The Gamer Chapter 785 – Tournament of Oddities 20 – THE DOOR (Patreon)

John really wanted to be put at ease by the fact that the set-up for today was normal, but he just couldn’t be. Even though the three judges, Moira, Lorelei and the cameras were all present, he couldn’t consider today to be normal. ‘I guess that’s only natural, given the mixed experiences I’ve had. The wrestling with Wendy was on an odd day, while the vision was on a day that started normal, so I can’t really create a pattern,’ the Gamer thought as he analysed what was in the hall today.

There was a door.

It was a simple, brown plank of wood, decoratively carved. Set into a rectangle shaped frame, about two heads higher than the average person, it prevented people to go through. Only by pushing down a metal handle could one, presumably, open it and get on the other side.

That was what a door was.

With one eyebrow raised, John walked around it and towards the jury’s desk, where Vita was taking her seat on the left-hand side. “Hey there, stud,” Wendy greeted him. “Hope you had fun yesterday.”

“Depends on which part of yesterday you mean,” John answered, looking at the cameras. By the way they were flying around, he guessed that the livestream was already running. He skipped out on mentioning Maximillian by name, just in case the gravity king had some people that he didn’t want to let know where he was. “The challenge, not so much, but I made up for it with the rest of the day. You know, going out on dates, stumbling over a friend in the area, things like that.” ‘And thanks to the Extension, I still had easily enough sex to get my experience and GP rewards for it,’ he added in his mind.

“You could have visited me,” Wendy sounded almost offended, shifting in clearly suggestive ways. “I would have shown you a good time.”

Rave giggled and walked up to the fast food goddess. In a leisurely fashion, she leaned onto the table corner next to the redhead and made a waving gesture. “We thought about visiting ya, but we weren’t sure if ya could feel your legs again already.”

“Psh, yeah, he didn’t take me THAT hard,” Wendy crossed her arms. “I doubt he even could!”

“Is that today’s challenge?” John asked with a smirk. “Because I’m certain I could beat that.” Following his girlfriend’s lead, he positioned himself in front of the table and made himself as tall and broad as possible. “If you think you even got half of what I can do from a little bit of oil wrestling, you’re absolutely wrong.”

Wendy’s smile was something between uncertain and lewdly ecstatic. “Y-yeah, right!” she returned in her usual smug tone, while shifting like a fidgety schoolgirl in front of her crush. Despite her sassy outward behaviour, she enjoyed being bullied, John found. As per usual with these kinds of things, only if it was all in good fun and not the kind of bullying the Gamer had sustained at school. “We’ll test that some other time!”

“It’s a promise then,” John said. “I’ll call you.”

“You will?!” Wendy exclaimed in a mixture of command and confusion. To say that he had her hooked would have been an understatement.

‘I wonder if I could get her into the harem proper or if she’s too hooked on the partying life,’ the Gamer thought. He wasn’t even sure yet if he really wanted Wendy around him all the time, he barely knew her, but the basic greed he experienced dictated that he considered it. She was, after all, an attractive woman and he was a guy whose balls were literally never empty. Every bit of his instincts was programmed to want her. As they were both sapient, there was a bit more to attraction than that, though.

Perhaps because he was uncomfortable with seeing them flirt or perhaps because he just wanted to get this show on the road, Jeff cleared his throat very audibly and then spoke up, “As much as that will disappointment you, Mister President, your challenge today is not to make another porno.”

“The filming is pretty optional, so I would settle for just having sex,” John retorted. “It’d be nice if these challenges could be more about things I’m good at. We could play chess, alternatively. Warcraft 3, maybe? Been a while since I booted that up, but I’m pretty sure I could do some ghoul rush and take it from there.” He looked over to Vita. “I could beat you in a game of your choice and fuck you afterwards, that would serve to get rid of my frustrations toward you.”

“I’ll consider it,” the tanned pariah just calmly smiled away, “that is to say, I have already decided.” Normally, those kinds of statements made it rather clear what path a woman had chosen in regards to the Newman question. Vita’s unchanging expression and tone made it difficult to read.

“I’m going to visit Nashara later,” Jeff grumbled.

“Well, everybody has to land with someone,” the Gamer couldn’t help but tease the man. Given that the caster was moderately powerful and the succubus’ reaction to power, John couldn’t imagine that it would take a lot of effort to get her to the physical part of things. “If she makes you happy.”

“It’s always a nice party with her.” The hype-man didn’t seem to be offended at all. Instead, he grabbed his microphone and admitted everything he cared to. “Taking a bunch of drugs and then going to a swinger with a succubus? Sign me the hell up every day of the week! I’m a billionaire and I want to live like a billionaire, slinging my dick around!”

