‘That was like the fifth worst pain I have experienced so far,’ John thought and opened his eyes. Immediately he told himself he should have waited a few more seconds. His arm was a piece of meat that had turned into charcoal. There was more detail to be described there, but he refused to look at that for longer than necessary. ‘Guess there is no more pain because there is nothing more to feel pain with.’

The crawling, itching and general feeling of illness were gone. At least that part had worked.

He automatically tried to use his right hand to tap on the window. Of course, that only resulted in the raised bone falling down as the tension that had forced it to remain up unravelled. On the way downwards Gamer’s Body finally kicked in and restored everything. “Huh,” John blinked, “for some reason I really thought this would go worse… although I guess I can now join the club of scarred individuals.”

From his elbow to his wrist, there were red lines that looked like his bones cast a shadow through his skin. He touched the affected area, trailed it with his finger. It was numb, he barely even felt the touch.

“Huh, never have seen a human get Lorylim marks before,” Metra commented, stabbing at it with her index finger.

“Very intriguing indeed,” a curious Tilgun said, stealing John out of his chair after casting away the binding on the Gamer’s left arm. There were numerous complaints from down below, from the girls who didn’t appreciate their man getting slapped around like this, and John didn’t particularly appreciate dangling just from his left arm.

“Oh, thank Gaia that went alright,” Rave exhaled her tension and then put on her usual good mood smile. “You know, that reminds of that one scene from Konosuba,” she shouted up to him as Tilgun inspected his arm. “Where Lalatina gets cursed with death and then Aqua just heals her without a problem.”

“I take offense to the idea that burning off my arm is equivalent to ‘without a problem’,” John shouted back. “Also I don’t think that Izha guy-thing-I-don’t-know will come here after finding out.”

“But you have to agree that it was easier than you thought, right?” their loud conversation continued. “Lydia was all like ‘repeated corruption is bad that, Lorylim are super dangerous this’, even Romulus told you they were dangerous enough to blast Undine into smithereens for.”

Tilgun dropped John out of five metre height and thus ended whatever response John could have had in an uncomfortable landing on his back. To restore the HP of her summoner, of which he had lost not too little, Undine appeared and begun doing her thing while Tilgun talked like a teacher. “Which both are perfectly reasonable positions.”

“Yes, they are,” John groaned as his HP ticked up again. “Jane, what do you think this is?” he tapped on the new scars he had gotten himself.

“Kinda fashionable and hard to explain to your mom?” she suggested.

“True, but not quite what I was getting at,” he laughed. “Lorylim seem to burrow some sort of network into you as they take control. I guess they grow inside you, kind of like Cordyceps,” his girlfriend’s eyebrows travelled upwards and towards the middle in a confused expression, “the zombie mushrooms?” Still confusion. “The Last of Us?”

“Oooh… Lorylim are clickers?” Rave asked to the sound of Tilgun giggling.

“No, the mushrooms that make things into clickers,” the laughter in the background continued as John answered. He didn’t even attempt to ask what the higher dragon found that funny; he wouldn’t get a conclusive answer no matter what. “Anyway, despite looking disgusting and having some sort of swarm mind, they are evidently not out of this world, so they still obey what works in this one.”

“Okay… so can we get back to how your new scar-too plays into that?” Rave asked.

“Because it already dug a bit of the system now,” he explained, “so the next time it gets on me, it can start right where the last one left off. This is why repeated corruption would be so dangerous, eventually countermeasures won’t cut it anymore because they just get through that quickly. First infection probably normally causes some sort of permanent psychological damage, just because weaker minds than mine -and I don’t mean to pat my own back, it’s just how it is- would probably be less able to listen to that song without going a bit bonkers.” When looking at the Lorylim through the lens of a parasite, their whole schema made absolute sense. Disgusting sense, almost. Even healed people could be turned insane enough to want to be infected again. “Thank god, I got some sort of resistance skill to it now, but we both know that I am an exception here.”

The thing he had gotten reduced the effectiveness of every further attempt of a Lorylim to infect him by a magnitude of 1. In other words, level 1 infection wouldn’t work at all, level 2 infections became level 1, and so on. He really wanted some more levels in that skill, since the implication here was that he could become immune.

“And why would Romulus be that afraid of that thing then?” Sylph asked. “I mean, he looked more annoyed, but why would he be annoyed with that thing that he can kill that is no threat to him.”

“Because Romulus’ first concern doesn’t really seem to ever be himself,” John pointed out. “I do think he really doesn’t want a disease that is half zombie shroom and half watered down C’thulhu stuff rampaging in a city of hundreds of thousands.”

“Aaaaaaaah, I think I get it? Is that a cloud formed like a gummy bear?!” Sylph was immediately distracted by something else. Less surprising than her taking part in this conversation in the first place.

“Bravo, you are more intelligent than I thought,” Tilgun clapped, “can you figure out why you got those scars though?”

“Because, much like elementals, my body is basically completely magic based,” John told him, “despite being made of flesh. That puts me in a weird state where I get things like this,” he raised the affected arm, “despite also being a good old meatbag.” He had figured that out pretty much immediately.

“Right, right,” Tilgun nodded, “good, very good. You are correct in all of that, please continue, I enjoy seeing humans figure things out.” He said that like a proud dog owner who just succeeded in teaching a puppy a new trick.

“Now I do wonder what it looks like if normal humans get infected,” John did continue his thoughts nevertheless. “Do they get just no scars if they are healed or how does that work?”

