John eventually returned to his drink, a glass of now cola flavoured water thanks to the ice cubes melting. “Are you the Gamer?!” a slurred voice said, and of course there was another angry drunk guy who had bet money on Lydia losing. No, judging by the pupils the size of plates peeking out of his ridiculously long, dark blonde pony, this one wasn’t drunk but drugged. While being drunk was, of course, also a state of being drugged, John lacked a specific word for whatever this one was on.

“You don’t want to be the one taking me out of my good mood,” John warned, “just turn around.”

The drugged man sized-up the Gamer. Under the long sleeves of his white shirt and the suit pants, John didn’t look particularly impressive. Sure, he was muscular, but that didn’t really show unless he was naked due to having a naturally slim frame. Unless someone had known him before he had gained in Strength and Endurance, they couldn’t tell just how much broader he was compared to his door stopper body before. In totality he didn’t look particularly impressive, especially not for a member of the Abyss, where everyone but those truly weak had bodies where the baseline was ‘healthily fit’.

Therefore, this must have looked like easy pickings to someone who thought John was only the magic type, and thus the first punch was thrown. Directed at John’s face, the drugged man must have been aiming at some quick revenge. However, the Gamer managed to raise his arms in time and block before returning the favour by kicking the man frontally in his stomach.

‘Good thing I upgraded to kickboxing in the break,’ John thought. After thinking some more about his melee situation, he had come to the conclusion that there was no reason not to use his legs as well as his arms to brawl. Getting a book on the matter simply had replaced Boxing with Kickboxing. Thankfully, this new passive hadn’t just gotten rid of his old skill levels, just shed around half of them. Point was: he knew what he was doing when kicking now as well as throwing punches.

“What is going on here?!” growled Barend as he appeared from behind the bar. Apparently, it was a change of shifts, as the wasp girl disappeared in the same moment. “Gamer, I let you in in good graces and you start picking fights?!”

“No,” John stated quite clearly, “he started it.”

“I know, I have camera footage, I just enjoy giving people who bribe me with pats shit,” Barend kept up his aggressive tone. “I swear, the guests here are terrible fucknuggets, STOP BEING SO DRUNK, MARVIN!”

“Your name is Marvin?” a streak of green said in the tone of the chattering, before becoming a pretty small girl of 1,50 metres with pale green hair that would have touched the ground if she was standing. As an air elemental, Sylph seldomly walked on the floor though, instead she kept confusingly flying in winding circles around the drugged man. “I had a friend called Marvin, he wanted me to eat him. I miss him very, very, veeeryyyy much. He was squishy and red and the ultimate martyr and about this big,” she spread her arms apart the maximum distance to indicate her whole body in size.

For Sylph that mistake wasn’t that bad, after all the gummy bear she was talking about had been as big as her in her small form. Just missing one logical leap was, frankly, an accomplishment. “You know him? Is there a League of Marvins? AUDIBLE GASP! Do you hang around and drink tea and eat gelatine and science about on how to make gummy bear flavoured condoms? I had that business idea once, but everyone said that was a stupid idea.”

“No, we said condoms flavoured like gummy bears flavoured like John’s cum were a stupid idea, you airhead,” Salamander, having caught up with her speedier sister announced.

“What are you two doing here?” John wanted to know as Barend grabbed the now disoriented aggressor and pulled him away to give him a stern lecture and place him somewhere else to get the rest of his trip done peacefully. ‘The next club I go to, I will get a bodyguard… maybe I should have just coerced Aclysia into coming with me? She would be happy to stick around and protect me from the drunk and drugged, I think.’

Salamander just pointed over her shoulder as Eliza stormed into the room. Despite being much faster than Salamander, the fact that she had to walk instead of fly through the labyrinthian structure had caused her to fall behind. “YOU MOTHERFUCKING COCKBISCUIT!” she screamed murder with her voice and the rotation of her eyes and came to a short halt before her legs delivered her from the ground, jumping atop the tower of speakers.

The crowd below didn’t notice, at first. John had been able to hear her because he was seated relatively close to the entrance, and very few people actually looked up while dancing, so a flying blood mage over their heads went by relatively stealthily. That changed when the music suddenly stopped, presumably because Jeff had hit some button in his panic, and all everyone could hear was Eliza screaming.

“I AM NOT THAT SMALL, YOU SHITBOOT!” her voice was accompanied by some scrambled answers coming from the DJ and former announcer, who was being violently shaken. “You mongrel fucking pussy, I will tear your hair out and drown you in that stupid ass shampoo everyone uses so it doesn’t grow back! Then I will feed your hair to your unborn fucking children together with anti-growth hormones SO THEY WILL BE MIDGETS, YOU TALL FUCK!”

With a quick whirl around her own axis, Eliza tossed the man downwards with such perfect aim that he landed sitting upright in the bar stool right next to John, the excess momentum causing the DJ and his new seat to tilt backwards.

‘That makes the second person she has thrown in this city,’ John thought, finishing the rest of his brownish water just as Eliza landed before the bar.

Barend opened his mouth, taking a stance that probably was meant to be intimidating. However, a quick glance from the blood mage’s two-ringed eyes shut him up before he got a single word out. “Anybody interfere and I will make you get the voice of a fucking opera singer,” Eliza glared at everyone, as she was now the centre of attention due to the lack of music to dance to.

“Can ya get this over with quickly?” Rave asked, forcing her way out of the crowd; “Your temper tantrum is ruining the vibe.”

“Hey, he knew what he was getting himself into!” Eliza defended herself, pointing at the comedically looking commentator as he attempted to sit upright.

