Collide Gamer

Fianna’s report was concerning.

It was only half a page long, summarizing what minor activity she had been noting recently. Except for the second sighting of the man whose blurry photo they had managed to extract before, there was nothing concrete in it. The disciplined maid had left a singular line at the bottom that succinctly described John’s own feeling on the matter: “Either we are dealing with ghosts or someone of immense intel skill.”

‘Knowing Latebloomers, it could be both,’ John thought.

He closed the window. Reports were given via Harem Comms. There was no more reliable and secret way to communicate. To date, the Harem Comms had only been suppressed by one entity. If it took an Izha-level telepath to pull that feat, then John felt secure enough about it.

“So, what should our next move be?” John asked.

Wet, erotic slurps marked Nightingale’s slow glide upwards. The folds of her throat-pussy reluctantly relinquished their grip. With a loud pop, John’s cock sprung free, its length shining from spit and Nightingale’s sexual fluids.

It did not remain unclaimed for long. As Nightingale cleared her throat, Ehtra’s lips wrapped around his manhood. She tried to look annoyed and failed. Half-lidded eyes and the vibrations of her throat made it very clear how much she enjoyed sucking him off. A submissive did not need an orgasmic throat to enjoy being on her knees.

“Pressure must be applied, my patriarch.” The goddess of the night beheld him with her purple eyes. Though flushed with arousal and messy from her long service, she nonetheless displayed the wisdom of a socialite. “Cracks do not form through observation alone.”

John grunted in acknowledgement of her words and Ehtra’s hot throat. His cock tensed. White lightning danced in the corners of his vision. Thoughts lamed for the duration of his orgasm, then accelerated back to their proper pace.

Gently, to not deprive her of it too quickly, John pulled out of Ehtra’s throat. The sour maid was still twitching from the cum-induced orgasm when he had fully pulled out of her. A wanton sigh was closely followed by a grumble. “We don’t have to hurry that much…”

John let Ehtra do her sweet-sour spiel and headed for the bathroom for a very quick shower. The maid and the harpy followed him. Much as he enjoyed the sensation of their fresh fluids on his skin, that shifted quite rapidly after the sex and when he was walking around. Also, as much as he enjoyed shower sex, he kept it to cleaning himself up real quick. A bit of a challenge, since it was a one-person cabin and they were scrubbing three bodies clean.

They could also have spread out between the three bathrooms that they had access to, but that would be a lot less fun.

John put the suit back on. The Ambassador Double typically came with an indistinguishable copy of his clothes. Like with the Creator Puppet, he had decided to dress the second body up the regular way. It was just more convenient on long missions.

“Alright, everyone, gather up!” he shouted into the building.

The other haremettes, having scattered through the three floors to have some time alone, congealed back in the dining room. John swiftly explained to them what Fianna had sent him.

“Claire and I will head out and search different parts of the city,” he said.

“Why different?” Claire whined.

“Why just the two of you?” Lyndell asked a more reasonable question.

“Because we need to cover more ground and because us two are the ones who can operate with safety in mind. This body is expensive but no real loss, Claire can teleport back to my actual self in an emergency.” John gave Lyndell a curious look. “If you can engineer some similar effect to get out in an emergency, I would hear it.”

Lyndell put a hand up. The black roots beneath her disguise rose to the upper layers of her epidermis, forming miniature runes in her palm. There was a subtle shift in the energy of the air with every sigil she crafted. She closed her hand. The pressure returned to normal. “Not quick.”

The Gamer nodded. Lyndell’s rune magic, or whatever moniker was most accurate for it, was extremely versatile but slow compared to what others at their level could do. Advantages and weaknesses, magic had a lot of these.

“Then I’ll be out now. If anything happens, you’ll hear via the Harem Comms.”

John and Claire stepped into the elevator together, rode down to the base floor, then shared a kiss on the sidewalk. They were now officially past the point where they hid their presence. From this point onwards, the plan was simple: walk around. Either they would stumble over something by the power of brute forcing chances or their target would reveal themselves.

It was cold in the streets of San Jose. Warm for winter, by some measures, with temperatures barely staying above freezing, but cold all the same. John adjusted his suit a bit out of habit. Though this temperature would not have been dangerous even for his real body, the human instinct remained. The seeping of his heat from his skin was uncomfortable.

