Before the drinks

“Richard!” John shouted out to the triumvirate that was walking down one of the many hallways. All three turned around, but with a quick gesture and few calm words, the Horned Rat ensured them that this was okay, and they went on ahead without him. Seconds later John had caught up to him.“How good a timing of you,” spoke the Rat, “I would have come to visit you in that mansion of yours later today, but it seems I can skip that. Where is Nia?”

John, mouth already open to ask the exact same question, furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “So, she is not with you?”

“Once we were done with the subjugation of Scotland and told her I didn’t have anymore orders for her, she suddenly disappeared. I would like to say this is unprecedented, but you know Nia,” the Horned Rat let out a grumbling sigh; “I had hoped she would be with you. I seem to be wrong.”

“Why the sudden care?” John wondered; “Weren’t you saying that you got way better tools in your arsenal last time?”

“Very funny, Newman,” Richard’s eyes focused on John with annoyance flickering in their crimson colour; “We both know that I have been wrong regarding her. She shouldn’t have been able to purposefully eliminate certain magic frequencies, and yet she is. A blank of that strength is rare; I won’t let her go quite as easily.”

‘Well, that was to be expected,’ John thought while trying not to be too happy about the Horned Rat admitting that he had been wrong about something. It could still be a ploy for something he wanted, a very complicated one at whose final goal John could only guess.

“If you don’t know where she is, I will have to go on and search for her,” the Horned Rat spoke. “We will see each other again soon enough.”

“Soon enough would be never again,” John jokingly berated the god as he also turned to leave.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When he met Lydia and everyone else at the feet of the massive entrance to the imperial palace, there was one extra person amongst them. Sol, wearing her typical golden plate that just radiated light constantly, was meeting him with her gaze, which seemed to constantly measure him to see if he was anything worth even looking at.

Suffice to say that John would much rather have dealt with Luna.

“There you finally are,” the sun goddess spoke in a busy tone; “I don’t have much time. You are invited to meet Romulus in the Obelisk park tomorrow 14 o’clock, together with anyone else you might want to string along. You know what it is about?”

“I do,” John nodded, this could only be about Romulus promise to tell him about Gaia if Maximillian survived this war. “Why that late?”

“To allow you to recuperate from the hangover you are about to get yourself into,” Sol answered and then handed him a card. It was the picture of a translucent female made from a golden liquid, bubbles rising throughout her body and causing her hair to have a foamy crown that was slightly angled to the right. John was pretty certain he was looking at a beer elemental here. “Romulus had this place rented for you, as he can quickly reach it if there are…” Sol looked to Eliza, “…emergencies.”

“Understood,” John said and pocketed the card. They couldn’t go there quite yet, Lydia had to attend to another press conference and make calls with a lot of people. ‘Oh hey, I am debt free,’ he realized as he waited.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“We are getting ya drunk tonight!” Rave announced as they tapped into the second circle of Abyssal Rome. “Finally, you are getting drunk with me.”

“Why does that excite you so much?” Momo wanted to know. “It’s just .”

“’Cause I haven’t seen John when he is drunk yet and I want to see what that is like, maybe it will be funny,” Rave said and then sung a little song; “Oh, I just caaaan’t hiiiide it – I am soooo exciiiiteeeeed.”

“You are shit at singing, so shut the fuck up,” Eliza requested. “Where in this beautiful dumpster fire of a town are we going anyway?”

John was wondering that as well; Lydia had taken the lead upon seeing and then taking the card, which had no address on it weirdly enough.

“This,” the queen said and raised the card in question, “is a locator card. If you have one, it allows you to choose where you end up when opening certain doors. You ever encountered a free barrier?”

“Free as in ‘freely tumbling through space and attaching itself to other barriers’?” John asked. “In that case, yes, I once found the shop of Hermes in a barrier.”

“Exactly like that, they cost billions to maintain so not a lot of people get themselves one. However, there is a certain kind of being that get to have theirs for basically free,” Lydia told him.

“Gods,” John didn’t need to guess. Who but these immensely powerful beings based entirely on magical energy could hope to maintain something with that power requirement without a Fateweaver around?

