The Gamer Chapter 1522 – The Dangerous Aspect of Staying (Patreon)

What was the worst part about having to stay longer in Rome?

Factually, it was that he had to keep breathing the same air as Mengele. Because there had always been a chance for some kind of proof of power being required, John had planned with the additional days in mind. Romulus had warned him from the start that this was likely to happen. Whether it was truly necessary for anything that could not immediately be solved diplomatically to turn into a tournament was a question John had to consider at times. However, when in Rome, do as Romulus suggests.

Theoretically, it was that John had to fight for the position in the first place. That was, however, greatly negated by the fact that he rather enjoyed combat. A part of him was looking forwards to the challenge these arcane elementals would hopefully pose. The Purest Front wouldn’t have put them forward if they did not consider there to be some hope they could win. That was worrisome on one hand. On the other, it had been too long since John had clashed with a non-Raid enemy that posed a proper challenge.

Figuratively, the worst was that he now was exposed to Lu Zhi for an additional five days.

And that was dangerous.

Really, really dangerous.

John had barely left behind the court, when his phone buzzed. For various reasons, he was keeping the device in his pocket for the stay. One of them was to give himself a deliberate weakness. A phone on his body was a clear target for any enemy technomancer around. Since he could, with confidence, assume that Scarlett could counter-intelligence basically any effort made against him, it was pure bait.

No one had taken it. Competent opponents rarely did.

John still made it a deliberately visible motion when he pulled out his phone and checked it. That switched immediately when he realized he had gotten a message from one ‘Green Miracle’ on Discord. Putting two and two together, John accelerated his steps and quickly found himself in a corner. He unlocked the screen and checked.

Green Miracle: Thinking about more entertaining things <3

Right under that line of text was a photo of Lu Zhi in a chair. Judging by the angle, it had been shot covertly under a table. One knee was pulled to her chest, riding up the skirt of her traditional Chinese dress and revealing a pair of exceptionally innocent white panties. Plain as they were, the roundness of her perfect ass on display was enough to make anything she wore into an item of pure sex appeal.

The upper half of the photo was only slightly less alluring. Her head barely fit in the frame. Pink lips were spread into a half-smile. Her tongue poked visibly against the inside of her cheek. Behind her, the eunuch that had been with her, Xi Pang, was in the process of walking, his lips forming a consternated word.

It seemed the Heavenly Jade Empress was getting a talking to by her first minister.

Jeehan: Would you like me to send you something back?

Green Miracle: Yes, please!

“Nathalia, could you come with me for a second,” John requested.

He chose the dragoness on a whim. Most of his harem was still around him. Lydia was engaged in her own conversation with Romulus, regarding the next couple of steps. Momo had moved, of her own accord, to talk to Prometheus, in an attempt to find out why the Supreme Seeker of the Flame had voted the way he had. It was unlikely to produce anything, but it was worth a shot. Metra had departed to talk a little more to those of her siblings that were present. Claire also stayed behind, on John’s request. She was the best to attempt to make covert contact with the Horned Rat.

John wanted his opinion on something and, annoyingly, the god had changed his number again. The constant game of cat and mouse when it came to contacting Richard was one of those tiresome side quests he had to keep spending secret operative resources on.

“We’ll be at the beach,” Rave told her fiancé, when he and the redheaded dragoness stepped even deeper into one of the sidearms of the imperial palace.

“What little debauchery have you planned?” Nathalia asked, uncaring of any ears potentially following their falling footsteps.

“I need to snap a photo,” the Gamer responded.

“For… ah.” Nathalia caught herself before she could divulge sensitive information. The dragoness was proud, sometimes arrogant, shameless and perverted – she was not an idiot. Quickly, they found themselves a room with a lockable door and vanished inside. “How do you want to do this?”

“Helper’s choosing,” John hummed, then smiled approvingly when she dropped to her knees. Not that he could think of anything she could do that did not involve him grinning like a lovestruck fool.

“Since this is the only hole she’s decided to use so far, let’s give her an idea what she looks like serving you,” Nathalia explained her rationale, before catching his zipper between her teeth and dragging it down.

That was the first photo he took.

Swiftly, she had freed his cock. His girthy erection smacked down on her features, leaving a drop of precum on the caramel-skinned goddess’ forehead. Her mouth was agape, her pointy tongue extended to weigh his heavy balls on them.

That was the second photo he took.

