Chapter 357 – Before the drinks

Chapter 357 – 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?”Geett the latest novels on no/v/elbin(.)c/om

“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 alcohol.”

“’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.

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.



It was time to get drunk.