It wasn’t loud applause, no chants of his name, just the dignified clapping of a moved, empathic crowd. Everyone was in on it, leaving John in awe as he had the possessed sphere fly higher to watch over the crowd. Several people were crying just like he was, more were lost completely to their grief, some simply nodded with appreciation, nobody seemed angry or think he was using this to his advantage like he had feared.

Was it his raised Charisma that made his emotions be genuinely relayed to the people or had he just held an acceptable speech? John leaned towards the former, which made him happy that he had been incentivized to go invest in that Stat, despite its lack of apparent usefulness in day to day situations. If somebody had accused him of not being truthful in his mourning, he may have stabbed someone out of anger. Figuratively or literally, both would have only worsened his situation.

With nothing else to say, John put on his glasses and grabbed his phone. The next person in line to speak was Chemilia, Ted standing next to the podium like Rave had for John. More speakers were planned, mostly consisting of the spouses left behind. It wouldn’t be a proper funeral if the actual family of those buried didn’t get to share their stories. None of it was forced on anyone, of course.

Aclysia met him in the backstage area, which was just a designated part of the lawn where all the technical stuff was hidden behind some transportable plastic walls. “Here, Master,” she offered him a handkerchief made from cloth and, once he was relatively tear free, a moist wipe that smelled of aloe vera. Combined, those two things got him into a relatively presentable state again.

“Thank you.” John kissed his favourite maid on the lips, after she had taken care of the resulting trash. He held her in his arms for a few moments, then he had to let her go and send her back out there. That she was back here was only a momentary thing; like most of his familiars, Aclysia was part of the security team. While there was currently nothing bad going on, John wasn’t taking even the slightest risk today.

“Alright, that was good,” Rave put an arm around her boyfriend and rested her head on his shoulder. “I know that sounds pretty poor, but that’s really all I think of that,” she continued. “You fine?”

“Better than before,” John admitted. “Crying in front of thousands of people is surprisingly relieving. I feel like I finally dealt with this in its entirety, you know?”

“N’awwww,” Rave let out an adoring sound. “Come here, my nerd.”

As they exchanged little kisses and deep hugs, John had to laugh. “I like the usual pet name you have for me more,” he let her know. “Although I wonder why you even started calling me tiger in the first place.” That was one of the few things he hadn’t asked about yet.

“Dunno, was honestly a bit sarcastic at the start,” she answered a few moments later. “But we got closer and it had a nice ring to it, so I just kept it. Ya like it, don’tcha?”

“Absolutely,” the Gamer agreed, leaning in for another kiss. Freezing when the phone in his hand started to buzz. With a raised eyebrow, he looked at the display. An unknown number met his gaze. “Well… I better take this?” John said, unsure if he should. He was about 80% sure he was about to be met by the voice of the Horned Rat, essentially telling him ‘See? I can do this too!’, or something to that effect. ‘Whyever we don’t exchange numbers like normal people is beyond me,’ John realized as he picked up the call.

“Buddy, are you okay?” the worried voice of a man echoed in John’s ear. “Hello?” The Gamer was honestly flabbergasted to hear him of all people. “Don’t tell me Lydia gave me the wrong number.”

“Max?” John asked just to be sure.

“Yes, Max, short for Maximillian, am I talking to John or a pillar of redundant questions?” the royal couldn’t help but sass back. “In Romulus’ name, I am watching the broadcast. I had to call up Lydia to get your number just to ask you: are you doing fine?”

“I mean… yes and yes,” John answered. “Sorry, I just didn’t expect you of all people to call me.”

“Neither did I ever expect to be worried enough about you to pull something like this, but here we are,” Maximillian answered. “Is it all true?”

“Again, yes.”

“You sound pretty fine.” That was worded a bit accusatory but the tone betrayed only genuine relief. “Straight talk for a second, buddy, we are friends at this point, right? Like, all sarcastic bullshit aside.”

“Yeah,” John found himself agreeing rather easily. That the gravity mage was going out of his way to call him like this was pretty big proof of that. It almost made up for the entire situation with his parents. Almost. “We didn’t start off on the best foot, but I would say you’re one of the few guys I can hang out with.”

