suddenly got a text. Normally it would be filtered out by the AI Chip, but the person it came from was someone Dante had marked as important in his account.
Valeria: "Heyya Dante, I'm free tomorrow, can I come over?"
Ah…
Well, this was quite the problem, now wasn't it?
Dante rubbed his head as he did not know how to reply to Valeria because he could not easily deal with their situation anymore. Despite how it may seem, Valeria was not Dante's girlfriend or partner, nor was she even necessarily a lover.
They… had an arrangement.
You see, Dante, in the current state of his life, was extremely ambitious and driven to success. He wanted to stand out among the 7 billion humans as someone special based on his own merit, hence he had tried to take the path of app development and recreate the legend of the Zuccmeister or even the Google Bros.
That naturally led to his experiences over the past few days, but that was tangential. The issue was that in his state of seeking to be the best, he really did not care about companionship or romance.
Like most young men of this age, he was perfectly content being by himself, in his room, partaking in his niche interests which would probably be mocked by the mainstream anyway.
However, it was not that simple. In the end, he also suffered from exactly what many such young men suffered from that led to a severe cultural shift in the modern day: sexual desire.
Specifically pent-up sexual desire.
It was something that came part of the package with being a male and - unlike the staunch protagonists of media who were neither 'servile nor overbearing' and 'indifferent to all things' who always claimed to be 'uninterested' in women - an average human.
He was ruled by his hormones, and could not resist the demands of nature.
So this caused the biggest problem most men today faced. You don't really want companionship or love - at least not until you achieve your goal - but you had sexual desires you needed to sort out.
This led to a difficult situation where one did not really have a true desire to approach a woman, but was forced to and the only goal was to satisfy one's urges. Naturally, the women being approached were not stupid and could see such intentions from a mile away, usually leading to a rejection, causing the problem to persist, and so on.
Usually, the negative feelings from being rejected in such a situation would begin to grow, especially due to the influence of social media where the same fellow could see the same woman doing very sexual acts for another male very openly.
And that was the majority train of events that led to the birth of the 'Involuntary Celibate'.
In order not to fall down that path, Dante had thought about the issue. Usually the mistake most of the men made in the above situation was twofold.
Firstly, none were upfront about their intentions and tried to handle things the way one would when entering a relationship, which was unwise.
Secondly, and this was the biggest reason, most men in such situations failed to… how to say this… assess reality. The assumption was usually that, by being a nice enough guy, the attraction value would be there... but that was not the case.
Dante asked himself, what did he have to make a woman feel like he was worth having intercourse with? Because if you thought about it, the process from being apart for thousands of kilometers in terms of distance to being in close proximity, to having clothes removed, and then genitals connected was pretty long.
There were many checkpoints in that process where she could change her mind. How do you keep her interested enough to go through all that and then come again after?
The difficulty varied based on your starting point. For Dante, it was not too difficult since he had only come out of being relatively popular among his age group in the city he was in after graduating. Not to mention he had above-average looks and had a good build, not necessarily because he worked out, but because he did not eat fatty foods thanks to his mother's nagging.
With this good foundation, it was not difficult for him to find a few willing partners who'd indulge him for free, but there came another problem. The women you were having a 'connection' with were usually sensitive and had to be coaxed often.
Basically, you had to give them attention in the form of relatively constant communication, the occasional outing, and generally show that you care and do not treat them as 'sheathes' for your 'sword'.
This was not a problem for the socially involved male, but for the shut-in who loved his own presence the most and hated the presence of others, it was torment. It was why, even if one was lucky to build such a relationship, it would eventually crumble fast.
Dante had realized this problem, so when communicating with potential partners, he had made his conditions clear. However, very few women were willing to take this deal even if he had an above-average score in each required field.
So Dante had to think of an alternative. How to get a relatively attractive beauty that suited his sexual taste that also ticked a few other boxes like low promiscuity, willingness to be exclusive, and did not cause trouble nor ask for anything?
That was naturally the height of delusion.
If you wanted all such convenient traits bundled into one, you have to give something up. You had to pay for it.
So that's what Dante did. He shared his conditions with Valeria, and she also shared her conditions back. She could do all that, but Dante had to first keep their arrangement on the down low, and he also had to provide for her basic necessities since she was an orphan in the city trying to further her career in Aerospace Engineering.
Dante came from a wealthy family and Valeria was truly attractive enough to make him feel moved, so he agreed.
In truth, Dante had developed some fondness for Valeria after these few months. When they first spoke, she sounded so confident and unmoved that Dante had been nervous the entire time, thinking she was skilled at this.
When they first met, he was surprised to discover she was just as nervous. After chatting for a bit, she confessed that she was also anxious since she had never done something like this before. She had some casual boyfriends in the past and one that she thought would be serious, but that fellow eventually put himself inside another woman and ended their relationship.
She had been desperate enough because she still had debt from her basic degree and was now pursuing a master's that was partly funded by scholarship. Meeting Dante was lucky for her, a guy her age that ticked all her boxes in terms of taste and was willing to provide.
As for 'giving up her body'… well, Valeria's logic was that Dante was the kinda guy she would have probably had a romantic encounter with for free, and if she managed to get support for her dreams out of it, then it was a good deal.
ραΠdαsΝοvel.cοm And so, their arrangement was born.
Over the past year, Dante and Valeria had gotten down to it many times, enough that they were fully comfortable with each other. Before taking the 15,000 dollar credit, Dante had even spoken with her about it to see her advice.
After all, it was his first time taking such debt while she had been in debt most of her life.
Dante passed a hand through his hair when he saw her message. Valeria was not someone who would pester him, as she was also kind of a reverse female shut-in who spent most of her time studying or drawing with her tablet since she loved art.
Just like the long soliloquy about males suffering from sexual issues when shut-in, she too suffered from the same, so more often than not, their mutual encounters were initiated by her, especially recently as Dante had been coding his app and barely had enough time to even sleep.
Normally, Dante would have immediately given a positive reply and looked forward to it. However, now there was a big problem… actually, there were two big problems.
One was his body. His genetics had completely changed to be something that no human here could fathom. Even if he was completely gentle, there was a chance he could completely shatter her waist.
Not to mention, he had no idea what effect his body fluids or semen might have on her. It might not do anything or it might be like that one Spiderman comic where he killed MJ due to his radioactive sperm.
The second big problem was Beatrice.
The source of this c𝓸ntent is fr𝒆e(w)𝒆bnovel