It's a Game Jonathan, Honest! Part 2 (Patreon)

Jonathan blinked as he found herself back in the black stone room looking at the screen filled with portraits. “Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, or Sirius for playable characters. This would be my character roster than. That explains the message about maxing side characters for skills. Let’s see… oh there is a gift icon.” He grabbed the remote and selected the gift box and grinned when he got a bunch of presents.

Token: Improved Eat Anything 

Token: x5 Grey Magic Hacker

Token: Temporary Clone

Portkey: Ancient Tours: Olympus Unbound

Collection of Rare Skill Books

Book of Monster Breeding Spells

Sacred Celtic Ring

Altar to Goddess of Magic

Player Unlock: Pet Arena 

Player Unlock: Gladiatorial Arena 

5,000 Star Coins -75% loot drop (1,250 Star Coins)

Jonathan grimaced at the reduced coins and glanced at the pet arena and gladiatorial Arena icons that appeared at the top of the screen. “I don’t remember this from the books.”

“Unlocking the Pet Arena allows you to capture certain creatures and use them to battle other people’s pets in an arena for prizes and tokens. The Gladiatorial Arena allows you to use captured people or humanoid monsters and force them to fight to the death.”

“Oh, neat,” Jonathan said as he looked over the tokens. “Huh, that’s a better version of Ron’s perk, no downside and all of the upsides. Grey Magic Hacker, whenever something would give you points of dark magic taint you take one less per point you possess, it can stack up to five times. I’m guessing taint is a bad thing.”

“Dark Magic Taint reduces your ability to relate to people and impairs logical thought processes, the more taint you have the less stable you are,” the voice explained.

“Thanks,” Jonathan replied absently as he read the temporary clone token. “Gives a random player character the ability to create temporary clones that last from dusk to dawn or dawn to dusk…” He glanced at the Gladiatorial arena icon then back at the temporary clone trinket. “Considering the token gives it to a random person, is there a point in waiting to use it?”

Jonathan sighed when he didn’t get an answer after several seconds. He glanced at the next in his collection of player items. “Reusable portkey to and from Olympus Unbound, you may assign it to a single playable character, which may be passed along in game. What’s Olympus Unbound?”

“A world where the Greek gods never retired and monsters may be encountered and defeated for experience and loot,” the voice explained.

“That’s handy,” Jonathan muttered mostly to herself as he looked at the bundle of books. “I need to assign them to a person, I should probably give them to Harry, as he’ll have the worst access to magical knowledge to start.” He looked at the Sacred Celtic ring. “Two points of regeneration a second and two points of protection from taint, burns and withers anyone that touches it if they have more than 15 points of taint… that sounds insane considering how many hit points Ron has but he’s not even first level. Still, I think I have at least one of my rings for a decent amount of time.”

Jonathan blinked as he read the description on the magical Altar. “You can sacrifice living or dead creatures for crafted items, crafting material, temporary stat buffs or temporary skill buffs. Neat, sadly it also has to be placed somewhere and can’t be moved once placed. The Forbidden Forest would be convenient and it’s unlikely to be stumbled across.”

“I wonder if the Star Coins are arena currency,” Jonathan mused as he selected the pet arena then frowned when it told him that none of his characters had any qualifying pets. 

“Okay, I might as well use the temporary clone token before I forget,” he mused as he selected the clone trinket and used it hoping it would prove useful.

Jonathan watched as the portraits on the screen lit up and went dark randomly, bouncing the lit portrait around before it finally settled on Harry Potter. “At least it’s not Ron, he’d let it go to his head which would probably screw up my dialogue options.” 

He selected Harry’s portrait and read the mission description, “Welcome to a day in Harry’s life, avoid being beaten half to death by Dudley and his gang on your way home from your first day of primary school… Yeah, that’s fucked up, he looks like an extra in Oliver Twist. Mission ends when you get home safely or get thrashed.”

Jonathan assigned the ring of regeneration and bundle of books to Harry, figuring he could always share the books with the rest of the group when he got to Hogwarts and the ring would certainly help with the Dursleys. “Okay, that’s the best I can do.”

