“…then I would muddle up the system you have set-up over a ten-year interim, by the end of which it would be so easy to corrupt that I can control the whole thing through bribery and extortion,” Scarlett finished up detailing one of her failed plots to John, speaking nonchalantly while reading news on her phone in the flashy technomancer way, dozens of articles flashing by each minute. “Problem with that is that you don’t seem to be interested in prostitutes.”

“It’s very hard to convince me to sleep with random girls these days,” John agreed, his attention split between the screen and the conversation. “I just have so much choice already and they are all so attractive!” he said that last part more forceful than he needed to as he was hit by lag and consecutively comboed off the stage. “Smash Bros online still sucks… Anyway, that’d need to be a pretty great prostitute.”

“Couldn’t find one, so I had to cancel that plan,” Scarlett nodded.

“That’s a conversation to come back home to,” Rave announced her entrance into the living room. Putting down a couple of bags on the side of the couch, she dropped down next to John. She bounced twice on the cushions, propelled both by the soft couch and her firm ass, before coming to a rest with a long, relaxing sigh. “Sitting… yay.”

“Walked around a lot?” John asked.

“You have no idea, we went through half the city. Well, I did with Mat and Sally, we kinda separated and or lost each other throughout the day,” she checked her phone. “Gaia almighty, I’ve been out for eight hours?”

“Yup,” John said. “So the rest is…?”

“Somewhere, probably stripping and running through the city in the nude, in Mat’s case,” Rave answered in line with her earlier statement, turning around on the couch the second she saw her boyfriend outside of a match. Her feet rested in his lap, “Pamper me!” she demanded.

“Of course, princess,” John agreed and began massaging her naked feet. The purring sound she let out in response was all the incentive he needed. “So, what did you buy?”

“Boring stuff to set up an office,” she answered. “Gonna take up one of the empty rooms in the Guild Bank soon and begin working.”

This was doubtlessly an achievement of Mabirl. Despite their initial disagreements, her and Rave had hit it off during that dinner. Although It would perhaps be more accurate to say that the housewife was a mother of three and pretty quickly figured out how to talk to the younger woman. Over a round of Scrabble, and John couldn’t believe his girlfriend had been having fun playing Scrabble of all games, Mabirl had made the friendly suggestion that Rave should just set-up an office to work in rather than wait for work that justify setting up an office.

Ever open to being proactive, that had immediately resonated with Rave, and that was how they arrived at the current point in time. “Any idea what you want to do yet?” John asked.

“Organize an effort to build public transportation,” she wiggled her tired toes. “Ya can guess why.”

Over the next few hours, the girls returned in small groups. They all brought back something they had bought over the course of the day but nothing really interesting as far as John could see. Once the last person returned, being Sylph who had just been flying about the place after getting lost, the group was ready to leave.

____________________________________________________________________

The metal gate of the Harbour closed behind them, as John steered the yacht southwards. It was the first time he was actually navigating this ship, so he was incredibly careful and took wider turns than was necessary at a low speed, but in the broad strokes the instruments used for this and Magoi’s ship were the same so he got used to it quickly.

‘I really wonder how all of this will work out,’ John thought. In an optimal world, this would just be a nice, short vacation before he returned to New York for later planning. Thankfully, the odds were in favour of that outcome.

He had sent a very nice email to the Little Maryland guild, informing them that he just wanted to visit the capital for personal reasons and that he was not there to stir up any trouble. Explicitly, he had also mentioned that he was accompanied by Lydia. They had sent him a similarly nice email back, guaranteeing him that they respected his vacation but would like it if he came by the government to have a chat with them.

The whole exchange had reeked of political language, lots of words had been used to describe very little. Still, the fact was that they were willing to talk and they hadn’t inquired about where he was staying or what his personal reasons were either, leading John to believe that they respected his privacy. If only out of sheer fear that ruining John’s trip by extension would piss off the current ruler of one of the strongest guilds on the face of the planet.

It was either that or they already knew about his mother.

