Collide Gamer

“Ladies, you can stop staring at me now,” Maximillian declared. “This is the kind of female attention I don’t want, you bunch of tomboys.”

The gravity king sat on the cave floor, getting healed by Undine, kissed by Alice, and analysed by Jane, Metra, Salamander and Scarlett. John would not have qualified Scarlett under the ‘fighting maniac’ category of his women, but there she was clearly annoyed that Maximillian had beaten someone she had proclaimed untouchable. Then again, she likely was just upset that her prediction model was wrong.

John did not have any problem accepting his friend’s victory. For one, he had earned it. More importantly, some people were just better suited to fighting certain enemies than others. Above even that, John highly doubted Maximillian could pull off this miracle reliably… though he wasn’t going to bring this up in front of the awed knights.

The king ultimately taking care of his own problem was quite good for his reputation.

John walked over to Scarlett. “You filmed all of that, right?” he asked, to which the redhead waved the detached ‘visor’ in her hands. By its very nature, it necessarily had cameras installed and she had several storage units installed all over her body to save that data. Usually the direct visual data got pruned fairly quickly due to the file size of high-resolution video, but a couple of minutes her terabytes of storage could certainly keep around until it was passed along for celebration purposes.

A groan pulled their attention over to Ernst. The man had been out for about thirty seconds now, which had been more than enough time to rope him up in metal bindings. Admittedly, none of them knew if that would actually keep him. Either he would now be trapped, incapable of breaking them due to his own ability, or he had a ‘base power’ state that he could use to snap them open.

If it was the former, this whole thing could have been solved with a simple pair of handcuffs.

Out of precaution, they surrounded Ernst on all sides with blades. There was no intent to stab him, just a layer of pointy ends to assure he stayed put.

“Been a while since I lost a brawl,” Ernst groaned. “Granted, I have not been fighting too much the last few years. Too busy with arthritis.” The ripped, old man stretched his back until there was a satisfying pop. “Aaaah, really good suplex. Did not see that coming whatsoever.”

“Glad you enjoyed it,” Maximillian stated. “I now offer you a simple choice. Swear fealty to me or die.”

“Hah!” Ernst laughed. He did not even ask whether he could be imprisoned or not. Everyone understood that he was too strong to risk being contained. “I am honoured you’d take my word for it, your majesty.”

“I would simply have to beat you again if you turned out to be an oathbreaker.” Maximillian’s regal confidence reflected in his posture. Arms behind his back, he waited for Ernst’s response.

The Survivor rolled his jaw once, before shaking his head. “Sorry to disappoint. I’ve put my lot in with other entities.”

“The Tzitzimimeh,” Maximillian stated. “Tell us what you know about them.”

“And then what? You’ll show me leniency? Hah!” Ernst tilted back as much as the wire-ropes allowed him to. “I’ll do you the favour anyhow. I know absolutely nothing about them. I didn’t even know you’d call them Tzitzimimeh, though obviously I knew that Nyala wasn’t human. The sex with her was out of this world. You killed her?”

“Presumably,” John answered.

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Ernst asked.

“It means she didn’t leave a corpse,” John answered. “And in the Abyss there’s a saying: ‘That which leaves no corpse behind can never be trusted.’”

“What? You got a bunch of people cheating death in the Abyss?”

The Gamer chuckled. That was practically the same question he had asked when he had first heard the saying. He left it to Maximillian to answer. “Such cases are astonishingly rare, even in these times. The proverb refers more to illusions and such trickery.” The king shook his head. “Pleasant as it is to talk to you, if you will not swear fealty, then I am wasting time on a dead man.”

“That’s fair,” Ernst grunted.

“Any last wish? Any next of kin I should contact about your demise?”

“Nah, I had taken care of that myself. My brats all think I died of a well-deserved stroke.” Ernst glanced over his shoulder at the multitude of confined followers, still locked into the floor. Gnome had at least done them all the favour of facing them the right way to witness the events. “What’ll happen to them?”

