The remaining gifts.

Against his expectations, Nathalia was actually the first one to get up. “This was worth my while,” she decided and lightly tapped against a wall. The rock proceeded to melt away quickly and the volcanic light that flooded in surprised John by its intensity. The cave had been in the middle of the island Nathalia had created, why was there lava directly next to them?

John soon realized that they were moving towards the shore whence they came, and what was more: They were almost there already. “Did you move the island while in the midst of ecstasy?” John asked while blinking in confusion, slowly rising from his position on the ground. “Yes, you think a bit of sex will keep me from using my powers? A ridiculous assumption,” Nathalia confirmed.

Easy choices. The only thing he would be interested in would be what an Epic Gag was. Would Gaia tell a very great joke or would she gift him a ball-gag and if the latter would that maybe be the gag? Well, whatever the case may have been John chose to go with the big spoon. The second choice he had to go with tragedy, he just had more use for Wisdom than Charisma. He immediately looked at the new item that he got, not like he had much else to do while they waited to arrive back at the mainland.

Once again John was wondering what ‘Lightweight’ was supposed to mean really, as the blasted thing was just way too heavy to lift for him. A quick look at the attributes description revealed that it reduced the base items weight by 10% x Level of Lightweight. In other words, this thing was 30% lighter than the sword would have been without the enchantment. Which boggled John’s mind as he tried to pick it up, but did only lift the weapon enough for the guard to be a bit in the air, producing a violent screeching sound in the process as the now tilted blade screeched over the stone floor.

“Where did this come from?” Nathalia wanted to know. “I got it for fucking you up the ass,” John answered truthfully, gaining both a raised eyebrow and a small chuckle from Nathalia. “Interesting,” she took the blade of John and effortlessly raised it into the air.

Its haft was made for only one hand but extended long enough to be gripped with two if the situation called for it and with an about one-meter long blade it wasn’t the biggest sword, but by far not a short sword either. A bastard sword was probably the right word to use. The blade was only sharpened on one side, the back completely straight, the smooth black surface glinting in the light of the magma below.

“This is a good weapon,” Nathalia said, before adding in a less convinced tone, “for people at your power at the very least. Do you still have that creation of yours?” “Aclysia? Yeah,” John answered, “I will give it to her.” The dragoness nodded, and John guided her hand into his inventory, he would have been unable to get it back in there otherwise.

“Okay, sex is awesome, I lose the bet to Sylph,” Salamander suddenly announced at John’s ear. He reared his head to find the blaze elemental sitting on his shoulder, having shrunk again considerably. She was not as small as before, maybe about the size of his hand now, but it still left John wondering. “So you can change your size as you like or...?” he asked. Salamander shrugged, “Seems like it, for the most part anyway,” she said and flew off his shoulder. Hovering in the air in front of him for a moment she explained, “So this seems to be my minimum size.” Her body flared, being nothing but fire for a moment before manifesting at the size she had during sex earlier, “This is my maximum size, everything in between is stressful to keep up,” she collapsed back into the hand-sized form and returned to John’s shoulder.

It was another thing of note that she apparently didn’t need to think about not burning him, which was a massive improvement to her burning holes into his furniture. Salamander acknowledged that as well and flashed him a smile before being suddenly kidnapped by Nathalia. The island shook as it connected to the shore, Nathalia was suddenly gone, little more than a spot with wings in the distance. John quickly ran after her, after securing the Necklace of the World Ender in his inventory, when a thousand curses hit his consciousness together with the feeling of Salamander being submerged into water again.

He needed about two minutes to get there, finally arriving at Nathalia pulling her hand up again. “That was for the ‘lovelizard’ comment,” she stated, “I do not forget, small one, and now…” “…Oh, please not again!” Salamander lamented mockingly, “please oh big scary dragon, I am so afraid of the water, I will behave, I swear!” a short pause, “granny.”

The blaze elemental was slammed underwater with such **** it created a momentary geyser. “I will repay our contract otherwise,” Nathalia growled, “You will have to find a new familiar.” John was very much against that and made Salamander incorporeal, or he would have wanted to, but something blocked him from doing so. Nathalia threw him a disapproving glance, “Just getting her body away from me will not save her, I am touched by the Abyss itself, John Newman.” John was reminded of the attribute her scale had given Aclysia; it would indeed be naïve to think that it would be that easy to get something away from Nathalia by such easy means.

John was sorting his arguments so that Nathalia would think about this again when he noticed the pool boiling. It was weird in the first place that it didn’t, being in a place of this level of heat, but it was even weirder that it only started now. John finally realized that the center of that heat was where Nathalia kept her hand underwater.