Orientation largely impaired thanks to the whole shaking thing, Jeff swayed from left to right, gripping the bar in order to not fall off the stool, as he spoke. “Should have listened to Dra and not made too much fun of you. Sorry, Tha- Eliza! Eliza!” his hasty correction was accompanied by a dangerous flickering up of fire from Salamander. John was also keeping a clear eye on the whole situation, not that the almost mentioned goddess went ahead and tried to force her way into the forefront again. For the moment, it seemed like she was laying low, however.

In a way that was more terrifying than her just trying to get out again, it meant that she was watching very carefully and slowly learning what she could and couldn’t get away with.

One didn’t need to know exactly where up and down was to notice an explosive increase in heat. “But that is the job! And I am just a man trying to please the crowd!” he tossed his arms in the air and almost fell over; “Won’t you have mercy on this guy trying to do his job?!”

As he saved himself at the last possible second, by returning his hands to the surface of the bar, a little box fell out of a pocket inside the DJ’s vest. He tried to catch it as quickly as he could, but Eliza’s hand darted forwards and snapped it out of the air, already looking at it when Jeff had just put his hand in position.

“Fuck no,” Eliza finally said and kicked the sitting man’s shin, “I am not that tiny, you cocksucker! You haven’t even apologized yet! Also what is this?” She opened the box and looked at the tiny orbs inside, taking a whiff. “Smells like sour peanuts, the fuck is this?”

“Something really expensive, please give it back!” Jeff pleaded, “I need that for later, to feel the groove and all that.”

“You got rich off my fucking misery, so fuck off, you fucking fuck,” Eliza said and, after cackling menacingly, threw the whole box into her mouth. “Disgusting! Who the shit made that?”

“Oh nooooo,” Jeff cried out, ruffling his long hair in an overdramatic motion and then quickly pulling out a comb to get the mess he just made back in order. “Well, I hope you packed your bags!”

“The fuck?” Eliza wanted to know as her pupils suddenly expanded.

“You are going on a loooong trip,” Jeff said and then fled towards his work station the moment Eliza looked at her own hands. She did so with a calm expression the likes John had never seen on her face before and for several seconds.

“Everything feels fluffy,” she said, wiggling her fingers, dropping the box in the process. That was all she had to say, not even looking up when John touched her on the shoulder, instead just moaning a bit and then laughing maniacally, loud enough to cause a few people to flee the room despite the restarting music.

‘Well, great,’ John thought, sighing as he grabbed the box from the floor to see if there was any information what kind of drug she had just thrown into herself and if there was any expectancy as to how long this state would last.

He found a name on the removed lid ‘Shroomperotic’ which a quick search on the Abyss auction revealed to be a kind of hallucinogenic mushroom that was made much more potent than the real-world counterparts thanks to magical meddling. ‘Starts working after 1 hour and lasts for several days,’ John read the manual on the thing. Well, thanks to Eliza’s insane metabolism, it had started working immediately, so it stood to reason that it was also going to wear off soon enough.

Still, the list of effects was highly interesting: Low on hallucinations but high on heightened feelings and extremely increased libido and sexual endurance, perfect for long time orgies. Prevents damage to tissue even during prolonged erections.

“John,” Eliza said, finally looking up from her hands, “I need you to slap me across the face, right the fuck now.”

“Not really comfortable with doing that in public,” he tried to dissuade her; “Let’s go back to our room and I am going to do whatever I want to you, deal?”

“Fuck me, yes, GO!” Eliza’s leather bottom piece was already starting to glisten, and the way she moaned when they started moving made it sound like she had half an orgasm with every step.

“This is going to be interesting,” Rave said and followed them.

“You got enough of partying?” John wondered.

“Nah, I am gonna go back here after seeing what drugged up Eliza sex looks like,” she exclaimed, “and after the whole situation has calmed a bit, ya know?”

“Sure,” John said and checked for the other three girls. Salamander seemed to have already decided to go back to the metal stage, Metra decided to come with, and thus Sylph attached herself to the two of them, chattering with them despite the cascade of angry remarks she got from both of her companions with heated temperaments.

Well, the bedroom would get crowded enough as it was.

They took the quickest way they knew of back to the elevator. Because one needed to have a room booked to use that thing and because it was pretty fast, they only had three of those next to each other.

“Hey, John Newman!” a female voice shouted after him.

“I swear to god, if she wants to fight me too, I will break her legs,” John mumbled and turned his head. A foxy blonde woman in a pretty revealing dress ran after him. He recognized her after a moment of thinking. “You are the elector of the Netherlands,” he said; he was unaware of her name, but he did know that she had voted for Lydia.

“Yes, thank you, I have a name, it is Amalia, and my eyes are up here,” he had been looking at her cleavage without a lot of shame. Sure, she wasn’t the youngest piece of hotness (Observe was blocked, but she was around forty looking), but she was a total MILF.

“Sorry, I picked up a few bad habits because,” he nodded at Eliza who he was currently carrying princess style and who was also breathing as if she had a fever. Occasionally she would plead for the antidote as well, being (in her and his opinion) his dick. After one of such moans for release, John cleared his throat and said, “Well, as you can see we kind of have something to do right now.”

“Fine by me, just give me a call tomorrow, okay?” Amalia said and reached him a card, giving him a sultry smile, “I will make it worth your while.” She took a glance at his erection, winked and then turned to leave.

John furrowed his eyebrows. Rave on the other side hummed, “Mhm, we gonna eat her up or what was that about?”

“Honestly, I feel like she just tried to fit in a bait strategy,” the Gamer said, “just to make sure I call.”

“Always the sceptic,” his girlfriend complained.

“AND CURRENTLY NOT HAVING HIS COCK BURIED IN MY ASS!” Eliza screamed at him so loudly that half the club must have heard her; “Let’s GO!”