“Just say ‘Exit to Main Menu’ if you wish to return here and pause the mission while outside of combat,” the voice said cheerfully.

Jonathan accepted the mission and found himself in the body of a five year old Harry just outside of a school with a bunch of children running around.

‘Auto Save,” the voice said.

Jonathan opened Harry’s character sheet and looked at his stats.

Hit Points:12 

Stamina: 24

Strength: 3

Endurance: 12

Agility: 19

Speed: 10

Magic: 20 

Will Power: 15 

Luck: 15

‘How the hell does Harry have luck 15 with his family?’ Jonathan frowned as he realized he was looking at things backwards, Harry was lucky to be alive. ‘Okay, three strength for a five year old isn’t bad. His strength, endurance and speed should go up when he gets older which means his stats are pretty decent all things considered.’

Jonathan glanced at his perks. ‘Fly like the wind, +25 bonus on any flying checks, doesn’t count against skill gains. Yeah, that explains so much.’ He looked at his flaws as he headed after a group of children walking with a girl that was probably in fourth or fifth grade. ‘Requires glasses makes sense and curse scar, 1d6-2 points of dark magic taint a year? How the hell does that make sense? Yeah, I’m going to need to do something about the scar. Mother’s Love a persistent effect that give 1d20+12 resistance to dark taint per instance. Okay, that explains the reason Harry isn’t so dark that he makes Voldemort look like Ghandi already.’

He looked in his inventory and pulled out the sacred celtic knotwork ring and slipped it on his finger. ‘That should help assuming that his aunt and uncle don’t try to steal it.’ He decided to move it to his toe when he got the chance so they would never see it. 

He slipped slipped away from the group into an alley when he saw a chubby brown haired child with a nasty look on his face heading his way with a pack of four other five year olds carrying sticks, one of whom had a red heart floating over his head. ‘Great, its following canon no matter how crazy it was.’

He rushed over to a trash can behind one of the businesses and grabbed the lid. He scowled at the dead end alley then grabbed a piece of wood from a broken crate that might pass for a shiv if you squinted. He quickly hurried over to where the dumpster was blocking most of the alley so that they couldn’t flank him then waited for Dudley to run around the corner. ‘This is going to suck.’

Dudley sneered as he walked around the corner with his four goons. “Daddy said I was supposed to make you cry.”

Jonathan glanced over the dialogue options. “You need four thugs to beat me up?”

“I don’t need them to beat you up, it’s just more fun with friends,” Dudley said cheerfully then rushed him.

Jonathan did his best to block Dudley’s stick with his trash can lid and keep him off balance by occasionally trying to stab him. Thankfully Dudley hadn’t actually had a lot of practice beating people up yet other than shoving Harry or hitting him with things when he couldn’t fight back, which meant that he was mostly able to block his attacks without taking more than the occasional point of damage when he got through his block and rattled him.

“Block improved by 1,” the voice said.

Thankfully, unlike Ron, Harry had 12 hit points which meant Dudley wasn’t even close to skilled or strong enough to knock him unconscious before his ring healed the damage. It would have been an entirely different matter without the ring or the perfect spot that kept Dudley’s friends from jumping into the mix and beating the shit out of him. He lost track of time as he worked on blocking Dudley’s shots and occasionally hitting him with the trash lid to work on his Blunt skill while stabbing him with his wooden shiv.

“Edge improved by 1,” the voice said.

Jonathan probably would have taken the nice and slow path to increasing his Block skill if his trash can lid hadn’t fallen apart as he hit twenty three points of block. He stabbed Dudley and dropped him to the ground. “You better run!”

Three of the children ran while the child with the heart over his head stepped forward and hit his in the arm as hard as he could with his stick.

“Critical 4 damage. Block increased by 1,” the voice piped up.

Jonathan tossed his shiv at the kid and grabbed Dudley’s stick.

“Thrown Weapons increased by 1,” the voice said cheerfully.

“Last chance shithead!” Jonathan blocked another shot with his arm then hit him in the nuts with Dudley’s stick causing him to collapse to the ground with a pained squeal. “That’s what I thought.”

