John: So, what, you will just watch as I take over your city?

Scarlett: Yeah, best start with the places I have shops. Take over the barriers, don’t harm the shops unless you have to, and if they do get tangled up, please don’t break anything really important.

John: Like the store clerks?

Scarlett: Eh… depends on the store.

John: Wow.

Scarlett: Spare me your moralizing. Do what you must to make it look like we are enemies in waiting. I will keep the response measured.

John: Won’t that make you look weak/your board of directors pissed?

Scarlett: That’s the idea.

John: …Can you elaborate?

He blinked at those last few sentences of the chat exchange. The talk had been lengthy, productive, but still kind of confusing. ‘She wants to bait the competition to attack her, I guess,’ John thought and put away his phone, as the green button that indicated Scarlett as online switched to grey. ‘At least that’s the only reason I can think of for trying to seem weak…’

“Ya know, they always make jokes about strip club food,” Rave said, eating a burger, “but this is really good.”

Yes, they were still in this club they had met Scarlett in. The Technomancer had switched her conversation to electronics because that way she could get back to her tower and work while keeping the conversation going. One could only imagine how jealous a certain queen would be over such a possibility. “I wonder if Scarlett and Lydia would get along,” he asked out loud.

Eliza was the first one to jump on that train, “Twenty fuck bucks that it would be like two cats meeting.”

Bets were then called and arguments made. It was a wholly nonsensical conversation. John wrote Lydia a message by the end of it. He left out all the interesting details, it only said ‘We met someone and bet on how you two would get along. Can’t wait to for you two to meet.’ As Lydia was currently offline, he would have to wait for an answer.

“Anyway, what’s the situation?” Rave asked by the end of her burger.

“Well, we will continue as planned but with less uncertainty,” John answered. “If Scarlett betrays us, I will level her ivory tower and leave but the shell of her company while also locking her into some cell without any electricity. I think she is very much aware of that. Also, I got a new achievement...”

“…So I can upgrade the Guild Hall to Tier 1 later.”

“Why don’tcha do it right now?” Rave asked, playing with Copernicus. What she would do is take his front paws, lift them so he had to stand on his hind legs, and then make him act as if he was dancing the caramelldansen. Copernicus, of course, looked as annoyed but also completely uncaring about this as only a cat could. “Is it cause there could be some fancy visual effects if we do it while inside? Cause if that is the answer, I ain’t complaining.”

“Yup, hit the nail on the head right there,” John said. “Anyway, here are my goals for the next month: Grind my billion dollars, I still want those. Spreading Collide’s influence, I will largely leave that to you, Jane.”

“Ya sure?” Rave raised an eyebrow. “Ya know I am not big onto this whole political thinking stuff.”

“Great thing you are not here to do that then,” John smirked, “just beat up some bad guys and leave our name behind. Aggressive advertisement, if you will.”

“I can do that,” Rave smiled back at him. “What else?”

“I want to get a new cleaver for Aclysia,” John said. The weaponized maid nodded to that. She had a good dagger and a great katana right now, but for the heavy work she was still stuck with Vol’Jin’Zul, the sword they had gotten from the Troll arena.

It was a very sturdy sword, balanced around level 150 or something like that, but John was pretty certain that he could get something better and more tailored to Aclysia’s class. Both the Lifesteal and Soulbreaker attributes were kind of useless on her, the former being a healing factor that Aclysia truly didn’t need and the latter dealing extra damage against incorporeal beings. Otherwise it was just Sturdy and Sharp. It was good as a cleaver, but in all situations that weren’t blunt damage to environment, it was way worse than Eclys.

John wasn’t even sure if they could find a sword that could rival Eclys, being forged by some multi-dimensional prankster out of mithril, but it was worth a try. His phone vibrated on the table, Scarlett had sent him an address.

“Listening in whenever she wants,” John grumbled. He still wanted an elaboration, but it seemed that Scarlett was bent on making this next part a surprise.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Rave teased, poking him in the cheek with Copernicus paw. It was warm and fluffy.

“I can live with it,” he claimed. “Anyway, it’s that and get a replacement for Jack.”

“Can’t ya just order a new one off the auction?”

“Just like with Aclysia, I would like my equipment to have a bit of a higher standard,” his explanation came swiftly. “Mass production is just not cutting it anymore. To be honest, I am not looking for a new bird either. I have something else in mind.”

He checked where the address Scarlett had just sent him was. While he was unlikely to have enough money to buy whatever was sold there right now, or commission his own piece, checking it out wouldn’t hurt, especially since it was nearby.

“I am going over there, how about you guys?” he asked.

“I am all in for a weapon’s shop,” Metra finally found something to make the fact that she got into clothing worthwhile. “Who knows, maybe he has some good stuff.”

