The Gamer Chapter 1029 – Return of the Dragoness 1 – the Gatekeeper (Patreon)

John practically ran over to the teleporter that brought him from the Apothecary outpost on Ellis Island to his home, to his office in the Fusion Administration. The centre of the executive affairs of Collide and Fusion was made up of two Buildings. One was the Great Archive, a Guild Perk unlocked Building that automatically archived every last guild that popped up on owned or conquered territory. At the start, that would only be the name. Intel got actualized automatically as it was sent in by the Federation’s government members. These features made it really easy to keep a registry going and also helped, to a minor degree, with tracking down any crime syndicates that popped up.

The other one, the one John was now heading to, was the Guild Bank. It had been the original seat of Fusion’s administrative offices for the sole reason that it was the only Building that originally had expansive offices. While there were more Room Slots to deal with that issue nowadays, moving out was just not worth the effort. It worked nicely for the core teams at the moment. Anything that couldn’t fit in was pushed to the parts of Manhattan that were part of the Hudson Barrier.

He entered the Guild Bank’s public hall from the backdoor. Everyone that was part of the Federation had a 5-slot inventory here and a lot of people used it, so there was a steady stream of people going in and out. They just had to stand next to one of the terminals along the wall to open a window. Some put things in, others pulled things out, a whole lot of people deposited money, and everyone glanced at the two-metre tall human-rat-goat-wolf chimera that reared its bare, horned skull to observe them in return.

“Richard!” John shouted to get the Horned Rat’s attention. It wasn’t necessary, the god’s red flickering eyes already directed their gaze at him. “Will you ever come in like a normal person?”

“Perhaps when there is something less intriguing to learn about,” the Horned Rat told him, acting as if there was absolutely nothing unusual happening. The people around disagreed, looking at the two leaders interacting in a matter that could fit either the end of diplomatic relations or a comedy skit.

“What is intriguing is you making me wait, come along.” The Gamer had no interest in feigning patience at the moment. What the Horned Rat was here to deliver he desired too much to push things back any further. With an amused chuckle, the god did follow John. Once they were out of the main room, John asked, “So, what do you need? A big open space, an Illusion Barrier, proof that I defeated Enki?”

“Your I.D. Gates will do, I just need to connect you to her Sanctum,” the Horned Rat explained and they continued along. “You reacted quite quickly. Why do you have watchers in your Guild Bank? The service is entirely automated.”

John kept walking with long, quick strides, while he answered, “Initially, we just had a person over the daytime whose job it was to tell people that the inventories could not be made bigger, no matter how much money they offered – or other frequently asked questions. A couple weeks ago, someone had the, admittedly smart, idea to hide some valuable items they stole in there.”

“Hiding contraband in a dimensional pocket not even attached to one’s person is indeed clever,” the Horned Rat continued in his amused tone.

John was texting the meeting place into the harem chat group and got a wave of thumb-ups and other reactions in return. “They left a number of other clues though, so they were caught and I retrieved the stolen items from their inventory. Since then, we have at least two watchers in the Guild Hall around the clock.”

“Oh? You can access the private inventories of your citizens, can you?” the Horned Rat asked, while they entered his office.

“Yes,” John just said outright. “Don’t even try to spin this into making me a hypocrite. To start with, I can’t disable the mechanic. More importantly, there isn’t a government in the world that can’t access a citizen’s bank account, if it is determined enough. The question is only if that power is wielded justly.” John stepped and gestured at the teleport pad. “If you would.”

“You really yearn for her,” Richard hummed, while obediently going along.

“Of course I do,” the Gamer returned. “I need her back… there is so much about her that I want to know, so much more of her voice that I want to hear.” The time he had spent with Nathalia had been brief, much briefer than the time they had now been separated. Perhaps it was foolish that they were so in love with each other. Probably, it was foolish. John didn’t care though. He cared for Nathalia and, even if he disagreed with her doing it in the first place, she had still locked herself up in abstinence because of him. Although she had made that decision demanding that he become worthy of her, it also proved that she was loyal to him. Which was a big deal for a goddess that had spent about ten millennia being promiscuous.