Well, he would find out once he got there, so there was little use continuously worrying. Instead he made sure to put the correct route into the auto-pilot and then looked over the monitors to make sure no other vessels were in danger of crossing his path. Very few ships were swimming in the Hudson, just the Fateweaver’s ferry service and a couple of private ships, most of which were anchored.

Owning a boat had been risky business in New York before John cleaned up most of the robbing parties. With how recent that had happened, it was no surprise that the waterway was largely unused. Even Thorne had owned very little in the way of ships, as they had very little interest in the overseas market.

John was of a different mind and construction on both sides of the channel had recently started. The former Thorne HQ would see its dockyard enlarged and John was attempting to persuade Amalia to send him some NTC instructors on construction of ships, how to manage a proper harbour and the likes.

On the east side John was preparing for a giant project he himself had only thought about briefly, dismissed it as impossible and then searched on it on the Abyss Auction to find out that it was not only possible but also existed. Abyssal warships, colossi of metal and magic that were supposed to make his yacht look tiny in comparison.

John had neither the resources nor the skilled labour to create such a thing yet, but he felt like it was wise to begin laying the groundwork for this thing early so he could get it as soon as possible. Whatever wars would follow the unification of America, willing he was successful, having a mobile battle station of that potency on the seas was sure to pay some dividends.

On the far shore, where water and land met, John spied little dots through the projections of the cameras. Their upper parts were swaying left to right. It took John a moment to realize that the dots were people and that they were waving him goodbye. ‘I guess I would be kind of popular?’ John thought, unsure what to do with that realization. Well, he would gloat on it, cause it felt great to be recognized, but aside from that.

They reached the edge of the city and thus separated from its Abyssal side, the mobile barrier kicking in and making sure the magically engineered ship remained unseen by the mundane. Once on the open sea, John felt way more confident about letting the autopilot do the work and walked off the bridge.

____________________________________________________________________

“How-“ John hit the sandbag with his fist, “does-“ another hit, the leather, skinned off some supernatural creature, absorbed the punches well, “this-“ his voice was pure frustration as every attempt at doing this correctly failed, “work?!”

The impact sound of skin on leather echoed through the room one final time before John simply fell backwards. He had been punching the bag for thirty minutes straight and even his stamina gave in at that point.

“You just need to stop sucking,” Metra joked, having held the sandbag in position while John attempted to finally get the martial arts to work for him. They were in one of the formerly unused rooms on the main deck of the ship, which the berserker babe was in the process of transforming into a gym. While she did report rather large aspirations for it, including a boxing ring, for the moment only basic training equipment stood scattered around the room. “Eliza, your turn.”

“Fucking finally,” the blood mage stepped onto the mat, everyone ignoring John while he mumbled something about broken game design. He had all Physical Stats at 100, his body was that of a Greek god and he commanded elementals and spells of the upper echelons of the Abyss. What the hell was so hard about punching correctly?

Didn’t help that Eliza simply took a stance, had her crimson aura flare up, punched the damn bag and created a visible shockwave in the air behind it. “Pretty good,” Metra complimented, “nice to see you actually punching rather than flailing around with absurd strength.”

“Go fuck yourself,” the pretty little psycho retorted, going for a second hit. A moment before her fist connected, her aura fizzled out and vanished. “COCKSUCKER!” she screamed when she didn’t manage to get it back in time.

‘At least she has the decency to be bad at that,’ John thought and immediately felt like slapping himself for that comment. That was the petty envy of a casual who demanded access to the same rewards as a pro player without putting in the effort. Getting back on his feet, he took his boxing stance again. “Why doesn’t this shit work?” he grumbled, still frustrated. He had tried to get this technique down for weeks now and it was just the basics of the basics. “Eliza, you figured it out, tell me what you are doing.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, John,” the blood mage shrugged. “Just breathe it in, gather the energy in your shoulder and then punch the shit out of your target.”

“Very helpful,” he grumbled in a deeply disrespectful tone.

“Motherfucker, how do you expect me to explain to your nerd brain how to move a muscle?!” she spewed at him with justified irritation. “You can suck your own dick tonight, use that stupid bendability of that body for something useful!”

