Collide Gamer

Magic was a bit weird, and it was all thanks to humans being its origin, as they were even weirder. That was what John learned from asking, “So why do you fight by just pressing people to the ground?”

“What do you suggest I do instead?” Maximillian asked, stirring his drink with his straw so it stayed properly mixed.

“Reverse the course of gravity on them, have them fall upwards until they either hit outer space or you can let them fall to their death?” John suggested.

“Even if I had the effective range for that, it would only work on really, really weak people,” the Gravity King explained and sighed when John urged him to explain further. The Gamer had found his new trivia source. “Okay, look, every human has something that we call basic magic resistance that is directly related to their strength. It’s what keeps blood mages from ripping out someone’s veins, wind mages to suck the air from your lungs and me to just reverse the gravity on you and make you fly off.” He took a sip to oil his voice. “The pressing is an exception because I increase forces already existent and working on your body from the outside. Same is true for other powers like this: Sylph can’t steal the air already in the lungs but she sure can stop more from moving in.

“For more physically oriented things, the rules of broken skin apply. If you were to fight Lydia and you had a metal bone, that won’t be a big problem, it’s inside and part of your body. If she manages to cut a big enough wound though, she could theoretically rip it out. The more of your body underneath the skin surrounds something, the stronger your basic magic resistance affects it. Makes sense?”

“For the most part,” John said, “and you could only do it on weak people because their basic magic resistance would be so miniscule you could overcome it?”

Maximillian pointed at him with the straw of his half-raised glass, “Exactly. We can be pretty thankful that the world works like this or otherwise blood mages would just eviscerate us all. Although I can think of a dozen other magic schools that would be incredibly dangerous if they could freely mess with bodies outside of their own.”

“Yeah,” John was thinking of Gehnigm and that he really didn’t need to experience what it actually felt like to have his head up his ass. He also had to wonder if BMR was natural. Knowing the true backstory behind the Abyss really had a lot of questions whirling around in his head about what was by design and what was by coincidence. “Anyway, you said basic magic resistance, so I just assume that there is more?”

“Why in Romulus’ blessed name do you need to ask ME that?” Maximillian looked at him funny. “You are the one running around with extended immunities. I can see it in your aura.”

Right, he had Fire and Arcane Resistance 5 from Nathalia’s and the Horned Rat’s blessing, respectively. “Fuck!” he suddenly exclaimed as he remembered something and slammed his hand on the table. Now it was the king’s turn to look at John with the intent of getting an elaboration. “I only have two gods’ blessings, I can have three! I should have asked Lydia if her two-headed eagle could spare a cup of energy.”

“You can do that?” Maximillian sounded honestly surprised. “Your powers are such utter horseshit.”

“Bullshit!” an energetic voice corrected, causing them to drop their ongoing banter in favour of looking over to the pink-haired girl walking up to them. Her naked feet hitting the floor to the beat of whatever song was stuck in her head today, Rave stopped next to the table and grabbed Maximillian’s drink from his hands. “We use the term bullshit here,” she clarified and then finished the drink. “Aclysia, can ya make me a Pina Colada? Also, how do I look, John?”

John looked up from her slender, long legs over the sexy bottom piece of light blue colour, her athletic body with the subtle muscles and her breasts under her bikini top that was cut in two halves by a diagonal line, one half the same light blue as her bottom while the other was a bright pink, and then finally stopped at her smirking face. “Honestly? You fall a bit flat,” John joked and received an enthused punch on the shoulder for that, which he took with a pained giggle.

“Really? Breast puns?” Rave asked and handed Maximillian’s glass to Aclysia. “Anyway, why are ya glooms sitting right here when it’s finally warm enough to jump in there?” She gestured at the pool, which everyone not made of fire was currently enjoying. Between Sylph creating giant bubbles underwater and Nia just doing an Olympic swim routine while in a dress that didn’t get wet, John wasn’t quite sure what to look at there.

“Because I can’t exactly swim with this,” Maximillian tapped against his bad leg.

“And I was waiting for you,” John said and was suddenly sitting there in nothing but plain black swimming trunks. ‘Hurray for the equipment menu,’ he thought. “So, sorry, Max, but I won’t be around to entertain you anymore.”

“Whoever allowed you to call me th- Ah, whatever, you know what,” he took his newly refilled glass from the returning Aclysia just as Rave took hers, “real talk, you are okay. You are letting me stay and you aren’t trying to crawl inside my ass and find the gold in there, so you can call me Max.”

“How nice of you,” John said, kind of sarcastically. Although he did have to wonder what his and Maximillian’s relationship was. From the amused look Rave gave the two of them, silenced by her inability to stop drinking her Pina Colada, her comment would be something to the effect of ‘gay’. Personally, John leaned more towards ‘friendly acquaintances’, he hesitated to call the king a genuine friend given their history.

