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The Gamer Chapter 1562 – She got friends on the other side
🕑 Added 2023-11-15 03:11:23 +0000 UTCThe universal discomfort inside the protective barrier was palpable. That everyone else felt it in the presence of the strongest pariah to walk the Earth was expected. That John felt fear when beholding his Nia, that bothered him.
But he could not help it. Mantled in a grey cloak, she hovered like a ghost among the minimal rubble that remained among the asteroid field. Her hair was universally long and golden. White bandages were wrapped around her head. A singular blue eye peeked out. That was the image he saw.
He knew that it wasn’t actually what was there. There was no cloak, there was no long skirt, and what she wore was certainly not grey. Her hair had not changed. That eye that moved in their direction was not her eye. It was not blue. It was no colour at all.
No.
The word entered his mind unbidden. A panicked screech of reason in witness of something alien and anti-material. The Maiden of Null moved towards them and the barrier that the goddess of the moon had erected disintegrated in her presence.
No. No. No. No. No.
John involuntarily took a step back from the pariah. Alarm bells went off in his mind. The system that governed his Innate Ability flared up with a myriad of error messages. This passive or that passive, all disabled. Then the message system itself began to collapse, the letters on the bold windows corrupted into nonsensical signs.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No…
Even Romulus took an instinctive step backwards, leaving John as the sole fool to advance towards this empty thing. Wings of white skin and silver nerves were pulled into a flared display by hands that made his head throb. He could feel the blood run from his nose and to his chin. A hand behind the pariah reached out, threatening to whisk her away, if his did not mimic the motion. A hand of fractal nails and intertwining tentacles.
No. No. No. No. No.
The blue eye stared, emotionless. The Maiden of Null stared and in the presence of her eye, reality distorted. His brain pushed geometric patterns into the void. He saw flowing colours and spectral shapes. All of them worked against the unfathomable headache that threatened to split down his spine.
No.
His hand reached Nia’s face. His skin cut on the bandages, smearing blood over her face. Finally, his palm covered the eye and everything changed. As if none of its non-existence had ever dared to invade this side of the veil, the cloak, the changed hair, and the bandages all went away. Left behind was his Nia as she always was. Slender, covered by an impossible white dress, her long hair tied into a low ponytail, her right eye beholding him.
Its blue was the only thing about her that still had colour. Swiftly, John wrapped his other arm around her and pulled her into a kiss. He could taste his own blood and nothing else. Her warmth rapidly gained presence and soon her own arms wrapped around him.
The kiss broke once he could no longer see through her. “I’m sorry,” John mumbled.
“For what?” Nia whispered.
“There is a part of you I can’t love.” The words hurt to say and she was displeased to hear them. A flash of guilt made John peek at the eye his hand covered. He stared at the bottom of the abyss… and the abyss stared back.
John pulled air in through his teeth. He was locked where he stood, until Nia closed her eye. Even with the lid covering it, reality distorted around the left side of her face. It constantly looked like something was about to break through and bubble through solid surfaces like they were suggestions.
“I can’t,” John whispered apologetically.
“It is fine, darling,” Nia assured him.
John wasn’t so sure about that. This was something she had accepted for him and all he could feel was that a part of her had become vile because of it. He kissed her again, to assure her that, while he could not deal with that eye, she was still his Nia. Happily, she put her forehead against his. “You’re still with me,” he whispered. “We’ll deal with the rest.”
There were three solid seconds of silence. “I will need an eyepatch.”
The announcement was so sudden that it made John chortle. It was entirely true and yet so entirely unfitting. “Yes, yes, you will,” he said and put his arm around her. He reached into his inventory with the other hand, to pull out one of the usual towels and wipe their faces off with it.
The rest of the watchers had gathered themselves in the meantime. Sol and Luna were keeping two paces extra away. The rest of the leadership of the Divided Gates refused to be seen as weak and so all approached. “Shall we return?” Romulus asked. The question was accompanied by the appearance of a teleportation platform, carefully pocketed away by someone with a convenient Innate Ability.
“Yes,” John answered, squeezing Nia’s hand.
They returned to a restless stadium. The people had busied themselves with replays, in absence of any footage that could be extracted from the fight that had just happened. The illusion overhead appeared, letting the public see the returning members of the Divided Gates.
