Chapter 225 - There was a beast, and on its head it wore four horns. (Patreon)

“That will temporarily satisfy me,” Nathalia remarked as she and Thana jumped up to the rest of the group. She gazed at Momo for a moment. “I didn’t even see you before,” the dragoness commented, “are you another one of John’s creations?” “Yes,” Momo kept it short.

Nathalia continued to stare. “What?” Momo finally asked. “There is something odd about you,” the dragoness pointed out, “a familiarity I can’t quite place.” John raised an eyebrow, that was weird. He had gotten Momo from the loot system, just like Aclysia. Okay, Aclysia he had gotten from a quest, but they still both had their source with Gaia, and Nathalia hadn’t raised any complaints about the guardian.

“How about you go away like you usually do and think about it,” Momo hushed her away and hugged her sister. There was another thing that John found weird now that he thought about it, Momo wasn’t frozen in terror. There could be a multitude of reasons for this, but it was interesting to note.

“I will not go away,” Nathalia flipped her hair, the cascade of orange falling down in a dramatic fashion; “You will hide my presence within Rome.” “We will do what?” John asked, that sounded like the recipe to get into trouble. “You heard me, John,” Nathalia said and was suddenly all up in his face, their noses almost touching.

“You either allow me to stay with you or you are coming with me. For the moment I want to keep you within smelling distance,” Nathalia hissed. “Uhm, is there a reason for that?” John wanted to know. “As you, somehow, already know, I seem to be infatuated with you. I am new to this feeling and will therefore do my best to experience it,” the dragoness answered clearly; “I will, begrudgingly, join that hoard of girls you have. You won’t have a monopoly on me, however.”

“I guess at your age you don’t get to experience a lot of new things, do you?” Salamander giggled and, as her reward, was violently swatted into a distant wall. John didn’t get a pop-up for that, so he chose to ignore that. “I will pinch her little head off if this disrespect continues,” Nathalia warned everyone as Gnome went to retrieve, and give a stern talking to, her younger sister.

“Anyway, I am staying with you,” the dragoness stated, “or do you have another solution that works for both of us?” “Well…Lydia, it is your mansion, you will have to decide,” John decided to shift this decision away from him.

“Sure,” Lydia answered without a problem, a sly smile on her lips. Figuring that Lydia would use the fact that Nathalia would be around to get on Luna’s good side, John sighed. “Okay then…Well, I’ll be going to get my bonus points from Richa- the Horned Rat,” he announced.

“Why that guy specifically?” Rave asked. “Because it’s a nice, quick and easily abusable system,” John answered; “Also, I want to talk to him about that damn prophecy and why he didn’t warn me in non-cryptic words.” He had been afraid about facing the Rat again before today, but Thana coming back to life and yesterday’s run in with reality in the shape of information broker had put his head straight. Richard had to speak for himself, and John wanted answers.

“If you are visiting Horn, I am coming with you,” Nathalia announced; “I am tired of hearing about how those Illusion Barriers of yours work in detail. I want to see it.” “Okay,” John agreed and sent her a group invite. The dragoness eyed the blue window for a moment. “Didn’t this use to be a shade of orange?” she asked.

“Gaia decided I should have a different colour, don’t ask me why,” John shrugged it off, and Nathalia accepted the invite. He did that just to make sure she would come with. The dagger was taken out of his inventory, and then he, following instinct, slashed the air with it with the intent of getting into the Horned Rat’s Sanctuary.

Reality was sliced apart and opened a tear that grew around the group, turning the space inside out. Suddenly, they all stood in the stone chamber that was the secret room John had wanted to reach.

It was like in his memory: a small room, illuminated by lit coals resting inside braziers. When he first went here, it had been four on the walls and a fifth one hanging above the throne at the wall opposite of John. The room had been grown slightly, however, to accommodate the group’s larger size more comfortably. That didn’t make it big, just slightly less small.

The throne, a simple thing of polished grey stone, was of enormous size and was currently empty. “Huh,” John wondered, “where is he?” A grinding sound, stone sliding over stone, behind John caused him to turn around and see the Horned Rat step through the door.

With his three metres height, the anthropomorphic god was a towering figure. He was naked, or well, as naked as the being could be considering that he was covered in short black fur everywhere, excepct his face which was the skinless skull of a rat with four horns protruding from it. Together with his long head, those horn formed the image of a pentagram.

“Don’t be so impatient,” the deep, inhuman voice of the Horned Rat bellowed through the room. With a loud ‘Thuck’ the stone gate closed again, and the Rat sat down, its tail wrapping around the throne. It gestured at the crowd with its hands, the three fingers and the thumbs all ending in black claws, polished to glint in the flickering light.

