Divine Milking System-Chapter 23 | Assessing the Waifu Market

I was bent over like a question mark, hands on knees, trying to remember how breathing worked. Air went in, air came out, except my lungs had apparently forgotten the second part and were just holding onto everything like a fucking miser.

Marc’s hand landed on my back with a solid thump that nearly sent me sprawling.

"Stand up, man." His voice was somewhere between concerned and amused. "Can’t show weakness. And you gotta be able to breathe better if you stand."

Don’t you think I know that.

The problem wasn’t knowledge. The problem was that my body had decided to file a formal grievance against my life choices and was now conducting a work slowdown to make its point. Every muscle from my calves to my shoulders was vibrating with that specific flavor of exhaustion that suggested I’d find new and exciting ways to be sore tomorrow.

But Marc was right.

I pushed myself upright and pulled my chest up, forcing my lungs to expand properly. The immediate relief was enough that I wanted to kiss him, but that would have been weird, so I just nodded instead.

"Better?" he asked.

"Operational."

"You keep saying that word. I don’t think you know what it means."

Garrett was already calling the class back together, his voice carrying across the field with the easy authority of someone who’d spent decades making people do things they didn’t want to do. Students assembled in loose rows, some still catching their breath, others barely winded.

I focused on standing upright and looking like a person who was handling this fine.

The satisfaction of watching those numbers climb in the system interface had been real, though. Endurance up two full segments in one morning. Strength ticking upward. Agility following suit. It was the kind of visible progress that web novels spent entire Chapters celebrating, and I was living it.

Except I was also dying in forty-eight hours, which put a damper on the celebration.

Garrett ran through the baseline results without naming individual students. Median times, average outputs, percentile breakdowns. He explained that these numbers would be tracked monthly and compared against our individual progress curves rather than against each other. The goal was improvement, not competition.

Which was horseshit, because everything here was competition, but it was nice horseshit that made people feel better about the constant evaluation.

While Garrett talked, I activated Snake Eyes.

The overlays appeared instantly, translucent text boxes hovering above every girl in my field of view like a particularly perverted video game HUD.

Belle first. She was standing ten meters to my right, blue hair still loose and falling past her shoulders despite the workout.

BELLE FOX

36DD-24-36

Rank: Bronze

Current Attraction: 24%

Twenty-four percent.

That was higher than I’d expected. Significantly higher. Yesterday at dinner she’d been at eighteen after I’d hit her with the charm effect. Either the effect had lingering duration I hadn’t accounted for, or the breakfast conversation and the walk to class had actually moved the needle naturally.

I kept my eyes moving so it wouldn’t look like I was staring.

Naomi was easier to find. She was standing right beside me, pink and black hair distinctive even in a crowd, her athletic uniform somehow managing to make her look wholesome despite the obvious physical assets on display.

NAOMI LOVE

36D-27-38

Rank: Silver

Current Attraction: 34%

Thirty-four percent.

Jesus.

That was almost double Belle’s number, and I’d barely interacted with Naomi beyond sitting next to her in class and running a mile near her. But then again, this tracked with what I knew from the source material.

Naomi had always been the type who cared about what was inside rather than surface aesthetics.

She’d fallen for the original protagonist despite him being a broke lottery kid with nothing to offer except determination and a good heart.

I had determination. The good heart was negotiable.

I swept Snake Eyes across the rest of the assembled students, collecting data like a fucking spreadsheet.

Blair Davenport: 3%. Barely registered. Made sense, given she was an ice queen heiress who probably considered most people beneath her notice.

Misato Ayame: 1%. Essentially noise.

I kept scanning, looking for patterns, looking for opportunities.

Most of the girls hovered between zero and five percent. Generic baseline attraction, the kind of thing that existed because I was a human being in their approximate age range and not actively repulsive. Nothing actionable.

Then I hit Hikaru.

HIKARU TANAKA

36E-25-35

Rank: Gold

Current Attraction: 0%

A fat zero.

Not even baseline noise. Just complete and total absence of interest.

The moment the overlay appeared, Hikaru’s red eyes snapped to me.

I immediately shifted my gaze two degrees to the left, pretending I’d been looking in that general direction at nothing in particular. Just a guy standing here, gazing vaguely at the middle distance, definitely not using a supernatural ability to analyze his roommate’s body.

Hikaru held the stare for another second, then returned her attention to Garrett.

I did not exhale visibly.

That was too close. Using Snake Eyes on Hikaru in a crowd had been stupid. She was too aware, too trained, too suspicious. The charm effect didn’t work on people with low baseline attraction anyway, which meant all I’d accomplished was nearly getting myself flagged as a threat by the most dangerous person in my immediate vicinity.

Note to self: do not use divine perverted powers on the secretly-a-girl samurai assassin who sleeps four meters away and could kill me with invisible cutting attacks.