“FUSION EMERGES VICTORIOUS!” Romulus shouted.
The watchers did not react in any intense way. There was a clap here or there, uncertain and quickly dying when no one else joined. The presence of the pariah was simply too strong. Everyone was, simply, intimidated.
John kept holding Nia close. Even if no one acknowledged her victory, he wou-
“P-people…” Jeff stammered. His audible gulp reverberated through the speakers. “People!” he repeated, then rose from his chair. Putting his right foot on the table, raising the mic high, the announcer shouted with all his conviction: “PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, CHEER FOR THE WINNER OF THE TOURNAMEEEEEEEEENT!”
The enthusiasm of the hype-man was met first with silence, then with a first few claps, then with feet drumming the ground, and finally an ever-increasing volume of cheers and shouts. All around the stadium, the city, and the world, people cheered for the victors.
Nia may not have needed to be acknowledged, but she smiled all the same when she was. John pressed another kiss on her cheek, and the cheers reached a second peak in response. ‘Maybe he isn’t so bad,’ John thought, making a mental note to send Jeff a gift basket of some kind.
“Tomorrow evening, the appointment ceremony shall be held,” Romulus announced to the people. “The coliseum shall remain open until then, for all those of all sides that wish to partake in games to prove themselves!” Expectedly, the Apex turned to John.
The Gamer took the cue and the little object Luna handed him to tap into the coliseum’s loudspeaker system. Now that he was part of the big leagues, officially, he had to partake in the song and dance of being a global power and that meant flaunting, flexing, and flattering for prestige. Luckily, he had come prepared.
“Thank you, people of Rome and beyond, for your hospitality,” he announced to everyone. He noticed a crackling under his voice, as if the microphone was detecting radiation. Nia took a step away from him, remaining connected to him by their held hands. That reduced the crackling to barely noticeable levels. “It would be remiss of me not to return the favour, so for the next two days, there shall be public feasts, sponsored by the produce of my Guild Hall. Indulge in all that I can provide.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could feel Beatrice and Scarlett twitch at this expenditure. Both knew about it, of course. Necessary arrangements had been made before they had shipped out and only Aclysia’s brutal dismembering had put a dent into their stockpiles.
The renewed cheers of the people were suddenly interrupted when one of the walls of the coliseum was blasted wide open. “Noooo-o-oo,” the distorted, overlapping voices of the Father of Arcane echoed through stone dust. Arkan, returned to his regular state, stumbled forwards. He looked like a mangled doll. One of his arms was twisted entirely, the other’s fingers were constantly moving. When he stepped forward, the motion was jittery and uncontrolled. “C-cannot be all-l-l-l-l-lowed to…”
Before anyone else could react, Romulus had moved across and shoved Arkan gently but firmly back the way he came. The people muttered, Mengele growled, John repressed an annoyed sigh. Victory was sweet, of course, and considering what he had seen, he wasn’t sure if there had been any other way to achieve it, short of repeated fights grinding Arkan down or Eliana lucking out and fighting after she had fully recovered. The issue was simply that any diplomacy with the Azure Tribe was now doomed to fail.
Arkan would not allow any talks with an entity he regarded as utterly evil. Select members of the Azure Tribe may have been more amicable to talks, but others would push against it. How this developed was anyone’s guess.
For now, Romulus removed the weakened elemental ruler from the premises. Jeff and Dra smoothed over the situation under Luna’s guidance, while Sol began to organize the ‘lesser’ fights that would happen for the remainder of the allocated time. To begin that, she asked one question. “Can I assume that all of you will stay until the ceremony?”
The question was loaded, her tone leaving no doubt that she expected all of them to answer with yes. Fusion’s benefactors and those that had stayed neutral on the matter obviously nodded. It was the Purest Front and their supporters in appointing the Azure Tribe that had everyone’s attention.
Nodding, Eglystas answered the question plainly. Atrahasis similarly nodded, although in his case it seemed more because he didn’t trust his vocal cords. The Great Sultan’s enchantments were currently stable, but Nia’s presence messed with everything. The representatives of the Sons of Odin also answered in the affirmative.
Mengele himself looked around dramatically for a long while. If he knew just how deep John had penetrated his safety protocols already, the butcher would have doubtlessly taken his leave immediately. He still just might. People like him thought in terms of power moves, which meant that he was weighing whether he could frame him leaving before the ceremony as a sign of strength, rather than having it look like he was being a sore loser.