“They will be judged individually on whether or not they can be part of the regular Abyss,” Maximillian stated.

“All right… well, let’s get this over with then.”

“Lady Edeltraub,” Maximillian declared. “The execution falls to you.”

“An honour, my liege,” the knightess declared and stepped forwards. The cave was dead silent as the woman approached Ernst. It was wise to choose one of the knights as the executioner. Ernst shouldn’t get the necessary boost in power out of that to break his restrictions, at least not quick enough to dodge the blade.

An assumption that was proven wrong instantly.

Ernst flexed his muscles. The steel cables suddenly snapped, ripped apart like they were made out of wet tissue paper. Shards of the metal exploded in every direction. The brawlers in the background cheered. “Morons!” Ernst snapped at them, still seated.

Everyone on Maximillian’s side was suppressing their instinct to jump at the Survivor. It would have given him a disastrous power spike, turning what had been a fairly clean operation into an absolute mess.

‘Though I am happy to know that this couldn’t have been solved by handcuffing him in his sleep,’ the Gamer thought. ‘I would have beat myself up over that for years.’

Ernst waved at the knightess, shooing her away. “Nothing against you, lady, but I’ve earned my execution by the commander in chief.”

“Boss-“

“Shut the fuck up!” Ernst snapped back at the goon. “I’ve been beaten and I’m not swearing fealty. It’s that simple.” The Survivor turned back to Maximillian, a solemn smirk on his face. “This is a good way to go out.”

Maximillian took the sword from the knightess and weighed it in his hand. Ernst hung his head, still smiling while he presented the back of his neck. “This is a waste,” the gravity king declared.

“No, this is exactly how it should be,” Ernst said in his last words.

The blade swung downwards in a long arch, slicing through the old man’s neck cleanly. The head dropped before the crossed legs of the man, then the body lost its internal balancing, slumping to one side. Green energy lifted from the stones all around them, dissipating into the air.

Scarlett put a clawed finger to the cave wall, effortlessly scratching the solid rock. Perfect Challenger had been lifted. Ernst was well and truly dead.

_____________________________________________________________________

It only took one more day for the matter to wrap up.

Lorelei made passing judgement on the remaining members of Ernst’s followers a streamlined affair. Some were swiftly executed, being of a radical anarchistic bent that would have inevitably put them back on track towards terrorism. Most were in a middle category of ‘deeply displeased new Abyssals’, who were saved by Ernst’s honourable death. Not because Maximillian felt merciful towards them on that basis but because seeing their leader lay down his life in that manner had them emulate his example. It was easier to permit them to live, given that Ernst’s powers were no longer there to raise them up.

A few had been swept up in the whole Ernst matter because they just thought that was how things worked in the Abyss. They were the easiest to absorb into polite society.

As for Ernst’s corpse, Maximillian decided to have him buried on palace grounds with all the honours usually reserved for a captain of the royal guard. John had advised against this, feeling that even the corpse of such a man was a potential safety risk. Necromancers were rare but quite real, and with a self-declared ‘Clonelord’ running around, he wasn’t feeling great about his DNA being preserved somewhere either.

Maximillian countered the latter point with Judas having had plenty of time to take blood or whatever else he needed anyhow – which was true. For the necromancer point, he acknowledged it but simply retorted with, “For the sake of honour, that is a risk I am willing to take.”

Personally, John thought honour could also be preserved as carbon, but Maximillian insisted on a proper burial. Since this was not his call to make, the Gamer left it at advisement. If this bit either of them in the ass down the line, he got to deliver a massive ‘I told you so’. That would be worth that hassle, hopefully.

Was all quiet in Austria after that? Hardly. This had been the longest nail that got the hammer. A multitude of smaller cells of Awakened existed all over the territory, each of them its own issue to be dealt with. Those were problems that the king could and would have to contend with on his own.