Maximillian grabbed his walking stick and stood up, “But you are also a massive dick.” That comment came somewhat expectantly. “I hope these walls are soundproof, I don’t want to hear whatever orgies you pull there. Even less do I want YOU to hear whatever orgies I pull in my half.”

“Feeling is mutual, buddy. Aclysia, do you know whether or not they are?” John turned to his wonderful assistant.

“I am unaware, do you want me to test that?” Aclysia had a suggestion to that effect, “I could go inside and lustfully scream as loud as I usually do in bed.”

“That sounds like she has a lot of experience in faking it,” Maximillian poked fun at John and then raised his hands in a defensive manner as the salver folded into the knife again, the silver-white alloy glistening dangerously. “Calm down, woman! I don’t think me and your ‘master’…,” the knife was raised to a level where it could have slashed Maximillian’s throat. He picked his next words with probing intent, “Your stupid boss,” Aclysia got into position to jump at the guy, “your precious little snugglemuffin,” the knife returned to its harmless form and Aclysia relaxed, “would get along without making fun of each other. We are men, dammit.”

“Not sure if this is because we are men,” John added, “but he is right.”

“Is that so?” Aclysia blinked and pondered about that information for a minute. “My apologies, I will add a special note that you are allowed to insult Master.”

“Great, the dick deserves i-“ Maximillain found himself at the end of Eclys, the whole length of the white katana shimmering dangerously with its diamond cutting sharpness. “Can you please chill?”

“How about you chill?” Aclysia asked with warning smile. “Added details: in the ocean water, I am sure it’s…”

“I get it!” Maximillian said.

“No need to interrupt her she will finish anyway,” John explained, putting his hand on Aclysia’s raised arm.

“…nice and cold,” the weaponized maid looked over. “I must insist that people give you a baseline of respect, Master, and for no one to ever use the word master sarcastically. It is a sacred word!”

He just looked over to the king expectantly. The man sighed, “I promise to never use the word master towards John sarcastically anymore, happy?”

“Generally?” Aclysia asked and got a giggle out of John and a kiss on her lips. “Ecstatic,” she said with a little smile as Eclys vanished back into Adaptive Bladdery.

“You are one scary girl,” Maximillian grumbled.

“I am whatever John needs me to be, for he has created me and allowed me to be whatever I want to be for him,” Aclysia told the man. “And don’t start any free will arguments now. I have one, that argument has been concluded.”

“Okay?” the gravity mage just accepted that. “Would you be so kind as to bring me a key card though? You are quicker on your feet than m- Thanks.” Presented to him was the card that Aclysia had stored inside her inventory earlier.

“I will take a replacement from the apartment which Master has graciously allowed you to sleep in,” she announced.

Maximillian made a sour expression as the role reversal from benefactor to benefitted was rubbed into his face again. Being a member of royalty and thus used to being the one on top of the hierarchy, this was a pretty unwanted blow to his pride. He took it with grace though; he wasn’t quite snobby enough to punch gift horses. “You are in your rights to do that,” he told her and then walked off, relying as little on his stick as possible. Except for the stairs, that actually wasn’t too bad, the hobble being almost unnoticeable. “See you whenever,” he shouted back over his shoulder and left the harem on its own.

John wanted to say something witty but instead got Rave aggressively kissing him. For a full minute they were just making out, which left John in a constant battle with his mind to not get an erection clearly visible from even the lower deck. They were way too close to the railing right now. However, speaking up would have meant to disallow the butterflies in his stomach from flying around, and that was just not an option. “What did I earn this for?” he asked in a positively surprised voice when it finally did come to an end.

“Ya didn’t,” they put forehead against forehead and just swayed for minute. “It was an apology kiss.”

“Apology for wha-“ John began to ask when he was picked up by the hips and tossed the remaining eight metres from where they stood and then some more into the pool. Suddenly, he was surrounded by water. Fight management skills helped a fair amount in this situation, so he wasn’t confused for too long and just broke through the surface again.

“How is the water?” Rave asked, swaying her hips sexily as she walked up to the edge of the pool, where John swam to.

“It’s pretty nice, not too warm, not too cold, just a question though: why didn’t you just ask anyone else already in?!” he gestured at literally everyone but Salamander and Aclysia.

“Yeah, sure, I will ask the breeze, the rock, the water, the girl made from metal or the two weirdos that walk around mid-winter in nothing but a dress or basically underwear about their estimates regarding temperature,” Rave mocked and then put her own hand into the pool to just test it herself. “Also, ya dirty liar, this is way too cold!”

