The Gamer Chapter 1129 – Back in Black 12 – If there must be war, let it be small and swift (Patreon)

“Three battles,” John suggested.

“Agreed – and Lethality is to be avoided. Can you bring in your High Fateweaver?” William answered swiftly.

John wondered about that. Trying to fade into pension was still Magoi’s modus operandi and he was likely to try and push this off to his children. “I will have someone with the necessary capabilities.”

“Good. When?”

“As quickly as possible, I’d suggest. I’ll need to bring the Fateweaver and several dozen soldiers over, if this is supposed to be proper wargames.” John kept scratching his girlfriend’s head, trying his best to keep level-headed and only use short, factual sentences. That seemed to be the best way he and William could communicate. “I could have this done by tomorrow, if you transfer a small property in the area to me. My parent’s house, for example. That’d allow me to put down a long-range teleporter.”

“Granted. Do you need this in writing?”

“Yes.”

“Reginald, bring me some parchment.” One of the butlers went to a side room that was still part of the barrier and returned with some pure white paper that was considerably thicker than the paper used in regular print. With it came a feather and a pot of ink. All of it reeked of the same English aristocracy vibes the entire manor and organization had.

John considered giving the Lord-Protector a compliment on how eloquently he swung the feather in his fully armoured hand. That he was sure William would just take it as a sarcastic remark was the reason he didn’t. A more honest part of him pointed out that he was probably being petty.

Either way, the document was written within a minute. It consisted of three sentences that specified that the exact same area the house of John’s parents stood on was to be his property. They both signed, a copy was made, and they continued the talks.

“Your people will need time to set up a place to stay and mine are still tired from recent travels,” William said. “Wednesday?”

“Wednesday,” John agreed. “We said three battles, I suggest a battle of tactics, a battle of leadership, and a battle of power.”

“A battle of tactics… do you mean an equal sized force against an equal sized force, of comparative power, with us directing their efforts?” William asked for clarification and continued when John simply nodded. “A battle of leadership would then be motivating our forces?”

“Or to lead them despite their fears, yes,” John affirmed.

“Despite their fears… I will see if I can arrange something fitting for that. Lastly, a battle of might, what do you suggest?”

“Elite against elite,” John responded. “Your most powerful against that of Fusion – gods excluded, of course.”

William glanced over to the harem, then nodded strongly. The Gamer found the confidence on display mildly disturbing. From what he gathered from their last fight, the Lord-Protector was powerful, but if he and Moira were the best the Order had to offer, the battle would be quite firmly in John’s favour. One of them was missing something and the Gamer did not like that there was a possibility that it was him.

“We will discuss the numbers involved later,” the Lord-Protector declared. “Go and put up your teleporter. You will… you should return afterwards. Until Wednesday, we might as well discuss what exactly happens when either side wins.”

And that was exactly what they did.

They drove over to the house John had grown up in. He made the call during the drive, informing Chemilia of the situation and that she should mobilize a number of people along the different levels of professionalism of the army to gather by the teleporter. John then left Aclysia by the endless range outpost he left on the Abyssal side of his front lawn. Only members of Collide could activate the teleporter. Chemilia and Ted were members of it, but they would require some guidance once on this side. Many of the rest of the harem decided to stay there or went back to the bus, not feeling like being part of the negotiations that followed.

So, John went back with only Momo, Beatrice and Scarlett along for the ride. To make things a bit quicker and to organize things on his own side, William had reduced the size of his gathering to only five advisors, two of them being Moira and Lorelei.

First, they discussed the trials themselves. The numbers of the people involved for the first two trials, the equipment standards, levels of power and how to test for them, how much of a strategy was allowed to be discussed with the soldiers beforehand, who would serve as overseer of the rules, and other such details. Minorly contentious was whether the elementals counted as their own people or if they were part of John’s presence. They eventually agreed to count them as half. Designing each battlefield was to be left to a shared taskforce of both sides that none of the people involved in the fighting were allowed to have contact with. Lorelei would make sure they kept that promise.

After all of that was done, they continued on with the contentious topic of what would happen depending on the outcome of the competition.

What was easily established was a discontinuation of the way the Order of the Golden Rose administered its territory. They were practically a supermassive blob, with no local governance to speak of. Everything was centrally managed, which was ambitious and practically impossible. It was held together due to sheer military might and momentum, but it could not last.

If nothing else, the Order of the Golden Rose would happily accept Fusion’s layered system of governance. The difference afterwards was then where final decision-making power laid. Under the Federation system of Fusion, most laws were supposed to be made and enforced by local authorities. Obviously, the Order with its strict moral codes did not want any possible slipping of ‘public decency’ due to localism. They wanted the Order to have an area of the country to be the place where all resources were funnelled into, to raise a massive force there and create the necessary bureaucracy to administrate every corner of the continent centrally, with local authorities acting primarily as executive forces.

