Chapter 771 – Tournament of Oddities 6 – Old and faint acquaintances.

Chapter 771 – Tournament of Oddities 6 – Old and faint acquaintances.

“Then again, the fact that you decided to go with Collide meant you likely had a flawed character from the start,” Moira continued in the same breath and crossed her arms. “So, it’s the raw power that likely corrupted you further. Both of you. You were at least decent enough to keep clothes on in public, Jane Hollmey.”

“Glad to see ya too, Moira,” Rave chattered back. “Reminds me that I never asked: how mad were you when you found out that was me?”

“Mad? I had no reason to be mad. You were a third-rate threat, both by courtesy of your groups low power and the fact that you didn’t dabble in any arts too dark – until Travolta decided to ally with the Bloodfallen, of course. An issue that solved itself, much to the unnecessary hurt of everyone.” Moira sighed and shook her head. “That aside, I have to admit, I don’t ever recall meeting you in the hallways, so all your name got us at the time was an easier time to track you down whenever you did cross the line.”

“I did a good job laying low and, ya know, skipping school,” the Lightbearer joked and exchanged a glance with her boyfriend. They had a short, silent conversation with their eyes, then Rave got off his dick and both of them got clothed again.

When dealing with the kind of people that disapproved of the Gamer’s ‘degeneracy’, there were two paths to take. They could either continue as they were, effectively rubbing it in the face of the complaining party and riling them up, or they could stop (for the moment) and oblige the issues raised. Generally, John preferred to do the former, but he wanted to appear reasonable to the Warden.

“If you want to, we can have a more in-depth discussion about things,” he offered and waved at a nearby chair.

Moira raised one of her elegantly swung eyebrows. Although covered, the groin areas of both John and his girlfriend were an open display of perversion, being raised in a tent and drenched respectively. It was remarkably difficult to convince his dick that NOT plunging right back into Rave’s pussy was the right course of action. Until Source of Satisfaction switched to ‘regular’ mode and drastically debuffed his Libido.

Even with his boner slowly deflating, there was still the naked endflame elemental watchinging everything. They had stopped adding new food to her curves, so she had rolled onto her side to better follow the situation with a giant grin. John was pretty surprised that, at no point, Moira had blushed or looked startled by what was going on. She may have been strict, but she wasn’t sheltered when it came to erotic matters. The same couldn’t be said for her company, who had turned almost as red as the Warden’s hair.

Since an Observe on that companion had failed, John wasn’t surprised when it also bounced off Moira without an effect.

“I came here with the goal to talk to you, but... not in these surroundings.” Two tables over, an unrelated woman screamed ecstatically her demands to get taken up the ass. Elsewhere, someone shouted that he wouldn’t buy geodes at that price. Salamander cackled, Rave shrugged, John scratched the back of his head.

“Yeah, I can get that... well, I’m basically filled up anyway. Aclysia, see to it that the payment is made.” Aclysia obediently lowered her head and walked away, while he got up and straightened his clothes. “A walk then, Moira? I would say we have a lot to talk about.”

“We can talk in a minute, after Jane has changed her clothes,” Moira suggested, evidently taking issue with the Lightbearer’s state of legwear. “I suggest we meet at-“

“Just gimme a second,” Rave interrupted, after rolling her eyes, and proceeded to strip on the spot. It drew the attention of the majority of the room. There were videos of her naked body available, so the more porn-consuming members of the crowd had likely seen her curves already, but watching a woman with her curves and perfect bubble butt nude in person was something nobody wanted to miss. John just grinned and leered throughout all of it. They could watch, as long as they understood she was his and his harems to touch.

Once naked, ignoring any complaints from Moira, Rave slipped back into her pink sneakers and they turned semi-liquid. Over the course of a few seconds, the pink crawled over her body and manifested into a stretchy, neoprene-like material. The bodysuit hugged tighter to her curves than any other clothing could have. It was basically like a second skin that closed in a turtleneck and left everything else covered while making her round ass seem absolutely fantastic.

It was an Artificial Spirit in itself, created with much weaker cores and programmed without any sort of actual consciousness. This had the advantage that the bodysuit was self-repairing and could be upgraded by feeding it newer materials. Something that John had engaged in relatively recently.

Torso, upper thighs and the majority of her arms stayed with the same pink colour as always. The fibre in those areas was enriched with L-Baelementium, providing a natural resonance with Rave’s light-based powers. A few darker lines cut through here and there, breaking up the monotony of the semi-shiny surface of tightly knit strands.

The cover on her hands had been reinforced since she had gotten the suit, but her legs now followed that trend, being covered up to the middle of her thighs. Those areas were black and a bit thicker. The colour coordination came courtesy of Rave herself and had little to do with the metals that were part of the suit.

“Everything alright?” John asked, while his girlfriend did a few stretches.

