By the time the girls had finished a second shower, carefully avoiding any contact with Jenna’s parents, Jenna felt more relieved of her constant arousal than she had in the last week. Kara, though, she could tell was on the verge of a meltdown and Jenna wondered how much longer her chastity challenge was going to last. She couldn’t imagine going a full week with the belt teasing her, and who knew what other torments the game would inflict on her to keep her locked-up pussy on edge. Clean and mostly satisfied, Jenna hardly had the strength to whine a bit as Kara locked her in the belt again.
“Kara,” Jenna said softly as she put on some of her new clothes, “how long do you have left in your challenge?”
“Today is the last day,” Kara answered, desperation clear in her tone.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Jenna said, lamely.
Kara shook her head and replied, “Don’t be. I took it knowing it would be hard. I didn’t realize exactly how hard,” she smiled sadly, chuckled, and continued, “but I’ll be rank five and have only one more to go before I can ditch my keyholder.”
“What happens to the belt, you know, after that?”
“It stays on,” Kara explained, “but you’re entitled to one Universal Key in your inventory each day. You can only hold one at a time, though, so it’s its own form of torture. Use it on yourself, or use it on another player.”
The idea of having her own key, being able to be free of the belt whenever she chose, if only for a little while was immensely exciting to Jenna.
“Kara,” Jenna said, timidly, “What is it like to really… well, to have sex?”
She flushed crimson at the silly, naive question. Kara was clearly more experienced, though, and from looking at the challenges the previous evening, she knew that a lot of them involved some kind of sexual act.
“Honestly,” Kara said, taking her hand, “It’s not so bad. Most times it’s really fucking good! Of course, being on a constant fuck high, with whatever’s in the Obsequium pumping through your veins makes it incredible. Doing it with complete strangers, well, it wasn’t that much fun at first, but after the first few times it becomes its own kind of thrill. At least, it did for me.”
“I need to start taking challenges,” Jenna said.
Kara nodded and replied, “You can start easy. The important thing is to rank and to increase your trust score.”
“Trust score?” Jenna asked. She didn’t remember seeing any kind of score.
“You really haven’t played any online games, have you?”
Jenna shook her head.
“Okay, think of it like social media or like a product review. Edge has its own community. The whole thing is fucked, and it revolves around you debasing yourself and being as slutty as you can be. At least, it does for the girls. As far as I can tell, the guys are the real winners, no matter what kind of rewards they give us. I just figure that the rewards are a way to keep the slaves (us) from getting too rebellious. If you’re constantly beating an animal and never giving it any kind of positive reinforcement, eventually it’s going to bite back. But if you can give it an incentive to keep coming back for more, something that has real, tangible benefits, eventually it just stays in its cage and wants to keep being rewarded.”
Jenna nodded. It made sense.
Kara went on, “The trust score is like a product review. When you interact with other players, you’re given the chance to rank that interaction. It might not seem like it, but there are rules that govern what people can and can’t do to one another. Other players can’t kill you, for example. The people at the top, that’s probably a different story. I haven’t been keen to see for myself, if you know what I mean.”
Jenna gulped, thinking of the missing persons reports in the envelope, and nodded agreement. Kara understood. She continued, “Trust score has an effect on what challenges you can take. The lower your score, the lower reward you can earn. There’s a lot of twisted and sadistic fuckery to this whole thing, but whoever is running it doesn’t seem to want people out-and-out harming each other or inflicting total misery. They push you, coerce you to do things that are kinky as fuck, but there seems to be a bigger picture, like they’re using us to create some kind of alternative society.”
“Alternative society?” Jenna asked.
“You’ll start to see it when you get new challenges. The introductory ones are to get you motivated. Good money, nothing too extreme, some fairly easy but still kinky sex. My thinking is that it’s what they do to get you comfortable with taking risks, doing things that are outside of your comfort zone. Later, you’ll start to see new ones, things that don’t even involve sex, like Courier challenges, where you transport packages. Others, like Influencer usually do involve sex, but those are with a specific target. I once spent the whole night getting butt-fucked by a Congressman.”
Jenna paled, and Kara laughed.
“It’s not so bad. I mean, you already butt-fucked yourself, right? Trust me, with how goddamn horny you are all the time, you’ll take an orgasm any time you can get it. Why don’t we take a look at some of the challenges and I’ll help you pick one to try.”
Jenna nodded, uncertain, but slightly aroused at the thought of being anally penetrated by a Congressman, which was very confusing.
“Tony,” Kara said, “Request access to Jenna’s Halo.”
A message appeared in her vision stating, “Kara has requested to share your view. Is this okay?”
She tapped to accept as she asked, “You named your Halo Tony?”
Kara shrugged, “I think it’s cute. There’s nothing that says your Halo has to share the same gender.”
Kara swiped and tapped the air in front of her, and in Jenna’s view a ghostly white hand brought up the Edge page, showing the available challenges. Kara enlarged the Rank Zero challenges and began to scroll.
“This one,” she said, tapping it.