“This makes the whole affair almost acceptable,” John spoke up after taking his first bite of breakfast. They had gathered up some of the eels and what remained of the fish for Aclysia to prepare overnight. After using the Abyss Auction to buy the information about how to prepare them and whether or not there were any toxins she had to be aware of, the weaponized maid had done her magic while they all were sleeping.

Chewing through a dark bread covered in the eel, John enjoyed the taste. It had a rich saltiness, the taste of the ocean, along with a nice denseness to their fat. As an extra note of flavour, there were small sparks of remaining electricity. Much like eating pineapple, the resulting tingle was nice in small doses. The better cooked, the less there was of it though.

Rave and Copernicus were the happiest about the seafood. “Ya gotta wonder what delicious stuff ya keep murdering in your barriers,” the Lightbearer noted with a half-full mouth.

“Not like I can prevent them from turning to dust,” John stated. “Aside, if you make a training barrier with monsters in it, the same thing happens.”

“Ey, I suck at barrier making, so there is only like ghosts tops inside there,” Rave shrugged it off. “And we can’t eat those even if we found them in a natural barrier.

Lydia was the only one on the table sitting properly, which made her stand-out like caviar in a serving of 300 McDonald’s burgers. With delicate movements of knife on fork, she separated a piece of the meat and guided it all the way from the plate to her mouth. Only after having chewed thoroughly and rinsed the remainders down with a bit of apple juice, she commented, “Saddening that we have only steamed but not any smoked meat.”

“My deepest apologies,” Aclysia stated, “I attempted to make it work on the grill. My lack of experience in the matter turned them into coal-covered, dry pieces of probably cancer inducing waste. That is to say, I burned them by accident.” The maid took a deep bow.

“Relax, Aclysia, it is a wonder what you did with the rest of it,” John told her, to which Lydia nodded. “We just don’t have a proper smoking room or something like that. Although I wasn’t even aware we had a steamer.”

“I bought it recently, with our finances being…” Aclysia looked for a flattering word.

Beatrice found the correct one. “Immense,” she dropped into the room, standing close to her more emotive elder. The two of them were strategically standing left and right behind John, which was also the side of the cantina table that was closest to the kitchen.

This position assured that they could immediately help John with whatever their master wanted, from refilling his glass to feeding him, but also get requested items quickly from their resting place in the kitchen. Currently, John was doing all of these things himself, but they stood there just in case.

“…secure,” Aclysia went with her own choice of word.

“You can say that twice,” John mumbled into his glass of water.

Eliza cackled, “Yeah, fuckwit, like your maid sluts didn’t just do exactly that…” Ready to follow that up with some more cussing and sarcasm, the blood mage’s attention was interrupted by someone else stumbling towards the room. “In comes the living regret!” she shouted at a nearby entrance.

A certain redhead moved into the cantina. Dark rings under her eyes proved lacklustre rest and her usually perfectly sitting suit was hastily put together today. “Shout any louder and I might throw up onto the floor,” she sounded like somebody who had been raised from the dead, stabbed in the lung, died, and raised again.

Aclysia gave her the death glare, “Perhaps you shouldn’t fill your stomach in that case.” There was unveiled anger in her voice. Scarlett had spent the whole time the group had prepared to and executing the fight drinking and smoking. Supervised by Eliza, who was way too busy laughing to stop the Technomancer, the redhead had thusly committed a number of household sins. “I needed an hour to get the kitchen back in order and Gaia only knows how long it will take to get the cigarette stench out of the living room.”

“I was in the kitchen?” Scarlett asked sitting down. She reached for food and Beatrice left to get something in the same moment. “What the fuck would I do in the kitchen? Wait, don’t answer that, the answer is more bottles.”

“A metric shitton of bottles,” Eliza grinned, getting hit by the wrathful glare of the head maid upon that comment. As the one who had just let it happen, she bore partial responsibility.

“Cigarette – Stench,” Aclysia repeated slowly. “It sticks. Master doesn’t like it. It’s bad for the furniture. Do not smoke indoors. You are both off dessert for the next couple of meals.”

The blood mage dropped her eating utensils. “Nooooo,” she whined, “fuck you, I want my pudding.”

Aclysia closed her eyes and stood straight, she had made her statement. “You are welcome to make your own – outside of my kitchen.”

Scarlett was bothered, “Like I fucking care about some dessert.” Looking at the piece of eel she had loaded on her plate like a kid did at broccoli, she unenthusiastically stabbed at it. Before she could decide to eat it, she was presented with some painkillers and a glass of water from the returning Beatrice. “You are the best, Bae,” the Technomancer spoke and caused John to blink. That was probably the first time he had heard someone say that while Aclysia was in the room and not mean her.

Feeling a bang of annoyance and hurt pride at that fact from the weaponized maid, John baited his breath for her reaction, as did most other people around. Nothing happened, however, as Aclysia continued to stand there on her point of principle. Beatrice soon assumed her original position again.

Scarlett entered a state of tormented trance, sitting in her chair, neck stretched backwards, emptily staring at the ceiling while she waited for the headache to be murdered by the aptly named medication. As such, she was as quickly out of the conversation as she got in.

“So, how many hours did we lose?” Rave asked.

“About two in total,” John answered, looking at the clock. It was 8AM now, the time he originally wanted to pull into whatever harbour he could find in Washington. The computer told him they were scheduled for 10 now. “Really annoying.”

“Unusual as well,” Lydia commented. “Granted power over here is fractured, but even then a barrier this close to the shore shouldn’t have existed for this extended a period to allow the monsters inside to gather that much strength. There should be some sorts of patrols by the closest guilds.” She gave John a much saying glance.

