Chapter 501 – The smell of gunpowder

Chapter 501 – The smell of gunpowder

John hid himself awfully inside a pair of jogging pants, a slouching shirt with long sleeves, pair of glasses and a cap. ‘Interesting that glasses don’t count against the cap in the head slot,’ he thought as he walked on, his girlfriend holding onto his arm. Rave herself was disguised as her brunette self with less conspicuous clothes: a dark green, frilly pair of yoga pants under a wide, white t-shirt. ‘Guess Gaia is letting me get away with it because neither of the items are enchanted?’

“Seen anything interesting yet?” Rave wondered, glancing over her own pair of glasses to direct her blue eyes at her boyfriend. Her attempts at hiding were way less effective, her ass attracting the attention of every guy in a mile. Thankfully, it was a passing view only.

“Kind of,” John answered, quickly lifting his shades to use Possession on the desk of an open doored shop they were walking past. It was an annoying thing with the skill that he needed to look at whatever he wanted to possess with his own eyes. As he had just today learned, this included barriers made from translucent materials. Luckily, not energy, but he would have learned that earlier due to Mana Protection interfering with the skill.

“...pical as always,” the Gamer’s displaced awareness inside the counter picked up the ongoing conversation. An old woman was complaining to her workers in the shop and obviously not done with it. “You need a license for everything nowadays. Want more employees? License. Different product line? License. Import from anywhere? All an individual license!”

“So... do I need to bring some cash to the usual place today?” one of the people she was complaining towards, a man in his late twenties, asked. The almost humouring tone he presented the question with let John guess that this wasn’t the first time this or similar conversations were had.

His attention shifted to another Possession he had placed in another shop, “I am heading out!”

Immediately upon that announcement, another person shouted from somewhere, “Don’t forget to drop by the White House on the way back!”

The person making the initial announcement made a sour face. Seemingly a well-off businessman, his tone betrayed a level of unhappiness. “Can’t we skip it? I want to go a month without crawling to my uncle.”

“Sure, if you want us to lose tens of thousands of dollars because we need to wait on the building proposal to be approved, then we can do that,” his partner in business answered in a sarcastic tone. After a short pause and in a lighter tone, he added, “All you are good for is your uncle anyway.”

“Very funny, dude,” he took it with humour, then stopped for a second. “Don’t you feel watch-“ John broke the connection before the businessman could finish the question. Going around in disguise would have been pretty useless if he got caught now.

The Gamer was currently getting busy doing the thing he actually had promised he wouldn’t do and spying on the Little Maryland. Well, to be exact, he was eavesdropping on semi-public conversations on this business district he found. It wasn’t as impressive as the tube-shaped mall back in New York, but this was still a rather large barrier committed to nothing but commerce. One of three, if John understood all of this correctly.

Given that he had access to a tourist guide, that understanding was quite vast but also as basic as it could get. Wide but thin, that was the correct way to look at John’s knowledge of the situation.

The Little Maryland subscribed its government to a changed form of the three estates model. They had the basic citizens, the military and the government, a triumvirate that was meant to keep each other in check through inter-tangling of rights and obligations to each other. Brought into life almost 200 years ago, it was obvious that such a system would show cracks eventually.

Which was why John could smell a powder keg despite the obvious lack of gunpowder around. He had already seen that at least someone higher up in the military was unhappy with the bureaucrats, and the citizens also seemed everything but happy with the governmental influence on their lives. The corruption stunk to high heaven, and unlike the anarcho-capitalists in New York, these people were hesitant to pick up arms against the largely functioning system.

‘There is only so long you can keep shaking a bottle before it explodes, though,’ John thought, cutting the last of his Possessions off and just walking onwards and checking out the shops. A person skilled at reading auras could have easily seen through their disguise, given how much stronger they were than most people in the crowd. Such a person watching John would have caused some drama, but the Gamer was willing to play their complaints about him doing some minor spying against their screwed up welcoming committee.

At this point, John was certain that they hadn’t sent reinforcements in time for numerous reasons that had nothing to do with the actual security of the White House. What exactly these reasons were, John was still debating. An attempt to show the military as inept, perhaps? Highly likely, from how Chemilia had been spoken to. To what end though?

John whispered the question over to his girlfriend, who hummed. Although she wasn’t the smartest person around her boyfriend by a long shot, she was able to present some theories his mind didn’t immediately go to. That and, although she didn’t get all of the jumps and loops of politics, she was socially more apt than him. A valuable perspective to get into these discussions.

“I have no clue,” she, however, offered that simple answer. “All I did in that situation was laugh at how embarrassingly untimely his entry was. I mean, if you’re right - and you usually are, I guess - that he shouldn’t have ever allowed us to talk to Chemilia for more than three seconds.”

“You are a genius,” John told her as her comments caused the puzzle pieces in his brain to neatly fit together. When she stared at him with that disapproving ‘can ya explain to me, please?!’ look on her face – easily discernible despite the tinged glasses – the Gamer went on. “Untimely, our visit was delayed. The idea must have been to let the military fail in front of us for a bit and then swoop in to look like they were the much more competent force around. All to impress Lydia. By the time we did finally arrive, the military already had the situation under control at that point and the welcoming committee was no longer ready to immediately move... well, the fat guy commanding it wasn’t.”

“I guess that’d make sense,” Rave mused. “Seems awfully inept though. Can’t say I get the impression the government here is bad at their job of being bad.”

