The Gamer Chapter 1275 – Gala Date 6 – Walking with his Lady (Patreon)

John looked around, scanning every bit of their surroundings on both layers of sight the Vision of Calamity lenses gave him. A green energy sphere sitting in the branches of a nearby tree caught his attention. Carefully, he moved the Companion Cube up to it and then shot a single Blast Ray. The scrying enchantment was destroyed.

“Alright, we should be on our own,” John informed Lydia. “Should I drop my pants, or do you want to-“ He stopped when he lightly hit the back of his head.

“You know the terms of your reward.”

“What if I have come to believe Bertrand is an alright fellow?”

“Have you?”

“No.”

“Then do not waste our time with such absurd hypotheticals, limited as it is. Our walk will raise suspicion and I noted a terrible lack of bathrooms. My original deal may not be sustainable.”

“The horror, guess I’ll have to live with doing it on the way home then,” John sighed.

“Of greater import is whether you are certain it was fine to neutralize these enchantments in so rugged a fashion. Will this not alert who maintained them?”

“Honestly, no idea. All I can tell you is that there was no active link,” the Gamer responded to her. Information magic wasn’t his forte. He had read a lot about it, but he couldn’t recognize which spells exactly he was dealing with just with what his lenses let him perceive. “Could have been a dormant vantage point. If anyone figures that it is gone, it will be like realizing that a camera was knocked out while they weren’t looking.”

“It matters just that privacy is guaranteed, my love,” Lydia said and embraced him. She took a deep breath, while he wrapped his arms around her in response, then exhaled. “Haaah… it is much easier to deal with the annoyances of domestic affairs knowing that you are within reach, John. The past month has been an irritating experience, to summarize it.”

John let his fingertip glide over her back. Outlining the shape of her shoulder blades was a journey holier than any pilgrimage. “I hope having this security doesn’t make you weaker?”

“I was once worried so. No, you only give me a place to unwind. Before you, there were no thoughts of an easier path for any day. The temptation I can withstand, the stress without it, I could too, but I am happier and better informed for having a second home away from my palace.”

“You’re welcome to stay forever,” John invited her.

She broke the hug, but only to put her arms around his neck instead. “You are aware already that I will be moving residence to yours eventually.”

“You’ll be a fantastic housewife,” John said, only half-jokingly. He wouldn’t want to rob anyone of the choice to follow that path. After all, he had considered the househusband idea himself. Making his only three responsibilities raising the kids, doing the chores, and keeping the haremettes happy sounded like a pretty great life. The problem was that his ambitions were too large. He would be occupied, but he would always wonder what large project he could go after if he hadn’t been occupied with the laundry.

“That life would not be for me,” Lydia mirrored his thoughts out loud. “I do envy Aclysia for the joy she finds in maintaining your household. If I found such satisfaction in de-dusting surfaces, I would gladly pursue such a path.” She sighed, without a hint of snobbery. She, as a queen, had genuine admiration for the first maid.

That was a second-hand advantage of the harem, that they all had close friends in other walks of life and could therefore keep an open mind and respect for each of them. Difficult to develop a down looking attitude when many of one’s erotically intimate friend group belonged to ‘classes’ that one could look down on.

“Well, it is what it is,” John hummed, moving his hands to hold her face. His thumb lovingly brushed over her lips. “Some do useful work and some think they can rule the world – or at least a sizable section of it.” He leaned down and kissed the queen. She made the innocent motion hungry and demanding. This often happened when they had a moment alone. What she had missed out on during his stay in the Iron Domain, she still did not feel she had been fully repaid for.

John doubted she would ever find that she was as loved as she deserved, because he never considered to have given her enough yet. Theirs was the most forgiving variance of a long-distance relationship there could be (a category it was only technically in). Still, those days where they didn’t see each other, those weeks and sometimes months, they were horrible. “I miss you when you’re not in my bed,” he confessed, when their kiss broke and their foreheads touched. He chuckled at himself. “I could have put that better.”

“I understand your meaning, my love,” she whispered back. “I would require a dance with you, but the ground here does not agree with my shoes.”

“We can dance back at the mansion,” John suggested.

“I will be caught up in the talks and threats of sycophants and opposition,” Lydia guaranteed and distanced herself only so she could ask for his arm. “Walk with me, my love.”