So, what if it was foolish? John only cared to deepen that bond and make it something that nobody could doubt was more than a fleeting infatuation. He wanted to hold her, kiss her, talk to her, satisfy her, hug her, buy gifts for her, and do all of the pure and impure things lovers did. He wanted to know her better than he knew himself. He needed her back and that need was stronger than ever now that she was so close.

The teleportation consumed their vision with the blue and purple of pure arcane magic. They emerged in John’s Palace. They kept moving along. “You know, I have quite a few questions for you,” the Gamer said.

“You’ll get to ask a few of them before things are properly set up,” the Horned Rat responded, finally sounding serious, “or you might as well start now.”

John was quiet for a moment, considering if it was worth starting on a big topic at that moment. There were many questions regarding recent happenings and the Lorylim. Many of them had accusations inside of them, burning questions of what the Horned Rat really had known and how many lives could have been saved if he had just told the Gamer. If they started with that, it would likely continue for a while, so he kept those questions to himself for the moment.

There were some that could be answered simply, despite their impact. “The Lorylim – the first foe – they are the old god of genocide, aren’t they?”

“…hehehe…” the Horned Rat giggled, the laughter slowly expanding in volume but never going beyond acceptable room levels. “Perhaps, that depends on what you mean by that.”

“The Lorylim precede Tiamat, they seem to precede just about everything. Thus, the moniker ‘the first foe’,” the Gamer explained what he had gathered. “There are two possible explanations for this: either they formed extremely early on in humanity’s history or they were around before us. A remnant of a species that came before. They have the same aura as Thana, but directed primarily at Lorylim, yet they never inhibit their own regeneration ability. They hate themselves, they have a hint of individualism still remaining, but they are still all connected. It just seems more likely that the Lorylim are the remains of a now extinct species – a god of genocide that was successful, eliminated everyone, and then started… fraying apart when touched by chaos.”

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” the Horned Rat asked, while they walked up the stairs. The claws of feet and hand created small metallic reverberations on the steps and the railing. “Even I don’t know the full depth of what this answer entails, but it is the one I, and a number of other people, came to as well. In some way, the Lorylim, or whatever they used to call themselves, were probably some kind of sapient fungoid.”

“Not like there is anything we could unearth to check. It’s all gone, torn away by that old god,” the Gamer mumbled. “Gaia hadn’t been made or hadn’t inserted herself into her dream at that point. There was no barrier to protect whatever mundane Lorylim may have existed. Perhaps Gaia removed what little evidence remained herself. It would certainly fit with her goals.”

“Sometimes I wonder if some of the fungi on earth are survivors that degenerated enough to escape the notice of the old god.” They arrived at the top of the stairs and headed out to the roof. It was only a doorway away. The Horned Rat kept talking as the sunrays of the eternal summer washed over them. “Whatever remains of them, they were capable of generating Faith in the same capacity humans are. Although their Faith seems to be different from the one I’m made of in the same way water and alcohol are different liquids.”

“And they keep mixing the two, leading to a continuous change in their makeup.” John rubbed his forehead. “What Metra originally knew, the first foe, was likely a pretty pure variant. Then, after Tiamat mixed with them, they started to undergo rapid changes.”

“These days, they churn through human minds at every given opportunity,” the Horned Rat confirmed. “The three aspects of the Lorylim. The ancient, the old god of genocide, who tries his utmost to accelerate his own destruction. The corruptor, Tiamat, the goddess of chaos, whose goals shift every day. Finally, the corrupted, Izha, what may have once been an individual human mind and has come to be nothing but a nihilistic virus that seeks to spread the greatest misery it can.”

“What even are they at that point,” John mumbled. “They break every attempt at classification.”