“Block increased by 1,” the voice said. “Opponents that have hearts over their heads can be captured and used in the arenas. The more health they have, the harder it is to capture them so you want them weak but not dead. Your Care of Magical Creatures skill heavily influences your capture rate, just say capture to attempt to capture an appropriate creature or person,” the voice suggested.

“Capture,” Jonathan said cheerfully.

“One child thug captured. You will have to acquire a personal dungeon or stables if you want to hold more than two pets and challengers,” the voice said as the child vanished.

Jonathan turned his attention back to Dudley as he started getting back up and cracked him over the head with his rather sturdy stick.

“Blunt skill increased by one,” the voice said.

“Ah good.” Jonathan hit Dudley and few more times for good measure, thinking about how they’d treated Harry in the books.

“Harry Potter is unable to kill Dudley, he’ll merely regenerate and forget the savage beating you gave him,” the voice pointed out.

“Probably for the best,” Jonathan muttered as he hurried over to the trash can and moved it to partially block the view of deeper into the alley. ‘Between the dumpster and the trash can no one should be able to see his savagely beating Dudley to train his weapon skills, but he didn’t see any reason to take chances considering he remembered Andrew complaining about the guards in the Elder Scrolls series showing up if the windows weren’t closed. He smashed Dudley a couple more times then saved the game.

Jonathan smiled as he dropped into stealth mode and worked on stealing his wallet.

“Pickpocketing increased by 1. You’re now a trained pickpocket, if you want to see what type of gear you can steal, sneak up to someone and focus on pulling up your Pickpocketing window.”

“Excellent,” Jonathan said as he took the twenty pounds in his wallet and stuck it into his inventory, grinning when his cash went from zero to twenty. He stuck his leather wallet in his inventory and went back to beating him with a stick to work on his Blunt Weapon skill. He focused on Pickpocketing and grinned when he saw an equipment page pop up with percentages next to each item. ‘Twenty percent chance to steal his clothes? Yeah, it’s sad when the bastard is unconscious and my chance to steal shit isn’t 100%. Then again, it should give me a decent amount of experience.’

Jonathan saved his game and stole his pocket knife which was at a nice 60% chance.

“Success, pickpocketing improves by 1. You now have a stolen item, certain merchants and guardian type figures will recognize stolen objects on sight. This chance is determined by the value of the item and by the location it was stolen from. Of course, certain dishonest merchants will happily buy your stolen goods, we call them fences,” the voice explained.

“That makes things easier,” Jonathan mused as he went to work stealing Dudley’s shoes and socks, smacking him with his stick a couple of times between pickpocketing attempts. He grinned when he finally got his left sock off, having failed to pickpocket it twenty times in a row after stealing his other sock on the first try. He viciously thwacked Dudley a few times in the head with his stick when he appeared to be waking then worked on stealing his shirt, happy that his pickpocketing skill was quickly increasing, even if he was failing more often than was completely reasonable as far as he was concerned.

“Blunt skill increased by 1,” the voice said.

He frowned when he managed to steal Dudley’s shirt and saw his rolls of fat. “That takes some serious work.” He watched as one of the cuts he'd inflicted on his face healed before his eyes. He hit Dudley again to make sure he didn’t get up while he figured out his next move.

“Critical strike 8 damage. Stealth improved by 1, Blunt improved by 1,” the voice said.

Jonathan spent the next twenty or thirty minutes thumping Dudley between pickpocketing random bits of junk into and out of his pockets to work on Harry’s pickpocketing skill. “Yeah, twenty five points in Blunt and I’m still level zero which is good considering how health works but I should probably finish leveling up Block before I actually get a level. Why do I have four points in strength?”

“Reaching your milestones in certain physical skills gives you a boost to your attributes,” the voice explained.

“So… 25 in Blunt translates to another point of strength, nice,” Jonathan mused as he kicked Dudley in the side when he started moving.

“Hand to Hand Combat increased by 1,” the voice said.