“We remind everyone that this is an adult program,” Vita said, like she had done basically every day of these challenges.

“And speaking of swinging!” Jeff segued, his right hand pointing towards the door at the centre of the room in an overdramatized fashion, “today you shall swing that bad boy open! Your challenge of the day is to walk – through – that – DOOOOOOOOORRRRRRR!!!”

John’s eyebrows shot up and he looked at the door. Then he looked back at the jury. Vita seemed as cryptic as ever, Jeff was extremely hyped and Wendy’s smug smile was only interrupted by her words. “What? You scared, Newman? Of a door?”

“Scared isn’t the word I would use,” the Gamer returned. “Given that you’re all varying levels of crazy, I’m not sure if that’s JUST a door. Also, you should call me John. We got intimate enough for that.”

“It is just a door,” Vita assured him, making him even less sure about this whole thing.

“Can I inspect it before making my bet?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at the rectangle shaped barrier. For some reason, it looked somewhat menacing now. ‘Keep the paranoia down and the logic standing,’ he told himself.

“Sure, knock yourself out,” Jeff announced and then loudly commented everything the Gamer did. “John Newman, who has fought against multiple enemies of cataclysmic power AND was in the arena when Romulus fought the newly awakened Thana, is now approaching the door. He inspects it with wary eyes. Dear viewers at home, this man is currently looking at this door like you would at a plate sized spider you suddenly found in your home. Unless you’re Australian, then he looks at it like a drop bear.”

John circled the door, waved his hand in the air around it in search of any magical strings or something of the like. Switching the settings on his contact lenses, he scanned for any illusions and found nothing. ‘It can’t be just a door… well, it can, but I don’t trust this,’ he thought and walked around it one more time.

“He is prowling around the door like a cat around a mouse, absolutely unaware that he is not a predator staring at prey, but a grown man looking afraid of a wooden plank,” Jeff continued. “His breaths are calm, but his eyes dart over the little decorations on the door and the frame!”

“Hey, Wendy?” John shouted.

“Yeah?”

“Can I make Jeff shut up if he annoys me? By any means necessary?”

“No,” the redhead denied him. “Did you seriously think that? The dude still has to be able to shout about your bet and deliver his verdict at the end of the challenge! If you make him shut up, keep it to methods that leave him mostly unharmed.” Wendy crossed her arms and propped up her chest. “Seriously, think along, would you?”

“Aclysia, Bae, you heard the woman,” John said and turned his back as his two maids jumped on top of the hype-man. Rubbing his chin, he successfully ignored the protesting, the high-pitched sounds of a mishandled microphone, and Rave’s laughter at the entire situation. His attention stayed with the door in front of him.

Equipping Purgatory and making it engulf his left hand like usual, he glided his palm over the frame, the handle and some of the door itself. He hoped to find something with the Spellbreaker Attribute. Still, nothing. That was much more disconcerting than if he had found a death-trap.

He felt like he had arrived in an empty room with a save point, a merchant and some sort of HP recovery fountain, only to stumble into the next room and NOT find a boss. Something had to be here, his entire perception pointed towards it. Yet, all he found was a door, a completely normal door.

‘Well, that confirms that the door is pretty much normal at least,’ John thought and took two steps back to look at the surroundings. The rest of the floor was empty, as was usual. The only somewhat outstanding thing about the ground level here was the white-haired seer in the corner, chuckling about something. Moira leaned over. She must have asked what was so funny as the two exchanged a conversation so quiet John couldn’t hear it. The Shield Warden then began to grin as well, as if someone had just told her a joke.

The Gamer took that information into account. Neither Lorelei nor Moira had any investment in him getting hurt, the seer even seemed interested in him. Whatever the woman in her dark, ceremonial robe was seeing, it wasn’t harmful to him. Even though he was 99% sure of that, John still found himself considering using the future sight capabilities of the Vision of Calamity lenses.

‘Let’s look at this logically,’ he told himself. ‘There are three ways this can go. Option 1 is that the vision reveals to me some sort of threat that comes along with the door.’ The Gamer looked upwards to check if there was an anvil or something hanging under the ceiling. Nothing there. ‘Some sort of threat that I, for the life of me, cannot find. Option 2a is that the vision shows me nothing, because the obstacle isn’t actually threatening. Option 2b is that the vision shows me nothing, because this really is just a door, and I’m looking like a giant idiot.’

John looked over to the jury’s desk, where Jeff was still struggling against his maids. Neither Vita nor Wendy gave anything away, although the latter seemed to be progressively more amused with the situation. That could easily be attributed to the forceful muting of the main caster, however.

