Chapter 824 – When the Horned Rat trolls

Chapter 824 – When the Horned Rat trolls

“Master... Master...”

John made an unwilling sound as he opened his eyes and stared into the darkness of his blindness. It had been weeks since he had last woken up in a manner that left him wishing he could close his eyes again. Usually, he either woke up because he was rested or because he was getting a blowjob. Either of these were things he could have only dreamt of before starting to eat healthily and gaining a whole slew of somewhat sex addicted lovers.

There had been one recent case where he had woken up because he hadn’t been able to breathe. Cause of that was that his face had been buried inside Salamander’s cleavage. That had been out of the ordinary, but not unpleasant.

Getting shaken awake was not exactly his chosen way to start the day. His wishes were somewhat followed when Aclysia stopped shaking him. Instead, she presented him with a phone. All things he saw through her eyes, the Mandala Sphere only just rose from its socket while he took the phone. Whatever the reason for this call was, it had to be urgent enough that the weaponized maid ran the risk of displeasing him.

“John Newman here, what is the situation?”

“The situation,” the Horned Rat responded in a nonchalant tone, “is that you’re a terrible disappointment. I just heard about your quote-unquote break-up with Marie. I hoped a relationship with her would bind you closer to the Illuminati. It would ensure the alliance of our guild even if you grew to hate me. Instead you only fulfil my secondary objective of giving her a talking to about her attitude.”

“...I’m going to hang up now...” the Gamer grumbled and already moved the phone away from his ear. His mind was trying to decide whether he was going to scold Aclysia first or go back to sleep. The former won out. Spanking her ass was a great way to spend the morning and he wasn’t that tired. The first rays of daylight softly illuminated the curtains. Around him, the harem was slowly roused to awake themselves.

“Alright then, guess we will have the meeting without you,” the Horned Rat cackled, causing John to freeze in his motion.

“You’re going to need to send me some other princess substitute from the Illuminati that’s a tad easier to deal with,” the Gamer groaned and put the phone back against his ear. “I can feel the hate growing by the second.”

“Tigeeeer, why are you talking to Dick first thing in the morning?” Rave wanted to know, sleepily raising her head. “It’s not even seven.” She blinked to find that she was now right in front of John’s groin. “Oh, hello actual dick,” she sleepily remarked and gave it a quick peck.

“He’s decided to have the Florida meeting right now,” the Gamer told his girlfriend, resisting the urge to brush his hand through her hair and encourage her sleepy instincts.

“Do ya need me for that?” Rave asked with a long yawn.

“No, it’s fine if I go by myself.”

“Fantastic, see ya when I’m awake.” Her face plopped back down on her cushion, which happened to be Eliza’s thighs.

“You might want to bring Nia. See you in Paradise,” the Horned Rat said and then hung up on John.

“But why does he need to do this before breakfast...” John mumbled, while leaving Aclysia and Beatrice to wake the elemental girls that weren’t sleeping inside their dwelling place in his soul. Because he was going outside of even their ludicrously extended range of operations, they had to come along with him. The alternative was the incredibly unpleasant feeling of void and them having an urgent need to find him. Being shaken to wake up was at least mildly more pleasant. Especially since they could just go inside that soul-space and continue sleeping.

John noticed that Nia wasn’t in bed and neither were Scarlett, Metra and Siena. Reaching out mentally to the moonshade elemental, he dropped the attempt immediately when he walked into the living room. There, Siena and Nia were sitting on the table and having some tea and biscuits. “I see you’re having a stiff morning,” Siena hummed, making a nonchalant gesture towards his morning wood.

Scratching his head, the Gamer stayed silent from there on out. They walked through the many-doored corridors until Wendy stopped and grabbed a handle, bursting into the room.

“There, I brought the stud!” she announced as they entered a room that reminded John of school. Wooden tables stood next to each other, with unnecessarily uncomfortable and small chairs next to them. There was no chalkboard or teacher’s desk, but even this basic component reminded John of his terrible education experiences. He was immediately uncomfortable, his stomach twisting into a knot.

‘Now that’s an interesting feeling,’ he analysed himself. ‘Slow breaths, you’re not fourteen anymore and you could slap Frank silly now. No way could he take all the money you saved up to buy the new World of Warcraft expansion after school.’ By the time he picked a seat, the knot had mostly resolved, although a fundamental dislike for the environment remained. He gently moved into Aclysia’s mind to keep her from randomly smashing the furniture that made him so uncomfortable.

The Horned Rat was sitting behind one table at the right-hand wall, downsized to accommodate the surroundings. Alice was sitting on a table at the left-hand wall, her legs dangling over the edge. Wendy and John sat closer to the left side and by the entrance, Aclysia and Beatrice standing behind their master. Nia walked into the middle of the room and stood there. “Hello,” she said, to no one in particular.

“Glad you could make it,” Alice said, her face a blank mask. John had always found her empty smile unnerving, but this was even worse. Exactly because he knew the first Maiden of Null could emote, her blank face carried all the threat that Nia’s still expression had lost through exposure to it.

“You’re doing well,” the Horned Rat remarked. “Have you gained some weight? I feel like you were thinner when you left me.”

Nia bowed down and grabbed the edge of her skirt. Pulling it up to barely socially acceptable levels, not that this mattered around Florida people, she showed off her legs. Although not at a properly thick level yet, she had successfully gained some definition over the past ten days. “I am working out,” she said and dropped the skirt again.

“That will have little practical effect, but if it makes you happy, I suppose it’s a good thing,” the Horned Rat remarked.

“It makes John happy. He wants me to have a bigger butt.”

With as much of a deadpan expression as a skull could have, the Horned Rat turned to look at John. “Of course he does,” he stated. “You continue to aim low, don’t you?” The Gamer just shrugged. “Is Nia maybe an acceptable princess substitute to keep binding you to the Illuminati?”

“She is more than a princess substitute to me and I guess it does make it harder to stab you in the back if it will make her sad,” he thought out loud. “Congratulations, you managed to get what you wanted before you knew you wanted it.”

“Brazen of you to assume this wasn’t my plan all along,” the Horned Rat responded, cleaning his claws of some minimal dirt. “Anyway, as entertaining as all of you are, I have forges to attend to. Let us get on with this. What do you desire from me? Knowledge? Power? An explanation for some past perceived slight?”

As the Horned Rat asked, he looked around the room in a thorough fashion. The red flickering in the otherwise empty sockets of his skull analysed every corner in an almost paranoid fashion. John had gotten the ability to pierce illusions from receiving some of the Horned Rat’s powers and the Visions of Calamity were capable of further dealing with them. Doubtlessly, the god of future calamity was a master when it came to information manipulation. It was quite fascinating to the Gamer to see this being visibly search for anything wrong going on.

‘I wonder if this is related to a certain chicken not being present,’ John pondered, still convinced, and growing ever more so, that Fred was something more. His current guess was that she was the goddess of illusions or something of that nature. His attention shifted to Alice when she finally opened her mouth.

“None of that, no,” she dark-haired pariah said. “You can stop looking for someone else. I wanted this meeting.”

“And I still desire to know what for,” the Horned Rat responded, focusing on the pariah.



“To talk about you being a horrible parent.”