He kept an eye on his surroundings. There was a steady stream of activity around him. Nightlife had started and San Jose, by virtue of the surrounding tech companies, had enough wealthy young people to support a bit of buzz. Though, from what John saw, he was dealing more with the women in office jobs and the finance bros networking than any programmers and inventors.

John had certainly seen worse flavours of nightlife, both back in Springfield’s Ruby Road and, absolutely, when he had been out and about in NYC. That being said, he also saw the usual idiocies of drunk people. He did a large swerve around someone vomiting against a lantern pole.

Every step took him further out of the bright lights of the inner city and carried him across the wealth gap between Silicon Valley and the rest of the city. The first thing he noted was the condition of the street. One block to the next, it felt, the city oversight had disregarded all care for the asphalt. The locals did not help this foundation of dirtiness. Sacks of trash were left simply sitting around.

‘If I am charitable, then I have to assume they were just never collected. If I am realistic, they decided to make it everybody else’s problem,’ the Gamer thought. ‘No, realistic is the wrong word… both are realistic.’

John strutted by a dark alley, barely noticing a homeless man who was huddling under several blankets, his possessions kept in a shopping cart. Dressed as nicely as he was, he knew all too well that he could become the target of a common thug. Though, he was not actually too worried. He knew the psychology behind the picking of victims. As a well-built and visually affluent young man, anything but the most drug-addled moron would look at him and decide that he was too much trouble. Criminals knew that the best victim was someone just wealthy enough to have something to take from and not wealthy enough that they could put a word in with the powers-that-be.

As with all things, those that had power, or were perceived to have power, could get away with so much more.

The window appeared in front of John suddenly. He stopped in the middle of the dark street. ‘Interesting,’ he thought. ‘Someone is feeling very confident. That makes my life either a lot easier or a lot harder. Let’s see which one it is.’

John pressed the confirmation button. The wind that had been playing around him suddenly ceased. Sources of artificial light disappeared. His magical sight needed no adjustment, allowing him to make out matters clearly.

"Se resistió cuando lo jalé, creo que esto es una mala idea" The voice of a young man reached his ears first, closely followed by a second, much deeper speaker.

“Cállate, tenemos que hacerlo.”

“Puedo oírlos, ¿saben?” John shouted into the dark. He saw little benefit in pretending he was unaware of their presence.

There was a moment of silence, then a singular figure stepped out into the street. The man was somewhere between his late twenties and early forties. A wide range, and his looks made it genuinely difficult to be certain. He had a good looking beard and the kind of hardened features that young people rarely managed, but his skin was also taut. Though John would say that the man was objectively attractive, he also had a bit of an unfortunately large head, only further emphasized by his smoothly shaved baldness.

The man stuck to Spanish, as he continued, “Did not expect you to speak our language.”

John obliged him, responding in the same. “Even if I hadn’t been born in this country, I would have picked it up. It’s one of the most spoken tongues on the planet.” When John threw an Observe at the man, he expected it to fail.

Yet it did not.

For all the want he had to tease the man, John held his tongue. There was likely more intel to be gained if he didn’t reveal his hand too fast. “The way you speak makes me think you know who I am?”

“You are ‘emperor’ John Newman.” Sanchez spoke with open disdain. “You’re here to shackle this city. Well, I’m here to tell you to get out of it! These are my streets and we don’t need your help.”

“That so?” John asked, mentally superimposing the picture of the one lead they had onto this man. ‘That’s a match,’ he thought, meeting the grim gaze of Sanchez head on. “Well, in return I have to tell you that I just finished wrestling this continent from centuries of instability, so I am not going to let it degenerate into anarchic pockets again.”

Raising both of his hands, Sanchez brought forth his magic. John had the decency to flinch, to at least pretend he was being cautious about what happened. Conjured from nothing, a sword fashioned of red crystal appeared in the Hispanic man’s hands. It illuminated his fur-trimmed, brownish-red coat with arcane light, surrounding it like a torn veil. “What will you do if I say leave?”

[Sanchez Chapter 2014 AI: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/5684897ae339.png]

John took a step backward. Sanchez advanced a step. “Violence isn’t exactly my skillset… I have summons for that.”

A Summoned Sprite manifested in front of John. It was a living rock with two large, four-fingered hands on barely existing arms. Its feet were comically huge, each of them another rock in its own right, covered in moss. The most ridiculous part of its looks, however, was the face. Two black, angular, thick eyebrows set above big, round eyes, a flat, broad nose between them and a stupid smile beneath it all.

