“I can walk by myseeeeelf,” Rave whined, slowly shaking her legs while John carried her out of the arena. “Ya don’t need to carry me- Ah!” The half panicked noise came when John threw her up a bit in order to reaffirm his grip on her.

“If you walk yourself, how am I going to carry you like the princess you are?” John asked, kissing his pouting girlfriend on the lips. He tasted a bit of blood; she was still hurt and clearly barely conscious. After having collapsed moments ago, she had quickly woken up again. The moment John pulled his lips back, she passed right out again, though, her head hanging down.

The Gamer didn’t head immediately for the exit. Not by a longshot. First on his list was to heal the familiars that had survived. Starting with Salamander, because that was the quickest and easiest, the endflame elemental going incorporeal once Undine was done with her. Siena didn’t need the help; as a matter of fact, she had already disappeared elsewhere.

Aclysia, however, was a bit difficult. “I am not sure how to get you out of there,” John commented, putting his girlfriend down for a moment, just to scratch his head. Not the most helpful motion, but that was all he knew how to do in that moment.

The weaponized maid was embedded half a metre deep into the solid stone wall. Well, half of her was anyway. Her lower body was gone, to be found as molten drops of metal all across the glass cone.

‘I would say this is about… a tenth of Sigmund’s ability in terms of large-scale destruction,’ John thought, looking at the entire thing again. The shockwave around Rave hadn’t reached particularly far and it didn’t seem to affect landmarks all that much, while the main attack was all direct heat without fire. If something was blazed and started burning, that was more of a side effect than the actual intent of the attack. ‘Against the actual target though…’ John thought, and looked to Aclysia, ‘A fourth? Third? Not that easy to melt Aclysia… Don’t think that could have killed me in one punch either, but it’s getting there.’

‘For data collecting purposes,’ the weaponized maid added to his thoughts, not all that bothered by her current position, as the pain had faded after the initial impact. ‘I had Fortification active before the impact.’

‘Well, not sure if having a harder body makes a big difference against that,’ John commented, still scratching his head. It wasn’t just how deep Aclysia was buried, but also the fact that she was like two metres up. Without Gnome around, he couldn’t just get her out of there.

‘I am going to rectify this problem myself, Master,’ Aclysia stated and John saw her successfully ripping an arm out of her lodged position, grab the edge of her confinement and pull herself to freedom. She dropped in John’s arms, although less gracefully. She was heavier and just existing from the ribcage upwards.

“That marks two killed and two crippled to the point of non-functionality. I am honestly impressed, Jane,” John glanced at his girlfriend, awake again, but only in the way that somebody who is in delirium was awake. Her eyes were moving, there was something like a smile on her face, she gave him a thumbs-up, then she was out again. His attention returned to the half-present person in his arms. “Sure is good you encapsulate your core these days,” John noted, watching as Aclysia’s stomach reformed centimetre by centimetre.

The material for this appeared from seemingly nowhere. Artificial Spirits stored excess material in a sort of inventory space. At this point, Aclysia had plenty Baelementium to pull from, that she passively created from lesser materials that entered her body thanks to the Twilight’s Body ability. The only really irreplaceable part of her was her core, thusly. Its destruction would end her life. For that reason, it was hidden under a layer of the only material that she had available that was even harder than the elemental metal: Nathalia’s scales.

“Master, there is no need to wait for me,” Aclysia announced from John’s arms. “I will have to see to the cleaning of the arena regardless of your next actions.”

“Right…” John had to agree there. While the material lost wasn’t necessary to Aclysia’s reconstruction, they were still talking potential millions of dollars in molten L- and S-Baelementium here. For Aclysia to enrich that much, it would take days to weeks. Best to have it be absorbed back into her again.

That aside, the arena was a total mess. They were going to pause the tournament until it was at least partially fixed up. At least the damage hadn’t spilled out to the watcher’s area. That would have been a catastrophe for John’s reputation, especially if it hit the reporters.

With all of that said, the Gamer still wasn’t going to just leave. “You currently don’t have your teleport,” he reminded her. “Should Jeremiah decide to follow his appetite right now, while we’re weakened, that would be a problem. Best I wait here at least until you’re regenerated.”

‘Don’t worry,’ Siena mentally reached out to him, sending a mental picture of her overseeing Zensie and Jeremiah talking. From their expressions, the mood was quite heated. Which was likely good for John. ‘He is occupied with his toy.’

‘And you’re getting all of that?’ John asked.

