John expected it to be the hand of someone new, a previously unknown leader figure perhaps, but it was just Wendy. “I got everyone covered, so now I have time for you,” the redhead stated; her semi-mocking attitude had not gotten any less intense from the earlier humiliation. It seemed to simply be the way she talked. No loss on John’s side, he could deal with this much better than open hostility or subservient spit-licking. “Let’s go to the audience room, go, go!”

Turning him around, she started to shove him towards the door. John mentally called out to Beatrice, only to find that his girlfriend was already right behind. Stark naked and smiling. Her clothes were in the inventory of the passive maid behind her, so her not getting dressed was a decision based on raw exhibitionism.

The party continued, escalated even. With Nashara’s attention no longer being taken by the Gamer and her sexual urges agitated, she turned towards the nearest male and started begging for a good dicking. Didn’t take long for a small group of bored and desperate men to gather around her. Elsewhere, people just continued to talk like normal.

‘I still have questions about their reproductive cycle,’ John thought, feeling incredibly thankful that he had a perk to disable things on his side. ‘Do succubi get pregnant easily? Do they ever inform the potential fathers? Hell, do they even know who all comes into question?’ John scratched his head and wondered how he would integrate a succubus population into Fusion. ‘Depends on how many there are and how quick their numbers grow. If the answers are ‘low’ and ‘slowly’ then perhaps they could open a sort of specialized brothel? I would need some sort of law enforcing that they clearly state which succubus is going for a baby so that the customers could avoid those if they don’t want to sire some future succubus.’

There were other health concerns that came in depending on how truthful Nashara had been about the life drain aspect of things and the question of how good succubi were at sex. If they had ways to effectively enthrall men, then that was going to be an issue John had to contend with. It was completely possible that he straight-up had to declare succubi undesirable. Which was a nice way to say genocide or, at the very least, mass exiling. That was the final measure, but if they turned out to be an unredeemable force, born with instincts that ran counter to a healthy human society, then that was the only remaining course of action.

Given that the men behind him behaved rather normally, even while the succubus was taking turns who she had her mouth/hands on, that seemed to be an unfounded fear. John pushed the option to the back of his mind. He would contemplate the issue some more at another opportunity. It was important that he outlined very carefully when such an action was justified. An action only contemplated at the moment of suggestion could easily be used too early or too late and the death toll in either case was something he wanted to avoid.

For now, he had something more pleasant to pay attention to, being Wendy’s miniskirt and the naked bodies of both his girlfriend and Vita, who accompanied them as they left the room and went into the sterile, white hallway that connected everything. There were no paintings, no statues, not even any sort of carpet. The only things that gave the corridor any sort of personality were the doors, each of them looked different while keeping to a uniform size.

Wendy guided them diagonally across the hallway to a door that was black and smooth. Inside was a surprisingly simple board room. The centre of it was dominated by an elliptic table, fashioned from dark wood, around which stood several, purple-cushioned chairs, and a flatscreen at the back wall finished the typical business atmosphere. John looked around for any oddities or other surprises. All he found were the people already with him. Between Wendy’s dress, the maid and the nudes, he was the only one who looked like he belonged there. Vita somewhat eliminated that problem while getting dressed in the blink of an eye.

Literally, as John blinked and the naked pariah was suddenly wearing her clothes. The silver lines spread over her face for a moment, like some sort of war-paint. A breath and they were gone. That woman continued to be unnerving and smiled her empty smile at him.

He was also the only guy in the room. Not that he was complaining. “Your audience room is pretty business-like,” John remarked in a casual tone, as he took a seat. He didn’t wait for it to be offered since Wendy had already decided to plop her butt down elsewhere and just doing what came to mind seemed to be the usual course of action around here. His girlfriend decided that his lap was the best place to sit down, while Aclysia and Beatrice stood behind his chair.

“We can take this to the throne room, if you would prefer that.” Wendy pushed her seat away from the table and then placed her crossed feet on top. Her blue gaze went over the tip of her shoes, just as John’s view travelled over the, still wet, hair of Rave. “But I would be sitting on it. Think your ego can take that?”

“Barely,” John joked and shook his head. “I wasn’t complaining anyway, business suits me.” After a moment of deliberation and looking at Vita, who was simply present in the room and sometimes walked from one spot to another, he remarked, “I have to express genuine surprise that you’re the leader though.”

“I’m not,” Wendy yawned.

Now the Gamer was confused again. “So, am I not going to speak to your leader?”

“Can’t speak to someone who doesn’t exist,” the goddess of fast food declared.