“I got here on short notice, what do you expect of-“ the Horned Rat was interrupted by Nathalia snipping her fingers. “That’s it,” the dragoness exclaimed and offhandedly pointed at Momo; “You could have just told me you created her with energy from Horn.”   

Baffled silence. The jaw of the Rat’s skull, which had a lot more teeth than normally attributed to a skull of the vermin animal, creaked as it opened and he sighed. “What is the meaning of this?” John demanded to know and turned to Richard. His other questions suddenly took a backseat to the affair that had just been revealed to him.

“It is not a hard riddle,” the Horned Rat ridiculed John. The Gamer grit his teeth and went through the events. “That quest to create something with the crystal, that was you,” John realized. The quest titled ‘Fuck the Fateweaver’ had been weird in several ways. It had been blunt, uncreative and the reward text then had been in French. At the time that had looked weird to John, but now that he knew that the Horned Rat was involved and that the god was a founding member of the Illuminati, the pieces clicked.

“So you gave me a quest before Gaia displayed where the quests came from…which you were able to thanks to getting into my system with the Mana Blade skill book!” The Rat’s skill creaked even more as the skull shifted into an unnatural smile. “And the boss that the crystal for Momo dropped from didn’t even have that in his loot table afterwards. You hacked into me by dangling a cheap and strong ability in front of me, dropped a crystal in my path, then encouraged me to create something with it…”

“And there you have my elaborate scheme in a nutshell. Thanks for ruining it, Nathalia! Here I go, giving you advice to assume a more symmetric form because it would be more pleasing to your lover’s eyes, and now you rat me out!” despite being revealed, the Rat seemed to be in a very good mood. “Be quiet,” Nathalia warned and glanced at John with a hint of embarrassment. So the change in exterior had been deliberately targeted at him? That was flattering.

Unfortunately, John was seething with rage right now. His Wisdom prevented him from doing something stupid, like assaulting the god in front of him, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about the situation. “Why?” he therefor pressed out a single word.

“Use Observe, that should tell you the answer,” the Horned Rat suggested. “Like you can’t fake that window ‘God of Rats’,” John spew out, that was the title he had read on Observe last time, which he since then learned wasn’t accurate. A deliberate change, there to fool John, most likely. “Nathalia, I would really appreciate it if you stopped spewing out my secrets,” Richard said.

“Hardly a secret,” Nathalia waved off. The red inside the skull’s eye sockets flickered back over to John, “Either you trust your powers or what you hear me say. One way or another, you will only learn what I want you to learn.” John grit his teeth, “Arrogant dick.”

“So, you gained a level…and you had your birthday recently. I would congratulate you, but like anything else on this sheet, I can’t be sure if its correct,” John said, ignoring the taunting changes to the window; “So I am to assume that you were syphoning power off Momo to feed yourself?”

“That would be correct,” Richard admitted; “We are barely tapping into the part where I get more than a stream of uselessness though. 85 levels for her and you say 1 for me. What a bad trade to trade such a prized possession away for.” “Stop being a drama king,” Momo chimed in, having had enough off people talking over her head, “and lift your damn influence on me!”

“No,” the Horned Rat denied, “I will not.” “So, you are going to leech off me forever?” “I created your heart, so you can pay your poor father back a bit after all,” his next words shook the whole room with unyielding power, “WITHOUT ME YOU WOULDN’T EXIST!”

Everyone, except Nathalia, was forced to the floor. It was as if the words themselves pushed them down with the weight of the world itself. Even Thana crashed onto all fours, “Bloodburn,” she growled. With her blood ignited she tried to fight against the influence, barely managing to raise a hand from the floor before the Horned Rat continued to speak.

“You are free to try and free yourself. If you want to unshackle yourself, and your creator by proxy, from my gaze there is a simple solution,” a sinister laughter forced them flat on the ground; Thana managed to raise herself on one leg; “Kill yourself, Momo” The blood mage joined the rest of the group as the weight on her increased several times over.

John felt his ribcage slowly getting crushed by the force. It wasn’t gravity, he was fairly certain of it, it was just sheer magic power that weaved through the Rat’s words. He heard Nathalia growl.

“Of course, I could also strike you a bargain,” the pressure suddenly vanished as the Rat changed to a friendlier tone. It was so sweet it offended John’s ears. “What would that be?” the Gamer asked. “I could mend her broken wings,” the Rat pointed at Momo.

The support’s eyes went wide; despite knowing who they were dealing with, she pleadingly looked at John. The wish to fly herself was bigger than her caution could ever be. John, however, wasn’t that easily convinced, “Didn’t you just put that flaw into her to have a bargaining point for whenever you were found out?”

The Horned Rat spread his arms out in a puzzling way, “Who knows?” “You do!” “Yes, No, Maybe,” Richard laughed to himself and materialized something in his hand; “Will you take the offer or not?”

Will John?