“That works,” Jonathan said thinking of all of the people that had harassed him growing up as he worked on kicking Dudley. “It’s almost a shame you won’t remember this, it might make you a better person or cause you to kill Harry in his sleep so yeah, probably best this way.”

Jonathan absently continued kicking Dudley as he opened the bundle of books in his inventory and looked over the five books in the bundle.

Goblin Alchemy

Plans and Patterns.

101 Uses for Dark Potions and Dark Plants:

Dark Plants That Can Kill the Inexperienced Wizard

Cooking With Hags

“Hmm, I’m almost afraid to look at the Cooking With Hags book,” he mused as he pulled the goblin Alchemy book out of his inventory and opened it.

“I’m sorry, you can’t read books in combat,” the voice said.

Jonathan put the book back in his inventory and glanced at his hand to hand skill a touch surprised that he hadn’t gotten any experience toward his next point despite repeatedly kicking Dudley. “Why isn’t my Hand to Hand skill leveling?” he asked, hoping he’d get a response.

“Hand to Hand Combat requires an active foe,” the voice said.

“I guess that makes sense at least for the Hand to Hand bit,” Jonathan mused, a bit annoyed that he’d have to fight at least somewhat fair in order to increase his combat skills. He walked over to an old television that someone had left and used it as a step stool so that he could reach up and grab the edge of the dumpster. He set his stick against the dumpster and pulled himself up so he could look inside. 

Jonathan grinned when he saw part of a bag of individually wrapped candy bars sitting on a stack of rather clean looking cardboard along with a mostly used roll of duct tape and a broken T-Square that was in two pieces. “Special Candy or just normal Snickers?”

He glanced at Dudley to make sure that he was still unconscious then saved his game and climbed into the dumpster. “They’re individually wrapped and on cardboard, I’m sure they’re fine, Snickers last forever,” he mused as he picked up the package of mini Snickers, duct tape and the pieces of T-square. “Okay, I need to increase Block and Heavy Armor which means I need some form of armor.”

He shook his head then grabbed the top layer of cardboard and stuck it into his inventory. He grinned as he found a coiled up length of hemp rope that had been under the cardboard. “Score. You can never have too much rope.” He grabbed the rope and climbed out of the dumpster after making sure there was nothing else of value.

Jonathan grabbed his stick and jumped down after making sure Dudley was still unconscious. He pulled his supplies out of his inventory and set them on the TV. “This is the stupidest idea I’ve had since coming back to Sunnydale,” he muttered as he started cutting the cardboard to size so that he could wrap it around his arm. “It’s just like when I went as a cardboard knight for halloween only with less laughing, hopefully,” he muttered the last part thinking about Xander and Jesse and wondering when things had gone completely sideways as he worked.

Jonathan gave the cardboard a critical look, trying to figure out if he was completely crazy or just crazy like a fox, he was guessing the first but was willing to try as he wasn’t sure when he’d get such a chance to increase Harry’s defensive skills in the future. He cut four small pieces of tape then stuck just the ends of the tape on the TV, wrapped the cardboard around his left arm once and taped it in place.

He walked over and kicked Dudley in the head as he started to get up.

“Hand to Hand Skill increased by 1,” the voice said cheerfully.

Jonathan shook his head as he walked back over and placed the oversized broken ruler against his cardboard bracer then ‘tacked’ it on with the two pieces of tape. He grabbed the next piece of cardboard and awkwardly wrapped it around the bracer a few times then used the remaining tape to secure it. “Yeah, that will never hold up.” 

He grabbed the rope and wrapped it around the bracer, turning it into a rather clunky bracer that might actually hold up against a five year old beating on it.

“Armor working skill increased by 1,” the voice said with amusement.

Jonathan sighed in relief when he looked at the piece of crude redneck heavy armor and realized that it had an armor rating and was labeled heavy armor even if it was a single point of armor. He quickly saved his game as Dudley started getting to his feet. “You should run home Dudley.”

“Tripping me was a cheap shot,” Dudley said as he charged, paying no attention to the fact that his gang had long since fled or that he wasn’t wearing a shirt or shoes.

Jonathan did his best to block Dudley’s wild swings