“They are the Lorylim,” the Horned Rat stated. “Fundamentally, that is enough to know. They are a threat that will devour you, heart and soul. Their origins, in a way, don’t matter. All that matters is to know what they are capable of.”

“Which is to appear randomly all over the world following nothing but the intuitions of chaos and be essentially immortal because they are a decentralized hivemind.” The Gamer shook his head. “We’ll have to talk more about this later.”

“Indeed, we will,” the Horned Rat agreed, while they walked up to the I.D. Gates. The sizable frames of marble held the comparatively plain doors, like they always did. One of the doors was destroyed, kicked out of its hinges by John personally. Beyond it lay, in theory, the Kingdom of the Gestalt. It couldn’t be accessed from either side, however.

Not that John didn’t have a protocol for the case that, somehow, a Lorylim or other invasion force started to pour out of it.

‘Happy thoughts,’ he told himself, while walking over to what of his harem had already gathered. The elementals were there, as were Metra and Rave, who had waited by the teleporters after they had left Medelnick’s office. The rest of the girls, save for Eliza/Thana and Scarlett, arrived one by one while the Horned Rat went through his preparations. Only Lydia could not make it. They had talked over the phone the day John made it back, but the queen was currently in Greece on a diplomatic visit. The teleporter that let her visit John was anchored in Berlin. As much as she wanted, she couldn’t come without neglecting her duties.

The god of future calamity picked the door of the I.D. Gate that was capable of connecting with one of the many ‘floating’ Illusion Barriers and began to scribble runes along the rim, utilizing his own blood as the ink. Usually, it was enough to have a calling card to enter any barrier without an anchored exit. What made Nathalia’s Sanctum different, John could only guess. Perhaps the Horned Rat was lifting the seals he himself had put in place or other Illusion Barriers John had visited in the past were equipped with things that the Gamer wasn’t aware of.

While he wanted to know, he didn’t want to delay whatever Richard was doing by asking questions. All else he wanted to know could wait. He jumped from one foot to the other in excitement. “Look who’s excited,” Rave purred, swinging her own bottom left to right in a fidgety showcase. “Come ‘ere.”

John let himself be pulled into the centre of his harem and got consequently showered with kisses and attention. In the middle of that process, Scarlett arrived – alongside a robotic assistant. It was an oddly shaped robot, essentially a large box with four legs and a camera mounted to the front. “Yo, I brought you a present,” the technomancer shouted out to John, who walked over to see what she meant.

Inside the strange carrier unit, he found a sphere. It was about the size of a basketball and its smooth, bronze surface was separated into purple and gold tinted areas. “Ah, the replacement sphere,” John said.

“Making the mark 3 will take a while longer, so this perfect replica will have to do in the meantime,” Scarlett told him. “Figured Nathalia would appreciate having Jack around. From what ya told me, she’s probably going to need the fuck of her life.”

“Yeah, about that,” Rave spoke up before John could. “We’ve decided to let ya go in on your own. Every harem member needs their special times and this definitely qualifies for her solo date.” The Gamer’s girlfriend winked. “Ya better repay us after ya get back.”

“How could I not.” John grinned, smacking her on her perfect round ass. The throaty moan she let out in response already had his dick twitching. He was absolutely primed for what would likely happen next. Putting Extension on the Mandala Sphere replacement was like restoring feeling in his arm after having slept on it.

“All is prepared,” the Horned Rat’s dark voice called out and he stepped away from the door. “Once you are through, you will arrive in Nathalia’s Sanctum. You’ll need to either get back through where you entered or have her guide you back out.”

“I guess it will be the latter,” John said and walked up to the door. ‘This could be a ploy to lock me up somewhere.’ The thought occurred and John carefully opened the door. Lava and islands of black rock were before him. ‘Well, that’s on theme, at least,’ he thought and gave Richard one last glance. He could never fully trust the Horned Rat. On this, he was more than willing to take the gamble though.

The Gamer stepped through, to the Ashen Land.