The Gamer Chapter 1344 – Mundanity (Patreon)

““BORN IN THE USA…. I WAS BORN IN THE USA NOOOW…. BORN IN THE USA! I’M A LONG GONE DADDY IN THE USA NOOOOOOOW!””

John and Claire sang alongside the radio. The windows were rolled down, letting the lukewarm air from the outside in. It was a nice 19 degrees, with an overcast sky. Pretty great conditions for bricklaying, but doing the same task day and night was going to get incredibly dull if he did not intersperse it with whatever else he wanted to do.

The pickup truck was rolling down the road. Against better judgement, the Gamer took his eyes off every now and again to turn his head to his vampire in the second seat. Each time he did, they turned towards each other and screamed the lyrics of the song together. A trucker hat protected Claire from a lot of the direct sunlight.

Once the song was over, the Gamer turned down the radio, ignoring the various adverts that were coming on. American countryside radio had a few drawbacks and getting told about laundry detergent every thirty minutes certainly was one of them. “You doing fine back there?” John asked into the rear-view mirror.

Lydia looked up from her book to meet his gaze in the reflection. “This is not what I anticipated when I set over,” the queen reported. “It is entertaining in a lively fashion, so let that be no harsh criticism.”

“If it were criticism, you’d be nagging my ear off for at least five minutes straight,” John joked. “How about we- Jesus Christ!“

Stopping halfway through his sentence, he slammed his foot on the brakes. The truck came to an immediate and hard stop. All three of the passengers tilted forwards, then managed to plop back into their seats.

Annoyed, John stared out of the front window and at the giant pig that had dashed onto the road. The boar was easily 200 kilograms and was massive enough that it would have put a sizable dent in John’s bumper had he reacted any slower. Reacting opposite of a deer in the headlights, the large animal seemed to regard the pickup truck as a challenger for its territory.

After trying to shy the boar away by revving the engine a couple of times, John groaned. “Claire, give me the gun,” he requested. The maid opened the glove compartment and pulled out a handgun. It had originally ended up there in case he had a mundane altercation. John had by now learned that it was the wildlife that was his worst enemy. It was no wonder there were a bunch of gun nuts out in the rural area. John would be a lot more enthusiastic about weapons too when he needed them to get moving mountains of muscles the size of trash containers off his property.

As a matter of fact, he was growing more appreciative of guns by the second.

When he jumped out of the side of the car, the boar suddenly took off. ‘Looks like this one already had some experience with people,’ John thought, while he aimed. Then he lowered the gun. Shooting at its rear would leave a wound, but it wouldn’t kill a creature of that size. With a few motions, he put the security back into place and then loosened the magazine. He handed both it and the gun back to Claire.

“Annoying,” he summarized the entire situation with one word and re-started the engine. This was his third encounter with wild pigs out there. He had known they were a menace. His experience so far was frankly ridiculous though. First time he had stumbled across a sow and her litter out on his property. Fair enough, they lived out in the forest, good for them. Second time, that very same sow had been destroying their outdoor campsite. An additional reason to keep eating and BBQs to the Protected Space. That sow had met the business end of his shotgun – in Eliana’s hands.

The pretty little psycho had almost keeled over from the knockback. Turns out that, nerfed down to regular human levels, a shotgun was doing quite a number on a girl of her stature. That being said, she had landed the shot and the problem of the scavenging sow had turned into the question of whether they wanted to use the corpse for anything.

They had ended up just dumping it a dozen metres into the forest. On the plus side, that would take care of itself. On the negative side, they had spotted coyotes around the property now, attracted by the carcass.

“I need a fence,” was John’s logical comment on the situation. “A big one. With electric wiring. Maybe an automatic sentry turret…”

“I must express doubt that robotically aimed weaponry is legal,” Lydia presented.

“Well, it should be,” the Gamer stated.

“Like there is any higher authority than John,” Claire agreed with a sage nod.

“Well…” John hated to end his overstretched outrage too early, but he was afraid Claire was going to indulge herself in delusions too far. Before he could correct her, she gave him a reassuring wink. That was the end of that topic. “What do you think Reika and Velka are up to at the moment?”