“Subdue him,” that was John’s simple order for the Earth Sprite. It immediately glided forwards, skating alone on the flats of its feet.

Sanchez seemed offended at what had been chosen to fight him, until he realized the speed of the creature. His sword turned larger, sharper, and swung downwards at his enemy.

[Sanchez vs Earth Sprite Chapter 2014 AI: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/6154c101a767.png] Read complete versıon only at novel~fire~net

The red crystal sword sunk into the top of the absurd-looking elemental, only to stop between the eyebrows. “OOOOOOOOOOOOOYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” A sound like an annoyed football fan escaped the creature, then it swung for Sanchez’s kneecap.

“Owww—FUCK!” The Hispanic man stumbled back several steps, checking his knee once he had some distance established. “You shitty pebble, I will show you what for!”

‘Definitely not very used to Abyssal fights yet.’ John put his hands into his pocket. ‘He completely forgot that I am here.’

With Base Stats of 202 and a 50% increase to Endurance, the Earth Sprite was the inferior of Sanchez in every way except Endurance, where they were about equal. Even before considering the difference brought about by the Innate Ability Sanchez had, the victory of the Hispanic man was assured.

In the meantime, John could study his fighting style. Which was… not terrible, actually. ‘Pretty bad situational awareness and he clearly underestimated his opponent at first. Still, his footwork is decent, good even.’ The Gamer’s gaze switched to the alleyway. ‘Let’s see what else I can learn.’

When a human was angry, his peripheral vision collapsed, narrowing down on what was in front of him. It was just what happened to people. For that reason, John could feel for Sanchez when he failed to notice the Gamer just… walking past him. The man and the Sprite were still exchanging blows, the former gradually taking chunks out of the latter.

The alleyway appeared empty, ending in a smooth wall after five steps. John looked at the floor, raising an eyebrow at the way ancient stains just suddenly stopped when they hit the concrete slab. ‘That’s weird… I have control over this Illusion Barrier. No Fateweaver should be capable of manifesting anything.

Three Blast Rays tore apart the wall. The alley continued behind it. The second person wasn’t there. An open door indicated a hurried escape.

A flash of red made John turn around. He caught the ebbing away of the light and the loud cracking of the pavement. He walked back out of the alley, to analyse the aftermath. The street had been stripped of its pavement, all of which had been pushed up, creased into a clump at the edge of the Illusion Barrier.

‘The sword works on an arcane basis then?’ John thought. In the arcane spectrum of colours, red was representative of magic dealing with kinetic force. What was before him certainly looked very kinetic. “Very impressive. I think you are-“

This time, he was prepared for it. A needle pushed against his control of the barrier. He tightened the control of his mind around the needle, yet it slipped through the mesh all the same. For a small bracket in time, in a specific way, control was overwritten. ‘So, this is how Macuil felt with Lee, huh?’ John thought.

The changes a Fateweaver made to a barrier were always slow. By the time the ground beneath John began to open, he had already stepped out of the area.

“LET’S LEAVE!” the second voice shouted.

Sanchez whirled around. “I CAN-“

“HE IS FUCKING WITH YOU, MAN! I AM LEAVING!”

John furrowed his eyebrow. ‘Someone is smart around here,’ he thought and activated Summon Hero. Simultaneously, he launched two Mana Chains at Sanchez. That was the only spell he dared to use, everything else was too likely to end in a lethal outcome.

Sanchez swung his weapon in a wide arc. It was enough to force the chains off-course. Seeing the silver slam into the ground beside him seemed to be what knocked sense into the Hispanic man. He raised his hand up, just as the summoning for the Hero finished. At three times John’s or Sanchez’s speed, the summoned Unit moved across at a rapid pace, spear going straight for the arm.

Not quick enough.

Sanchez disappeared from the Illusion Barrier. The bothersome needle was gone with him. John immediately left the Illusion Barrier as well, only to see Sanchez and the other figure sprint around a corner.

‘I suppose I’ll let them get away with this,’ he thought and put his hands in his pockets. He turned around and walked back the way he came. ‘That paid off a whole lot quicker than I thought… which also meant that they knew I was coming. A mole or a seer, what am I dealing with here? The latter feels more likely. A mole would have known to tell them to take precautions against Observe.’

John suppressed the urge to whistle. He was in a good mood, but filling the air with high-pitched noises past midnight was just bad manners. All he had needed to do was use himself as bait for an hour and already he was on the road to answers. He had two names.

In the modern world, just about everything could be found with two names.