While that explained why John had never been able to gather who he actually needed to contact to engage in diplomacy with the Florida guild, he was still confused as far as the general situation went. “But you are speaking in the name of the guild, right?”

“Totally,” Wendy nodded. From her tone, he wasn’t quite able to grasp if she was being earnest or sarcastic.

“We have a leader,” Vita suddenly chimed in and clapped her hands. The large screen, now to John’s left, activated. “Minarchia, show Fred.”

“Showing Fred,” a robotic, female voice in the style of Siri or Cortana responded. The image of a chicken appeared. It had brown feathers, the type of head-shape that identified it as female and looked overall plain, standing in front of a wooden coop on a green lawn.

“This is our current leader,” the pariah stated.

“…Am I looking at some sort of shapeshifter or is that a genuine chicken?”

“The latter.”

“It’s a girl-chicken though,” Rave chimed in. “Why did ya call it Fred?”

“Because it is Fred, the Cosmic Chicken,” Vita stated with a straight face, her steady smile having vanished in favour of a determined stare.

“So it IS some sort of powerful entity?”

“Nah, we’re probably going to eat her next week,” Wendy declared.

“We are not,” Vita disagreed vehemently. “I will feed you to Cheshire if you fry our dear leader.”

Wendy threw her hands into the air in a defensive motion. “Oy, don’t you joke about unleashing that Nevr’est on me! That’s too scary to make a joking threat with!”

“I’m not joking.” The black-haired woman’s empty smile returned, a pitch-black knife suddenly appearing in her hand. “You will not harm a feather on Fred.”

“She would be delicious!”

“And you would be reduced to nothing.”

John let them banter on as he took note of something specific. ‘Cheshire, huh?’ he thought and looked at Vita, not as an attractive woman but as yet another enigma. ‘That’s a very specific mention for a very powerful blank to make. I imagined she would be blonde. She also looks pretty good for someone over 200 years old. If she is Alice, that is.’ From just a single mention, the Gamer wasn’t willing to make the call, but it took no superhuman mind to establish the connection.

“Not that ya two aren’t entertaining,” Rave spoke up on the behalf of their entire group, “but we kinda wanna know a few things here, so can we talk about what’s going on? Ya said ya wanted to talk about ‘this, that and Nia’ and we’re kinda, sorta, very eager about that last bit.”

“You’re sounding a bit like Sylph there,’ John whispered into her ear.

“I can talk a lot if I want to!” she returned.

“Right, right, the Gamer is a big busy boy with big busy pants.” Wendy turned her attention back to them, while Vita resumed her prowling through the room. “To explain things to your dough-brain, we here in Florida only have the guild as a central rules thingy. We aren’t really that organized.”

“I can dig that.” John nodded. There would have been issues if the local culture was more tyrannical, like the Small Lake Pact had been. Funnily enough, the Floridian goofballs had the closest thing to a common sense mindset when it came to society he had witnessed so far (common sense by his understanding). Personal freedoms and rights, a central body of law and, apparently, a very liberal leadership. “But you DO speak for your guild in this meeting, right?” He needed the clarification. There was such a thing as going too far down the liberal rabbit hole.

“We had a vote on a few things, so yeah, I’m authorized on those topics.” Wendy changed the position of her legs, leaving her panties visible between her meaty thighs for just a moment. Despite the situation, John felt his erection pressing against Rave’s butt. She started grinding against him. First by pure instinct, then with perverted intent, smiling over her shoulder. The carefree aura of Florida definitely had them acting even more brazenly than they usually did.

“And what topics would that be?” he inquired further, while embracing his girlfriend tightly. His right was around her waist, the sole purpose being to hold her close, while he grabbed her soft chest with the other. “Or should I ask ‘What do you mean by this and that’ to keep with your earlier attempts at being mysterious?”

“What do you mean ‘attempt’? Do you know what this or that is?”

“No, but if it’s that obvious, I don’t call it ‘mysterious’. The term I would use is ‘obnoxious’,” the Gamer pointed out and pulled gently at Rave’s nipple. ‘Natural boobs this firm are just unfair to the rest of womankind,’ he thought as he followed the jiggle. Then he groped her firmly, listening to her moan. ‘If anyone deserves to have this girl as his, it is absolutely me though.’ An entitled thought, but John couldn’t help but mean it.

“Just lose the pants already, tiger,” Rave fidgeted in his lap. “We just came out of a room where they had an orgy with a succubus, there’s no need to hold back,” she preempted any second guesses he might have. The fact that the young goddess across the table had recently made close acquaintances with their skills as lovers helped.

John opened his character screen and was ready to go through the motions when his system suddenly began to fizzle. Letters were displaced, parts of the windows went green or assumed any assortment of random colours, giving the impression of a graphics card defect.

