Chapter 781 – Tournament of Oddities 16 – Painting over White

Chapter 781 – Tournament of Oddities 16 – Painting over White

“I’m this close to stopping this entire tournament, acquiring a nuke and just dropping it on this entire, blasted state,” John growled rubbing the towel over his face repeatedly. He had just managed to wash all the blood off and that was trickier than it sounded. The pressure of the Nevr’est had made them bleed in incredibly unpleasant places. Eyes and ears were what he had expected. Gums and nailbeds, however, were not what he had signed up for.

His wrath wasn’t aimed at his own injuries, however. Gamer’s Body, once the Nevr’est had vanished, had fixed everything within a few moments. Same couldn’t be said for his girlfriend. While her own reaction to the creature hadn’t been as intense, she had ‘only’ bled from the eyes and ears, and managed to keep standing through the whole of it, the damage had to be healed. Something that wasn’t possible immediately. Despite having left the room, the elementals and Artificial Spirits all had passed out for as long as John had been, being a solid ten minutes. Another point that annoyed him.

That being said, Moira had come over and used what small healing powers she had to help out his girlfriend. According to Rave, she had checked on them before taking care of herself. With no way to verify otherwise (and also trusting what his girlfriend said in general), the Gamer took that on the face of it without questioning.

“Wasn’t even that bad,” Rave tried to calm him down. “I mean, that thing was pretty terrifying, but it’s not the worst thing I ever went through. You’re just mad they didn’t say ya won.”

“Two seconds!” John threw the red-stained towel into the bin. It was supplied by the Florida guild, so he didn’t care to give Aclysia the task of washing the blood out of it. “I passed out two seconds before the whole minute!”

“Ya know ya would insist ya lost the challenge if ya had to make the call from their position,” Rave answered and then, jokingly, added, “Ya-ya-ya, I sound stupid.”

“Yes, I would,” John sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just annoyed in general right about now.”

Florida hadn’t been that unreasonable, putting aside the fact that they approved that challenge in the first place. Having declared it a narrow victory for their side, they implemented the condition as receiving yearly prune cake shipments of no stated size or quality. Basically, they had made it a quirky tradition that John would have to fund in the future.

What he had lost annoyed him less than the loss itself. It would have been a lot less infuriating if he had collapsed after a few seconds. Far away from the goal, the loss wouldn’t have stung so much and Rave wouldn’t have gotten hurt as much. His stubborn pride was to blame for both the way he had handled things and him now feeling extremely pissed about the way things went.

It certainly didn’t help that Aclysia was ever-present in his thoughts, fuming even more than he was. She had already destroyed three cutting boards in the process of gutting the barracuda. Once again, they weren’t theirs, so she wasn’t as cautious as she usually would have been. Having one messed up room in exchange for forcing someone to look at the (likely) most powerful Nevr’est in existence was, in John’s biased opinion, a pretty good deal.

“Crazy to think that Nia always has one of those running around behind her,” Salamander chimed into the conversation, when John and Rave went from the bath into the living room. Barely had she said that, when the endflame elemental made the mistake of recalling what had happened about an hour ago, and immediately started writhing on the couch. “Fucking Mother Fire!” she shouted, holding her head in an effort to think about anything else.

“Hey, hey, Sally, remember that one time when you took me out to the beach and you fired up a bunch of fireworks and it was super pretty?” Sylph darted around the endflame elemental, zapping from one position to the other like a lightning bolt. “It was pretty, you do remember that, yes? It was pretty!”

“Yeah,” Salamander nodded and sat up straight, “thanks for the distraction, Sylph.”

The thunderstorm elemental blushed and floated around while happily rubbing her cheeks. “Silly Sally, I don’t want you to be in pain, just don’t think about the grinning nightmare ca-ack!” Sylph dropped to the floor like a dragonfly whose wings had suddenly decided to stop existing. Starting to get worried about her, John stepped closer, only for the air spirit to immediately dart up again. “Never mind, I’m better now!” she exclaimed.

