The Gamer Chapter 1537 – Little Gained, Little Lost (Patreon)

“Calm: there is nothing off about my magical matrix.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” John mumbled, continuing to run his analytics as best he could. He did not have all the tools he would have liked to have for the job. Watching her very closely through the mental connection would have to suffice.

‘Want me to take a look at her?’ Delicia asked through the mental connection. ‘I’d bring Lee and Rel.’

‘Yeah,’ John took that offer and carefully rose from his chair. Nobody stopped him when he walked away. For now, the watching area was almost entirely empty of visitors. There had been enough mingling, apparently, and with most of the food gone, people had no motivation to stick around.

Still, he wanted a quiet corner for the inspection.

Delicia followed him, Lee and Rel behind her. The majority of the crafting crew, specifically those in the know about these things. “God, am I happy to have all of you,” John said, once they were in the relative privacy of a nondescript side chamber.

“You should be.” Delicia’s smug grin stayed only for a moment, while she maneouvred Beatrice to an empty chair. The passive maid spared them her protest and just sat down obediently, allowing the shortstack to run her initial diagnostics.

Utilizing her Mutagen Library, Delicia transformed into a spectral entity. Her body turned a ghostly blue and partly translucent, particularly around the ends of her limbs. A half-ghast was what she called it, one of the few undead that were ‘alive’ enough to draw mutagenic materials from them. In this case, quite useful because she could reach into Beatrice’s body.

Unlike Arkan, she needed the consent of the Artificial Spirit to do so. Innate magic resistance would have pushed her out no problem. Neither could Delicia pull out the internal matrix. She could just ‘feel it out’.

“Sensing a minor disturbance below the shoulder joint,” the alchemist said clinically. “Lorelei, you got eyes on it? I mean, sight on it or whatever.” The little joke slipped in anyhow.

“Yes,” Lorelei answered, her actual eyes closed. “It seems to be a resettling issue, nothing more. The magical matrix is in a slightly different spot than usual. It is correcting itself as we speak.”

“Do you even feel anything off?” Delicia asked.

“Negative.”

Delicia drew her hands back and disabled the mutagen. “Yeah, nothing to worry about here,” she told John, her typical grin returning. “Man, can’t even go ten seconds without getting deadly worried, huh?”

“Do you want me to change that about myself?” John asked.

“Psh, no,” Delicia answered in that mocking tone that made his eyes twitch. “What, seriously contemplating not protecting your girls? What a man you are.”

“What do you want from me, woman?!”

Delicia laughed behind fanned out fingers. “Whaaat, you still haven’t figured that out?” Their little play was suddenly interrupted by Delicia’s phone buzzing. The device was hidden quite well in a pocket between her slit skirt and corset. She checked it leisurely, practically utilizing the pause to annoy John that little bit more. Then, her smile was replaced with a raised eyebrow. “Huh, that’s…” she muttered.

John waited for any follow-up, but Delicia was busy tapping around. “That is what?” he asked, none of the previous annoyance in his voice. Their banter game was second to actual problems.

“Interesting,” Delicia finished, her tone indicating that it wasn’t a big deal. “Minor signals of surface thoughts with Ehtra, but nothing that lasted. Could be a comatose twitch, could be the start of her waking up.” The alchemist shrugged. “For now, it’s just interesting.”

John still liked to hear it. He had moved Ehtra from Medelnick’s care to Delicia in the gap between the grinding session and setting out for Rome. The apothecary had been seething, one of the most interesting objects of research in the world removed from his care. Just another reason why John was happy to have done it. Medelnick was reliable for a member of the Apothecary. Still, he had outside loyalties and John could never trust the eunuch completely. Delicia was brilliant, capable, equally motivated, he loved her, and he could look into her head. The last of these was also the least of the reasons why he gave it to her.

John trusted his haremettes, even the newer ones. That was the foundation of their relationship, after all. “Still, that’s the first signal we got, right?”

“According to the data Medelnick gave me, yes… as much as you want to trust that.” Delicia kept scanning through a couple of logs. “I’ll tell Metra, she’ll probably want to hear it even if there’s little news.”

“Yeah,” John agreed.

“Well, I was useful,” Lee remarked sarcastically, while they headed back outside the room. “What was I even here for?”

