The Gamer Chapter 1036 – Consolidation Diplomacy 2 – The generation of monsters (Patreon)

Scarlett did continue to insist that it was just like any other day. John used it as an excuse to worship her butt during a massage. He would have done that on every other day, but he gave her some particularly thorough attention. He enjoyed it while he could.

Inevitably, there was a knock on the door.

John sighed, knowing that his relaxed time would come to an end the second he answered. He groped Scarlett’s squishy backside while he still could. The question of just how long he could justify pushing things back was made obsolete when the technomancer said, “Get in here.”

The door swung open and the Horned Rat walked in, ruining John’s personal paradise of being alone with a harem of incredibly attractive, naked women with the presence of a humanoid rat-dog-goat chimera with a skull for a head. The god didn’t look quite as out of place as one might expect. Not to John, at least, who was used to odd sights anyway.

“What a nice place,” the Horned Rat said. “You mind if I set up a scrying ward in the corner?”

“Hmm… let me think about that…” John looked over to the Couch, where a bored Nathalia was lying on top of a podium, switching through TV-channels. The dragoness generally preferred to position herself in a way that could be observed by everyone in the room. “Hey, Nathalia, would you crush the Horned Rat for me?”

The goddess of volcanoes rolled around to face them. Her gaze swayed from her man to the god and back. “Depends on how annoying he insists on being,” she then answered.

“Then no,” John stated, giving Scarlett a last clap on the butt before reaching for a towel and cleaning the massage oil off his hands.

“Shame,” the Horned Rat let out an overexaggerated sigh. “What insights I could pull from this place. How are you faring, Nathalia?”

“Adequately,” the goddess responded to her friend’s question with a yawn. “He is worthy, even though he still needs to grow beyond my reach. Not quite a fan of his decision to specialize further into magic.”

“We will get to the stage where we can cause minor earthquakes just by fucking,” John promised her.

“Every day until then is a day wasted,” the dragoness lamented and turned back around to the television. “Go about your business, my mate, I will find something to indulge in.”

She spoke for the harem on that and John clicked the necessary button to dress himself. “Nia, would you come along?” he asked. Looking up from her current read, the pariah blankly stared at John for a couple of seconds, then nodded and got up. The three of them left the apartment and headed for the teleportation room. “Now that Nathalia is back, it’s going to be a lot easier to threaten you into talking.”

The Horned Rat chuckled. “Please, you are rapidly approaching the state where taking you out would be too immense of a bother to do – unless we faced each other in a war.”

“Well, I suppose that is some kind of compliment.” The three walked through the simple yet luxurious corridors of the Palace. On the commonly frequented routes, several paintings and other decorations covered the deep purple walls. The maids had placed those things around and were slowly expanding on the rest of the Palace. “We were talking about all of the things you needed to tell me.”

“We were talking about all of the things you wanted me to reveal to you,” the Horned Rat corrected. “Of which there is not much left. You know of Gaia’s dream, of Babel, of Romulus and Remus, of Enki and Tiamat, what mysteries of the world do you demand I tell you about?”

“I wouldn’t know what to ask about because what I don’t know is too vast to pluck something out of it and get a worthwhile bit of information.” The Gamer turned a corner and the other two followed. “At least tell me what you think your prophecy meant.”

“To make it short, it means that I have influence,” the Horned Rat told John. “Romulus is a sturdy rock, and while that makes him a steadfast figure in history, it also means he is inflexible. From what I know of his brother, a man who acted far before even my time, he is different but in a more… dare I say ruthless way. As one who knows them both, I can play them both.”

“Just like you can play me?” the Gamer asks.

“We all tug each other into certain positions. Our interests, however, will align out of necessity, when the time is right.”

“If that’s the case, you may as well tell me everything right now.”

“What I know is vast, to pluck something out of it at random and present it to you is unlikely to be a worthwhile bit of information,” the god parroted what John had said earlier, only inverting the stance. “You desire not what I know but what I desire the world to change into and that’s not something I can give you without risking losing it all. I do not benefit from revealing it to you, so I won’t.”

John sighed and backed off. It wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last time he tried to get the Horned Rat to talk honestly about his endgame. “Fine. What do you think the Lorylim’s next move is?”

“Obviously they have a base of operations somewhere in America,” the Horned Rat responded swiftly. “Somewhere isolated, somewhere they could put together a hive. They are abysmal at enacting detailed or short-term schemes, but even they can put together basic necessities.”

“They aren’t stupid, just unable to stay coherent,” John agreed. “I was thinking they must be either in the tundra, so either Alaska or northern Canada, somewhere in the desert, the Caribbean, or the south American jungles.” He opened the door to the teleporters. “Not exactly a narrow list of areas to search.”

“It seems they had several hundred years to prepare, so it may be that they are in all of these areas.” The Horned Rat pondered for a couple of seconds and then said, “I would personally favour the tundra. I wouldn’t put it beyond the Purest Front to experiment with Lorylim, but they would at least stomp out large infestations as they come across them. There is too much traffic around the Caribbean to remain unseen for too long. The desert, similarly, has enough smaller guilds that a large influence is unlikely.”

“Yeah… that goes along with my thinking…” John hummed and scratched his chin. Their conversation was shortly interrupted by the humming of the teleporter. A moment later, they found themselves in the forest of in-land America, where the Gestalt guilds had previously operated. “Why did they kick it into high gear nowadays though?”

The Horned Rat chuckled. “Are you not aware what generation you are part of?”

“…Look, I know everyone hates the Millennials and the Zoomers, including themselves, but I don’t think that’s a good enough explanation for an amalgam of different, insane energy creatures to suddenly start wiping out the magical population of a continent.”