“It’s been nice having you around,” Irielz said, when they had their last tea party. “Though it will also be nice not having to host you any longer. Your quantity is taxing on the servant staff.”

“If you trained Laralia to be one, you’d ease that issue tremendously.” John pointed at the inundation elemental. Now that he knew of her elevated Tier, he was also aware that two bodies was neither her limit nor the norm of how she usually operated these days. It turned out she was more comfortable as four of herself. Those copies were of a higher quality than Undine’s multitudes, but John’s water spirit could split a whole lot more if she meant to.

The differences made by several hundred levels and one and a half Tiers.

“The woman of a ruler does not serve,” Maximillian stated clearly.

“Oy!”

“I disagree vehemently.”

“Statement: Wrong.”

“How dare you, how dare you twice, how dare you thrice?!”

“Never have I heard such hogwash from a king creature.”

“That’s, like, so wrong.”

“Psshhh, that’s as stupid as your stupid capes.”

The flooding of disagreements from the present maids only made the king and queen of Austria laugh. Alice, likewise, speared a strawberry with her fork, then raised it up to Maximillian’s lips. He took the bite and chewed it carefully. “You are all entitled to your mistakes,” he proclaimed with his usual haughtiness. “After all-“

DING! DONG!

The ringing of the large pendulum clock in the corner of the room interrupted the gravity king. Both he and John checked their phones, unable to believe that it really had been two hours of snacking and chatting already. When the truth of the matter became undeniable, they both sighed. “That ends my allocated time,” the Gamer said.

“Your allocated time?” Maximillian scoffed, expertly pretending offense. “Buddy, it is my time I am sacrificing here.”

“I got more women, therefore the sum of time sacrificed is greater.”

“Ah, but I have so many more productive things to do than you.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“You would.”

They laughed, rose to their feet and exchanged a quick, brotherly hug. “Thank you for your aid,” the gravity king said. “I would say I owe you one, but by your insistence we are even.”

“Really, you took care of it by yourself, so I still owe you something,”

“You two are so gaaaaaaay,” Jane whispered.

John immediately pinched the bridge of his nose. “Woman, I love you, but you tempt me towards the path of spousal abuse.”

“See, that’s what I got sister-wives for. I tease ya and then ya can get really rough with Eliana.”

Lowering his hand, he glared at the love of his life. “One, this and that spousal abuse are very quite different and, two, Eliana is not going to get her allocated roughness for much longer, as you very well know.”

Irielz snapped to attention. “She is already pregnant?”

‘God damn women and their intuition!’ John shouted in his mind. He had tried to keep this under wraps, so that Eliana could reveal it herself. “No, but I hope she will be soon,” he lied, hoping the ambiguity of the previous sentence would serve him.

Staring over the rim of her raised tea cup, the succubus observed him for a bit. When the cup was put back down, she simply said, “My best wishes, I know it is her greatest desire.”

‘She knows,’ John thought and kicked himself in the mental rear for his slip-up. “Well, I will get right back to trying,” he responded to her cordial ignorance. “It’s been a pleasure.”

That was John’s final goodbye. It took another fifteen minutes for the women to disentangle in the same manner. Less of a manifest gender difference and more of a matter of sheer group sizes, in this case. Once Sylph and Laralia had chatted the last word, they were finally out of the room.

They saw Maximillian one more time before they left, but that was a ceremonial handshake delivered at the bottom of the staircase leading up into the airplane. Crisp, courtly, and short, just a matter for the cameras. Not twenty minutes later, they were in the air, flying towards home.

John looked out of the window, watching the natural beauty of Europe shrink and then glide by beneath them. It had such a different character than North America, broken up further by the individual countries. Some of the borders were plainly visible from up there, evident by the layout of the fields.

It was a gorgeous view. All the same, John turned away from it. This was not his first departure from Europe and it wouldn’t be his last. There were gorgeous views closer to home to enjoy.

‘Let’s hope Hawaii goes as cleanly,’ he thought.