The Gamer Chapter 1616 – Raid and Adventures 12 – Brew, Crush, Jiggle, Stir (Patreon)

“Yeah, because I have so little else to do!” Delicia remarked sarcastically.

The short alchemist hopped off the footstool and marched over to another desk. Some sort of kettle whistled, until she attached a transparent tube to the spout. The liquid inside, by some alchemical laws that no doubt made sense if one was in the know, rose straight upwards through.

‘Or maybe there just is a vacuum at the other end?’ John wondered. He couldn’t tell. Wherever in this jungle of glass and metal the tube went to, it was hidden among the foliage of plastic, more glass, and more metal.

“I miss the days when you all were wrong about alchemy being useless,” Delicia mouthed off, hurrying to yet another spot in her laboratory. She spat something that had been brewing inside her into a bowl, then circled the pottery in her hand, until that something had manifested into a marble that rolled inside the curved body.

Delicia grabbed a pestle and began to grind the silvery object. The sound of the slow breaking down filled the room – then there was a snap.

Calmly, the alchemist put the bowl and the broken pestle down. She took a deep breath. Then she fell backwards. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” she screamed, while throwing her limbs wildly in all directions. “Stupid, evil, blurghahahaghars!” Nonsense like that left her pretty face.

John scratched the back of his head and waited for the tantrum to abate. Which, after about a minute, it did. He wanted to bow over her and ask if she was fine, but she sat up and went back to the workstation before he could. Grabbing a new pestle from a drawer, she returned to it. Soon, the silvery sphere was a fine powder.

“Perhaps we are working you too much?” the Gamer suggested, while she tapped the produce over into a different bowl, filled with some other powder. She put a lid on top, put it into an electronic shaker, and then moved to somewhere else to twist some valves. Released pressure hissed.

“No such thing as working too much,” Delicia chirped. “My problem right now is that I’m busy with all of your commissions. When do I get to do my stuff, huh?” The alchemist walked up to John, reaching up to stab his sternum with her finger. “Right now I’m making enriched black powder for Hailey, infusing coals with elemental essences, working out new plans for your Creator Puppets, and keeping up the supply of our various sex drugs.”

“I thought the one you gave me was semi-permanent?”

“Yeah, you thought, that was your first mistake,” Delicia stated with biting mockery. It felt actually insulting, which was a worrisome change from the usual. Something to John’s left made a loud booming noise. Delicia immediately turned to deal with that. “Fact is that you’re not the only one having mind blowing sex around here. Shocker, I know!”

‘Actually, the opposite of a shocker,’ John thought but knew to keep his mouth shut. The alchemist was venting, and when someone like her, who usually was such a good sport about bantering back and forth, was venting, he best listen until she got it out of her system.

“Then there’s Scarlett with her complete laundry list of stuff I should do. ‘Just make concrete,’ she says! I’m Delicia Poor, not your bog-standard alchemical cement mixer! I can lactate Astrotium, for Gaia’s sake!”

John did snort at that and she shot him a grin. At least she wasn’t being direly serious about all of this. “So it’s just work that’s below you?”

“It’d be like asking you to solve all of the administrative troubles of a town,” Delicia answered. “Sure, you could do it, but is that really what you want to do with your time? Is that really the best use of it? Is there nothing else you could do?” Delicia poured a steaming liquid into a cauldron, then twisted the lid shut. “Alchemical cement is a project for someone two years into the craft, if they’re of middling talent. I did it when I was 11.”

Delicia walked towards John, grabbed a large brush, the kind used to paint walls, from a bucket, and put it in John’s hand. He grabbed it, then followed her. She pointed him at a container full of blue, metallic paint and what seemed to be the arms of a potential Creator Puppet.

“Make yourself useful. Paint the biceps, triceps, and palm areas. Do NOT move it as you do, it has to stay perfectly still.”

John nodded and got to it. Delicia lifted the powder bowl off the shaker and checked its contents. Nodding a few times to herself, she then sealed it back up, put it back into the apparatus, and began to crush down mana crystals instead. Every time she cracked them, there was a discharge of magical energy. One of the bolts struck a nearby pipe. Delicia didn’t even look, as she adjusted a different valve.

“Same for Lydia’s metal potions,” the alchemist continued. “Yeah, sure, I could do that, but it’s really boring, really basic work. Really, she can just do that herself. You don’t even need to be an alchemist to do it. Most of that is just dissolving mana rich metals in mercury. Anyone with sufficient heat, a binding agent, and mercury can do it. Fuck, you can even just shred it into small pieces and put it in, if you want to.”

