Chapter 188 – A fluffy Monday 8 – Dance of Mettle

Chapter 188 – A fluffy Monday 8 – Dance of Mettle

John carefully put Rave into their shared bed. After about ten minutes of fighting, she had finally left her feline state and went back to normal. She also was super tired and fell asleep halfway back, so John carried her the rest of the way. Now, he put the blanket over her and kissed her on the forehead. He wasn’t tired yet, so laying down as well wasn’t on his mind.

Rave mumbled something and rolled around in the bed until John was looking at a blanket-shell burrito with pink haired girlfriend-filling. Smiling and shaking his head, he backed off. “Man, we got demolished,” Salamander complained, “aside from Sylph, none of us could keep up. The airhead didn’t do a lot of damage though.”

That was true. Rave had shown that her spontaneous nature made her a pretty good brawler. John’s initial strategy had been to delay her using Gnome, whose primary objective was to grapple the techno-lover. Not only had that proven to be an almost impossible endeavour, Rave was more than aware that she would have a hard time getting out of Gnome’s grasp; the one occasion Gnome had actually gotten her, Rave had used a Judo-throw and was free a moment later. That trick wouldn’t have worked twice, but Gnome also never got the chance to grapple Rave again.

Salamander had been taken out for most of the fight. Offensively, she was the most dangerous of John’s elementals. Rave, knowing that, had concentrated ranged light attacks on the fire spirit. Even if they missed their mark, they at least blinded her and without aim she was useless, John didn’t want her to throw fire everywhere at random.

Sylph was faster than Rave, by a huge margin actually, but, as Salamander had said, her offensive power was limited. Aside from the mana intensive electric attacks, Sylph’s default attacks were more of the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ kind of deal.

He himself had thrown the occasional Arcane Explosion. Otherwise, his plan had mostly focused on getting away from his girlfriend, the moment she got him in a melee he would have lost for good. Undine had been standing at the back, waiting for when she would be needed. Healers were best kept outside the line of fire.

All around, the fight had gone pretty poorly for them. However, John wasn’t worried about that fact. “Well, she had the advantage, so this went about as well as I expected.”

“Oh really now? Do tell.” Salamander sounded very interested in finding out how this loss hadn’t been her fault.

“First off, this was a non-lethal engagement. Rave’s powers might be pretty dangerous themselves, but if it's about actually winning a fight under the use of our full powers, mine are better. Not only do I have you and Sylph, who at full mana output can cause a lot of havoc, but Mana Ray and Mana Blade, which I didn’t use at all in this fight. Second, the location. I had nowhere to hide and no sides to dodge to, the narrow bridge meant that Rave only had to outmanoeuvre Gnome to get to me, so that struggle was the centre of the engagement, limiting my options. Also important about the location was the lack of earth. Gnome could have collapsed the bridge, but otherwise here, as well, my options were limited. There are some other smaller factors as well, but that’s the long and short of it,” John explained.

Undine nodded, as did Gnome. Salamander evidently had stopped listening at one point, looking at her fingernails. Sylph’s head was spinning. “So many words that say so much stuff, can’t you try, like, words that say nothing, like, obvious stuff, like: Sylph, you look the best today, or, Sylph, I really want to give you a gift, or, Sylph, you are my favourite concubine or, Salamander, you have such lovely big bouncy boobs. These of course all mean very much, but they are obvious, so they are saying nothing, you see?”

John ignored the blabbering air spirit. “Anyhow, I’ll be visiting Lydia now, so you four can hang around the house.”

‘Bathtub?’ Undine sent a simple request. The upper floor didn’t have one of these, there was only a shower.

“You can check on the base floor, I don’t think the princess will mind,” Gnome answered for John and the mending elemental puddled away.

“Sylph, I’ll be hanging out with Momo, why don’t you go and look if Aclysia can give you something to do,” the stone elemental suggested further.

“I was ju- WOAH!” John found himself pulled inside by the princess grabbing him by the shoulder.

In a swirl of motions, John fell to the ground. The door slammed shut. The two halves of the lock violently snapped into each other and Lydia, her half-braided hair quickly unravelling, nailed him to the ground.

‘That’s like the third time this is happening to me today,’ John thought. Unlike with Rave though, John could put up a bit of a struggle with Lydia. He didn’t plan to though, especially as he suddenly found himself pointed at by hundreds of small metallic projectiles. Pens, Misshapen piano keys, the liquid metal her rapier was made from, buttons, paper clips, pretty much everything had been turned into a deadly weapon.

“Calm down, Lydia,” John pleaded, which, like any other time one asks somebody upset to just calm down, had no effect whatsoever.

“Du... hättest anklopfen sollen!“ the princess fell back into her mother tongue, her voice unsteady from embarrassment.

Thankfully, John had spent his time productively. “I already told you: I did knock!” he defended himself, but it fell on deaf ears.

Lydia’s eyes were wetting, John could feel the heat radiating from her face. Her lips trembled, but she took a deep breath, which calmed her enough to at the very least speak in sensible English again. For the most part. “You will never speak of this to anyone, verstanden?” John just nodded in a signal that he would comply. “Say it,” Lydia requested, in a whining tone. “Please, I need to hear that you will not betray me on this, John.”

“I swear on my life that I will never tell anybody about your wonderful music nor your enticing dance.”



The result of that promise, as Gaia spoiled, was all over the place. On one hand Lydia let out a relieved breath; on the other she managed to grow even redder.

“Th-thanks?” she blurted out and just continued to stare at him, as if to find the truth on how to unravel this situation in his eyes.

Then the metallic pieces rained on the floor and snapped her right out of it. The shock about the state of her room, and property in the form of her favourite instrument, made her forget all about the embarrassment.

“What a mess,” she stated and jumped to her feet, leaving John on the floor. He was consequently ignored for the moment, and he didn’t plan to interfere, as Lydia got her room back in a presentable state. Only the piano could not be repaired. For a long time, she looked at the gaps where the wood had splintered so the keys could fly. “What a mess...” she repeated, rubbing her face.

John dared to question, “Was it really that embarrassing?”