“Come on, tiger!” Rave shouted. “We have way better things to do today!”

“Do we? All I can think about is fucking, gaming, and walking around the building,” he answered, just as loudly. “Maybe all three at once. I did install Azur Lane again.”

“Ya just can’t stop with the waifu collection games, can ya?”

“That’s your fault, you decided to have me watch anime with you until I started liking the genre,” he returned. “Or artform, or whatever, you know what I mean.”

“I know that fucking, gaming and walking around are all way more interesting than standing around here.” Rave pushed herself off the table and crossed her arms. “So go ahead and do what ya have to.”

John nodded and, after a moment of deliberation more, decided to use the Vision of Calamity. He wasn’t in any danger around here, so taking the time it took to restore the 25 Durability that using the Attribute cost wouldn’t be too bad. He pulled the mental trigger, noticed his vision degrade from ‘vastly superior’ to ‘slightly above average’ and was then pulled into the vision.

He saw himself, still in this very room. Everything was washed out and the background blurred, but the details were clear enough. His back was facing the jury, as he continued to look at the door. Something flew at his back and he whirled around, smashing it into a myriad of pieces, many larger than his fist. Then a cry of pain from the corner of the room, clearly Lorelei’s voice.

John returned to reality and looked over to the, still amused, seer. What he had just seen didn’t seem to faze her whatsoever. This could easily mean that she was unaware, which in turn would have meant that the Vision of Calamity was a more powerful predictor than her abilities. Not willing to make that call, John turned towards the jury’s desk. The projectile had clearly come from there.

The direction he was facing turned out to be more important than he thought, as the vision unravelled only a few seconds after he had it. In his continued struggle against the two maids, Jeff kicked the table with all of his superhuman strength. Flying at the speed of a car in the inner-city, it came straight towards John. Being somewhat on guard and knowing that smashing it would have unwanted consequences, John caught the entire thing in one hand and put it down.

He looked over to Lorelei, who nodded contently. ‘Okay, so did she see that I would see things and therefore knew she was safe?’ the Gamer now asked himself. ‘As if future sight alone wasn’t confusing and inaccurate enough, now I have to deal with potential future sight layering.’

Regardless of that problem, the door was still closed and his bet unmade. The vision had revealed fairly little, given that the event had happened before he had even pushed down the handle, but he was out of options to feed his paranoia with.

‘Let’s just put a bit of faith into the Attribute and assume it would have prioritized something actually threatening over the minor inconvenience that would have been throwing a bit of wood at Lorelei,’ he made his resolution. ‘As awkward as that would have been, I would just have apologized repeatedly and have Undine heal her. Nobody could say that was my fault.’ He then sent a mental signal to Aclysia and Beatrice to let go of Jeff.

“Gaia almighty!” he exclaimed and pulled his suit back into position. A task with limited success, thanks to the deliberately goofy cut it had. “That is incredibly rude! Are you always in the habit of silencing your critics?”

“If I was, you wouldn’t be here,” John told him. “You’d be dead and I’d be laughing. Sadly, I’m a person with morals, so I have to live with you most of the time. Sometimes, however, you’re just annoying enough that I can justify shutting you up. Anyway, I want to make my bet now.”

“Alright, then!” Jeff acted like he hadn’t heard any of what the Gamer had just said and jumped to his feet, pointing at the screen above. “Let’s see what conditions have been cleared so far!”

“What do you want to bet today, John Newman?”

“Florida will receive the privilege to send its recruits to its own division of specialists, rather than be drafted to a regular formation. That is Fusion’s demand for today’s challenge,” he announced.

He was now operating under the assumption that this really was just a door. Everything he had tried pointed towards it and he had already crossed the point where it was silly to assume anything so bad it could have stopped him from getting through a door. As for the demand he made, John had figured that notable recruits from Florida wouldn’t work that well in a rigid military formation anyway, so it was best to just put them into some other division he could still command. Everyone who wasn’t a weirdo, which was likely the silent majority who just accepted the public fucking without being a raving lunatic, could still choose to go into the regular army. It was the closest he could get to in terms of ‘the best of both worlds’.

“The bet is made! NOW! WILL HE BE ABLE TO GET – THROUGH – THAT – DOOOOOORRRR?!”

John turned to face his obstacle, although he still had his doubts. He took one more breath, then suddenly pulled his shoulders back and marched on ahead without any hesitation. It was important that he looked resolute now that he had made his decision. He grabbed the handle and pushed it down. The door was locked. ‘Really?’ John thought and sighed, blowing out the lock with a quick Arc Lance. Creaking and swinging open at the next attempt, the Gamer stepped through the door.

Fusion Victory.