“Hmmm, yes, I will.” John used Magus Step to move himself half a metre. The motion of scooping one of his haremettes up was a well-trained one, no matter what size the individual. Lydia did not let out a surprised sound. ‘Maybe I’m getting predictable,’ the Gamer thought, but that was fine. If anyone should have been able to predict him, it was them. “You said the ground did not agree with your shoes.”

“I did indeed,” Lydia said, confidently crossing her legs. With one arm, she held onto his neck, with the other, she gestured. “Then walk with me, my love,” she demanded, the jest reverberating only as a minor tone under her serious voice. “And that is no invitation to walk me,” she preempted the joke he was about to tell.

“Ever resisting my training,” John grumbled, as he set-off in a random direction. Carrying a queen princess style would never go out of fashion. “Why won’t you just let me break you in, hm?”

“You try and try, and I remain as I am. Perhaps, my love, my natural inclinations and kinks are just not as extreme as that of many of our compatriots?”

“On one hand, you clearly are not as submissive or masochistic as I coaxed out of most of you,” John surrendered that point. “Which, to be clear, I’m fine with.”

“I know.”

“Just want to restate it. Hot as the idea is to have all of you be Eliana levels of good little sex slaves, it would get stale pretty quickly.” John adjusted his grip a little bit. The eagle feathers of Lydia’s skirt brushed over his sleeve. “Anyway, you say you aren’t as extreme, but you’re still the only one in my harem that actually prefers it up the ass. For everyone else, that’s just an occasional urge.”

“I am what I am,” Lydia responded.

“And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Do you wish to guess whether I wear a plug at this occasion, my love?”

“You aren’t,” he responded immediately. “You have too much to do during this gala to consider that. You’re just saying that to tease me.”

“Heaven has no satisfaction like a woman who feels understood,” Lydia purred, inverting a well-known saying. Then, she drastically changed the topic. “Nightingale proved herself quite the socialite. A surprise, to be sure.”

“…but a welcome one?” John asked with a half grin.

“Why is your tone… is this another reference I do not catch?”

“Come on, we did watch Star Wars together.”

“You mean these terrible sci-fi movies that you made me waste several hours on despite letting me know that it was only downhill from the second one?”

“Still can’t believe you don’t even like the OT.”

“I do appreciate that the right-hand man of the space tyrant was still a better father than my own.” John felt his insides knot up a bit at that sentence. That was something he didn’t know how to respond to. Apologizing made no sense, because he had done nothing wrong about it, and he didn’t want to keep harping on about her parents. “Did my joke stun you into silence, John.”

“I don’t know if it’s a joke, Lydia,” he confessed. There was nothing outward that betrayed what Lydia thought about her father, more than a year after she had ended his life. “Your situation is complicated and I don’t know how to deal with it. That’s the truth of it… how would you want me to react?”

“I do not know.” Lydia massaged his neck. Temporarily, she was distracted when John shot down another one of the security enchantments in the area. “Then back to the topic that we are certain how to converse about: Nightingale.”

“Right… was she not known for such gatherings? I’ve intentionally avoided learning about her past so far.”

“That sounds incredibly unlike you, my paranoid love.”

“We both know my head isn’t on right when attractive women are involved,” John responded. “I trust my intuition that she means no harm to me… and at least three of you properly have done a full sweep to see if I was sticking my dick in the harmful kind of crazy.”

“Which three?”

“Momo, Scarlett, you… maybe Aclysia.”

“You forgot one.”

“Did I?” John’s face reflected his deep concentration, as he used the entirety of his 1000+ Intellect to figure out who he could have foolishly overlooked with this. He sorted the obvious out quickly, like Sylph or Metra. They weren’t the investigative or distrusting types. “…Lorelei?” he suggested. Of his current haremettes, he knew her the least. “No, that doesn’t sound right, she would trust the Lady would guide her, if necessary.”

“Jane.”

“Jane wouldn’t look into potential haremettes, she would gather people who do that properly for her,” John asserted. “That’s exactly what happened, isn’t it?”

“A miscommunication on what ‘doing a full sweep’ contains, then.” Lydia effectively said ‘yes’. “We had a little committee, if you so wish to describe it. To answer your initial inquiry: no, the lady now known as Nightingale was one of high respectability, but she never distinguished herself through the organization of gatherings. I suppose with her new divine might and potential position as a patron goddess, she wishes to assert herself on the social fabric as more than a spectator.”

