Chapter 695 – A quick drop in Germany

Chapter 695 – A quick drop in Germany

“This could be a much easier affair were you the owner of a private airport,” Lydia stated as they stopped in front of the security gates. People stepped around them, wanting to check in themselves. To that end, John and his harem were slightly in the way, but not enough that anybody asked them to move.

“I’ll put it on the list of future Guild Hall Buildings,” John assured her.

“That option exists?” the queen asked, raising an eyebrow. Before her lover could answer, she furthered the thought herself. “I suppose it does logically follow, as evident by the Harbour’s existence. Would there also be an option for cars, to complete the triumvirate of vehicles?”

“Yeah, haven’t built any of them yet because I wouldn’t get a lot of use out of them,” he answered and then yawned. That sleep he hadn’t gotten was slowly taking its due. ‘This is why I shouldn’t be fucking until four in the morning one day and try to get up at a sensible hour the next. Well, I can sleep a bit in the next few hours.’

“You should consider the option heavily in the future. It would make visits to your home a lot easier. Albeit, I don’t think this is going to be a problem for us two anymore, would it?” Lydia asked and mustered him with an iron gaze.

“Whatever could you mean?” John asked and grinned so broadly that the ‘lie’ immediately was discovered.

Crossing her arms, the queen shook her head heavily enough for her masterly made braid to peak past her back for a moment. “Your antics have been noticed, John. I know your mood when you have to say farewell to one of us and you are not replicating it believably.” She raised one finger to his chest and stabbed at his ribcage. “You think me a fool that can’t decipher the most obvious of situations?”

“I just thought it would be funny to see your face,” John admitted, doing his best (and purposefully failing at the same time) of looking guilty. “You know, when you say goodbye to us and I say goodbye to all of them,” he gestured at the rest of the harem following the scene. “Could have been funny.”

Lydia went back to a crossed arms stance. “I am no item for your amusement, John.”

“The fuck is going on exactly?” Eliza asked. She wasn’t entirely alone in her confusion, although it was only her, Metra and Sylph that had absolutely no idea what was going on. Everyone else was either in the know or could also guess where this was going.

“Our beloved and quite irritating Gamer here,” Lydia turned to the blood mage to explain, “has recently upgraded his Guild Hall to a higher quality. With it came the capability to place more long-range teleport outposts...”

“Oh, alright, I get it,” Eliza spoke up. “Fucker has to fly over to Germany now to place the broken-ass station over there and thought it would be funny to get on the same plane as you.”

John shrugged, the only thing he felt bad about was that he didn’t obscure things better. “That about sums it up,” he admitted. “Lydia and I have been talking about giving Fusion an embassy space in Berlin anyway. All it takes is for the pre-agreed place to be officially given to me. Once the prepared paperwork is signed and the land belongs to me, it belongs to Collide and therefore I can place one outpost over in Germany. Only thing I don’t know about is what happens to the outpost if the contract gets broken and the territory is technically no longer mine.”

“A question of no current concern,” Lydia dismissed and looked at one of the clocks that were everywhere in the airport. “Come then, John, we have a flight to catch.” Looking over to the rest of the harem, the queen only gave a respectful nod. “I would prolong this farewell further. However, as it stands it will be open to me to return without long travels from this night onwards. As such, I will simply say until later.”

“Laterz,” Rave waved and the rest of the harem followed suit, as John and Lydia turned to the gate to actually check in.

“You know,” John spoke up while they stood in line for the security checks. “You can’t actually come through the teleporter at will. Only members of Collide can use it.”

“Is this another futile attempt to get me to join your guild?” Lydia’s tone had a sharpness to it that made it clear she was not having this discussion for the third time. “I said it clear and I will stay true to my oath, not even in name or for convenience shall I swear fealty to someone else than my people.”

“No,” John tried to dissuade her through strong words and gentle gestures, putting an arm around her shoulders. It worked, Lydia’s blue eyes taking a familiar grey tone. “I wanted to remind you of that, nothing more. You’ll have to send me or someone else a message whenever you want to come over.” They took a step as the queue moved forwards. “Since you already saw through me, I guess you made arrangements to that end already?”

“Selbstverständlich,” Lydia answered, using her German completely consciously this time around. More often than not, when she slipped into her mother tongue, it was because she was worked up about something. “Aclysia and Beatrice are both easy to reach and convince to accompany me, should I desire so.”

“They would be the logical choices,” John agreed. “Our biggest problem will be the time zones though. You are six hours ahead of me. When you want to come over for dinner, it’ll be lunchtime here.”

Odd in this was Lydia’s home. It was its own district, by all accounts, surrounded by a simple park and a few additional buildings. While it was indeed a palace, it was one of the most moderate ones John had ever seen. For the most part, it looked like an apartment building. A very big apartment building with an uncharacteristically high amount of decorations, but still in the ballpark. Long walls with equally spaced out windows in stacked rows. Compared to some of the aristocratic mansions in the adjacent districts, of course nobles centred their households around the seat of power, it was almost humble – but only almost.