That wasn’t something John could give in to even if they lost. Instead, he suggested a vassal system where Fusion would remain mostly as it was, with some concessions made here and there to appease the moral demands. Most of the territory the Order had would be organized into administrative zones by Fusion officials. The Order would have command over Fusion’s armies when it came to the Lorylim and various ways to nudge Fusion here and there. Ultimately, the Order would get its focal point of resources, but it wouldn’t be as dramatic as they originally demanded.

The resources John was organizing into an anti-Lorylim front had to go somewhere, it might as well go into a gigantic buffer zone. That arrangement would allow them to revisit the issue of sovereignty after other issues had been dealt with.

William suggested various modifications to their loss deal as well. Acknowledging that the Order’s current territory had to be broken up due to the outsized influence a state that size would hold, he demanded that one would remain entirely under the control of the Golden Rose. That could not be done, as per Fusion’s constitution all states (except the Collide state) had to be headed by some kind of republican government. They could, however, agree on some kind of non-state territory. They would relinquish any seats they could have had in the House of Commons. A sacrifice they were willing to make to maintain some sovereign territory and their knightly order.

Beyond that, the Order wanted to form chapters all around Fusion whose purpose would be to find recruits, uphold local safety, and train people in self-defence. John allowed that. He knew full well that this meant he was letting a militaristic religion proselytize all over his territory. A couple of generations later, that could have unwanted consequences. The element of religion put aside, having a knightly order exist in parallel to the military and police forces was useful, as long as they were properly integrated. These chapters could act as local cultural forces and the Brightons had apparently been morally uptight individuals for several hundreds of years.

Little as John himself liked these fundamentalist religious types, he felt it wise to have them present in his country. His lifestyle was exceptional and it would be good to have some people feel strongly about that when reminding the average person that they should be aiming for realistic goals. Beyond that, the Order was still a militaristic organization and would diminish a number of problems just with their presence. The police forces, as much as John tried to keep corruption to a minimum, had been more than once caught overlooking affairs that were no longer permissible. Having an independent militia-esque force would hopefully act as a deterrent for both those who would try to bribe and those who accept that.

Plus, the Order was so eager to throw their face against the worst darkness reality had to offer that having them was just useful. They could be the segment of the army dedicated to defeating horrendous necromancers or Lorylim incursions. It was always good to have such task forces, even if keeping a handle on them would prove somewhat difficult.

Unlike real life examples, where such orders often grew so powerful they eventually overthrew the government (or at least stirred up a gigantic ruckus), John had the certainty that he would always remain too powerful for them to rebel against. Where in the mundane all power stemmed from hierarchies of power, in the Abyss people could have actual individual might that was impossible to take away. That was the insurance he needed.

It took the entire rest of Saturday and Sunday to discuss all of that. John and William got into fights several times, prolonging the discussions. Stirwin kept both of them on track or the two prideful men just decided to stare silently across the table at each other, while less disagreeable people did the majority of the negotiations for them.

The final results surprised John with how mild they ultimately were. If Fusion lost, it wasn’t the end of John’s ambitions, just a temporary halt. He would have to grit his teeth and let William take the wheel when it came to official topics. They would concentrate on the Lorylim, John would do political manoeuvring at the side to position Fusion well in future negotiations, and eventually they could just revisit the issue. Even if, by some unexpected chain of events, he did lose here, he wouldn’t lose again when he had a couple more years to grind.

If he won, the Order wouldn’t be in any capacity harmed in its core mission either. They would be demoted from a regional power to knightly order within a regional power, but all of their current membership remained what it was and John even assured them some federal funding to build up their chapters in key locations. Without all of the administrating they could focus on the actual protection of the innocent. Essentially, they would go back to what they were doing until last year. John wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that many within the Order preferred that anyway. It was certainly a simpler life, even if they had to exist within Fusion’s framework.

The only topic that made John a bit disgruntled was the condition of the victory. Making an arrangement like the three fights naturally made his Gamer brain believe that best out of three should go away with the prize. William (and Moira for that matter) saw this a different way. The three challenges were a way to facilitate Lorelei’s vision coming true. No matter what happened, all three had to go through and, if the prophecy didn’t come true by the end, everything would just be tossed.

John had no idea where it would go after that. All he could hope was that it didn’t come to it. ‘Well, I trust Lorelei, but I can’t exactly plan around vague visions,’ he thought, lying on the couch back in the bus. It was Monday morning, about an hour after breakfast. ‘If it was just about winning the three battles, I’d be absolutely certain I have this in the bag. As absolutely certain as my paranoid brain lets me be, anyway. Instead, I have to deal with this vagueness.’ He sighed and sat-up. ‘I’ll just have to do what I’d do anyway and hope that brings about the desired outcome… God, I hate that.’

He decided to distract himself by doing what he did best