The Gamer Chapter 1345 – Sourdough and Dark Corners (Patreon)

“This is terrible nutrition,” Aclysia whined, even as she presented the prepared dough. She still hadn’t recovered from John wanting canned tomato soup over her cooking. For several minutes, John feared his weaponized maid would collapse from the accumulating irritation that the sourdough distribution put on her mind. A fear that sort of came true. “My John’s happiness is paramount and John is happiest when I am happy, so shouldn’t he want me to eat what I recommend him to eat? But I am most happy when he is happy, so shouldn’t I be happy about him treating himself to something different? But he is happiest when I am happy, therefore my cooking should… but then…”

“I think Aclysia is broken.” Delicia laughed and pointed at the muttering maid. When that didn’t even get a reaction from the continuously logic looping Artificial Spirit, the alchemist stopped in her mocking giggles. “Is she going to be fine?”

“Right, ya never saw this before,” Rave said to the shortstack and Nightingale. “Aclysia sometimes gets caught in a logic loop. Tiger just has to turn her off and on again… or just on.”

“It’s nothing lewd, really,” John said, while he walked over to the frozen maid. Manoeuvring around the tray of raw dough she was holding, he firmly put a hand on her cheek. Then, he kissed her. Pretty pink lips stopped in the middle of her muttering. For a moment, they were frozen. Almost two years of habit kicked in and she answered her true love’s tongue. A slow, loving kiss unfolded. John’s hand softly reached behind her ears, combed through her silky hair at the roots. Aclysia tilted her head, allowing him to get a little closer without their noses getting in the way. The little, intimate sounds of their lips and tongues smacking accompanied their every notion.

Gently, he separated from her. “Thank you, my John,” Aclysia whispered, her green eyes more beautiful than any emerald.

“I hope you can forgive me for my culinary vandalism,” he whispered back.

“Barely…” Aclysia wiggled happily where she stood, blinking cutely at him. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” the Gamer responded and they kissed a second, swift time. The happy wiggles were almost dancing when he separated from her. ‘So simple to please,’ the Gamer thought. Humming loudly and taking goofily aloof steps, he returned to the campfire. Armed with a piece of sourdough and a sharpened stick, he skewered the former with the latter. To do it the other way around would have required an exceedingly soft piece of wood and a deep freezer.

The sourdough eating was in and of itself a fairly dull affair. John was hit with a bit of nostalgia from the time he was sent to give the boy scouts a trial over the elementary school summer break. That had been a rather terrible week. It preceded the bullying by several years, but for a young gamer, being separated from his handheld was just the worst. Still, he remembered the bread from the first night fondly. One had to wonder how different his life would have turned out if his parents had ignored his prepubescent opinion. He probably would have lived a healthier life or at least polished up his social skills a bit.

‘Would my Innate Ability be about collecting badges instead of Achievements?’ he wondered, amused. Then his thoughts turned to what he would have done in his parents’ situation. ‘I don’t think their hands-off approach to raising me served me that well, much as I love them...’

Without the act of divine intervention, which his powers effectively were, how would the rest of his life have looked? Not particularly rosy, he reckoned.

He would have gotten into college, that part was obvious. Would he have moved out of Springfield? No, he had been too risk averse for that. Therefore, he would have ended with Vanessa yapping at his heels. His college years would have been a continuation of his school years, probably with less physical abuse. The social alienation would have stuck, however. Quietly, he would have gotten his degree, almost certainly with middle of the road grades due to a lack of dedicated learning. Then he would have gotten some kind of alright job at an IT or engineering company and just worked until… he had no idea. Would he have managed to re-engage with the social life or would he have been so stunted at that point that just continuing on gaming forever was the preferable option? John was uncertain if he would have managed to become social even in his current situation if Rave had not dragged him out with her straightforward interest – first in his powers and then in him.

John wasn’t going to put all of that uncertainty on the shoulders of his parents. They had loved him and they had seen to it that he had everything he needed. As a matter of fact, he was not going to assign any blame. There was nothing to be resentful about, just things he wanted to note down to do better himself. His own children would have a lot of eyes on them. Their situation would be so vastly different that a hands-off approach would not work anyway. In the unrealistic case that he somehow managed to completely shield them from the public eye, there were still excesses that he had fallen to that he would not let them fall to. Like having a room that was utterly filled with garbage and worn underwear. How Brenda had allowed him to get away with that for 18 years straight was a mystery.