‘I put your ears where you wanted them,’ Siena answered and caused the Gamer to pull out of the conversation with a grin. Everything continued to go along as he wanted.

John took another look at Aclysia’s health bar. It was still down to a fourth, but her regeneration was as absurd as ever, arguably more than his own mana regeneration even, so that state wouldn’t stay for too long. “Alright, I’ll leave you to it.” Carefully, he put her down and planted a quick kiss on her lips. “I want you to know that I am absolutely happy with you and your performance lately, Aclysia,” he told her before leaving. “You’ll have some reward later, okay?”

The weaponized maid smiled widely, her hips reconstructing themselves. Completely clothed, the maid dress was a part of Aclysia’s body after all. A non-moveable part (like her hair) because of some rule of minimal thickness in order for detailed magic impulses to get through. Not that it was too important, it was basically just some cloth after all. “Your thanks is all I need, John,” she spoke lovingly, holding his hand for a few seconds after they parted.

He gave her a last squeeze, then she let go. “I like giving you things, so let me do this,” he told her and then took off with Rave. Carrying his girlfriend all the way back to the mansion, he chatted with a few reporters that approached him. The things he answered were pretty unimportant, just how he felt now that he had won and other things of that nature. Everything more substantive, he ignored for another day.

At the mansion, he excused himself, went up to his and Rave’s bedroom in the second story and put her on the bed. That the sheets became a bit dirty because of that didn’t bother him particularly much. After carefully nudging Rave awake again and talking her calmly into getting out of her bodysuit, like a sober person to a playful drunk, he got to healing her. The wounds weren’t too terrible, nothing really life threatening. The worst thing would either be the cut on the shoulder or some broken ribs, the latter being a potential wound that John couldn’t confirm. He just saw the still-growing hematoma around her solar plexus where Aclysia had crashed into her.

Undine fixed all of that. Green healing slime was dispatched to one wound after another. A lot of it, replenishing a level 200 person’s vitality was more taxing on the mana than some average goon. As such, John had to give his own mana to the cause, but it all worked out.

He put the blanket over his naked, unblemished girlfriend and just smiled at her peacefully sleeping face. A tapping of tiny paws announced the arrival of someone else. “She did well out there,” Copernicus commented, clearly wanting to be noticed.

“That’s an understatement,” John answered, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “You’re helping her a lot more than I do,” the Gamer continued, gently brushing the pink, wild hair aside to see more of her. “When it was just the two of us, we used to train together all the time. Hell, even throughout much of the tournament, we did it together. I kind of miss these times. It was all a bit easier.”

Copernicus prowled by underneath a nightstand, rubbing the side of his head against the legs, then continued to walk along the walls, repeating that same marking with each bit of wooden furniture he came across. “It can’t be helped,” the solar feline stated quite clearly. “She needs techniques, you need only repeated usages. The kind of experience you need also differs.”

“Right,” John now lowered his hand to rest on Rave’s thigh, just to feel her warmth through the sheets. The touch had nothing sexual. “This is the second time I had out-levelled her and she suddenly jumps ahead of me as well.”

“A true pain in my sides, her and her unpredictability,” said the cat as he finished his way around the room and jumped onto the bed. His minimal weight sunk the smallest bit into the bed as he tapped over to his summoner’s resting place, sitting down and gracefully curving his tail until it stopped in front of his paws. “Yet, I cannot deny that I like her.”

The Gamer couldn’t help but giggle, gaining himself an unappreciative glance from Copernicus’ silver eyes. “You are just such a cat,” John told him with a warm smile. He didn’t have a lot to do with the suncat, but they did share a sense of comradery over this sleeping beauty. “Can you keep her safe when I can’t?” he suddenly asked.

“Preparing yourself for failure?” Copernicus asked with a mocking purr.

“Preparing myself for the inevitable,” John returned, his eyes closing a little bit. He felt the weight of the world again. With his guild expanded by yet another swath of land and a good amount of people, the responsibility he had to bear was once more on the forefront of his mind. “Our path is adventurous to say the least. Without all the romanticism that comes along with that word, I might as well just call it dangerous. There’ll be a time, no matter how hard I try, where my initial plans fail in some way. I am preparing for that time, back-ups and back-ups for those back-ups, layers of security. I can’t guarantee anything without wrapping an armour around those I care about though. An armour that would be equally protective and restrict all movement. Which is a life I don’t want for anyone.”

There was silence following that. The question John had posed still hung in the air. Ultimately, Copernicus answered. “If it meant protecting her, I would die for it.”