“Yes, and as Rome is a location of extensive planning, Romulus included a headache inducing block,” Lydia told them as they turned a corner. It was a buzzing street crossing with door upon door set into one of four flat buildings that seemed to be a single piece of dark stone without any rooms inside if the lack of windows was anything to go by.

John watched someone open a door and stare at the blank wall behind it. The man then closed the door, opened it again and stepped inside. The same scene repeated elsewhere, some people trying several dozen times and still just looking at a blank wall, whilst others stepped out of one door, walked across the street and went right into the next one without a problem.

“This is called the ‘Crocevia di fortuna’ or Crossroad of Fortune,” Lydia told them; “basically, it’s a place where people who are bored and have too much money gamble on ending up somewhere interesting. Luckily, we have a locator card so we can get where we want without a problem once.”

“And where will we end up when we go out again?” John had to ask, worried that these travelling dimensional places spewed them out somewhere in North Korea.

“You doubtlessly end up where you entered,” the queen stated. “Do no ask me how it works, it just does. I don’t know everything.”

“Let’s just get wherever we are supposed to be right now!” Rave exclaimed; “It is cold!” She nestled herself against her boyfriend as they headed for the closest door.

Lydia pressed the card against the door, where it disintegrated, before opening the door and stepping inside. Quickly following her, John and Rave entered the place of that was first and foremost described by the word charming.

The flooring was made from long, brown, wooden boards that ran parallel to the counter that stretched along almost all of the whole opposite wall. The uncovered part was a hole that led to a stairway which then ended at the toilets, as the universal male/female icons above it indicated.

Between the white and roughly plastered walls, on which countless photos and posters of people, bands and brands hung, stood several wooden tables with long benches, stools and chairs around them. The room was likely big enough for about 50 people, but right now, they were on their own. Probably because Romulus had booked the place for them. Although one of the shadows in the corners looked suspicious. Some sort of bodyguard perhaps? Well, he was drinking shadowy beer and kept to himself so that didn’t really matter.

John noted two things. First was the, for the lack of a better term, beer slime behind the counter, who looked exactly like the one on the now destroyed card. Normally pubs like this had a wall full of different beverages as well as clearly visible beer pulls, this one had neither, which was a bit weird.

“Hello,” the slime greeted them in a cheery voice, “I am Lady Liquor, and you are in The Bubbly Wench, a shop I named after myself. If you want anything alcoholic, let me know and I will create it as soon as possible. Please drink lots, you will be my only customers tonight! Also are these two your friends? They said they were!”

“That tickled!” the goddess of complained as John turned his head to the two people already present, neither of which he had expected to see here.

The first was a blonde with an extremely voluminous mass of hair at the top of her head, like a field of golden wheat bending under a gust, and a long ponytail of indescribable silkiness, occasionally waving at the paws of an otherworldly, invisible thing. She was pale and wore a white dress that was both back and shoulderless. Silver lines, barely visible, wound across her slim torso like tattoos. Nia Fae, exuding her usual aura of strangeness, tried to grab her deck of emotion cards from her bag next to her.

Not only did her hand miss entirely, she fell off her stool and just lay on the ground, shaking her halfway empty mug of beer on the table dangerously. A black scaled and clawed hand grabbed the beer and secured its position on the table.

The hand belonged to a women who looked to be in her early thirties but John knew to be much, much older. She had light-brown skin and orange-red hair that glowed with heat, as did her eyes which were like a pool of lava that became more and more golden towards the centre. Scales, cracks filled with red hot stone, covered most of her body but left a V shaped gap, starting below her belly button and ending at a diamond shaped orange gemstone in her collarbone, that presented a nice view of her midriff and tits.

“Hello, John,” Nia finally said, completely displaced, her tone as bland as ever.

The redhead’s face was framed both by lines of scales climbing up her jawline and falling strands of her wild hair, two long, elven ears and curved horns poking out of the long mane.