“Are you mortal?”

John raised his hand to fire an emergency Mana Blade into the chest of the pariah that stood next to his chair. Although she had been openly walking around the entire time, the Gamer had no idea when she had gotten so close. His arm shivered, as did his girlfriend’s entire body. He felt strangely naked and had to concentrate to keep instincts from taking over and making him run as far from the alien presence as he could.

“Stop this,” he demanded. If she showed any more hostility, he would throw as much magic and power at her as he could. It would be a contest in her favour. Even though a blank could be made to fade if they had to neutralize too much magical force, there was no doubt they were the best mage killers around.

The giant smile on Vita’s face was predatory, revealing her teeth in a primally threatening fashion. Despite that, she turned around and walked away, all of John’s systems and emotions normalizing the second her eyes no longer rested on him. Both he and Rave took a deep breath.

Vita walked around the table; the walls were partly visible behind her. She had turned translucent like a ghost. If nothing else, this confirmed that she had her limits as well. If Gamer’s Body, the second strongest of John’s abilities, wouldn’t have taken any toll on her, he would have thought himself in the presence of a Romulus-level threat. Only Gamer’s Spirit was more powerful and that one was the foundation on which all of his other mechanics rested.

“I’m very much mortal, yes,” John, his fear now swinging into anger, growled. “Threaten me again like that and the outcome will be regretful for everyone in our vicinity.”

“It is simply fun to tease the powerful,” Vita mused and went over to Wendy. She bowed down, the blank and the goddess engaging in a kiss as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Quickly, the pariah regained most of her substance. Her kind often used physical contact with beings anchored to this world to restore their own connection to it.

Even seeing that, John did not regain the mood to continue where he had left off with undressing and instead just cuddled his girlfriend for some reaffirmation in life. ‘My apologies, Master,’ Aclysia’s voice slipped into his mind. ‘I… we failed to notice her approach.’

‘Can’t blame you,’ he tried to ease their hurt pride as bodyguards. ‘She clearly has her ways to undermine attention.’

If Vita wanted to pull something like that off again, it was now made incredibly hard by the two maids, Aclysia in particular, staring at her. Their emerald eyes were filled with an emotion bordering on hatred. Threatening John had that sort of effect.

“Sorry for Vita, she does things,” Wendy said once her tongue was no longer occupied. “As my apology, I’ll stop beating around the bush. ‘This and that’ is the basic question whether we join Fusion.”

“As much as I want to discuss that,” John softly interrupted her, “could we talk about Nia first?” It wasn’t a good look as a leader that he put his personal desires before the diplomatic questions, but this entire trip was born of that failing.

“The two are tangled, so no,” Wendy denied his request. “Here’s the thing, we’ve decided Fusion looks all dandy and that’d we like to join. A few conditions, though, seven, to be clear.” She raised her hands and counted. “We want to not pay taxes, we want to not be part of any army, we want regular shipments of prune cakes, we want the right to leave whenever we want, we want to talk to the Horned Rat, we want to get three IBMAs and we want a national holiday for the cuddling of animals.”

“…Those are ludicrous demands,” John stated and shook his head. “In vastly different ways. I can grant some of those, but there is absolutely no way I can do the first two.”

“Right, so here is what we’re going to do.” Wendy smiled. “You’ll face a series of trials and competitions that we set-up. For every challenge, you can wager one of our conditions. If you win, you can discard it entirely, if we win, you have to accept it as we want it, if there’s a tie or if we’re happy with your performance, we meet somewhere in the middle.”

John raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t fundamentally opposed to the idea of another tournament that helped him get what he wanted. Competitions in a controlled setting were always preferable to actual war. However, the rules of this particular one sounded awful. If he had no hand in the planning, he just had to trust that they didn’t screw him over before he even set foot in the metaphorical arena.

“Why would I agree to that?” he asked, therefore, having a terrible inkling what the answer would be.

“Because we won’t tell you where Nia is if you don’t.” Wendy crossed her hands behind her head and smiled smugly. “Don’t worry, pal, we won’t be unreasonable. We don’t want to piss the Nerdolus off so hard that he comes crushing us down the line. What we want is a proper look at who you are.”

“If it calms you in any way,” Vita chimed in, sitting down on the table, right next to Wendy’s legs. “This was my condition for training Nia and she agreed to it.”

“Which I just have to take your word on is what happened,” John pointed out. He already had his mind made up on agreeing to this tournament. Before he let them know that, however, he wanted to see what he could get in his favour. “You’ll have to forgive me if I’m sceptical.”