‘At least a few expectations,’ John thought and bit into the sourdough. ‘Insistence and structure. Discipline…. Not so much that they get stifled though… I’m not even a parent yet and it’s already hard. I’m sitting here thinking what mine did wrong and I’ll obviously make mistakes myself. Yet I want it. I want it a whole lot.’ He chewed on the bread. It had that perfect pizza bread taste, with a slightly moist core and a crunchy crust. ‘Man, I timed that right.’

Thoughts on pedagogy bounced around in his head until Salamander tapped him twice on the shoulder. “Want to do something fun, stud?” she asked, holding a flashlight.

“Hmmm, haunted house tour?” the Gamer guessed. It was pretty dark already and they had never given the old house more than a basic inspection. Using it was strictly impossible due to the space demands that food preparation and sleeping quarters for 20 people created. Because the weather played along, they were either sleeping outside or in the bus, however it fancied them that day – typically the latter. By now the Abyssal side of the main property had been expanded with a pool, a theoretically finished and structurally sound version of the mansion’s barebone walls, and a large stone ‘tent’ whose insides were lined with a particular kind of magical moss that was basically a self-fluffing pillow. Not exactly the true camping experience, but his bed was one aspect where he was willing to compromise. It was either this or sizing down the amount of haremettes he shared a sleeping spot with.

Obviously the second option was entirely unacceptable.

Similarly, he could not go without showers. He was willing to be covered in dirt and fresh sweat after a day of hard work, but he was not willing to stink. Neither was he going to let his dick get in any state that hentai artists seemed to be so fond of. The number of times he had read the words ‘dick cheese’ in the (particularly Japanese) porn he had read over the years was alarming. ‘I wonder how I got into hentai without ever watching anime… says a lot about my priorities, I suppose.’

“Man, I can see the thoughts go at lightning speed through that brain of yours,” Salamander commented from the outside. “You think like Sylph talks.”

“I’m more coherent than that,” the Gamer scoffed. “Although I do share with her that all roads lead to kissing you, silly Sally.”

“Do not fucking dare give that nickname any credibility!” Salamander shut him up by giving him that kiss he so clearly wanted. Thirty seconds later, she was panting a bit. Her tail was coiled around his leg. “But yes, house tour. I doubt it’s haunted though, we would have seen something by now.”

“There’s not enough leyline activity in this area to spawn ghosts,” the Gamer agreed.

“Weirder things have happened!” Lee added to their conversation, sitting two metres away.

“You want to join?” the Gamer asked the comfortably seated gamer girl.

The constant, quiet clicking of the buttons preceded her answer. “I’m in a boss fight.”

“It’s Fire Emblem, you can pause.”

Lee gave him a devastating, disappointed stare. “I can pause the game, but I can’t pause the experience, dude, you should know that.”

Raising his hands in surrender, the Gamer dropped the topic. That was fair enough. His head turned to Nightingale, who approached him with a coquettish smile. “I care to join,” she said and raised a wing before her mouth. “Although, I serve more to deepen the darkness than be frightened by it.”

“Edgelooooooooooooooooord!” Delicia shouted from behind her. Loudly, she laughed at Nightingale when she whirled around and gave her a no-doubt poisonous glare. Suddenly, Delicia made a serious expression. Eyes narrowed, she spoke in a husky voice that could have been quite sexy if it wasn’t so overplayed, “To be a dark feathered harpy is to never know the light. To be chosen by the night, that is my blessing – and my curse. The darkness does not frighten me. Where I walk, it deepens and becomes as black as my heart pit…. BWAHAHAHAHA-!”

“Irreverent brat!” Nightingale shouted, losing all of her composure in an instant. Purple chains spawned out of the night, wrapping around the alchemist and lifting her up in the air.

“Sticks and stones can’t break my bones but whips and chains excite me,” Delicia chanted in response. There was a bit of red on her cheek. Whether that was because of what she said or who she had said that to was not quite clear. It was the fourth day since Delicia had been welcomed into the harem. As per the adage that John often liked to cite: the human mind could get used to anything after three days.

It held true in this case; Delicia and Nightingale were just as close physically as Delicia was with the rest of the harem. What doubtlessly helped was that the harpy was a harem-oriented woman and the shortstack was just really horny. Transforming their relationship into something with a sexual component had been smooth sailing after the initial trouble of getting off the dock.