“My hope is that Reika is influencing the young Magryph and not the other way around,” Lydia responded immediately. She had brought the patron goddess of Rex Germaniae with her. An eagle deserved a break too and circling above John’s new property for a bit must have been more interesting than sitting in studies or looking at the same rooftops for the hundredth year in a row.

“First off, Velka is adorable,” Claire stated firmly.

“No, she is a terribly irreverent pest,” John immediately disagreed, as he always did when it came to his pet bird. “That is eating the last hair of my head and simultaneously manages to get fat off all the people throwing fish at her.” John had needed to renew public orders to not feed the Magryph during and after the Fusion anniversary.

“How could you not give her a fish when she comes at you all puppy eyed?” Claire asked.

“Discipline,” Lydia backed up John.

“You two are heartless – and I am saying that as the sole person in this car that doesn’t actually have a heart.” Claire shook her head. “I must declare that this is not fine. I must declare that this is indeed terrible. I must declare that you two make me sad, very sad.”

“At least you can declare any disagreement with our love.”

“The biggest one is that he refuses to let me live in his head, forever.” Claire’s thoughts encroached on his as she said that, wrangling a bit with the protective layer he put up in response. Pouting, she backed off. “Second point was that Velka doesn’t have a lot of ways to cause mischief where she is at the moment.”

“I suppose the most valuable thing she can dig up in the Protected Space is truffles,” the Gamer agreed. In front of them, the endlessly straight road finally led into Muskogee. They rolled past a Baptist church, then a casino and a power plant, finally over the bridge that stretched over the Arkansas River and led into the city proper.

“Another church… another church… another church,” Lydia mumbled as they advanced deeper into the sprawled out city. “I must say that I find it refreshingly rural to see a city that seems to consist of churches and car stores.”

“This is the Bible Belt,” John responded with a chuckle. “It would be more surprising if we didn’t run into churches every couple of metres. You want ice cream before or after we shop?”

“Before!” Claire declared vehemently.

“I do not care either way.”

“Before it is then,” the Gamer stated and followed the description Hailey had given him. By her insistence, he had to visit an ice cream shop called Braum’s. It was a state pride thing, apparently, which John was interested in giving a whirl. A decision that he did not regret. The ice cream he got there, after waiting in line for about fifteen minutes, was easily among the best he had ever had. The clearly advertised insistence on local ingredients was evident in every delicious lick. He had simply gone with chocolate and vanilla.

“Before was a sound decision.” Lydia was enjoying two scoops of citrus. Unlike John and Claire, she had decided to go with her ice cream in a cup. When asked, she had said she preferred the small loads on the plastic spoon over licking the ice cream.

Claire let out an agreeing sound, too busy taking bites out of her ice cream to answer. It was so weird seeing someone actually bite into a scoop of ice cream that John started to giggle. The voracious vampire only giggled back, having long accepted that her eating habits would take years to approach anything close to normal. Bite for bite, she made it through her cherry chocolate combination. Then John handed her the rest of his ice cream.

“I want both hands on the wheel,” he said, when she gave him a hesitating glance. That was all the convincing she needed. The true reward was watching her gleefully devour the ice cream and cone in a couple of bites. “You’ll have to vacuum up the crumbs though.”

“Will do,” Claire promised with a large smile.

John left the parking lot and then directed them to the nearest mall. The outside was as rural as Lydia had commented, but the inside of the mall made John feel like he had stepped into a portal right back to New York City. Admittedly, things were smaller and not as busy, with many dozen, perhaps a few hundred, people busying themselves where the Gamer had come to expect thousands. Otherwise, from the horribly bright decorum to the ludicrously large selection of sunglasses randomly located in the middle of the corridor, it was all the same.

“And they say America has no culture.” John chuckled as he checked out the sunglasses. “Want one?” he asked Claire, currently a redhead. The trucker hat was a good first layer of protection, but the vampire was still suffering in the sun. It made her constant participation in the bricklaying all the more lovable. Nothing should be cherished more than something that was clearly difficult for a loved one to do.

