The Bargainer 11 (Patreon)

The Bargainer
Chapter 11

-VB-

“So how is it?” I asked her.

It’s been a week since she’s had some fun with me, and while I knew that she doubted whether it would work, I also knew that she had enjoyed it.

But a week had passed and she had to fight a few times during the week.

… Actually, did she notice it? Her hamminess didn’t change nor did her outward abilities. In fact, her “power rating” hadn’t changed at all.

I only knew that she benefited from the tantric ritual because Alexandria was the one who begrudgingly told me of its success.

Mouse Protector - or Jennifer - looked up at me after looking at her open hands for a few minutes. “It’s definitely improved,” she said with a grin.

“Oh?” I hummed. “How so?”

See, the tantric ritual performed as it should. Plan C ritual boosted performance across the board, but I had no control how much across the board it improve. In fact, my third ever participant, a Mover Protectorate hero from Washington D.C., only got a small boost to his speed with the same ritual. Of course, I wasn’t going to fuck a man - I didn’t swing that way - so maybe that was the cause; as per my instruction, the man masterbated for an hour.

I wanted to know how much of a comparison I could make between a solo masterbation and a proper intercourse.

“I can place one more tag, which is how I mark where I could teleport, and my range is also longer.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Do you know exactly how much?”

Her improvements, if true, were already a significant improvement compared to that of the other hero, who only gained four percent increase in his top speed.

She grinned. “I went from city-wide to regional.”

In Protectorate terms, city-wide Mover was one who could cross more than ten miles in under one minute. A regional Mover could cover that in a second and then have the reach and endurance in themselves and their powers to reach an extra forty miles.

My eyebrows shot up.

“That much?”

“But nothing else.”

“That’s not right,” I mumbled. “You should have gained power across…”

Except, of course, her Shard specifically denied her improvements in other fields, but could Shards even access magic? Was there some other factor at play?

“So…”

“Yes?”

“Can we do it again?”

“Of course,” I replied.

“Let’s go with Plan D then!”

Plan D was … strenuous, even for me.

It called for a twelve hour tantric ritual.

I nodded slowly. “I’ll book you in for next week on Thursday at six a.m., then.”

She choked. “Six a.m.?!”

“Plan D takes twelve hours, dear.”

Instead of being daunted, she looked excited. Abruptly, her smile changed to a blank stare. “Wait, how many people are you seeing now?”

“Once word of your success gets out there, I suspect I will be busier.”

She frowned.

What was she thinking right now…?

Then she grinned. “How many people can participate?” she asked with a leer.

“For a Plan D, only two. For Plan C, up to four.”

She hummed. “Say-”

“I’m not interested in orgy right now nor can I guarantee the outcome of the ritual with more than two participants.”

She deflated. “Aw, shucks.”

I chuckled. “Don’t let your hormonal mind stray too far, Jennifer.”

“Hey, that’s a privilege of the young! We can do whatever we want!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I scoffed. “And that includes sex sessions that leave you unable to move, huh?”

“Hell yeah!” she grinned with a bit of pink dusting on her cheeks.

I rolled my eyes.

-VB-

Of the first five ritual takers, Mouse Protector was the only one who came for a regular “update and boost” sessions, and while the boons she’s received has sharply declined in intensity, the number of boosts she had accumulated started to show itself after the first month.

When a Mover goes from being city-wide teleporter to teleporting up and down the entire East Coast, people started noticing.

My tantric rituals, however, remained a bit of a secret among my close working relations and the very few people who got recommendations for it either due to their lack of power or monstrous appearance.

Mouse Protector didn’t tell anyone about it, apparently, and Alexandria also wasn’t keen about releasing the information, stating that it would result in negative impact upon the Protectorate’s reputation if it was known to the public that there was a sex-Trump.

The way she worded her words made me sound like a deviant, but I let it go.

I would have liked to continue with just my tantric rituals for sometime, but I needed to go and do more; with a power level comparable to the Triumvirate, there was a bit of a political pressure to get me to settle down, even if I would reject it. Alexandria grumbled about it a lot and bluntly told me that I should stick to a city.

I told her no.

That said, I did say that I would go out and do something heroic, and what could be more heroic than exterminating the Tyranids?

Of course, I had neither the power nor the reach to give the space bugs the genocide they dearly needed. Instead, I portaled myself to a world under their siege and started fighting.

‘Who knows?’ I thought to myself as I transformed into a Battle Wolf behind Imperial lines and jumped across the battered and desolate battlefield into the heart of the carapace and teeth-filed Tyranid swarm. ‘I’ll maybe even get enough essence out of this to appease my patron for my next boost.’

---

Director Tagg closed the video after watching it three times in a row.

It was…

How did one even fight that?

He knew that there were other humanities out there; Earth Aleph’s existence was proof enough of it. However, to see their interstellar counterparts fighting a war and losing to what amounted to giant biotinker space bags really made his fingers itch for a gun and a bug spray.

He had been one of the few directors demanding to know why a Triumvirate level cape was not helping the PRT and the Protectorate beyond training the Wards in New York City.

This video had been the chief director’s response to their outcry, and the video silenced whatever dissent there was about the chief director’s secret deployment of the Beast.

He couldn’t imagine what it was like to fight a losing war of that scale against monsters that wanted only biomass. Not even meat, just plain biomass to churn out more of themselves.

“Is there any chance that they will make it to our... galaxy?” he asked, and couldn’t believe that he had to think in such large terms rather than on the ground and in troops he could count.

“None,” chief director replied. “The purpose of the Beast’s attack was not to fight these swarms but to acquire the local technology, not tinker technology, that we may use to better our position on Earth Bet.”

“Just how much of an improvement are we talking about here?” Director Armstrong, a new director, asked.

“Anything needed to traverse the interstellar gap and colonize new worlds. Should Earth Bet become a ground for a total war, then colonies of American citizens can be sent to secure our future.”

All of it seemed farfetched to Tagg, but he admired the chief director’s willingness to look beyond just the immediate.

“Our job remains, however, and that is to ensure such an event or other similar events does not come to pass.”

Tagg could get behind that.

It would just be him doing what he knew best.