John checked his Ire again. It was down to 3 from 5. The previous blunder of him slipping had undoubtedly to do with that reduction. That wasn’t to say this couldn’t happen to him naturally, but slipping as he did at the moment of maximum humiliation was a different category.

Brett and Tetsh guided him through the bizarre bazaar. “Must be really nice,” John said, looking at a few people that wore rings around their necks that were so obviously sci-fi tracking devices that their existence alone was a hurdle to get out, scrubbing the floors.

“What?” Brett asked.

“Being the kings here,” he answered, looking away from the unwilling cleaning crew as they doubled their efforts in response to the brute duo passing by.

They reached the shop of Thorne in the area. As expected, it was stuffed to the brim with electronics, showcase limbs and other such things. With it being under the guarantee of another, much stronger faction, the rules for it were quite different than for the rest of this corrupt hive of scum and villainy. What that meant in detail was that it appeared like the usual mall shop and with a seniority, standing out a lot in an environment where every other shop around was bullied out of competition only to return under a flight of stairs every other week.

“The boss is here every Monday around this time,” Tetsh informed John and gestured for him to enter first. There was no reason to be afraid of an ambush, so he did as they wanted.

‘I slowly get your game, Scarlett,’ John thought. If said boss was here only at this hour, she must have wanted this meeting to take place in one of her shops. The only question was why. Without a doubt he would find out soon.

John saw two figures. One was a curly haired black woman, wearing a dark green and red store uniform. She had quite the rack and her beauty was only held back by early wrinkles appearing on her face together with her stern expression. A typical manager, as far as John was concerned, he didn’t see anything about her that annoyed him.

The apparent boss-man, someone by the name of Trebba, instantly annoyed John though. The only hair on his face were his bushy eyebrows and a beard that looked like a toddler had pinned the end of a paintbrush between his cleft chin. He was wearing his suit in a sleazy fashion and he didn’t put in any effort or money to get clothes that actually fit him or a belt that could keep his pants from slouching. While the outfit would allow him to attend high society events, he wouldn’t truly fit in.

“Yo, I am in a meeting here, what the fuck are you two doing letting someone in here?!” Trebba cussed at the brutes. Then he turned to do the same to the Gamer. “Who are you, you moron? Getting in here without an appointment.”

‘I am this close to blowing up this whole building,’ John thought as he introduced himself. ‘I could do it. It would be super easy. Just drop an Arcana Strike, wait a few minutes and BOOM! Crater.

Two minutes later, as if his name was a magic formula for invoking civility in people, he found himself in a small backroom office around a circular table, together with Trebba and the supervisor. Brett and Tetsh were also around, standing there menacingly in case somebody wanted to approach.

Trebba asked a one-word question that was way more acceptable than his earlier comments. “Coffee?”

“No, thank you,” John said, “haven’t gotten addicted to any drugs in my life, I am not going to start now, not even with caffeine.”

“Your loss, drugs are fucking amazing,” Trebba said and sat down after throwing something white in his own cup that John was 100% certain was not sugar. He took a sip and exhaled in an over-exaggerated manner. “So what brings the new big guy in town to my cove?”

“Did you not get the memo by now?” John raised an eyebrow. “I lost count how many people like you, loan sharks, bullies, parasites, tyrants, I already told off with the words: Change or I will force you soon.”

“Sure, sure, I heard that, but they spout such nonsense that I don’t believe that that’s your agenda,” Trebba answered. “So what do you want, 20% of the slaves trafficked through here? A cut from our income? What do I have to give you so you are happy.”

John just stared intensely for several seconds. Then his chair broke away from under him.

Trebba laughed out loud, the supervisor snickered as well, Brett and Tetsh had the peace of mind to stay quiet. ‘That’s it with the Ire,’ John told himself as he calmly stood up. He could live with looking like a fool for a bit, as long as nobody was about to get beat up or was throwing slurs at those dear to him.

John looked at the wooden chair, used Create to repair it and sat down again. That silenced the laughter. Whether it was the spell itself or the speed with which he did it, he didn’t know. “Well, let me give you a very easy ultimatum,” he said. “No more slavery, no more abusive or predatory practices, no more extractions, no more blackmailing and a responsive, competitive market where people that get in debt don’t end up imprisoned here, scrubbing floors for the rest of their lives or being sold on the Abyss Auction.”

“What moral dipshittery is tha-“ Trebba was stopped by a shard of arcane power flying by his head. The way he turned his neck afterwards to look at the splice in his wall made it quite evident that he hadn’t even seen it. He gulped at the three extra ones still hovering around John’s head.

“I think you don’t get it,” John said quite clearly. “So, let me make it quite clear: I am not in here for my personal gain. I would gain more power and money by staying out of this and spending my time back home than you could ever give me. I am here because I am a child of the mundane world and it seems somebody who used to be bullied is exactly the kind of liberator this corrupt underbelly of the world needs. So, how about you catch up to the ‘moral dipshittery’ of the world around you instead of holing up here as the king of the miserable?”

“And if I don’t, you will kill me?” Trebba asked.