“Guess we will organize such things once we have some more ships,” he told her; it wasn’t in his interest to wait until some sort of catastrophe manifested and attacked his lands as well. ‘Huh, that’s a new category of problems I need to give a lot thoughts,’ he realized, not for the first time, that thinking of his security and his guild/country’s security asked for two very different mindsets. “But we were pretty close to Maryland territory. Unlike the New York area, they already had cohesion, so why hadn’t they snuffed this out before that swarm became that large?”

“A good question, one I do not know the answer to,” the queen stated.

Rave leaned back in her chair, filled up on eel, and patted the suncat in her lap who rolled up and took a nap, much in the same situation. “I have a question you can answer though, where did ya leave your two-headed eagle? And your body guards?”

“The…” Lydia hesitated, knowing that dropping a German word in the middle of a conversation in English would look weird. However, as it was the name of the god, she did it anyway, “…Reichsadler is the patron god of Rex Germaniae. As such, taking him out of the country and taking him with me would have garnered immense attention. He therefore was left home. For my bodyguards, I ditched them at the airport.” Lydia took a sip of juice as if she had said something completely normal.

“Wat?” Rave sounded like she was quaking.

The queen put the glass back down, “They are an order older than my house even, I will not let them end their glorious history because I insisted on visiting my lover in a land of lawlessness.” Taking a pause, she loaded a new, very small piece of eel on a buttered bread. “Therefore, I left them behind against their will.”

“Won’t they try to chase you down?” John asked; he couldn’t imagine those weirdos just accepting that they were left behind.

“I put them on the wrong plane and had them tricked into a vacation,” Lydia stated. “The details will take too long to lay down, but be assured that they will not be a bother.” She bit into her bread and the conversation moved on.

“If we are asking questions, I have one,” Scarlett slumped forwards, looking about two degrees more alive than before. That still placed her in the ‘ghoulish’ category but was a clear upgrade from before. “Why the fuck are all your Artificial Spirits somewhat Asian looking sexy girls with great asses and white hair?”

“Okay, in order of easiness to explain,” John actually had answers for this. “Number one, I am an ass man, this is demonstrable if you look to the great ass to great chest ratio around you.” Currently on the table sat not a single girl with tits greater than Cs, as both Undine and Salamander weren’t around. “Second, I seem to have a minor case of yellow fever,” he gestured at Rave, who waved with a smirk. “Third, sexy needs no explanation, who would want to have an ugly servant? Lastly, for white hair…” he scratched his chin, “dunno, that’s more of coincidence. With Aclysia it was just because I had an A2 figurine and found it perfect, Momo’s original body was sold to me by Hermes, and Beatrice followed up because I could go for the twin look. Do have to say I find white hair pretty sexy though. Then again, all the hair colours look good in their own way.”

“Alright,” Scarlett nodded and then went ahead to eat. “Normal people always go ‘we need more redheads in our lives’,” she shrugged, “not that that is important or anything. Just saying, I clearly got the best hair colour around here.”

Rave giggled, “That was immense levels of Tsun.” She flipped her own pink mane, “But you’re super wrong either way.”

“I have no fucking clue which camp I am in,” Eliza grumbled grabbing a strand of her hair and pulling it in front of her eyes. “White, blue, whatever the shit?”

“On that note, perhaps you should put the illusion on her?” Lydia asked John.

“Right,” the Gamer agreed and reached into his inventory. Eliza grinned anticipatingly at the item he pulled out. It was a simple strip of cloth, somewhat stretchy but firm overall. In keeping with her usual attire, the thing was black and bore basically no decorations. Only two golden eyelets, with thin string running through them, broke up the monotony of the dark colour. “Be a good girl and come over here,” he told the blood mage, who looked like she was ready to climb over the table in response.

Halfway on the plate covered surface already, Eliza noticed the dark stare of a pair of green eyes and opted for the floor route instead. No reason to get in even worse grace with the chef. The result was also nice and pleasing, as a crawling Eliza suddenly emerged between John’s legs from under the table, giving him the wide, sparkly eyes of a submissive in her favourite position.

“Come up,” he commanded her, with a quickly growing erection. She did, until John could comfortably wrap the cloth around her neck and bind it together at the front with a decorative knot. He had to do that three times until he was happy with how tight the choker was sitting around her neck. Once settled for longer than a few seconds, the item unfolded its illusionary spell.

From white and blue to black, from sickly pale with a blueish hue to just white and from shattered purple, dotted and lined, to a simple hazel, her hair, skin and eyes changed colours. To put it simply, she now looked like a passable, normal person, the robe and very revealing leatherwork she was wearing aside.

John found that she looked cuter with the scarf, but the sexiness of the choker was undeniable. “Thank you, Master,” Eliza purred, resting her hands on the inside of John’s thighs, very close to where his pants were currently stretching.

Aclysia let an approving hum be heard, “The way you reverently used that word reduces your punishment by a day,” she informed her.

“Too bad that means you won’t get dessert today though,” John let playful sorrow flow in his voice. “And that even though you are such a good little slut,” he gently slapped her face, then grabbed her by squishing her cheeks together. “Mhm, you know they say about chokers that they are the mark of a great cocksucker?” he asked her, getting a small nod in return. “And you know how we were interrupted yesterday?” Another nod, this time Eliza opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, curving it against an imaginary phallic object. “I think you can work for a dessert.” He let her go and immediately she began working on his pants.