“Millennials… Zoomers… even Generation X, those are the mundane titles for them,” the Horned Rat said, “us gods and long-lived schemers call you the ‘Monstrous Generation’.” John furrowed his eyebrows and waited for further explanation. “Are you aware how Gaia ensures that mundanes give birth to people with Innate Abilities?”

“It’s a system where the Faith of humans that flows through the Leylines influences the unborn… in the… womb…” John trailed off as it dawned on him what the Horned Rat was getting at. “We are a generation born into a great collapse in reproduction. Developed nations having declining birth rates, the one-child policy, all of that among a largely peaceful time and an explosion of humankind into the billions previously. The amount of Faith that can be funnelled into each individual child…”

“It’s basically incomparable to any previous decades,” the Horned Rat said. “The one after you may turn out to be even more powerful, depending on how the demographics shape up. For now, you are part of the generation that has the highest percentage of Innate Abilities and Latebloomers ever conceived. Do you think it is a coincidence that so many people in your age range exhibit such extraordinary potential?”

“I had considered the theory before,” John mumbled. “I just didn’t take it as the primary reason until now.”

“It is the sole reason,” the Horned Rat told him. “You, your girlfriend, Nia here, Lee, Lydia, Scarlett, Maximillian, Sigmund, and so many more, you were all lucky to be born at the point of time where your chance to be powerful and magically talented was the highest. And so was the man that would become Izha.”

Several Fusion soldiers watched as the trio walked to one of the few cars around. They were all equipped with Mobile Barrier generators and usually needed extensive checking with the higher-ups to be used. Aside from John being the highest-up in the command chain there was, Nia, head of the local operations, was also present, so they didn’t have to answer any questions. At his current, quite human size, the Horned Rat fit into the car quite easily.

“What do you know about Izha?” John had to ask.

“He’s young or the man that originally was Izha was young, probably born somewhere between 1980 and 1990,” the Horned Rat answered. “I don’t know much more than you, just that he was a Latebloomer telepath with the unfortunate ability to communicate across Kingdoms. They must have driven him mad quite fast. I theorize that it was his addition to the Lorylim that drove them to their current spree of actions. A human mind that can exert influence over vast stretches of the Lorylim. It’s the closest shot they have at making long-term plans. At the same time, the Abyss is growing ripe with powerful individuals and the Lorylim crave more fuel.”

“A largely unorganized continent, a nihilistic madman, and a generation of the most nutritious food sources ever.” John rubbed his forehead with one hand. The other was on the wheel, as he drove out. “Where next, Nia?” he asked, to temporarily distract himself and to make sure he was actually heading the right way.

“Left, after about fifty more metres,” she answered. “You will see.”

John noticed the rainbow-coloured flicker of barriers melding and suddenly saw a sharp turn left on the road. Attached to the grey pavement of a regular street was a brown, smooth stone road. It must have been formed by earth magic. A couple of soldiers sat around a campfire, keeping the barrier going. John moved onto this added road and kept driving. The pedal was to the floor and they rushed over the highway.

“You cannot forget yourself and Sigmund,” the Horned Rat added into John’s thoughts.

“I’m not,” the Gamer answered. “We’re potential hulls for Izha and we bring with us Metracana, making us interesting to Tiamat as well.”

“Precisely,” the Horned Rat told him. “Now that Enki is no longer an option for the goddess of chaos, she will pursue… I don’t know, a set of different goals. It’s impossible to say what exactly she will think will work. She may even try to get at you out of a twisted obligation for revenge.”

“Let them come,” John grimly stared down the road, “I’ll be prepared.”

“Do not overestimate yourself,” the Horned Rat warned.

“We’ll see if I am,” the Gamer shot back and then exhaled slowly, calming himself. “I will fortify all I can. That is all I can do whether I am arrogant or not.”

“I will help you where it is to my benefit,” the Horned Rat promised.

John laughed. That was more reassuring than the god pledging he would do what he could. At least the formulation used was absolutely truthful. “What deal do you even have with the ancient Lorylim?” he asked.

“Pardon?” the Horned Rat tilted his head.

“After you commissioned a piece by Marathyu, you had a talk with Tilgun. You two mentioned that Mother Chaos hates you and the ancient does not. At the time that made little sense to me. Recent revelations put things into perspective.”

“We have arrived,” Nia said, and the car came to a gradual standstill.

By the end, John took his hands off the wheel and turned to the Horned Rat. The god was quietly sitting in the backseat, red eyes flickering. “Well?”

“Your memory is impressive,” the Horned Rat said.

The Gamer blew air out of his nose in a mocking fashion. Even if he hadn’t been able to remember basically everything he did by this point, that particular moment would have stuck with him because of paranoia alone. Something suspicious like that said between two schemers stuck out.

“I have no pact with the ancient. It is an entity unlike Tiamat or Izha. It may be more logical, but it is something akin to Thana before she was forced to be more human. I took from it a bit of knowledge. That is all.”

‘Obviously, that’s not all,’ the Gamer thought, while quietly turning away and opening the door of the car. They had other issues to discuss beyond the Lorylim. The three of them stepped into a patch of the forest that was strange in every way. A fine network of prehistoric looking vines lay on the floor, shifting through various stages of their life. All of them ran from the trees towards a hole. It had a sharp decline around the edge, craggy stone separating it from the rest of the ground.

The three of them stepped up to the edge of the hole and looked down. It was only a two metre drop to the bottom. According to reports, that had only been one metre two weeks ago. The sands that endlessly swirled underneath the still surface of the pond dug deeper and deeper, transforming dirt into more sand and sandstone. An arm shot out of the water, failing to stir it, and fell back into the sand it had formed from.

“So, this is Remus?” the Horned Rat asked.