“Guess your short-thought nature is advantageous in times like these,” John joked and let the adorable fairy-esque elemental land in his hand. He then proceeded to tickle her with his thumb. Her carefree laughter eradicated much of the tension in the room. Even the hacking sound from the kitchen grew a bit less aggressive.

“Uhm, so,” Gnome raised her hand to get everyone’s attention, “I suggest we don’t talk too much about this for at least... a week? However long it takes for the memories to dull to the point that I don’t feel like I’m going to dry up into sand and crumble whenever I accidentally remember anything...”

“Good call,” John agreed. “Blasted Alice, putting us through all of that.”

“Ya sure Vita is Alice?”

“Alright, we can have two lanes,” Rave said when she got back. “Y’all ready to get stomped by me?”

“Don’t we have to wear provided shoes to protect the floor or something?” John asked, never having been to an Abyssal bowling place before.

“Nah,” Rave waved off, and John decided to not chase that any further.

“How would I even go about that?” Siena wondered, looking at her permanent high-heels.

To that, John had no answer, so they just relocated to their assigned lanes. Inside her autumn leaf themed dress, Gnome came after them before they stepped onto the smooth wooden floor. “Here,” she said, passing her clothes to John, for safekeeping in his inventory. Not that they stayed there for long. He was having Jack take them out on the other side and put away for washing whenever Aclysia returned to their home proper.

They sat down on the seats that came with their lanes, right next to the left-hand wall. “We got the worst placement!” his girlfriend complained.

“Why?” John wondered.

“We’re furthest away from the bar, we’ll have to walk an extra fifteen steps to get there!”

“But we’re closest to the toilets, so that’s good,” John pointed out.

“I can hold my pee, I’m not some little girl!”

“I mean, no, you aren’t, but you also can’t, especially after you had two beers.”

“Look who’s talking!”

“Hey, I never said I was better.” John raised his hands defensively. “That aside, I shouldn’t even drink. Who knows what tomorrow will throw at me.” Rave looked at him with a dangerous pout and John couldn’t but concede at that. “Alright, maybe a few beers,” he sighed and started typing his name into the score tracking machine. Everyone else followed his example, giving him some time to look around.

The place was relatively well lit. It was at a level where it was clearly intentionally less bright than the day, invoking a cosy feeling. Numerous bowling balls were stacked into specifically designed shelves. They stood along a waist-high wall that separated the playing from the bar area, with only cut-outs in the middle and at the sides allowing to get through. The furniture over there was of dark wood and the carpet a simple dark grey. The walls were a deep red and the roof, segmented into square plates, had so many excess lights in it that John had a feeling this place had rave evenings. The speakers, way too large for the soft music that currently played, seemed to underline that.

The other eight lanes were almost all claimed. On the other side of the room was a group of three with no one else in the lane right next to theirs. Other than that, there were always enough people to fill each pair of lanes.

Next to him and his harem was a group that, notably, was exclusively made of women. Most of them were big-titted and of slightly older appearance, the MILF type that John wasn’t as much into as other men but he had to admit was attractive regardless. One of those women was some sort of minotaur, judging by the horns and the truly absurd size of her jugs. A younger looking, but no less stacked girl, was some sort of gnome (the race, not the earth elemental), and a dark-haired elf with an athletic, pear-shaped body closer to John’s taste was happily chatting with a hawk-winged, Asian looking woman.

Much like with John’s harem, there was a tendency towards the one theme in that group, but there was still variety. ‘Wonder if that is pure chance or if there is someone missing?’ the Gamer asked himself, as he heard the bathroom door open and close behind him.

A moment later, he got his answer. “Would you look at that, there is a celebrity present,” he heard a familiar voice behind him and turned towards the separating wall. Leaning on top, with the cocky smile that seemed to accompany him everywhere, a good-looking young man raised his hand in greeting. “I thought I would run into you, buddy.”



“You could have dropped a message,” John told Maximillian.