__________________________________________________________________________

“Alright, Jeremiah, this is your island,” John told the Art Eater, a day later. Everyone was completely recovered; the tournament had been wrapped up and now the islands were distributed to everyone according to their placement. Of course, Jeremiah had won the battle for third place. Won in the sense that Corith hadn’t even wanted to bother being beaten around for a few minutes for a slightly bigger island and immediately gave up.

With them were a whole bunch of people, as they were going from one island to the next and doing a little ceremony each time. Basically every person of some power and reporter that wanted to see this thing through was around.

“Fantastic,” the Art Eater responded, rolling his neck. Ever so slowly, a grin appeared on his face. It was clear that he was about to do something. “And that means that-“

“That means that this is now grounds of the Lake Alliance, specifically the Niagara guild,” John interrupted him. The earth began to rumble, an earthquake inside a Protected Space, as massive amounts of dirt were moved around. Something that could only have one possible origin. “Which makes this a war zone, isn’t that right?”

Jeremiah’s grin died as slowly as it had come as he realized the Gamer had already foreseen what came next. There was a sudden tumult when a number of holes opened up under less powerful individuals and John’s elementals assured that the more powerful individuals ended up in the earthen confinements. People stood around, confused as to what happened, as John’s overdesigned scheme came to its conclusion.

Just like people that came with John onto the island were brought under the earth, people that had been there beforehand were suddenly ejected onto the surface. People that wore the insignia of the Lake Alliance, a simplistic depiction of the Great Lakes on a hexagonal, were forced out of their hiding spots.

Rather than explain himself, either to the confused onlookers on his side or the shocked Jeremiah, John just grabbed his phone and played a file he had already open. A snippet of a conversation between Zensie and Jeremiah.

“So, what, we’re going to ambush him?” the former second of the Small Lake Pact spoke in the recording.

“As long as we get the drop on him, the fucker won’t be able to do anything.”

“When though?”

“When he transfers the island. Nobody can say we did something dishonourable. My superiors can’t circlejerk about an invasion as well, careful cowards, once the island belongs to me, the Gamer will have technically invaded the Lake Alliance.”

John stopped the recording. “Look, my dude,” he announced with a grin. “You aren’t smart enough to get ME on technicalities. Especially if I am the one writing the words.”

Siena had put recorders all around the places that Zensie and Jeremiah met regularly. The moment John had found out in what exact way they planned to try and one-up him, he had sent Gnome to the island. Of course, he hadn’t just put her into a boat and driven her over, that would have been way too obvious.

There was a pretty reliable way to smuggle Gnome somewhere though. Namely, fusing her with Siena into Darkness. That elemental could travel unseen even between shadows, creating an outline on the floor of herself that was easy to miss if one wasn’t paying attention. That way, Gnome had been put on the island unseen, hid herself underground, waited since yesterday evening, and accumulated John’s mana for the past few hours. Which was also how she could even move that much soil reliably.

All of this was taking advantage of tools and knowledge only the Gamer had. The Combination skill. The absurd 500 kilometres his elementals could distance themselves from him. Getting information unseen and being able to gauge his enemies’ responses by regularly using Observe on those he found out were in on the conspiracy but didn’t have a protection against scrying magic.

“Now, I am going to make you an offer,” John said, keeping an eye out for the reporters, many of which had hastily started recording upon this whole thing suddenly going down. “You can fight me here, with your scattered forces,” he gestured towards the Small Lake Pact traitors, all currently confined in their own holes, then towards the reinforcements the Lake Alliance had not-so-successfully smuggled there, recovering from their sudden ejection into open daylight, “or you can admit defeat, for the second time in as many days, and I will let you and your people go. The traitors will stay, of course.”

Watching Jeremiah turn from self-assured to beet red with rage was the greatest reward John could have asked for. This entire plan had been completely overdesigned for this simple accomplishment, but John wanted to ride it out nonetheless. It had been a mere side plot of his bigger aspirations anyway.

“This isn’t over,” the Art Eater growled.

“Fighting it is, then?” John asked, raising his left hand, which was engulfed in flames a moment later as he equipped Purgatory. The sight of that item must have put a dent in the man’s rage, as Jeremiah turned a bit pale now, likely reminded at the spell that thing had unleashed on his leg. That it wasn’t recharged didn’t actually matter, Jeremiah couldn’t know that.

“…Fuck you…” Jeremiah spat out and then walked off with shoulder’s hanging in defeat.