“Alright, let’s go into the haunted house,” John chuckled and led the way, before additional haremettes chiming in could delay them any further. It was just him, Salamander, Nightingale, and a flashlight. The apocalypse elemental extinguished her natural glow. A swish of the night goddess’ wing erected a barrier of darkness around the house, keeping out the ambient light of the campfire. There was only the limited illumination of the moon, peeking through the cloudy sky.

There was a gloomy feeling in the air, John had to admit to that much. Darkvision diminished the impact of the lightlessness in one way and illuminated it in another. Where he should have seen only pitch black were the colourless, strictly outlined shapes of the old house. Paint that had faded to the point where it was only visible in the grooves of the wooden boards. Scratches from animals that had inspected the house over the years. The little holes that had been dug under the wood-frame foundation. The crack that went through one of the window panes.

The house was from another time, although not one so far back it turned into an interesting relic. It was in that bothersome middle ground between intriguing and outdated, sort of like an early flatscreen or a graphics card lauded for being able to run CS:GO at 30 frames.

The door, once green, creaked when John pushed it open. The tiny corridor behind it was so different from the first and only other time he had inspected it in this light. Long, his shadow stretched, Salamander holding the flashlight behind him. Each step he took inside caused more and more creaking. Rusted hinges screamed when he pushed open the door to the kitchen.

“Would this even work?” Salamander asked, gesturing at the old-timey light switch by the doorframe.

“I cut the power days ago, so no,” John denied. It had been more convenient to him to reroute the landline to a spot outside the house, so he could hook up all of his tools to it. The bus didn’t need any electricity, as it was powered by his mana through a generator within the second floor of the vehicle.

Once more John remarked to himself just how thin these walls were. Anything that was done in any point of the house would have been heard everywhere else. He stared at a piece of the wall, where a slightly brighter square hinted at the existence of a picture frame many years prior. A sudden urge overcame him.

‘Eh, this is my property,’ he concluded and just went straight at it. With the strength of a mundane Olympian, he hurled his fist at the wall. His knuckles protested, bloodying at the impact. The wall still got the worst of it, visibly denting and cracking.

“We were supposed to get afraid of the house, not assert dominance over it!” Salamander complained.

“I just wondered how flimsy these walls really were,” John said and gave it a second slam. That one went clean through. The wall was basically just two pieces of cheap building material glued to a wooden frame. “It’s a wonder this is even capable of holding the wallpaper. Admirable how they managed to build something this lasting out of something so weak.” He pulled his arm back. “This place would probably burn like a tinderbox.”

“Really?” Salamander asked, excitedly.

“If you wanted to put it to the torch, you should have done it before we put half the walls up. I am not getting ash on my bricks,” the Gamer warned her and dusted his hands off.

“The house will be angry,” Nightingale warned.

“What is it going to do, throw the dirty mattress at me?” John asked amusedly and led the way upstairs. The ground floor offered nothing besides the kitchen, a living room, and a small pantry. All of the personal living quarters were upstairs. None of them were impressive either. The largest of the three rooms upstairs was almost entirely filled out by the bed the previous owners had left in there. “Granted this is spoo- ew.”

John had lifted up the used mattress for effect and spotted the remains of generations of roaches and other insects. Had they not been on the Abyssal side, the live creatures would have come crawling out too. “How about I torch it on this side at least?” Salamander suggested.

“Maybe on the last day,” John said. Just for completion’s sake, he checked out the other two rooms. They had been empty long before the property had been put up for sale. They had been the children’s rooms. Neither exceeded six square metres. The Gamer imagined that was still quite a luxury back in the day. Not like people needed a bunch of space back then. A bed, a place to store clothes, and maybe a table. A book shelf, potentially? Whatever else John came up with was a long list short of the dozen or so electrical appliances everyone had in their private rooms these days.

John opened the door to the second of the two empty rooms. Inside was a bubbling mound of darkness. Like a humanoid hunched under a coat of deep mist, it shivered. Slowly, it turned around, revealing two silver eyes that glowed in the da-

“Very funny, Nightingale,” the Gamer called out his harpy.

“It was worth a try,” she responded with a chuckle. The darkness dispersed, joining the other shadows in the room.

“Are your illusions getting better or am I just seeing them too rarely?” Salamander asked, while they headed back down the stairs.

“I rarely exercise creativity. Simple illusions work best,” the goddess of the night responded. “I do also increase in power and control. There is much to learn about what I am, still.”

“If you ever need a training partner, just ask,” Salamander offered.

“I will take that offer soon,” Nightingale guaranteed.