“You say that, but this water is probably 21 degrees,” John drily stated.

“Yeah, Kelvin!” she retorted, dodging an attempt at pulling her into the pool made by her boyfriend.

John clicked his tongue before continuing this playfight. “That’d literally make it a block of very, very solid ice.”

“Which it might as well be! There has to be a thermostat, everything about this place is customizable in some way,” Rave went off to search, and John turned around to explore the pool a bit.

He took a deep breath and then dived. The water wasn’t chlorinated or salty, according to Undine’s analysis at least. Speaking of the ocean elemental, he found her at the bottom of the deep end, just sliming around.

The pool was pretty big, twenty-five metres long, ten wide and separated into two areas. The smaller of those two areas began with a softly descending staircase around a semi-circular platform at the side that was close to the apartments and then extended about five metres in. Basically put, it was where people could stand, as it was pretty shallow at 1,50 metres depth. After that came a metre decline that further extended that depth to about 3 metres.

John swam all the way over to the other side in a leisurely 12 seconds. If he wanted to, he could have broken the current world record at ease. ‘At least I guess,’ he thought, ‘I don’t actually know what the current world record in 25 metres is… if that is even a category. Also does this platform need to be this big?’

It was at least three metres wide, it was almost more accurate to say that the staircase started between it and the walls of the pool than around it. It was a rather odd design decision. “Yo, get off there, Johnny,” Rave told him fidgeting with her smartphone. “Aclysia found the answer.”

“And what is it?” he asked and quickly did as requested. When his girlfriend called him Johnny, it only ever meant that she was in some way annoyed with him.

“You will find a code at the back of your keycard, Master, with which you can unlock an app that asks to install itself once you enter the ship’s wireless,” the weaponized maid explained.

“Who gives a shit?” Eliza, floating on the surface of the water, asked. Rave screamed like a scared girl. “Fucking cock, my ears, WHAT?!”

“We have a corpse in our pool!” Rave joked and threw her hands in the air. “Somebody call security.”

“Oh, fuck you, just because I have the teint of a drowned, shitbag. Prepare yourself for… oh for fuck’s sake you aren’t even Asian enough to call you yellow, so my piss-skin joked wouldn’t work.” Frustrated, Eliza kicked the water and caused a five-metre-high rebound that rained down on everyone around.

“Nope, I’m a nice crossbreed,” Rave gestured at her just nice and healthy looking complexion, nothing really tanned but also not pale in any way that deserved that adjective. “Marvel at me and my perfect hair.”

“I am going to hit your head on the fucking floor until you have as few marbles as me, how does that sound, you seizure inducing whore?”

“It sounds like the water is getting warmer as we speak,” John, who was standing with his feet still in the pool, observed. “What did you set it to?”

“35 degrees, why?”

“Jane, normal people get into the pool to cool down, not to warm up,” he complained, quite justified in this case. “I don’t want to cook my balls while swimming!”

“Urgh, fine,” his girlfriend rolled her yes and fidgeted with the controls some more. “There, 29, better?”

“More like acceptable enough,” he mumbled, but he could at least exist in that temperature.

“Oh, quit being a baby,” Rave said and then pushed another button.

John heard something behind himself, but he had to deliver a rant before he could deal with that. “No, Jane, I would be a baby if I wanted to deal with that temperature. I am pretty sure that 35 degrees is something you would have a baby bathe in, because they are babies!”

“At least 30 are required, usually 33 are recommended,” Eliza added from the background. “You know why the fuck I know that, do not ask!”

“So, what you want is even hotter than a normal BABY BATH! Seriously, did spending your youth in Britain somehow cause your southern Japanese genes to kick into overdrive? It’s like you are craving a land where it is forty degrees in the shadows! The third thing I am going to install -outside of basic necessities- in whatever guild hall we are getting is a sauna so you can go sweat your vagina off in private!”

“What are the first two?” Rave, who took this whole rant with a smile, asked.

“Number one is the zoo I promised Nia,” he heard a happy, way too long hum behind himself. This was the only reliable way to get something resembling an obvious emotional reaction from the blank John had discovered to date.

“Lemme guess, number two is a giant jacuzzi?” Rave asked.

“Of course number two is a giant jacuzzi! Speaking of which, why does this ship not have one? That is like luxury 101, a bubbling bath. Why are you pointing behind me?” he asked and glanced over his shoulder only to look into the face of god.

The centre of the platform had descended and was currently being filled with water through little holes. It was a circular jacuzzi big enough for literally everyone present to sit inside. “It has like 30 different scent and bubble settings,” Rave said. “Ya can play with the heat settings of that however ya like and I with the pool, compromise?”

“How could I possibly say no to that?” John indirectly said yes and stared at the rising water.