Salamander was using her newfound powers as a Tier 2 Elemental to boil the water away that was hurting her, and by the way the pool was quickly vanishing, it worked very well. Nathalia pulled her out quickly, “blasted girl!” she cursed and let her go while quickly reducing the temperature of the water again, “do you have any idea how hard it is to get water here?”

Salamander didn’t, but she also didn’t care, quickly flying over to John and hiding behind his ear, “just stop abusing me!” she demanded. Nathalia looked at her half-empty bath with **** dissatisfaction, ignoring the elementals latest comment. “I will have to get that fixed,” she sighed, “not having a bath is an unacceptable state of my sanctuary, even worse than not having my palace anymore.” The dragoness raised a hand to the stone in her chest, her face became slightly distorted in the slight agony the next act caused her.

With the sound of a glacier breaking apart power echoed over the sanctuary as its owner removed three splinters from the orange stone. The power **** John’s aura sight open, he saw Nathalia’s aura for the first time, it was so thick that she, herself, was almost invisible underneath it, the golden glow somehow unsteady as it swelled and collapsed irregularly until finally she had succeeded and the splinter lay in her hand.

John quickly closed the aura sight again. The way and flow of Nathalia’s had reminded him of a certain other one he much rather not be reminded of for as long as possible, lava amidst a sea of normality, refusing to be one with anything less than itself.

“Give me your hand,” Nathalia commanded while extending her own. A bit reluctantly, John did lay his right hand into hers. Nathalia pressed one of the three splinters against John’s ring finger. The smell of searing flesh was disgusting, but the pain was much worse. A drop of lava bubbled around and slowly formed a ring. At the end he was left with a black ring, the orange stone at the top glistening.

‘The main thing is probably that it makes the necklace that much better,’ John thought with a worried look at his HP bar. “Now, the other hand,” Nathalia instructed. “Can we postpone that a bit?” John asked. “Don’t be a weakling, John,” Salamander said. “I agree with the nuisance,” Nathalia added, “you will survive this.” “No, actually, I literally won’t,” John stated and explained, “This reduced my health to 23, another experience like that and I die.”

Awkward silence, “I don’t have time to wait for you, is there a way to heal you?” “Well, if I had a level-up…” John didn’t even have the chance to end his sentence before Nathalia bit his hand. She did not have the patience to suck the other medium out a second time.

“That did it?” Nathalia asked just to be sure, already grabbing his left hand. “Ye-aaaaaaaaaah,” John shouted in pain as the searing sensation returned. His flesh was burned right off the bone as the ring formed around his finger. He was left with a perfect copy of the other ring, pitch-black, the shard of Nathalia glinting at the top, although this one was called Ring of Fire instead. Even the stats were the same, except that now that he wore both of them, they were boosted to +15% HP Regeneration each.

“There, now you are marked as mine, I doubt you will ever be able to take these off,” Nathalia said with a grin. “Actually…” John just opened his inventory and pulled them over. They vanished from his hands, the injuries they had caused healing just a moment later. Nathalia’s smile froze and died, she folded her arms and annoyedly tapped her fingers against her elbow. John thought it was better to inform her beforehand of this, if she eventually found him again and he wasn’t wearing them, the ensuing conversation would have been even less pleasant. ‘Better to inform them early than late, right Jane?’ John thought back to a lesson his girlfriend had taught him once.

Nathalia pressed a very deep growl out of her throat that was accompanied by a couple of flame tongues; she, clearly, was not amused by this. “Whatever,” she finally spat out, “This one you best feed to that creation of yours.” “Ehm,” John took it, the shard prickled his hand, the latent power within radiating with intensity, “could you create a fourth item instead? I would get a bigger bonus.” “I lack the ability to create other items, bother somebody else with this,” Nathalia snapped and **** her hands into the air itself.

Cracks appeared as she stemmed open the barrier between this protected space and the one she had whisked John away from. The barrier was clearly fighting back, and John witnessed for the first time Nathalia actually looking strained by any activity. A new respect for Magoi’s skills grew within John, to be able to give a level 900 high dragon goddess a hard time, the Fateweaver must have been a true pinnacle of this school.

However good he was, it was not enough to keep her out though. Thus, the tear she created was ripped open wide enough for John to walk through. It reminded him a lot of the gates he had used to train, just very rough around the edges and highly unstable.

“I fulfilled my end of this bargain,” Nathalia said and let go of the edges, “I will see you again when I feel like it.” The crack started to close slowly; he had a few more seconds before stepping through. “I really, truly thank you for everything you did Nathalia,” John stated and showed it with a quick gesture.

The sudden kiss surprised Nathalia deeply, especially as it wasn’t the kind of passion and lust she was used to, but one of two individuals with no sexual feelings attached. “See you!” John said before jumping through the portal. Leaving a dragoness with a raised eyebrow behind, “Don’t make me root for you, mortal,” she shouted after him before turning and thinking about how to get her damn water back.