“Mhm, I will give you that answer, it’s a small one anyway,” Tilgun said. “Aside from the aforementioned spiritual damage, Lorylim hook into the epidermis of their victim. Basically, it looks like the skin of someone who has been tortured by having his skin ripped off with hooks.”

“Aaaand that’s all I need to know.” John decided that he got away pretty much Scott free. Although there were several things that didn’t line up perfectly. “Any idea why it was my right hand that got infected?” he asked Salamander.

She thought about that for a moment, “I used my right to burn away the corruption,” she tapped on the cheekbone under her left eye and the dense marks surrounding it, “that’s the only thing I can think of.”

“Mhm,” that at least was a possibility. John then put a hand on Salamander’s shoulder. He gently rubbed it, causing one of her dark red eyebrows to dart up as if to ask what he was doing. “Izha said they empowered you,” he told her, “and I am just wondering. Mine and Undine’s scars are red, yours are black and react to you using your power… do they feel numb?”

“No,” Salamander sounded as surprised about that herself, “they feel just like normal skin.”

“Mhm… did they need to give you something to travel with you?” he mumbled. “They couldn’t use you as a genuine vessel, so they gave you some power to be a blind passenger? I somewhat get what they are now, but how they operate is a mystery to me still. They obviously can boost people’s power… maybe calling them parasites is wrong after all, more like very one-sided symbionts?”

“Now they are Venom from Spiderman?” Rave asked.

“I don’t give a fuck what they are, I was so fucking worried, fucking beaver zombie eating cocksuckers, I will rip them all apart!” Eliza could no longer hold onto herself and jumped at John. “We are not doing anything like this ever again and you are putting a baby inside me in the near future!”

“You are jumping topics there,” John pointed out.

“I am not, you fucking asshole, you can DIE,” she looked up and in her eyes was genuine fear, “what will I have of you if you just stumble into something you can’t weasel your ass out of?”

“Eliza, I…” he wanted to calm her down, but it didn’t look like there was a way to do that easily. “…Ahh, to hell with it, you know the honest answer. I don’t want kids yet, and operating under the assumption that I will die soon is just depressing.” He put his hand on her head and just gave her a warm smile, “We won’t ever do anything this stupid ever again. Right everyone?”

“I got what I wanted,” Salamander stated, the plated parts of her outfit disappearing. Underneath the lines continued all the way to her nails, which were just as pitch black as them. They also were the evil, pointy, scratchy type.

“Uhm, I-I-in the first place I didn’t want to even try this… N-Not that I want to say you should have listened to me or anything,” Gnome said.

“Although we totally should have,” the endflame elemental interrupted her. “Come on, Gnome, you can say it when you are right. This was stupid, we all knew it was stupid, it turned out to be even stupider than I expected, but we got away with angering the boar once.”

“I don’t want John to be in pain again, so I am going to just wimpy about like usual, will fly to here and there and everywhere,” Sylph added, “I wonder, why are you still big though. Don’t you want to fly.”

The discussion flowed elsewhere, and Eliza seemed, if not exactly calm, at least pacified. She had that downtrodden, sour look on her face that she often had after one of her mood swings.

“For a start, I can still fly, you saw me do it earlier, you airhead,” Salamander answered and, proving the point, hovered off the floor. “For the second question… huh, I actually can’t.” She scratched her short hair, “That’s weird.”

“Naw, now I have to fly on my own, that is sad, I am sad,” Sylph complained.

“No, I can still… you know what, not worth it,” Salamander sighed, there was a moment, then she burst out anyway, “No, fuck it, Sylph, you dumb airhead, get your scrambled brain together and look at my feet!”

“They are very nice feet, not touching the ground feet, audible gasp! You can hover, that’s halfway to flying, good job!” Sylph then was witness to Salamander taking further off the ground and doing a little loop, “Wow-wow-wow, don’t be crazy, you are big, big girls can’t fly.”

“You fly when you are in your big form all the time!”

“Because I am mommy’s special little girl,” Sylph said, stemming her hands into her hips. “She follows me on Airter, I send her pictures of John’s memories all the time, and she answers with ‘Ooooooh my!’ and it’s like a little video and it’s super funnily spoken.”

John just sat down at that point, Tilgun said goodbye, and one by one everyone went back to their everyday life. ‘Haaaah, the virtues of being used to danger,’ he thought. Everyone made this another happening in their life. They would rest, and then this would be another story told in the giant chain of events in John’s life.

‘I really have to wonder what part of my powers are actually mechanics made for me or just representations of reality as it normally is,’ John thought, remembering the corruption chance on elemental evolution warnings. Obviously, they had been corrupted, but neither Undine nor Salamander had turned into failed nor fallen elementals like he had learned was to happen.

The chance just seemed to portray what level of chance there was for the Lorylim to get their dirty tentacles in the game. Well, he wasn’t going to attempt to take that chance no matter how unlikely it was now. He already had suffered lasting damage, however little it was, and at the very least until he was able to resist these beings better, it was foolish to engage them.

Eliza still held onto him, and so did Rave, so it was pretty cramped on the chair in the sun, but at least he was brooding over bad things in a nice atmosphere. What exactly was Izha and how powerful did John have to assume it really was?

He found no answers, and so all he could see were himself, with a scar that he had taken for the happiness of someone he cared about, Salamander, with her scar that she took for her ideals, and Undine, who had them forced upon her by regretful action.

John hoped he drew the correct lesson out of all of this.

Even when following his principles righteously, the world wouldn’t just give to him what he needed.

But he had gotten a reward: Salamander looked at him with new eyes.