“Support in case something was wrong,” Delicia told her. “Also so I can ditch you and leave you with the perv while Rel and I go talk to Metra! Okay, bye!”

“Oh noooo, the horror!” Lee cried out, while the alchemist dragged the seer away. They weren’t even around the corner when the gamer girl turned to the passive maid. “Seriously tho, you fine?”

“Affirmative, all operations are within expected parameters.” Beatrice folded her hands in front of her lap, taking her usual stance. “Worry is appreciated, but ultimately unnecessary.”

“How strong do you reckon he was?”

Neither John, Lee, nor Beatrice asked the question and none of them jumped at the sudden presence of the pariah either. Casually greeting the blonde with a kiss to the cheek, Lee hugged her best friend in the harem. John was left enough room to put a kiss on Nia’s other cheek. A little pleased hum was all the socially stunted blank produced. Even that was an adorable sound.

“Impossible to say. He was holding back,” John responded. “I think it’s safe to say that he is stronger than Orkos, but not much stronger.”

“Think he’s stronger than Romulus?” Nia asked the next question.

“No,” John answered with certainty. “In terms of raw Stats, the two may compete with each other, but Romulus has the might of many slain gods and the magics he has mastered throughout his life to fall back on. If he’s armed with Sol and Luna, that’s basically it.”

Romulus wasn’t just the Apex because he was the human that had, so far, the highest potential in history. The Godslayer had seen his share of challenges, some of which his Innate Ability could not just remove. There had been clashes with the Mandate of Heaven in the past, mostly in controlled settings, and there had been contenders to his realm. Romulus had defeated them all through martial prowess.

If the Apex had only had his Innate Ability to rely on, he would not have remained in the driver’s seat for this long. The Generation of Monsters presented more threats to his rule than ever, but he was still the Apex and he had earned that position. He had already held that title when the original six elemental rulers still walked the Earth.

This was the man that had beaten the newly awakened Thana despite having diffused a nuclear explosion and having his heart ripped out. Arkan may have been powerful, but Romulus was beyond strength.

“Maybe one day Arkan will pose a serious threat, but he’ll need to refine his power until then,” John said and scratched the back of his head. “The same is true for me… although I have the advantage of not being an elemental…”

Originally human or not, elementals fundamentally had a lower capacity for power than humans of the same level. Gnome, Sylph, Siena, Undine, Salamander, Stirwin, all of them were strong but, save for a hyper-fed Stirwin, a human that was trained to the same level was likely to best them in a 1 vs 1. This was simply part of the way the world worked. Elementals were manifestations of specific energies, born from Faith, they did not have the versatility of a human. They simply had the powers that they had and nothing else. This was also why the Artificial Spirits were stronger than them.

It was simply part of how the Abyss was structured.

The Azure Tribe had benefitted from their ascendance into arcane elementals, no doubt, but it also locked them into what they were. John doubted they could grow any further, unless someone like him contracted them. Perhaps Mengele’s soul-enriching experiments played a role in how powerful they already were. The matter was complicated, but fundamentally John had reason to hope that they could overcome this.

“Do you think you can defeat Arkan?” John asked Nia.

“Yes,” she answered instantly.

John raised an eyebrow. “I’m… surprised,” he admitted. “You have obviously thought about this.”

“My analysis isn’t complete, but he has character flaws that seem to be highly exploitable.” The pariah tilted her head, her icy blue eyes piercing to the back of John’s skull. For one moment, he felt the nearly forgotten shiver of her weirdness. “I am the strongest null in the world, John,” she said flatly. It was delivered passively not for a lack of ability to boast, but as a simple analysis. “They are raw magic. I think you underestimate me.”

“Maybe I do,” John agreed. To this day, much of how pariahs worked remained enigmatic. It was difficult to get a pulse on an ability that defied any kind of scan, mundane or magical. Doing as much as measuring her heartbeat required intense preparations. She did not smell or taste of anything, her dress was colourless, as was her skin.

The Gamer forced himself to look into her eyes again. Sharp orbs of blue – an intense colour that let him forget all the ways in which she was other. He leaned in and kissed her.

“You’re welcome to surprise me,” he said. “You often do.”