Moments later, her monstrous tongue coiled around his cock, while her lips wrapped around the engorged head. The dragoness moaned at the taste, sucking as best as she could with her tongue extended, and slowly went down.

That made three pictures and John sent them all over.

Jeehan: Nathalia said she wanted you to see what you look like when you go down.

Green Miracle: O_O

Green Miracle: I thought I’d get an abs pic.

Green Miracle: Wow, she looks good on her knees like that.

Green Miracle: Do I look as good?

Jeehan: Honestly, not quite, Nathalia really knows what she is doing. Plus, there’s the special tinge to women you love.

Jeehan: You’ll get there, though.

Green Miracle: Ooooh? <3 Will I now? >;D

Jeehan: It is my conservative estimate.

Jeehan: Anyway, I’ll have to go for now.

Jeehan: It’s rude to chat while getting a blowjob.

Green Miracle: Always concentrate on the woman in front of you, I get it, I get it. ^^

John put the phone away. Great as Lu Zhi’s charms were, his heart belonged to Nathalia more than her. Yes, the imperial tomboy was new, and that gave her the intrigue all new things benefitted from, but the dragoness was his and he would be caught dead before he took her for granted.

Tongue pulled back into her mouth, the redhead kissed her way down the side of his shaft. Touch after touch of her pillowy lips made the Gamer groan. She knew how to tantalize just as well as she knew how to satisfy. “You are aware that there is no way I will just be used as a model, right?” she purred in her husky voice.

John was just about to respond when a movement in the empty conference room caught his attention. A rat climbed on the table, the skin of its head peeled back to the neck. “Well, I knew that, but it seems like we've got company,” the Gamer groaned.

“And since when does the Horned Rat watching matter to you?” Nathalia asked in a seductive tone. It switched rather suddenly and intensely when his cock began to deflate. “Ah, a serious topic then.” She sighed. “I will be repaid for this, my mate.”

“Of course you will,” John promised her and tugged his cock into his undergarments. While he pulled up his zipper, the little rat expanded in size. Skin and fur shifted, as if the muscles and fat underneath were boiling liquids. Bones cracked, grew back together, then broke again, elongating gradually. Four horns extended from the small rat’s skull. “You know, you can spare me the horror show at this point.”

The Horned Rat rolled its neck. “You have to understand, understand that my powers are horrifying at their base.” The god unhinged his exposed jaw, then snapped the entire thing back into place with both hands. “I cannot help the grotesqueness. Not at all, not always.” John, like always, wasn’t sure how much of that he could believe. “Why did you send the pest to fetch me?”

John blew air out of his nose. The Horned Rat was either overacting the offense he had taken because of what Claire had done on their way to this meeting or he genuinely was annoyed that someone dared. ‘Again, impossible to say for certain,’ the Gamer thought, then got to the topic at hand. “Do you have this conversation shrouded?”

“What kind of amateur do you think I am?” the Horned Rat chuckled.

“Just wanted to be sure. The ‘Betrayer of All’, that’s what you called Herman, right?” the Gamer asked.

“That is what I chose, aptly, in the moment of clarity, yes, yes,” the Horned Rat responded with a nod of his head. “Although that applied to the Herman you knew, not his vat grown clone that is following Mengele around like a well-trained dog. Courtesy of what Gaia did, we can be beyond certain that they aren’t the same entity.”

John nodded. Herman’s soul was erased down to the last shred of Faith. Any overlap between the being John had known and Vier was on the genetic level. That, however, was more important than some people would give it credit for. Especially given the surrounding circumstances.

“I’ll be clear with you, Rat: I plan to kill Mengele after this meeting.”

The Horned Rat did not even pretend to look surprised. Who would have been, when the only thing that held Eliana back was the obvious futility of such an endeavour without preparation? “This extension serves you well then?” the god asked, the darker aspects of his many-toned voice coming to the forefront. Growling and rumbling, yet speaking in a pleasant baritone, he continued. “I can’t believe even you would have put together a plan to assassinate the leader of the Purest Front in just two days.”

He was annoyingly right about that. Even with the crystal and Lorelei’s ability to locate Mengele in his possession, acting on that intel was the really difficult part. Just attacking Mengele out on international waters was going to be a bloodbath – that was if John assumed his vessels could even keep pace with whatever method Mengele used to get around. If it was a submarine or something built for speed, then they would miss their window of opportunity.

John needed a way to get ahead of Mengele and to catch him off-guard. The best way to do that was to get an insider.