“Are you going to run, ‘Angel of Death’?” John mocked, a smug smile on his face. “I couldn’t blame you, your puppet scheme didn’t work out after all. Must be humiliating to be beaten down by a humanitarian upstart. Go on, walk away like the whipped dog you are.”
The coliseum went quiet. John had continued to clutch the transmitter. Sol immediately stomped over and wrestled it from him. The Gamer didn’t even make it appear like it had been an accident. The target of his mockery was too smart to believe such a mistake would be made. Red rising to his face, followed by veins of black, Mengele stared at the Gamer.
The challenge had been uttered. A conspicuous move, certainly, but also what Mengele would have expected from John. Important was only that he made it harder for Mengele to run away without looking weak. That combined with overconfidence that often accompanied the entrenched, tyrannical types tilted his decision making as far as John could push it.
“I’ll stay,” Mengele pressed out.
“How generous.” John immediately turned away from Mengele. Not to be outdone, the butcher also began to walk. The leadership of the Divided Gates dispersed. John had to do his best not to break out into song and dance. Now all they had to make sure of was that Mengele did not leave in the middle of the night.
They returned to their platform to a cascade of harem attention. Everyone, absolutely everyone, descended on Nia, making sure that she was alright and to kiss her for a job well done. Rave, Lydia, and Lee were the first to greet her, with the rest of the human haremettes following relatively fast, while those that were of purely magical origin hesitated. Like John, they eventually overcame their reluctance, though.
After the first wave concluded, they requested to see her eye for a moment. A moment was all it stayed as, a mere second of exposure to the voided gaze causing universal headaches. Nia hastily closed the eye again and the haremettes were quick to reassure their love through a second wave of loving touches.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Lee intervened, when they were about to go for a third round, “did your hair just change?”
The question caused everyone to take a step back for a moment. Indeed, Nia’s hair had changed. Where her golden flow was usually tied into a ponytail, it was now open, and several times more voluminous than before. Bits of black and white intermingled with the bright blonde, cascading past the back of her knees.
Nia ran a hand through her hair, fanned it out a bit, then said, “I decided I like it better this way.” She eyed one of the differently coloured streaks. “This is new, however.”
John was wary of it for a few seconds. Since, at the very least, this change did not bring with it anything that made him wish he could scratch the inside of his skull with a steel sponge, he didn’t stay cautious for long. Physical changes as power mounted were quite normal, especially when they reached their level of beyond godlike power and especially when accepting outside influences into one’s body.
Said outside influence was still settling. The burst of power she had been granted in the initial moments was gradually diminishing, which caused another question. “So can you just summon that kind of power whenever you want now?” Lee asked.
Nia did not answer out loud, instead opening the Harem Comms to resolve it in a way that could not be spied on. It read: ‘No, I only have two eyes. I had to do it once to achieve my potential. The next time will be a sacrifice that will make me Fade.’
The revelation was expected, albeit not what John wanted to hear. ‘We’ll make sure there is no next time,’ John thought and he knew everyone else echoed the sentiment. Clapping his hands, he drew everyone’s attention. “Let’s not stay here any longer. I think we should have a feast and a toast. Ted can organize any volunteer fighters that want to partake in the games. I, for one, have had enough of tournaments for a while.”
“Careful, if Romulus hears ya, he might banish ya from his city,” Rave joked.
They did, all, move back to the mansion they had been given. An immediate orgy could have been expected, but the events of the recent days left them all appreciating the chance to actually just relax.
They went to the Roman jacuzzi and just lingered in the lukewarm water, pleasantly temperate in the hot day. Surrounded by his loves, the Gamer ran through the recent days. ‘Now it’s only a matter of waiting for Fusion to join the Divided Gates,’ he thought and smiled. There were burdens still remaining, but at least this one was off his shoulders now. Everything was going smoothly. He took a deep breath and purged all the tenseness related to this tournament from his body…
…John nearly jumped when a flood of windows popped open in front of him.
Comments
Marko
Now we will know where Gaia went!
LOLZMAN
I wonder if John could ever pick up something like a class that at least negates the pain and damage of looking at her eye.
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