“That is fair,” John assured her.

“I’ll check on the Moon Lavender tomorrow.” Delicia put the crushed mana crystals into the powder, then let out a quick sigh. “Gale gets privileges, I owe her for putting up with my bouncy butt… plus no one has ever worked with that material before, so that’s worth my while.”

The shortstack walked over to John and checked what he was doing. From his highly limited experience, he wagered he was doing a good job. Delicia clearly disagreed, taking the brush from him and painting twice the area he had in half the time and in only two strokes. John had no idea how she even managed to let the hairs hold the paint that way, nor how she got it to spread so evenly.

“You know, you really are something,” John complimented her.

Delicia gave him an appreciative glance. “Truly, you are the poet of this generation,” she said, her dry tone swinging with gratitude. It wasn’t the best compliment he had ever given her, far from it, but it was all she needed to hear today. “I’m not overworked. You should know that I love working,” she said in a calm tone, “but I really, really, really would like it if you wouldn’t come to me with everything that a kid with a basic chemistry kit could solve. I’m kind of a genius, you know? I want to keep working on stuff that pushes the field forwards, not solve the basic issues of rich people.”

“You should bring that up after dinner,” John told her.

“I will… probably… dunno.”

“Not like you to be indecisive about saying something.”

“It’s not as simple as just telling people I don’t want to help them, it’s telling you lot I don’t want to help you.” Delicia strutted back over to the shaking powder bowl. Through the lid, a crimson light was shining. “How did she get the mana crystal to turn out red mana?” she mumbled to herself, then shook her head. “I’m a member of this household, right? That means I have some obligations to it, right? I shouldn’t just do what I want, right?”

As she asked the questions, Delicia added some small amounts of other powders to a bowl. She poured a liquid on top that seemed to be water at first glance, but had evaporated before John could even peer over her shoulder. The previously half full bowl was up to the brim now. There were easily two litres worth of powder.

“You’re taking a bit to the maidly mindset,” John realized.

“I’m not wearing the uniform as decoration, you know?” Delicia turned around, deliberately swinging her hips in the process. The back of her wrist sassily laid on the curve of her waist, as she bowed forwards. The depth of her cleavage nearly made John look past the finger she was wagging. “I’m a maid, thank you very much – I’m one of your maids. I don’t do as much cleaning as the others, but I’m here to keep our household running smoothly.”

Something else in the room began to rattle, like a pot filled with foaming water. With one swift motion, the alchemist pushed the bowl with powder into the Gamer’s hands, then turned to deal with that issue. “You do have a duty to the household,” John agreed with her. “You don’t have a duty to do things that make you miserable.”

“Urgh, listen to me! I said I like working!” Delicia shouted back at him, overpowering the sound of several dozen vents releasing steam all at once. The temperature in the room rose sharply. “It’s not simple! If it was simple, I’d have solved it already!” The noises ebbed away, leaving only the soft clattering of trembling glass in its place. “I’ll balance it out. I… eww, this is about to come out of my mouth… I love you all, so I like doing things for you, buuuuut, I’m also a selfish little brat, so I wanna do my stuff.”

“You’re a loud little brat, an obnoxious little brat, and a sexy little brat, but I wouldn’t say selfish,” John told her.

“Yeah, yeah,” Delicia tilted her head one way, as if she did not care for the compliments at all. “…Continue?”

“Right, add vain to that list,” John joked. “Also gorgeous, genius, and opinionated.”

“Hm, hm, how about wonderful to talk to?”

“Arguably,” John said in the warmest tone he could.

“Okay, okay!” Delicia’s head turned sharply when something turned red. “Now get out of here! I have, like, 451 more catalyzation steps to do!”

“What are you even working on right now?”

“Binding reagent for the next model of the Creator Puppet. Now go, go! Bring that to Hailey and her shooting range buddy!”

The alchemist would have shoved him out her domain, had she not been busy with her pipes and kettles. John saw himself out, stepping into the stone corridor. He closed the door behind himself. A thin thing, existing only so the fumes would not fill the rest of the building. One of the advantages of Delicia’s non-biology was that she could work around noxious gases without issue. The rest of the crafting crew did not have the same advantage.