“…Sorry, just very annoyed with my lack of progress,” John said and did his best to relax by taking guided breaths and looking at the blood mage. She was looking pretty sexy, having exchanged her robes and leather underwear for a sports bra and spandex pants that barely covered her ass. The fact that her long hair was currently bundled up in a ponytail, a little blue ribbon holding it together at the back of her head, only added to that.

“Cry me a fucking river,” Eliza cussed, “Jane said I should need a few days to be able to keep the aura up for one or two attacks. Days, DAYS! IT’S NOT BEEN DAYS!” the blood mage got her aura up and running again and wildly punched the bag. There was a very unhealthy sound, like someone twisting the ankle of a fried chicken, and Eliza’s hand went entirely purple for a second as her regeneration quickly fixed the damage she had done to herself.

“That right there could have been the end of a martial arts career,” Metra drily commented. “Depending on how badly you just ripped up your nerves doing that little stunt, anyone without absurd self-healing would now potentially have a crippled hand. Congrats, that’s only the fifth time this week you did that to yourself.” The berserker babe showed her a berating smile, “How about you be thankful for what you have, spoiled little brat.”

“Seeing what I had to go through to get this, spoiled isn’t the first fucking word that enters my mind,” Eliza hissed, plopping down on the floor. “Besides, why don’t you do it while pissed then, miss anger-management.”

“I can’t,” Metra answered.

“Then I suggest you shut the fuck up about things you haven’t bothered to learn,” the blood mage stated.

“No, you dumb bitch,” the ancient weapon rolled her eyes, “I literally can’t. Only humans and a select few humanoids can learn martial arts or a specialized form thereof. The only created being I know of is one of my brothers, and he lost all other powers in return.”

Eliza furrowed her eyebrows with a confused expression. “Why the fuck is that?”

“Because you need a spine, lungs, blood and bones,” Metra answered. “I have something like bones, but they usually don’t remain in place when I fight. I don’t have blood, and the lungs I have, I have purely to breathe out and speak. I just know a lot about martial arts because I have been in more conflicts than you have years in your life. That about cover it?”

“Oh… okay. Now I feel actually dumb as shit,” Eliza, remembering how she even produced the aura in the first place, suddenly realized that she could have known all about this in the first place. “Wait, by that logic, those divine pain-in-the-asses can’t learn martial arts either.”

“Yes, gods only have their unique or at least incredibly potent powers granted to them by their ascension,” Metra laughed, “terrible trade-off.”

Eliza growled, her perfect white teeth flashing dangerously. “Didn’t say it was, dipshit. Just had the realization.”

John also had a realization during that conversation. ‘Spine, lungs, blood and bones,’ he thought and then closed his eyes to get a better feel on his inside goings. For the past few weeks, he had just skipped straight to the blood step, thinking he had no need of the first two because he already was able to manifest his aura through the skill.

Perhaps that reliance on his powers was what had been blocking him from gaining the skill. Unless he did it correctly start to finish once, his powers wouldn’t translate the movement into an instinctual extension of his Innate Ability. That kind of tutorial phase he had long left.

He tried to track his ki from the start. How it was created in his lower spine, flowed through his body from there in lines that were invisible for even modern medicine, only traceable by other magic. Air entered him as he pulled that mana into his lungs, oxygen mixing with magic and enriching his blood. He gathered the physically bound ki in his shoulder and then punched.

There was a sting of pain along with the feeling of something releasing. He felt ecstatic, he must have done something right.

“Wow,” Metra sounded awestruck, and he opened his eyes, expecting to see her admiring face, ready to praise him for his hidden capabilities. “That was… the WORST Impact Punch I have ever seen,” she said instead. “The only thing that kept your hand from blowing off your wrist right there is how pitifully weak that attack was.”

That cut his enthusiasm right down to size. “I really suck at this martial arts thing,” he mumbled. Evidently, that attempt also wasn’t good enough for his systems, as no pop-up informed him about a successful skill acquirement.