“You wish to recruit Vier into your plan?” the Horned Rat cut to the chase.

“I need to understand how deep his treacherous side goes,” John stated. “Was he raised into being cold and abusive or is he a sociopath by genetic disposition? The ‘Betrayer of All’ sounds like the kind of title that could be assigned to the kind of person whose tendency towards backstabbing goes… deeper.”

It was unpleasant to think about how much of a person was written out when they were born. Debates were had about how much it was and would likely continue to be had for a long, long time. Evidence and counter evidence was presented on nature versus nurture. Important was to understand that both sides had a point.

No one in their right mind could have denied that some people were born with certain characteristics. Whether that was height, metabolism, or various parts of the brain being over or underdeveloped, there was always something about genetics that predisposed someone to certain types of behaviour.

Nothing was ever absolute, but if Herman had been a treacherous scumbag at the base and if that base had now been raised as a lab assistant of the Nazi scientist… John could not imagine that Vier was any less monstrous than the original. If, however, it turned out that Herman only began backstabbing people when he reached the point of desperation, that changed the equation considerably.

The Horned Rat’s claws clacked on the surface of the table.

Nathalia rolled her eyes. “Get on with it,” she demanded. “I don’t have all day. Tell us if you’ll aid my John or if you want to withhold this intel for one of your convoluted schemes. Do you need something in return perhaps?”

“No… no… I believe… the removal of Mengele is in my personal interest as well, especially with… what he announced today…” the Horned Rat spoke slowly, still half in thought. The red flickers in his otherwise unnaturally dark, empty eye sockets stared at John. “Herman was born under the name Judas.”

“Are you fucking with my soul?” the Gamer blurted out in a rare moment of uncontrollable profanity. He had experienced a worrying uptick of those recently. Somewhat expected, considering the weight of the news spreading around a gathering of the world powers. Regaining his composure, John continued, “You’re telling me that I shared a roof with the man that sold out Jesus Christ himself for two months? And you did not think it was proper to tell me that?”

“You never know when that kind of secret can become useful leverage, especially with the kinds of shenanigans Herman was up to over the course of his life. Doubtlessly, doubtlessly truly, there are caches of his research on immortality all over the world. Not that you and I would have a use for them.”

John rubbed his forehead for a few seconds, then shook his head. “That doesn’t quite answer my question, though. All I know about Judas is from the Bible, and depending on translation, Judas is either the worst creature ever or just an expected link in god’s plan.”

“You should know enough about prophecy to know that, when I said ‘Betrayer of All’, I meant it,” the Horned Rat stated with dire sincerity. “Herman deserved to be known as the archetypical traitor. He was jealous of Jesus for his purity of character and healing powers. He sold him out for no other reason than because he could.”

“Just to be sure, how would you know that?” John asked and raised an eyebrow. “This isn’t the part where you tell me you’re one of the apostles, is it? Or the part of the devil that Jesus met in the desert?”

“This is simply one of the pies I had my fingers in,” the Horned Rat dissuaded. “I happened to be seated in Egypt at the time, preparing for the day that we would disrupt Romulus’ Pompeii project.” He looked at Nathalia. “I learned about the ongoings in Jerusalem through my spy network. I did not intervene, I just watched and kept track.”

John nodded. “So, if I were to get Vier on board with a plan to kill Mengele, do you think it would work?”

“That depends on two factors,” Richard said.

“How much Mengele succeeded in lobotomizing this clone and what is in it for Vier,” John summarized.

“There’s not much will behind those eyes,” Nathalia chimed in. “I do, however, think that there’s more left of him than Mengele wants. He uses him as research assistance.”

“And he cannot do that while fully robbing him of autonomy and thought,” John agreed. “Herman… Judas... he was smart and focused on his survival. He would play his role until he had a very good reason to believe he could get out.”

“I believe, believe indeed, that resentment would be currency enough,” the Horned Rat hummed. “I also believe that you can approach him with an offer without much worry. Mengele will expect an attempt on his life, one way or another. If the clone is a puppet on strings, he will learn only that you are trying to do what everyone expects you to do.”

“Then the real challenge becomes finding Vier on his own,” John mumbled with a slight smile around his lips. It was a bitter one. None of this felt pleasant. Working with Herman again, even if it was a clone, felt dirty down to the depths of his soul. However, the vengeance of his sweet little Eliana was more important.

He was going to make it very dangerous for Mengele to have stayed.