Nathalia’s dark red lips were currently sucking on a straw that ended in a literal bucket of Bloody Mary, through which she guzzled in mere moments before also greeting John. “It was about time you came,” she stated, shifting in a way that John knew all too well indicated that she was pretty horny.

He expected her to just jump at him; they hadn’t seen each other in five days. The dragoness should have been needy beyond belief, and it seemed she was struggling not to act on that impulse, instead gesturing at Lady Liquor with the bucket while dragging one of her claws over the table.

‘Why is she holding back? She knows I would just take her in the bathroom if she wanted,’ John wondered as the hostess followed the unspoken request. He couldn’t believe it was because of the other goddess in the room, Nathalia wasn’t one to care about these things.

The question remained unanswered, and John knew he would only get a hissing comment back if he asked right now, so he just watched in fascination as Lady Liquor took the bucket of Nathalia and stuck her hand inside. There was a noise, like a vent that was opened and now released pressure, followed by the sound of a running tap, and the bucket refilled. “Here you go, Nathy. What else do you want? Something nice? Should I use my aura on you? Could get your drunk much faster, I know you like that. Also could you stop mishandling my furniture? Pretty please? I needed to fix my whole counter when you had sex on it last time! There were burn and claw marks everywhere!”

“Not today,” Nathalia growled and began sucking on the straw again. Hollowing her cheeks in the process; John just couldn’t help himself thinking that was his dick in her mouth. It was hard to not get an erection when he was around Nathalia; his whole body remembered having sex with her because sex with her was typically a whole-body workout. Whatever may come, John doubted that anyone in his harem felt as good to fuck as Nathalia, her many, MANY years of experience in that field made sure of that.

“Why are you two here?” John wondered when sitting down, helping Nia back up and into a seat that had a backrest on the way.

“Was chasing cats, saw a door, thought it’d bring me to a zoo, found Nathalia instead,” Nia slurred down a quick succession of words. “I feel weird.”

“How much did she drink already?” John had to ask.

“Only what is missing from that pint,” Nathalia answered, scratching another line into the edge of the table while holding the, once again empty, bucket towards Lady Liquor. Stretching a bit, John counted the lines; there must have been at least thirty already.

“So, I know you are like, really underfucked right n-“ the hostess tried to save her furniture once again but was put to silence when Nathalia growled deeply, the sound of stones beginning to roll down a hill.

“Be quiet unless you want me to test how burnable your content makes you!” the dragoness warned, giving a weird nod towards John. This had to have something to do with the mating thing, but how exactly it was connected, John didn’t quite get.

“Oh,” Lady Liquor exclaimed. “Ooooooooooh, okay. The answer is very burnable by the way, I am 82% ! Please don’t set me on fire, and I won’t complain anymore tonight, okay? Okay!” The Lady turned to her other guests, ready to take orders.

They were the full group; from Rave to Metra, everyone was there. It was Momo who cleared her throat, “Before you get shitface drunk,” she said, glancing at Nia swaying in her seat like she was sitting on a boat and not in the middle of a pub, “Can you do me the favour and do the thing?”

“Sure,” John said and opened the Artificial Spirit menu. The tournament was over, Lydia was queen, so there was no reason to keep this from happening any longer. “Let’s make this a double party: For Lydia’s ascension and for your independence. Just tell me what you want each time.”

“Hive of Fireflies?” John asked.

“Hive of Fireflies,” Momo agreed.

“Huh, guess Gaia actually wants you to make a choice for a change,” John said. Bufffood had been removed and replaced with ‘Selfish Support’, a rather apt name for Momo in a lot of ways (and completely unfitting in others). “So, what will it be? Personally, I lean towards Selfish Support, the Stats you would gain from buffing Thana would be insane.”

“Yeah, but it would also mean that I need people around to give me the buff,” Momo said, “so it’s less useful when I am on my own. I also don’t think I will ever need a buff to anything aside from mana, so it is a lot of dead Stats. I will take the Bombflies.”

Her reasoning was sound, even if John would still have taken Selfish Support himself, so he picked it for her and moved on.

“Hive of Fireflies?” John asked again.

“Hive of Fireflies,” Momo agreed again.