“Sits like a comfy full-body glove,” Rave answered, grabbed her discarded clothes and tossed them at Beatrice, for them to be washed later. “Just distracting myself from being horny. How does my ass look in this outfit?” she asked, fully knowing that John had to give her bubble butt a smack afterwards. “Good as always, got it,” she moaned.

“Are you mocking me with this show?” Moira wanted to know.

“A bit,” Rave returned and threw her arms around John’s neck. “’Cause I got this man and ya don’t and that makes me want to show off, ya know?”

“See, she says she got the greatest ass in the world,” the Gamer turned to give the Lightbearer a quick kiss, “but I’m not sure whether she means her backside or her attitude.”

“Maybe I mean you when I say that, tiger, ever thought of that?”

“We would only get involved as much as we need.”

“Can you tell me exactly how much that is?”

“Can you tell me exactly how much you can indulge without it becoming the road to ruination?”

“No,” John conceded immediately. “That’s why I made a parliament instead of keeping dictatorial power. I may have the intelligence to figure it out if I had all the data, but I cannot have the awareness to grasp every stream that flows through the culture. Even then, I have my biases, like everyone else. The ship sails best in the middle of the channel and I don’t trust myself to be the sole navigator of everything. Whether we run aground on the shore of tyranny or anarchy doesn’t really seem to matter to me. I’m more concerned about keeping afloat. I think having every single viewpoint out there will have the ship sail in a very odd way, but it should generally keep us around the middle.” He switched to a joking tone, kissing his girlfriend on her adorable cheek. “That aside, I don’t want to work that much.”

Letting out a long sigh, Moira rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I understand that idea; I’m not sure if your methods will bring you there. I don’t think another word than degenerate is fitting for the way you eat.”

John shrugged. “Then we should agree to disagree at this current point. Unless you think we can sort all of our differences in a talk right here and right now, it’s useless to shout at each other.” He gave both of them his most charming smile. “I would be happy to negotiate your integration into Fusion.”

Despite being blinded, Lorelei blushed intensely. She clearly had some way to, if not actually see, then to perceive things accurately.

“If you were to redeem yourself, it might be possible,” Moira carefully suggested. “Fundamentally, the divine mission the Order and the Wardens have been given is one of protection of humanity. We do not seek to rule, only to keep things safe. If there was a sovereign we trusted would not hinder us in our mission, we could make some concessions on independence, if need be.”

“Is that so?” John asked. “Well, how would I go about showing that I’m a good boy.”

“You would need to dial back on your impure lifestyle,” Moira began. “At best, you would disband your harem enti-“

“”No deal.”” Those two words were spoken, with wildly differing levels of enthusiasm, by John, Rave, Aclysia, Beatrice and all five elemental girls, suddenly popping up only to make their disapproval known.

“Then you’re right and we should just agree to disagree – for the moment,” Moira, slightly taken aback by the intense pushback she had just received, ended the argument. “I came here in a diplomatic effort to talk to Florida. Since they’ll apparently join you in a week, I decided to see how reasonable you were. Well, that and I wondered how you had developed.”

“Your evident distaste for my sexual appetite aside, you like what you see?”

“Spare yourself the flirts, you disqualified yourself as a potential partner the moment you found yourself unable to stick to one woman,” Moira snapped back at his joke in an extreme fashion. “The Golden Rose cannot be shared with the unfaithful.”

“Sorry, sorry,” John made a mental note that the redhead was off-limits, “I wouldn’t say that I was unfaithful at any point, but I’ll take the pointer.”

“If nothing else, you’re tolerable.” The Warden calmed quickly, having made her point, and leaned back. “We may have gotten along well, if you had made a different choice.”

“I honestly don’t see myself going down any path that doesn’t involve at least a small harem, so I think we always would have had issues.” The Gamer shook his head. “Anyway, how are things at Ashcroft? Are Vanessa and Frank still in charge of everything?”

“I had to discontinue my education there a month after you left,” Moira told him with a shrug. “I never had time to care about those two before and I haven’t had since. I was there to learn and to keep an eye on Wentworth. Since that witch has kept her activities low for the longest time now, I haven’t kept up with school affairs. My duty as a Warden meant I had to travel and purge all threatening elements we identified.” Her greyish green eyes focused him without any further words, the silent warning clear in the hard expression on her face.

‘Let’s hope they all deserved it,’ the Gamer thought and only nodded.

The redhead seemed happy with that reaction and pushed herself off the table. Once standing, she announced, “Well, I’ll follow the other six challenges as closely as they let me. Show your best, John Newman, I’ll tell my father and the council what my impression of you is by the end of it.”

“I don’t think you’ll find anything new.” John shrugged. “I’m pretty consistent when it comes to my public record and I won’t change now, not to look better to you and certainly not for some potential gain.”

“Your unwillingness to change is frustrating, but at least you’re honest.” Moira clicked her tongue and then turned to leave.



“Hold up, a sec!” Rave spoke up.