“I am going back home, the sooner I get out of this cold, the better!” Rave stated. “Also somebody gotta watch the enclave. I don’t think all the loan sharks got the message yet.”

Aclysia obviously stayed with John, leaving only Eliza to make a decision. “I will look at that fucking blacksmith or whatever,” she declared.

“Nope,” Rave denied. “You’re coming with me. Gotta discipline ya for just eating stranger’s pussy, very bad girl.”

“Fuck you!” Eliza pouted.

“No, now say sorry, we are going home,” Rave declared in a faux-motherly tone.

“…This play aside I am really fucking sorry…” the blood mage mumbled and John ruffled her hair as he sighed.

“I believe you, but maybe you could need it,” he told her. “As hot as you being submissive is, I really want you to not listen to anybody outside of this harem. Even if it is just about sex.”

“I wouldn’t, okay?!” Eliza was suddenly heavily annoyed. “It’s just that I feel like every fucking thing about her points to her sucking your dick within the next three weeks anyway, so why the fuck wouldn’t I go devour her leaking pussy when she is basically another bitch for the mounting anyway?!” She grabbed a handful of fries that remained on the plate formerly holding a burger, threw them down her throat and then mumbled, “…Sorry, standard aggression problems, you know the psycho drill.”

“Can’t say you don’t raise a valid point thought,” Metra chimed in.

John sighed again. “True enough… still, for the future, how about we wait for until after she has sucked my dick? Look at it like your master marking his territory, they need to be touched by my cum at least once.”

“Fuckin weirdo,” Eliza laughed out loud. “But yeah, sure that works. I can try controlling myself with that kind of mantra.”

“Still wanna punish ya tho,” Rave winked, “don’t worry, ya won’t forget the lesson – in a good way.”

_________________________________________________________________________

“You know what I often fail to realize?” John asked the other two remainders as they walked further south, down a street that was unironically called 22nd Street.

“What is it, Master?” Aclysia asked, her currently black hair waving in the cold winds.

“The fact that we are not in New York but in New Jersey,” he continued. “I mean, sure, we have our base in New York STATE, but New York CITY is actually east of where we do most of our business… or south, depending on your perspective.” He added that last part after seeing that the bridge (Bayonne Bridge) in the distance was a connection between the two cities.

Metra, currently walking in front of them with overacted steps, turned her head. “And how is that important?”

“It isn’t, just thought saying it out loud would help me avoid the mistake in the future.”

They arrived at a business district with a cinema, a supermarket and other stuff. John found the sheer size of the parking lot alone stupendous. His goal laid just behind that, at the Bayonne Golf Club. According to the intel he had gotten, whoever he was supposed to be visiting had put his shop up at the northern tip of that area.

“Master…” Aclysia carefully chimed into their wandering silence.

“I noticed,” he just told her, glancing at two people standing on a corner and having a louder than necessary conversation that sounded like it was about to get heated. A moment later they raised their arms to the sky and disappeared. That wasn’t the first time John had seen that while walking down this street, the amount of people with an aura he spied was also quite high. “There is some concentration of barriers around here.”

John just kept wandering on. He wasn’t here today to fix the situation. Granted, that hadn’t stopped him before, but unless someone was going to try and murder someone else before his eyes, he wasn’t going to cause a ruckus. Soon he would, but not today.

They arrived at the coordinates Scarlett sent him and, after John put away his smartphone, the group entered a barrier. The difference was immediate. Where the outside had the chill of winter, he was suddenly hit with the heat radiated by a twenty-metre-tall furnace in full gear. It was made from some kind of glass, blue swirls within changing from one magical symbol to another; each time they formed one completely, they flashed for a split second before becoming just shapeless colour again.

Earth elementals taking the shapes of hovering formations of rock were conjuring rains of coals to keep the thing running as a steady trickle of silver glowing metal streamed out of it. John quickly realized it to be mithril. The amount of it when compared to the massive amount of raw material within the furnace was laughable.

As John couldn’t actually find the owner of this whole thing, he followed that miniscule stream as it ran down the weirdly winding ramp towards the water. There he found a single human, small of body but large and muscular of frame, hunchbacked in a dark coat. He was standing on some sort of wooden island, staring at a fork in the metal’s road that ended on top of it, splitting the little river into two different end destinations. Some dark bronze caskets laying on top of a giant anvil, the streams vanishing inside; John could only assume they were moulds.

“He-“ John was about to introduce himself when the man suddenly screamed like he had lost all sense of self, lifting a giant hammer and smashing it on the moulds in front of himself. Some sort of mechanism was activated by this, a giant cloud of steam encapsulating everything as a black liquid drowned the moulds.

