Chapter 405 – Not so quickly summarized

Chapter 405 – Not so quickly summarized

Afterwards I had to leave for Germany. Lydia wanted me to help her in the tournament for German succession. As my powers were largely deactivated thanks to an ongoing patch, however, I was unimportant to her for months. It wasn’t until they returned, just shortly before things were about to happen, that she took interest in me.

Jane, healed, safe and toughened up, landed on the same day as the princess begun to actually talk to me a lot about what was happening. At the time I was also living with Herman, the Apothecary, who I had met randomly in Germany. Well, it wasn’t random at all, but I will get to that in a minute.

Lydia explained the process of the tournament to us. How, if there was a tie in the election, which there was, she had to start announcing four fighters over the next days. First, she announced me. At that time, I was somewhat well-known amongst the Abyssal elite only, due to SecretBlonde’s long-time spying on me, which had stopped shortly before the Thana incident. It was also the first time I met Romulus, who I thought a fleshmade god at the time, but I learned over the coming weeks that he was just as big of a flawed creature as the rest of us.

Speaking about flawed creatures, during the announcements Nathalia also came to visit me again. I skipped the second time, as it wasn’t that important, but that made this the third time I saw her. I guess it’s true what they say about ‘third time’s a charm’ as we actually fell in love with each other.

_____________________________________________________________________

“Ha...haha...ahahaha...AHAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAAAA,” Tilgun smashed his hand on the surface of the water as his bellowing laughter travelled over the still ocean and after the distancing boat. Like a drunk man who had heard a delicious jest, he repeated the motion over and over, causing giant fountains and waves in the process. John and Rave held onto the edge of their safety boat as it swayed dangerously.

Eventually Tilgun calmed and with a gesture of his hand the surface smoothened again. “A truly marvellous joke,” he admitted, acting as if he was wiping away a little tear under his eye. “I believed your story up until there, as unlikely as it sounded, but there is no way that...” Tilgun reared his head as if he had just smelled something weird. John also perked up to see what had the higher dragon perturbed.

Slowly a giant fortune cookie hovered down from the sky. Now this was the first time John had seen Gaia do something that stupid and blindingly obvious.



Tilgun grabbed it, ripped it open, devoured the edible parts, the hunger he was suppressing right now shining through, and then looked at the piece of paper inside. For John, it was really more of a banner. “It’s true?” the Maw of Souls said in the confused tone of reading out loud something that was dissonant to one’s own belief. Then he broke out laughing again.

“I don’t know how to feel about that,” Rave said as they saw the serpentine sea predator roll over the surface of the ocean. “I am confused as to what we are watching... also did I hear it right that you referred to him as Nathalia’s younger brother?”

“Yup,” John did not know what else to answer.

“So I am looking at the younger sibling of that overly slutty lizard literally rofling?”

“Yup.”

“Wow...”

“Yup. Wow...”

However, with Magoi, the very same High Fateweaver that had helped me before with Eliza, at our side, they could only trickle in in manageable amounts. We held on for almost a day before we were relieved by Romulus and his forces.

The emperor had been in need of healing following the events in the arena, no wonder with a missing heart, and thus the whole war had just been about securing our position until he was fully operational again. The battle of Warsaw destroyed most of the enemy forces, including a giant godkiller construct. On the fifth day we moved to Moscow, where Romulus used a terrible spear to level the enemies’ main base. The war was won.

And that was just about three weeks ago, since then nothing all that interesting has happened. We parted with Lydia, got on this cruise and that’s that.

___________________________________________________________________________

“Wow, wow,” Tilgun applauded with all his hands, a weird 1-2-1-2 rhythm. “You glossed over a lot of stuff there, I can tell.”

“It’s not like it was a linear story,” John made a grimace, “It’s hard to tell you all the things in a way that makes sense because so much of it was going on kind of next to each other.”

“Okay, a detail question then, where is my sister now?” Tilgun leaned in. “Her smell on you is faint at best.”

“Yeah, about that...” John just gave him the gist of what had happened on that evening.

“I see, I see...” Tilgun hummed. “So I am going to be an uncle soon, now that is a nice thought.”

“Not within the next few years,” the Gamer reminded him.

“Yes, very soon, I am aware.” Of course that was a highly insignificant timeframe to a being this old. “I am highly offended that she didn’t ask me to be the messenger on the matter. Someone has to tell her of your current exploits after all... I think I know exactly who she asked.” He did sound rather annoyed and sucked in air through his almost sealed lips, making a mice-like squeaking sound. “With my curiosity sated, another question: Do I assume correctly that this ship is equipped with a mobile barrier?”

John had a bad feeling about this, “Yes.”

“Splendid, I am tired of jumping into the magical stream that connects all barriers and pray Gaia presents me with some exit that has water and food. Moving on land is so tedious,” Tilgun rolled his neck. “It has been a while since I have been to a coastal city. We shall see what it brings me.”

“Ya don’t plan to eat the local population, do ya?” Rave chimed in. “Cause that’s totally a thing that I can see ya doing, being Nathie’s brother and all.”

“Only if they refuse to venerate me and give me offerings to feast on instead,” Tilgun simply answered. That wasn’t calming in the least, but what could they do?

They had picked up yet another travel companion.