There were four things about it that were quite imposing. In order of least to most remarkable, in John’s opinion. The decorations on the rim of the roof were pleasingly symmetrical and the bronze statues standing on the corners were artfully crafted. The large dome tower, beset with more statues and golden ornaments. The gate underneath it, a massive thing of stone, pillars and masonry, covered in heraldry and art. Lastly, the thing that he was looking at was a building that should no longer exist.

The Berlin Palace had been damaged in World War 2, deemed repairable but subsequently torn down by the communists in East Germany. “You know, once upon a time,” John admitted while they walked through the courtyard, “I thought of socialism as something that sounded pretty nice. The principles still sound pretty humane. Yet, every time the ideology gets into power anywhere, they only bulldoze the past and enslave the future.”

“Socialism and communism is inherently seductive because it is so utopian,” Lydia responded while they walked on through the building, preserved by putting it into a barrier long before that whole political thought was even formulated. “Its flaws are not immediately obvious. You know the saying, no heart he who isn’t a socialist before his twenties, no brain he who still is one in his forties.”

“Not sure that’s the exact wording, but that sounds about right,” the Gamer responded. “Well, not like the ideology has done only bad.”

They stopped in the middle of the courtyard as Lydia gave him a long stare. “What good did it do, John?”

He only now realized that he was talking to a woman who had lost her father to the Blood of the Proleteriat. ‘Bad move,’ he scolded himself, but he had already walked into that landmine, so he might as well state what he meant. “It created the pressure needed to birth many social programs, such as health insurance. You won’t catch me saying communism is something to base a government on, but some of the underlying principles can be used to achieve some positive results.”

“I entirely reject the notion that we have socialism to thank for these things,” Lydia spat the words out like they were poison. The moment she realized her tone, she closed her eyes for a few seconds and gathered herself. “Although I suppose you can observe the history as it has happened to interpret it that way. Giving the credit to that abhorrent miscalculation of a worldview seems like a terribly unilateral analysis to me.”

“I would need to dig deeper to debate that,” John dropped the argument, since that was his actual stance there. “It might very well be that it was just the time that made those things popular, with early industrialization and what not.”

“That appears closer to my view on it,” Lydia stated, and they continued moving, dropping the topic like a hot potato.

‘I guess I will have this talk in a calmer atmosphere,’ John thought to himself, since he was actually interested in having it. Seeing what good one of the most destructive forces ever had brought was a fascinating topic to try and tear down with someone else. If he warned Lydia beforehand that this would be the topic of a discussion, she would probably be happy to have it. Be it only to tear everyone else a new one. ‘I guess she could have a great time preparing with Scarlett on that front...’

They left the building on the other side and arrived at a place that had not belonged to the original construction. A house of late renaissance design but clearly built with modern materials. With a fresh coat of azure blue paint and a little garden attached to the front of it, it appeared like a nice place to stay. Although it was rather small, particularly between the Berlin Palace and the houses of the Abyssal aristocracy that stretched out behind it.

“My grandfather used this as the house for spurned guests, as he liked to put it,” Lydia informed John. “Those who he deemed necessary to be in close range but too obnoxious to have them sleep in his palace.”

“They do say Frederik the Great was an odd fellow,” John mumbled, scratching the back of his head. He couldn’t imagine people were generally too offended by being put there. Truthfully, it looked like a much nicer place to stay than some room inside the palace. “What does it say about me that you’re making this the embassy?”

“That I am not my grandfather. I don’t make the court convene here in the first place. This is strictly my home and workplace – and it’s awfully large.” Lydia took a little pause to glare at the aristocratic houses in the distance. “Were it not for this awful need for prestige, I would have moved into a practical office building months ago. Regardless,” she reached into her own pocket dimension to retrieve a piece of paper, “sign this.”

John took a moment to look at the contract. Only minorly to inspect what was written, he trusted Lydia, but to inspect the artistry of the whole thing. The dark blue ink on the creamy colour of the paper looked like someone had dipped their quill in the night sky and used it to write into a desert. Aside from Lydia’s own signature, there was also Romulus’s name in the bottom area. As Rex Germaniae was still technically part of the empire, that was a necessary step of this whole thing.

John took the pen that Lydia offered him and added his own signature to the contract, a second copy for Romulus and a third copy for himself. It was a pretty quick affair, without any onlookers to make it feel official. He actually preferred it that way, since he wanted to get this concluded quickly. Once all of it was done, John simply placed the teleporter outpost next to the house and that was all it took. Given that it looked like a dark, wooden pavilion with a blue glass floor, it actually fit quite neatly into the scenery.

“As always, it has been a pleasure to visit you, John,” Lydia let him know once the thing was in place. Evidently, she was under the impression he was going to leave immediately.

“You know, I do have some time before I have to leave,” he said with a smirk and gestured towards the house. “What do you say, you actually show me this new embassy you gifted me?” He liked to believe the implication was quite clear.

Lydia smiled in the slightest of ways.