“I don’t know, how do I look?” Claire asked, a pair of fairly standard glasses on her nose. “Probably better with some of my face covered.”

“Lady, the Lord clearly knew what he did when he made your face,” a man drawled.

“Thank you,” Claire chirpily responded, winking at the middle-aged man as he passed them by. He smirked, understandably feeling better about his day for having gotten a positive response from a girl that cute. For a moment, John’s possessive instincts urged him to do or say something stupid, but he wrestled that down and just let the little exchange be what it was. The world was richer for kind comments between strangers. Flirtatious would have been a different matter, but the man just continued moving and soon was swallowed up by the crowd. This would just be a random memory both parties recalled every now and again.

John turned his head and was greeted by a thoroughly unexpected sight. There stood Lydia, wearing a square-pattern shirt and jeans, her hair in a braid. So far so expected, it was how she had looked since she changed clothes inside the bus. The aviator shades, however, were so surprising that he could not help but laugh.

Lydia blushed. She tried to play over it by crossing her arms. That only increased the serious look those glasses gave her. Then she put her forehead in wrinkles and John felt a painful cramp form in his left side. “Oh… Oh God…” He snickered and cleared his throat. “Sorry, sorry, they actually suit you pretty well… just didn’t expect that.”

“It appears I will always reserve a place in your life as a laughing stock.” The queen took off the glasses and hung them back. Immediately, John fetched them and brought them, the ones Claire was currently holding, and a pair he swiftly chose for himself to a clerk. A quick transaction later, he had bought them all.

“You’ll always have a place in my life, in a great many roles,” he told her with a large smile. He offered her the aviator shades and Lydia rolled her eyes. Then she hid them behind the tinged glasses.

Wearing shades indoors swiftly proved impractical, so they kept them inside the purse Claire had brought instead. They located a shopping cart and then went into the food store. Strictly speaking, they had everything they needed back at the campsite. What they wanted was easier to get by stepping through the teleporter and then accessing the Guild Hall Storage. That being said, it wasn’t a vacation if they didn’t ‘live off the land’.

In a liberal application of that saying, it meant that John wanted to taste test what the local shops had to offer. This did not necessarily limit him to buying regional produce. Large brands that they offered in these stores specifically was also acceptable.

“Are you serious, my love?” Lydia asked when he threw a can of Boyardee tomato soup into the cart. “Aclysia would be justified to veto your nutritional decision.”

“Look, back when I was on my own, I used to treat these as a rare… treat,” the Gamer said and pointed at the can.

“Truly, you are a speaker to impress a nation,” Lydia remarked.

“I’m using my tongue a lot less these days,” the Gamer admitted. There were less conversations to be had when he was bricklaying compared to his office hours. Obviously he wasn’t dealing with any phone calls. Funnily enough, he was speaking less with his haremettes too. When doing physical labour, the lungs were much too occupied with breathing to constantly chat. During the blowjob schedule, they either had a partner with their mouth full or just took breaks. Maybe there was an element of habit there too. They probably would get chattier doing the housebuilding in a week or two, when aligning the bricks properly became more of a habit.

While wondering about this, John listened to Claire and Lydia have a little back and forth. “It must be surreal to witness such quantities of food.”

“Honestly, the surreal part is the variety rather than the quantity,” Claire answered. “I haven’t even gotten over the existence of flour yet. Have you seen all the things you can do with that? Boggles the mind.”

“I had a time in my life during which I had to give that a lot of thought,” Lydia said, turning a package of the ground down wheat in her hands. “My poverty was a shadow compared to yours…”

Claire waved off with a charming smile. “Yeah, yeah, you don’t have to reiterate that all the time. I don’t really care to compare.”

“Then let it just be said that I understand grains thoroughly. There’s few cheaper ways to achieve basic sustenance.”

“And it’s still so delicious!”

“Flour on its own I regard as a rather poor meal,” Lydia joked.

John had an idea. “Want to buy the basic components for sourdough and roast it over the campfire?” he suggested.

That was an idea that swiftly got everyone on board.