Still holding the bowl, John walked. He beheld the powder with a great amount of respect. The greyish black grains shimmered with a faint redness, crackling every now and again. John had no idea how stable this magical black powder actually was…

Afraid less for himself than for the building, the equipment in it, and the powder itself, the Gamer marched carefully, following the ‘BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!’ sounds that echoed down the corridor. Every expended bolt shell was a small fortune in material evaporated in an instant. ‘Why do people think war is good business?’ he asked himself. ‘Money is literally disappearing every time she pulls that trigger. Way too many people think just moving cash around makes for good value generation…’

John turned the corner and was immediately faced with the rather awesome sight of tanned and naturally brown tits. He couldn’t really help it, his male gaze just immediately snapped to the double pair of large mounds. The maid uniform’s stretchy chest stuck tightly to Ehtra’s breasts, the cleavage an even, chocolatey colour. Right next to her, Hailey stood, her skin more caramel in colour, the natural complexion of the blonde showing mildly where her leather bra had slipped off her tan lines. The enigma engineer had tied the sleeves of her coverall around her waist, effectively using the blue full-body outfit as pants and nothing else. Her exposed skin was covered in oil smears and dust streaks.

Hailey sat on the counter that separated the shooting position from the target area. Her feet dangled over the edge. Ehtra was right next to her, one of her supple and smooth legs on total display. The heel of it was placed on the counter, leaving her balancing on the other foot. She was in the process of gesturing at various straps attached to the leg, between the top of the thigh highs and the garter belt.

“Delicia sent me to bring you the explosives,” John explained, raising the bowl up.

“Bring ’em over,” Hailey told him and gestured him in.

John placed the black powder carefully on the counter. Neither the engineer nor the ancient weapon moved, beyond tracing his movements. “What are you doing?” he asked, once he had put the bowl down. He felt that was expected of him.

“Still tryin’ to optimize her holster,” Hailey reported and gestured at Ehtra’s leg. John really did not need another reason to stare at the squishy thigh and the way the various straps pressed soft dents into it.

“You’re just looking at the holster, right?” Ehtra asked with dry sarcasm. “You wouldn’t happen to be a perverted creature, right?”

John first glanced at her tits, marvelled at them being basically the same size as Hailey’s, suppressed the fantasy of a double tit job, then looked back at the thigh. “Totally,” he answered, the evident tent in his pants belying his every word on the matter. “What’s the issue, I thought you solved this yesterday?”

“We got somethin’ working for her armoured state,” Hailey reported. “Ehtra came back to me, though, and told me about it not bein’ so great for, ya know, maid outfit.”

“The armour notably adds to the circumference of my leg, which means there’s more surface area for the magnetic plate and the bolter to rest against. The issue is… Urgh!” Ehtra grabbed John by the forehead and shoved him back half a step. Admittedly, he had been leaning in a bit. “The issue is!” Ehtra gave her own leg a resounding, jiggle inducing smack. “My naked thigh has absolutely no friction to it!”

“Leg plate got plendy of places to sec’re the holster too. Ain’t got no edges or such on this smooth wonder.” Hailey gave the brown skin of her fellow woman a little touch. “Ain’t that a marvel?”

Ehtra just rolled her eyes and John bit back a comment on the innate unfairness that women just got to touch each other like that. He did wonder how far he would get if he tried with the First of Hatred… That was the horndog inside him talking though. He pushed those thoughts down for good and actually engaged this academically.

“Right, so the holster you use on her armour is too heavy and keeps slipping?” Nods all around.

“We tried tightening it, but there ain’t a good way to keep it really in place that doesn’t interfere with the rest of her clothes. Can’t make the plate any smaller, gun would fall off…”

“Have you considered making a smaller gun?”

Both women looked at him as if he had just suggested the dumbest and most revolutionary thing in the world. “But… but…” Hailey stammered.

“Blam! Blam!” Ehtra chimed in, mimicking the sound of the gun while pulling an imaginary trigger.

John snorted at the scene twice over. Hailey struggling against the idea of downsizing a firearm was partly expected, but Ehtra’s reluctance and the way she expressed it was deeply amusing. Dark lips pressed together, while the grey angel contemplated the idea. Hailey groaned.

“That’s poss’bly the least sexy thaing that ev’r came out of your mouth, hon’.”

“Look, if you have less surface to strap something to, you have to use a lesser load, it’s just physics,” John told her. “You could engineer a more intricate, magical solution to this, no doubt, but even then the bolter would be pretty cumbersome, right?” He gestured at the gun on the table. It was basically as wide as Ehtra’s leg – and she was no less well-endowed downstairs than she was upstairs. “Just have a second, sleeker gun. She’ll get an inventory eventually, so she can swap them out later.”

“…Absolute heresy…” Ehtra mumbled.

“You have to be doing that on purpose,” John said.

The First of Wrath shook her head.

She really was just that much of a (legally distinct) simile.