The Plan to Save Lily

“Alright... once Lily is fully restored,” John explained as he healed Juniluny’s gasping form, “we’re going to get her some levels to hopefully pad out her health... and then we’ll see if that just helps delay how fast she... goes... or maybe even cures her via evolution.”

Thumalk, Fairy, and Ju wore very different reactions to the scene before them: Lily, with squinting eyes that glinted red, was so gently fingering Juniluny’s depths that the halfling’s wild reactions seemed almost comical. Said halfling couldn’t bother registering her master’s plan; her eyes squinted shut as she continued to whine and holler as the succubus drained her of life and sense through a chain of body-racking orgasms, the only mercy being the small bites with which that draining occurred. John kept Juniluny’s health topped off easily enough; the bigger concern to him was ensuring that this set of minions understood the mission.

Fairy smiled as the whole thing unfolded, Ju remained horrified, and Thumalk did his best to hide his erection underneath the plain robes he wore. Elsewhere, the other members of his minion party-to-be—Woofroot, Tara, Greenpaw, Vok, and George Takorb—had been separately notified of John’s intention. He also had half the mind to level up some of them, but for now he wanted to focus every resource on Lily... and, if there was leftover, on Thumalk.

John considered the frail, male moon elf. Tita’s transformation had been powerful, if monstrous; what if this one hid a similar secret? Why wouldn’t he? He, like Lily, just needed to survive an encounter or two for John to slowly find out... and on that note, Lily’s health ticked up to full at last. Over a thousand health had flowed through Juniluny, but in the end no one was worse for wear...

... though the hobbit would disagree, counting her ever-challenged pride among casualties. Were she not a trembling, moaning pile of most-satisfied hobbit, she might even have said as much. Next to her, Lily sat up with a beaming, healthy grin of pearly whites. She looks healthier now than ever before...

“Master, I think I’m all done!” Her declaration was directed to John… just two feet to his left.

Still blind as fuck, though.

“Now comes the hard part,” John sighed.

“How is she going to earn anything if she can’t even see the enemy, much less fight it?” Fairy muttered. “Do you intend for us to do all the heavy-lifting and hope it rubs off?”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” John replied. “There’s a penalty for not being involved, sure, but that didn’t stop me from leveling up a fair amount while the Order had me, and I bet the penalty will be even less severe... as long as these two are with us inside the barrier.”

“I... I am not so ****, Master,” Thumalk suddenly spoke up, surprising the Gamer. “I was trained to be a warrior. I... I can fight- eep!”

Thumalk locked up as Fairy’s fingers suddenly slid under his pointed ear. Her breath was hot on the same as she whispered, “Fuck, you’re just so precious… you think you can fight? You couldn’t protect our master if he wore you like a condom.”

Thumalk hadn’t forgotten what put him in his earlier, humiliating state, and it was exactly the creature now groping him; John’s orders remained to prevent her from poisoning him anew, but the elf slowly inched away from the demonic fae all the same.

“But why am I to escort you as well?” Ju dared to ask.

“So you can get used to combat. You’re actually fairly powerful, but you need experience... literally and in terms of the Game.” Could leveling her up even bring her back to life? No, it’ll probably turn her into some kind of superior undead... if that’s even how it works. I mean, I don’t know; it could be some monsters don’t evolve at all... John briefly lost himself in thought as he considered the various monster-collecting games of his youth... until he realized Ju was growing more uncomfortable under his intent leer. “We’ll start you off small, just to get you used to combat... and work our way up.”

Ju closed her eyes and struggled to meditate as she grew paler. With her low level of the skill, she was liable to go more “zombie” than human on the battlefield… but perhaps that would prove to their benefit.

“Why not level us up now?” Fairy whined, still stalking the elf as he leaned away. “You know damn well I’m good for it! If you had focused on me more, I’d put that fat-titted elf to shame with the kind of massacre I’d have… conducted...” Fairy let her boast trail off as she caught John’s darkening expression. “I-I’d be able to help… more... “

“Maybe… but for now, you’re already good in a fight,” John explained, “and I need to get more of you to that level for the upcoming fight.” John glanced between the lot of them as he continued, “The battle we’re facing will probably be more trouble than the last and involve some heavy hitters. I need bodies, bodies I can trust won’t just perish when I’m not around… bodies I can trust won’t need to rest halfway through the fight.” And bodies ready to handle being stabbed in the back, if the Bitter Nines really do have a spy… The “if” was almost sarcasm at this point; unless the Peak managed to spy remotely on their little meetings, there were few other good explanations for the way they moved the targeted metals. “Now busy yourselves; I have equipment to make.”

With that, John retired to his forge and manifested in front of the hopper… only to shake his head in dismay as he saw the warnings blare over it.