“It would be useful to have someone around me that focuses only on mending ideological divides between prominent figures,” John thought out loud. “I would try to do it myself, but… well, you demonstrated why that won’t work well a minute ago.”

“A leader has difficulties to mend gaps when they are part of the pull that creates the gap in the first place.”

“Exactly.” John marvelled at her face, while dodging around a tree. She was so incredibly beautiful and every word that left those ruby red lips of hers only made her more gorgeous. “Did I ever tell you how much I admire your eloquence?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No. Shower me with redundant and repeated compliments, my love, for the words matter little when the intent behind them I can never get enough of.”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

John stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her. “…Did you… did you just…” She smirked at him in a way that Lydia never smirked. It was gone before John even got a first laugh out. Over his own amusement, he couldn’t speak. ‘If her subjects knew how cheeky their queen can be, I wonder what they would think?’

“Did you know that your humour is easily exploitable? All I have to say are certain phrases and you burst out like a child witnessing the DVD video screensaver finally hitting the corner.” John had to lower her, because he was laughing too hard. It wasn’t just what she said, it was that she said it. Heaving, he leaned against a tree. “You are programmed.”

“They’re memes!” John borderline shouted, too amused to control his voice. He shook his fist at the sky. “The DNA of the soul!”

Lydia sighed and shook her head, like only a disapproving lover could. Slowly, John regained control over himself. Clearing his throat once, he burst out into another giggle fit. That happened two more times, to a lesser extent, before he managed to stand straight properly. “Satisfied?”

“You can’t just do that to me,” he complained. “I’m weak.”

“Evidently.”

“Hey, don’t judge me too much,” he warned her. “You’re programmed too.”

“I’m most certainly no- Don’t you dare!” she warningly wagged her finger at his raised hand. Thumb and middle finger were pressed together.

“Come on, say it. Say that I was right and that you’re programmed,” he said, threatening to snap his fingers. Lydia’s red lips lost half their colour when she pressed them together. Making his threat a reality, the fairly unique sound of the middle finger smacking against the base of the thumb could be heard in the forest. Lydia perked up reflexively. John said nothing and just let the grace period of the hypnotic suggestion pass. “Come on, say it,” he teased her, bringing his fingers into the right position again.

“You will suffer for this.”

“Don’t make me ask a question,” he threatened with a big smile on his face.

“Fine. I’m programmed,” Lydia hissed at him. “Do not make me resist your hypnosis, you know I can do it.”

“Yeah, and yet you decided to give into my demand.” John lowered his hand. By the collar, he was pulled into a kiss. It was wonderful, until Lydia warningly bit his lip. Just enough to give him a slight pinch. “You’ll have to try harder to make me suffer, I got a Pain Tolerance Passive,” he told her.

“Urgh,” Lydia shook him. “How do you dare make me this irate when you know you are what is supposed to keep me sane in times of stress?”

“Because I know you like this.” John laughed, while his entire body swung back and forth. “Who else can you shake like this when they displease you? Only me and my haremettes. By the way, have you heard about all the new fun commands Claire and I came up with?”

“Giving you a second obsessed maid was a terrible, terrible mistake. I should have let that world die, just to prevent you from acquiring her.”

“Second? What about Bae and Momo?”

Lydia stopped shaking him and let out a long groan. “I respect their workaholism too much to describe them as obsessed with you.”

“But you’re not refuting it?”

“I will content it… in Momo’s case.”

“How gracious of you.” John teleported behind her again, scooping her back up, before continuing on their path. “I’m not putting you back down until after we get back.”

“Good. Remind them what we are. There is no compromise to be had with it.”

“Back on the leaders and gaps,” John hummed. “I suppose I should ask you: what do you think of Nightingale?”

“Capable, mysterious, attractive, has a chip on her shoulder. Tries to balance her urge to be a proper lady with that of spending every waking moment with your manhood stuffed down her throat. Divinity imposes certain expectations on oneself. She tries to prove that she is worthy of what she has attained.”

“I suppose divinity and royalty aren’t that different?”

“Not on this level, no,” Lydia responded.