John wasn’t with her on that; a government that let itself become so unpopular it was slandered by just about every working person around had to be incredibly incapable. The fact that no higher power had arisen out of the USA gave him the impression that they all capped out at a slightly above mediocre level of skill. Still, he best give them at least the benefit of the doubt and not take too huge risks.

The whole takeover of New York had gone over as smoothly as it had due to the time invested into the successful execution of a long-con. One inept bureaucrat presented with nepotism wasn’t reason enough to believe the entire government was terrible at what it did.

“Well, we’ll see,” John admitted, and they continued their little walk over the market.

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Following her as she stepped off the table, John greeted her with, “Liked? How about lo-“ he began but was promptly interrupted when she kissed him on the lips. The second their tongues intertwined was the second John’s balls suddenly tightened and he began pumping his seed into Eliza. He grunted, not interested in hiding his orgasm in any way. She absolutely deserved to know that her presence pushed him right over the edge and it spoke to her dominating side just as much as it spoke to his in similar situations, a hand soon fixating their prolonged kiss.

John’s favourite part of the female physique was directly in front of him. Yes, the Gamer was a massive ass-man, but there was nothing that he appreciated more than a beautiful woman’s face. In his mind, that was so easily agreed upon with most of mankind that it wasn’t usually worth the mention.

“What were ya saying?” Rave laughed when she dictated the end of the kiss.

“I love you,” he answered immediately, doing her the favour of making it sound that little bit begging. He couldn’t be just the dom all the time, that side was currently pleased by him being balls-deep inside the ultimate sub anyway.

One that got a slap on the ass in the middle of her own orgasm as Rave went, “A-dor-a-ble, tiger,” then slapping the other cheek before going towards Eliza, “alright, ya little slut, my turn.”

“Mistress, pleasshe,” the blood mage slurred, shuddering in climactic spasms. “Jusht a mooom-ah-ment.”

“N-O-P-E,” Rave decisively spelled out, almost shoving Eliza off her boyfriend. Leaving the blood mage quivering at the side, soon staining the couch with her leaking pussy juice, cloudy from the seed mixed into it, the matriarch of the Newman harem straddled over her boyfriend. “Think we will run a bit late.”

Not that anybody believed Brenda would mind that.

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“And I will spank you if you don’t get all of that off yourself, Eliza!” John threatened, standing before the mirror with a bottle. Being the thing he had bought earlier, it was a commonly available item in the Abyss, and, although to a less magical degree, also was easy to get hands on in the real world. For what it actually was, the answer was simple: makeup. More specifically, the kind that hid skin conditions.

Pimples, rashes or tattoo-like scars from an ancient race of eldritch abominations made from tentacles, teeth, terror and terrorizing teethed tentacles. The reasons why John went with the magical version rather than the common one were threefold. One, this was more resilient towards water; two, it was going to stick for the next couple of days; and three, it was way easier to apply. It was a simple lotion that detected the irregular colour on the skin and then drew on his mana to instead create a realistic looking stand-in. The costs of this were so negligible, John didn’t even see it show up on his character sheet.

The excess he simple washed away at the sink. Unnecessary parts didn’t harden. ‘This might be the most developed technology in the Abyss,’ John thought, marvelling at the ease and reliability of this readily available product. ‘Not that that’s a wonder, considering what happens to people that fail to hide.’

In this specific case, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he was found out. At worst, Gaia might get a little bit pissed if John scrambled his explanation. There was no easily discernible difference between the scar and a tattoo after all. John just didn’t want to lie to his mother about yet another thing. Better to just omit it.

“I have no fucking clue,” Eliza spoke over the sound of running water, “if that is supposed to be the dumbest threat in history or if you want me to look like an invalid fucking couch-fucktato in front of my kids’ grandmother.”

“Yes,” John answered like a smartass.

“Fuck you!” Eliza kicked the glass of the shower between them. Her foot left a short-term window on the steam-covered surface. Due to Rave being in there with her, the whole bathroom was heating up from the stupendously hot water they were using.

John looked at his arm after drying it up. Looked exactly like it had before the whole Lorylim run-in, even the slight blue of the vein that was running through there was emulated. A different girl suddenly appeared at John’s side, flowing up from the floor and startling her summoner.

“Can I try?” Undine asked in her melodic tone, pointing at the remaining bottle. Despite repeated assurances that it didn’t bother him or anyone else in the group, Undine was still searching for ways to hide her own, more extensive scars. As he didn’t think another such good-willed talking would change the question, John just handed her the bottle.

Carefully, the water elemental squirted some on her hand and then rubbed it on the red swirling patterns on her upper breast. The product was clearly not created with elementals in mind. While it did work at covering up the spot, it did so by creating an odd mixture of her usual blue, minus the translucency, and the texture of normal human skin.

Covering all of the scar tissue up in that way would have looked like she had suffered more than a few heavy burns in the past. In comparison, the scars had their emotional baggage but were at least aesthetically pleasing. Undine’s lips curved down in a frown as she cut the mana supply from the substance and then brushed it off herself as it turned into a dry dust.

“We can look into it another time, if you want,” John told her, brushing back the strand of her hair that she hid the ‘disfigured’ part of her face under. “I am fine either way.”

“I would appreciate it,” Undine mumbled, blushing the slightest bit. If it made her happy, then John would oblige her. It wasn’t often, after all, that his elementals came to him with a request for personal things. Aside from Sylph and her sweet tooth.

A knock on the door followed by an inquiring, “Are you ready?” from the unmistakable iron tone of Lydia echoed through the bathroom.



“Just about,” John answered.