TEMPLE INVENTORY WARNING:
Armoury summoner chest capacity (420) reached.
Hopper capacity (2,100) reached.
Excess item capacity (67,880) will be lost if not resolved within 22 hours, 14 minutes, 19 seconds.

More considerate than I expected. If I didn’t lose it all, I expected it would just vomit the junk all over the temple…

If John thought it useful to keep the Lawmen armory intact, he could have lined his marble palace with some hundreds of suits of emptied Lawmen armor before the timer was out. But John had no intention of keeping them anyways; they were, for the next hours of his work, the raw material base he desperately needed. The vast majority of the slots were taken up by the bulbous armor suits; the remainder consisted of weapons, tools, personal effects, and other random tidbits carried by any given Lawman at the time the battle was completed. With an exorbitant attention to detail, John filtered through the thousands of pounds of Vantage trash on the list.

Two (Temple) hours later...

Achievement unlocked! “Working the Bellows”!
Deconstruct over 100 objects for raw materials. What will you make?
+2 INT
+1,500XP

Craft is now level 22!

Craft is now level 23!

Achievement unlocked! “Owning the Bellows”!
Deconstruct over 1,000 objects for raw materials. What did you make?
+deconstruction can now crit (base chance: 5%)
+4,500XP

Achievement unlocked! “Helter Smelter”!
Refine over 10,000 units of raw material. Your shop is ready for greatness!
+100 units of your most valuable raw material (soul gem)
+5,000XP

Craft is now level 24! Craft can now be used to copy an owned item. Additional materials required; only basic functionality of the object is copied exactly, with detail copying dependent on craft level, user intelligence, and familiarity with subject to be copied.

Armoury Chest Contents:
Crown of Fear
Lawman Club (x4)
Rune of Binding (x5)
Rune of Harm (x2)
Rune of Healing Touch (x10)
Soul Gem [Lvl. 5] (x20)
Umbral Voice of Southern Winds

Hopper Contents:
Bar of Grade 0 Bok (x101)
Bar of Grade 0 Kelbok (x106)
Bar of Grade 0 Tubok (x114)
Bar of Grade 0 Zeebok (x304)
Bar of Grade 0 Zeetok (x409)
Bar of Grade 0 Pelos (x310)
Rune Plate of Binding (x43)
Rune Plate of Harm (x91)
Rune Plate of Healing Touch (x34)
Soul Gem [Lvl. 5] (x190)

The booklet on Lawmen guidelines was quietly tucked away into John’s inventory, with every redundant copy thereof reduced to its basic components. Everything else John had received from the Lawmen—armor, mementos, poorly-crafted weapons assigned and improvised—were melted down to bok, then refined to kelbok, tubok, zeebok, zeetok, and, at last, the ever-sought pelos. With the power of crafting, John’s process meant there simply was no Violet in the end-materials; they were all a grade probably deemed impossible on Vantage, not unlike the gold bars he gave to Tricia and Moira. But it took so much more of each material to refine to the next level than what Golgon described. But I guess that follows from my experience: Craft exchanges efficiency for ease…

John left the pelos out of his crafting filters; until he knew they had the pelos key they needed, he dared not use the best pelos they had. That left everything else—the metals, the stones, and all the runes infused with primitive, French magic, if John understood Tricia correctly—to help make gear for his deficient minions.

“Ah… Master?”

The Irish accent, more than the hesitation there, told John who it was without looking. Having her call him “Master” deepened his frown as he went through the crafting catalogue. “Just… John is fine, Regan.”

The dullahan stood at the mouth of the forge, her head cradled carefully on her forearms, as she stared back. “O-Oh, that’s… alright. Sorry, ah just heard the others calling ye and… w-well,” she continued to stammer, “I just wanted to ask… that is, I spoke with the giant fairy… Fairy, right…? Ah mean, that’s her name, I’m not repeating myself or… let me start over.”

John remained silent and patient, simply nodding to her self-directed request. “Take your time; I’m not going anywhere just yet.” Within the “Magic IV” category, searching for “gun” produced a host of strange, rifle-like devices. Each featured a rail mounted with runes along its length and a full-handle trigger on the grip of the weapon, and variations on that same theme; none took a familiar, Earthling shape of gun. Can’t I just get another Glock…? Maybe it’s because it’s stuff from Vantage… no, that makes no sense; half the materials I used before weren’t from Earth in the first place. I just need to be more specific… wait, Lily can’t use a fucking gun, what am I even thinking? They’re “equalizers” only if someone can see what they’re shooting…

“Well…” She inhaled deeply. “She was talking—ah sort of spoke with her… actually, more her talking around me, really—about how you were going to take yer, well, ‘weaklings’ out for a bit of… leveling? Since you’re the Gamer… and all?”