The flicker of weirdness in the air collapsed in on itself. A little pang of headache made him, Lee and Beatrice twitch for a second. Nia slowly spread her lips into a measured smile. “I am effective, darling,” she said, proudly. “Never doubt that.”

With that, the pariah suddenly disappeared. It seemed like she wanted to be somewhere else and the world obliged her. ‘She is scary,’ John thought, his heart beating a little faster in his chest. ‘Gods, I love the kind of women that can actually just kill me.’

“Wow,” Lee commented.

“What?”

“Nothing, I just got the inkling that I know exactly what you just thought… should I run around with a knife?”

John imagined it and he would be lying if he said the image of a combat knife strapped to her thunder thighs did not make her at least a little more attractive.

“Huh? Back already?” Delicia greeted them, when they emerged back on their private viewing platform. “I left you alone to make out and do all the lewd stuff! My gracious gift, squandered!”

“Believe it or not, but I am not horny right now.”

“Bwahahaha- Oh my everything, you are serious.” Delicia put both hands on the sides of her face. “The horror! The humanity! The-“

“Distraction,” Metra smacked the back of the shortstack’s head. “You said you can do something to make the thing happen faster?”

“I said I can try something to make the thing happen faster,” Delicia responded and put a closed hand up. When she opened it, a pebble of grey metal lay within her palm. “She needs material to replenish herself and it needs to be the correct magical frequency… Now, luckily, I am a genius and I can calculate all of that and create it… it’ll take time though…” The alchemist handed the tiny bit of Astrotium to John, who swiftly put it into his inventory for safekeeping. “I barely get any time for my personal project! It’s always this or that with you people! Get some other alchemists already!”

“I am working on it,” John promised. With all the ways that Delicia had proven herself to be beyond useful recently, he had seen the wisdom in her words that alchemists were more than a niche group of crafters. Since she was busy revolutionizing the field in a way that was, unlike Hailey’s creations, available to any sufficiently talented alchemist, training a new generation of them became quite attractive.

Like with so many things, John aimed to give Fusion the head start on this. It was infinitely fortunate that his harem contained so many bright minds at a time of intense technological advancement.

‘Thank God I don’t just love dangerous women,’ the Gamer thought. They were proving their might in the arena, but a large reason why they were even acknowledged to deserve to fight in it was everything else that backed up the nation.

“I hope she’ll recover well…” Metra mumbled.

“You think she’ll still be herself after…” John stayed vague. Not because Metra couldn’t handle the truth, that insinuation would have been insulting, but because of potential eyes and ears around. They would guess what they were talking about, but he wanted them to guess, not know.

“Yeah, she was ever one to bounce back quickly from the worst of things. Sure, this was especially terrible, but…” Metra shrugged. “An entity of contempt like her recovers quickly.” Her attention shifted back to Delicia. “Nothing you can do right now?”

“I mean, I could just saunter back home for a stretch and check on things,” Delicia said. It wasn’t even a joke, the long-range teleporter in the harbour was still standing and would remain there until the end of the tournament. “I genuinely think you’re overzealous in this though.”

Metra pressed her lips together, then gave her head a frustrated scratch. “I’m just a meathead, you’ll know best. Feeling good, Bae?”

“Affirmative. I rely on you to take revenge for me.”

“I can try,” Metra grinned wolfishly. With the Entropy Arena, she did have a chance to beat anyone, even Orkos or Arkan. “You think the other two are making progress?”

“Hailey is always making progress towards something,” John said.

“Even if that something is terribly frustrating.” Scarlett walked into the conversation, drink in hand. “I would love to watch her fiddle with the thing, but I’d just get fucking mad.” John noted Nia reappearing, her butt planted on the flat of the railing. “By the way, tell me if this is a terrible idea-“

Scarlett was interrupted by Romulus’s voice. “Laurence of the Azure Tribe! Nia of Fusion!” the Apex announced. Where the pariah had just sat, there was now nothing. Everyone streamed towards the edge of the platform, to see Nia now stand next to Romulus. It was surprising enough for even the Apex to stare at her confusedly for a moment.

‘Maybe I really do underestimate her,’ John thought. At the other side of the arena, Laurence took a mighty leap and landed in the dirt.

“You will fight… in the swamp!” Romulus continued his announcement.

And so the fighters moved to the teleporter.