“Hive of Fi- Oh, wait, we only have 5 points left. Can only get you Copperskin,” John informed Momo.

“What a great choice I have,” Momo rolled her eyes; “Gaia can be pretty uncreative. Well, I won’t have to deal with that in the future.”

‘Jesus Christ,’ John thought when he saw the choice that had replaced Sisterhood this time around. Sacrifice was painfully strong, a terrible skill with wonderful gains, but yet all he could feel towards it was immense abhorrence. There was no way he would ever select that skill.

“This is it then,” Momo said, stopping John in the motion towards what he wanted to look up. “Wonder what it will feel like.”

“Can’t tell you,” John mumbled, feeling his heart beat in his chest despite nothing dangerous being around at all; “Not too bad, I hope.” It was stupid how the most important choices in life tended to boil down to simple gestures and seemingly inadequate words.

“I told you already, it feels exactly the same as before, it’s really boring,” Metra commented, her chair dangerously on edge as she had apparently entered some sort of balancing competition with Eliza.

He looked at Momo who closed her eyes and nodded.

The window disappeared and everyone, most intently of all Aclysia, looked at the freed girl with expectance. For a moment there was absolute silence, then Nathalia hit the end of the bucket, and the horribly annoying sound of a straw sucking up miniscule puddles spread through the room.

“NEXT!” Nathalia demanded, slamming the bucket in Lady Liquor’s general direction. “And open your eyes already, you won’t find anything new inside that head of yours!”

“Rude!” Momo declared but did as she was told; her white eyes were the same as always. “But she is right, I don’t feel really all that different… although…” she raised a hand and conjured a Folded Mana construct.

John looked at the thing with slight confusion. It was white, like her eyes and hair and the membranes of her wings. Mana normally was blue, maybe purple if highly concentrated. A distant voice in his mind reminded him of the Jeopardy game that they played at the start of the tournament and of a question about different mana colours of advanced mages. White was for barriers.

He tried to reach Momo mentally, just out of interest, and of course there was nothing. It didn’t feel like that short time that Undine had been missing from him though, that had been like a gap in his teeth. Momo having gone with this natural cut between them felt more like he had just cut his fingernails, slightly annoying when he seeked her out but not noticeable otherwise.

The construct unfolded and created a barrier in front of the neighbouring table. A barrier that then violently moved forwards and threw the table against the wall.

“My furniture! Ah well, thankfully, I stocked up on replacement tables,” Lady Liquor complained but bubbled off with a sigh, putting everything back into place.

“What was that about?” John had to ask.

“I wanted to confirm two theories. The good news is that I can innovate my skillset now, I previously was bound to whatever your Gamer abilities imprinted into my brain,” Momo explained. “Bad news: I have to learn it all by myself since the automatic knowledge I got from your skill doesn’t really help me if I want to do new stuff. Turns out white mana behaves way differently.”

“Well, you better keep your experimentations for where ever you are going after this party,” John announced and quickly went through Aclysia’s choices.

Well, at least that was new, somewhat creative and reduced the number of choices he had to make with his AP to one, but it was a pretty important one. The Stat John wanted Aclysia to raise the most was Strength, but the added fire damage sounded the least interesting. Wind may have added ranged attacks to all weapons, but Aclysia already had Eclys, so it was only a minor addition really. Earth sounded actually the most attractive, since he now had Metra to fulfil the offensive role and could have Aclysia go back into the bodyguard tanking niche he originally wanted her to be in. That role had been filled by Gnome until now, but with Combination around, that wasn’t really the earth spirits primary role anymore,

Well, as good as the pre-emptive thing was on paper, with Aclysia’s miserable mana it actually sucked. Time to finally get her that inventory.

Well, at least Gaia wasn’t consistent. Sacrifice still made him want to puke; he could end Aclysia’s life with a miss-click, that was a terrifying thought. Reducing the burden, while interesting, wasn’t what he was looking for right now, so he went with a new beginning.

“So, we finally have that done,” John said, opened his character sheet and allocated his new seven points in Charisma, pushing it to 50.