John nodded as he switched the filters to purely defensive items. “That sounds like Fairy, all right. Don’t let her push you around… or mislead you, for the matter… if you can help it.”

“Then you’re not going?”

“Well, I am… but I wouldn’t say it’s for ‘weaklings.’ It’ll just be for…” John hesitated as he checked out what few magical circlets were available. “… the weaker ones. Ones who need it, or who I think will have potential.”

“Ah… so not… me, then,” Regan muttered, finally drawing John’s eyes away from his interface.

“What…? I mean, no, that’s not… Regan, I’m going to return you to your home, just like I promised.”

“Ah mean, and I’m grateful, truly,” she insisted, “I just wanted to be out of the temple a bit… and if I could be useful, then… that’d be nice, right?”

Useful? John reminded himself of her level… and how the level gap had only grown. She’s being influenced by the brand… she must be. Her blush was too earnest, and her roundabout way too pitiable, for John to suddenly agree to put her in harm’s way. “It would be very dangerous, you know.”

“Even for low-levels?”

“Well more because of…” John paused to consider her “disability,” as he was about to call it. How could she fight while holding her head? What vulnerabilities lay in wait for such a being? But the last thing he wanted to do was keep making the dullahan feel worthless.

Regan caught his eyes glancing between hers and where her head ought to be. Her cheeks puffed as she sealed her lips, an old habit to express frustration as a disembodied head, and in protest she moved her head to just her right hand, hugged it to her side, and stared at John from the point-of-view of a football in a receiver’s grip. John squinted at the sight curiously until Regan raised her left fist in the air. “I’m not harmless, ye know!”

In the Temple filled with demons, dragonkind, an ogre and a magical zombie, the Irish teen did her best to make taut knuckles seem threatening to the Gamer who owned them all. Her brow remained furrowed and combat-ready. John had only barely succeeded in not laughing.

Once he got his breath back under control, John chose his words with care. “If you want to leave the Temple for awhile, you can come meet the others in the Bitter Nines headquarters, or we could go for a very careful walk around the Plate… if that’s even safe anymore.”

“That’s… that’s not…” Regan hesitated, her eyes cast to the side while her body remained in its “combat” pose.

“Isn’t that why you wanted to come?”

“That’s not the only reason,” she reluctantly confessed. “I… I’m also… curious. About how yer other… well, yer monsters change when they level up, right? Alysha told me she used to not be all spidery… an-and Fairy used to be, you know, fairy-sized! And then there’s the blonde one who doesn’t like talking to me… the one with the tentacles,” she added, remembering Yulie. “Ah think something also changed with-?”

“You want to level up too,” John summarized for her, “and see how it affects you.”

“Y-Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a burden.” Both paused at that; Regan herself wasn’t ready for the bluntness of her truth. “Ah… ah know what you said about me parents and all and… and ah appreciate it, truly I do. But if they all changed… some better, some worse… then maybe… ah can, too? Would I… be different?”

It took John a moment to realize she was not wondering idly, but asking him. “So there are things in the Game I don’t know… lots of things, I bet, but one of them is that I have no way to know what you would become or what would happen to you.”

“But ah mean… my head might pop on me shoulders like it ought to, y’know?”

“That’s… a pretty particular wish.”

“R-Right, but it’d be… normal! Ah mean, Fairy got all normal-sized!”

“She’s also got bat wings and spits burning chains from her flesh.”

“W-Well-”

“… and her fluids cause irrational, rage-filled horniness, or something like that.”

A long, long pause. “Yer… yer messing with me, now.”

“I’m not, and you are commanded to never try it out.”

“But,” she emphasized with a finger pointed up from her free hand, “she does all that… stuff, sure… but while normal-sized!” Her eyes and face lit up as if she got him on that one.

“Yes… well, Tita went from a pregnant elf to a weird Cthulhu monster. Is that an improvement to you?”

“Well, ah mean, more arms means… ah can carry my head and do other things better…” Regan’s confidence in her plan was faltering.

“I can’t emphasize enough that it could be very dangerous.” Though if this Abysswalker ability is all it’s cracked up to be… well, no need to emphasize that. “You could be seriously hurt, even killed.” Tears began to well in the dullahan’s eyes, stabbing John through the chest. “This isn’t something we can just…” She bit her lip as she tried not to cry; the tears coming down her cheeks notified her of her failure, which made her cry more. “I’d hate it if something… happened…” The dullahan hid her face as John tried to maintain his position.

“Well… I mean, if you… just observed, and stayed back, but even…” John sighed as he realized his defeat.