John was blinded as to what happened next, stumbling backwards because of the sudden heat. The only thing he was mindful of was to not fall into the mithril stream. Eventually the steam dissipated and he was able to look at what was going on with the man again.

“There, it’s done,” the raspy voice of an old man with a hard life spoke out. “Finally, only took days to forge and decades to learn. Who would you be, who are you?” the blacksmith turned to John, and the Gamer forgot to answer for a moment. Under the hood he saw a face that was nothing but an assembly of scars. Nose and ears were basically gone, skin like fishhooks had been used to plough through it. Only the eyes were human, but in them beat an ever-present battle between insanity and genius.

John felt a scratching in the bones of his right hand. Judging by the nailless hand that quickly vanished under the blacksmith’s cowl, his whole body was covered in them – Lorylim scars.

Finally, John swallowed and found his voice again. “I have heard you make swords.”

“SWORDS?!” the man, aged far beyond his years, half-screamed and half-laughed. “I GIVE DEATH SHAPE!” As if to prove his point, he reached into the shattered remains of the double mould and dragged out a weapon.

It was an absurd sword. From the smooth glass grip with the black pummel to the guard made from pure, silver-white mithril forged into a symmetrical pattern that reminded John of ice flowers. The blade itself was complicated beyond necessity. Split in half, the two main blades had a hand-wide gap between them, with two thorns growing out of the middle of the guard and parallel to that gap a fifth up the entire length. Those blades were sleek, a polished, jet black that mirrored the surroundings. In total the thing was certainly two-metres long.

The blacksmith couldn’t even hold it up for too long - which was alarming given his Strength – and the sword itself refused to be Observed by John – which was even more alarming. “Metal stolen from a higher dragon, cooled in the blood of lesser kin – extinguish the white, drown it in sin – glass heated with the last bit of the fire of destruction’s breath I had… truly, truly a great piece, my best so far, yes, my best.”

And John really wanted it, but no matter what he said to the man, he was ignored. Marathyu was dragging the sword behind himself, the only way he could transport it, leaving a cut in the floor that looked like a hot knife was cutting through butter.

“Teacher, you shouldn’t-“ a female voice said as the blacksmith destroyed the doorframe while entering the entrance at the back of the shop. She stopped when it was already too late, not that Marathyu showed any sign of listening anyway. “…Same as always…” she grumbled and turned to John, who had just followed the blacksmith in the hopes of getting his existence acknowledged again at some point. “We will serve you in a second.”

“I have time,” John assured and watched as Marathyu dragged the sword all the way to a man sitting next to the main entrance. He too was scar covered, but his were battle scars from blades, claws and punctures. That was just his face, as most of his body was hidden under a pitch-black armour. He was a giant man of broad frame, the kind of grizzled warrior you expected to see in a fantasy story, with short black hair. An Observe here failed again.

“There you have your weapon. I thank you, thank you so, so much, to have the opportunity to make it,” Marathyu spoke and John was disheartened to hear that that sword was already accounted for. The man lifted it with one hand and put it on his back as he stood up. It just magically attached and stayed there, between armour and the black, grey ornamented cape.

“No problem, was an honour to face the challenges…” Something about how he said that word made it sound different. No, there was no inherent difference in how he said it, the world itself reverberated it differently than other words the man spoke. “…to get the materials for you… who would you be?” the man’s dark green eye, singular, his right one was closed with a giant scar running over it, fell on the trio. The scar looked a bit cliché but also quite intimidating. Despite all of that, John would have been surprised if the person in front of him was more than 4 years older than himself.

“John Newman,” he introduced himself. “Th-“

“The Gamer,” the man finished, his lips curved into a smile that made John’s skin crawl. Something was off, very, very off. He felt like he was suddenly in a deep pond, looking for the light of the surface. "I heard your name before."

“I have a feeling I very much don’t like right now,” Metra mumbled, looking around. It was doubtless that was related.

“I am Sigmund,” the man stepped over, revealing just how much taller he was. 2 metres? 2,10? Something between that. “It is always nice to find other people that want to order quality weapons.” He extended his hand, covered in platemail. He could have crushed a hand in that and not even thought about it too much.

After looking at it for three whole seconds, John shook it. “Pleased to meet you,” he said in a calm tone. If he didn’t look afraid, maybe, just maybe, this whole thing would go over without any problems.

“Likewise,” Sigmund stated and let go off his hand. “I wish you luck on the journey this crazed fool will send you on.” With that, the black swordsman turned for the door.

“Teacher is still excitedly drooling,” the female assistant said, “but I would hear your order.”

“It’s a new sword for her,” John pointed at Aclysia, “I would li-“

“Just one more question,” Sigmund interrupted his talk and looked over his shoulder, gripping his sword. “You wouldn’t mind a challenge, would you?”

The next thing John heard was the sound of metal clashing.