“As a last resort, sure,” John shrugged, “I would much rather you just give in, take the money you have right now and aid the transformation into a working society. I will tell you the same thing as everyone else before you, Trebba,” he was distracted for a moment by the supervisor’s buzzing phone, but continued anyway, “I am not going to persecute every single person who abuses their power in this city, it would take too long and would drain practically all resources, current and potential. You can take my amnesty, work under the morals of the west in the 21st century and continue making money or you can stick to being the oligarchs of this endtime-capitalistic terror and see me wash you all away.”

“…Sure, I will jo-“

“And before you join me with a creepy grin like that on your face,” John interrupted him and reached into his inventory to pull out a banana, which caused an understandable amount of confusion, “let me be frank: if you work behind my back to do the same shit you do right now, or you betray me by hiring somebody to try and kill me,” he tossed up the banana into the air.

Out of ground ripped Siena and executed a flurry of movements. She sat down on the armrest of John’s chair, licking her claws, as finely sliced pieces of banana rained down on the desk. “If I find out, or survive, she will do that to whatever part of your body you like the most. Even if you succeed, which is highly unlikely, I have way too many allies who would do that to you.”

“Is that a promise?” Siena asked, wrapping her arms around John’s neck and then looking longingly over to Trebba. “Please do betray him, it has been soooo loooong,” she moaned that part in a needy voice, “since I got to properly torture somebody.”

“A-and what if I say no to your proposal?” Trebba asked.

“Depends on what you do after that,” John explained. “You can run, but you better run far and keep your head low. If you stay, I will see you as an enemy. The plus side of being an enemy rather than a traitor is that I will do you the decency of imprisoning you or at least killing you quickly.”

“I stay with recommending the traitor route,” Siena whispered.

“I will take the running route,” Trebba declared. “How far is far enough that I won’t have to ever see you again?”

“I recommend some isolated island in the ocean,” John told him truthfully. “Also, another thing: If you plan to continue in the slave trade, you won’t be safe from me anywhere. Much like the British, I plan to end that practice globally.”

In silence, he admitted to himself that he would never succeed in that. There were too many corners of the world and too many slippery ways to communicate or legal technicalities to get slavery removed all over the world forever. However, he could at least be a force that made it as hard as possible to still get away with it.

“Well, if that is all our business here, I wish you some nice time packing. Brett, you are in charge here now, I am officially taking over,” the brute looked taken aback at that, as did his buddy who was the more straightforward of the two. They fell silent when John handed Brett two million dollars. “To clean this place up. Same warnings I gave your old boss apply to you,” he already used that term as if Trebba wasn’t in the room; he didn’t feel like he owed that guy any more respect than he had already given him. “You take the money, you take the job, we clear?”

“Clear,” Brett said and then split the stack of cash with his buddy. “Here.”

“Bro…” Tetsh looked like he would shed a manly tear.

John felt like he had to interrupt that party, “Don’t forget what the money is actually for. I will keep tabs on you.” The two of them nodded assuringly, reaching for the places John had healed earlier, and with that their relationship status was on a level where the Gamer deemed them at least trustworthy.

“Thorne…” a nervous voice echoed from behind him. The supervisor cleared her throat, reading a script from her smartphone. She looked up for a moment, all managerial class was gone. The expression had more similarity to somebody with a fear of falling slowly approaching the edge of a cliff. “Please, Mister Newman, I just told them what was going on, I am only the messenger.”

‘What the…’ John thought and then felt a sting in his guts as a mixture of awe at Scarlett’s genius and disgusted shock stirred inside there.

“Thorne sees the recent happenings in territories affiliated with it as an unacceptable interference of the markets in New York and surroundings. This most recent event is the last bit of suffering we can afford. The guild of Thorne declares war on John Newman, his guild Collide and its vassals. The war begins immediately,” she looked up from the display. “Please, don’t… I am just a supervisor of this shop…”

“Okay, if that’s how Thorne wants to play that game,” John hid his surprise about this turn of events; he was conflicted about whether to smile or call up Scarlett to scream at her anyway. “Collide will defend itself against unjust attacks. I have not once raised my hand against Thorne itself and it never even contacted me before now,” that was a lie, but the witnesses didn’t know that. “As for you specifically,” he told the supervisor, “as long as you don’t raise your hand against me, you are safe, don’t worry.”

The relief was visible on her face. What pulled John’s attention next was the sound of mechanic joints working heavily. A robot in the colours of Thorne broke in and darted straight towards John.

He barely got the Observe in before Aclysia sliced the thing clean in half with Eclys. ‘You have all of this planned to the detail, don’t you?’ John thought as he caught a small, translucent crystal that had been luckily missed. He tossed the Shard of Potential into his inventory before anybody could ask him what that was.

He was still torn on the strategy Scarlett had kicked off, but he best talk about it when they had a quiet second, which definitely wasn't the case now. “Time to fight!” John declared, acting like this was a challenge. Silently, he added, ‘And conveniently get all 25 Shards on the way out.’

He would have to explain what all of this meant to Rave later.