“Alright… just wanted us to be on the same page on that…” Awkward silence ensued. “Alright, I am sure you have your situation under control?”

“Yeah.”

“Girls happy around you like always?”

“Yeah.”

“Good… I’ll leave you to it then.”

“Max?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

The call ended on a few more words of goodbye. Putting his phone away with a sombre expression, John felt a bit shaken, in a good way. As useless a conversation it had been, it felt good to know that there was at least one person out there that he wasn’t in a romantic relationship with that still cared about him enough to give him a call in times like these.

“Are you not going to make a gay joke?” John asked his girlfriend.

“Hey, even I have enough tact to not do that today,” she pouted.

______________________________________________________________________________

Just like the applause, John hadn’t expected the overwhelmingly positive reception by the internet. Under the guise of anonymity, there were more people open about their doubts of the Gamer’s honesty, but those comments were in a clear minority. There were even a few guilds of the southern Maryland that laid down their resistance just like that upon getting the news. Apparently, they had been loyal to Abraham and having the story of his demise verified aligned them with John against the threat of Sigmund.

A threat that also kept the calls for an election and complete independence relatively quiet. John was in constant communication with all of the heads of the former estates. Since the governmental side of things had been completely wiped out, some lower-level pencil pushers aside, the old system of the Little Maryland was easily eliminated and replaced with one of the Collide-sanctioned modern forms of democracy.

It certainly helped that John’s immediate action as the interim president (and overall leader of Fusion) was to get rid of the entire license system and drop taxes immensely. That was, unsurprisingly, a very popular thing to do. At the same time, he finally had to introduce taxes in the areas he owned previously, where he had run everything out of his own pocket. Because his home turf was more positively predisposed towards him and in no immediate threat of seceding, that change was accepted pretty quickly. It had always been known that John’s no-tax policy was temporary.

He continued to hand out pretty cheap loans through the Guild Bank, however, at only 1% interest. Since most people could start their businesses using that borrowed capital, the economy of Fusion continued to expand and the Guild Funds were a nice ebb and flow of steady income and outgoing loans, eventually leading to more income. The system was operating at a bit of a loss at the moment, since it would take a while for the lent capital to pay dividends. Nothing the already present amount of cash couldn’t buffer out for the time being, however.

John wouldn’t have worried at all about this usually, he would have simply thrown some of his own money on the top to keep things fluid. Since grinding was currently not an option, at least not a safe one, he had to keep an eye on things. Roughly guessing, he could let it run for a month before he had to either raise taxes higher or stop giving out loans; both would slow down the growth of the economy tremendously.

The Lake Alliance declaring war on Fusion was a bigger deal for most people. Much like with Sigmund, however, this mostly served to aid John’s interest in keeping his federation together. They had a very real enemy in the war and an elusive monster in Sigmund. To unify people, having these clear-cut enemies was pretty much a godsend.

‘I still could have done without either of those happening,’ John thought as he walked up and down his living room three days later. Rave, Aclysia, Beatrice, they had all left according to his wishes, leaving him alone with his elementals. Even Chemilia and Ted were preoccupied with the (currently diplomatic) efforts of reintegrating the southern areas. Metra was with them in case things got ugly.

In reality, John had a mountain of paperwork right now, but he wanted to concentrate on working on his condition rather than stare at documents all day. By now, he was confident enough to stroll around casually with one contact lens active. The lightly offset field of view was fine and the three-layered manoeuvring of it (Possession’s own focus, eye-movement, neck movement) only caused nausea if he did it excessively by now.

Two eyes remained basically impossible for the moment though.

“Huh, that comes out of nowhere,” John wondered but happily accepted. It took a bit of the edge off the current situation. Speaking from a point of levels, this quest did very little to offset his current losses. 50’000 experience would translate to 2, not quite 3, levels, something that he could have easily gotten in the last seven days if he could have grinded like usual.

Max Class Level, GP and SEP were all immensely good rewards, by contrast, especially since they were resources hardly available otherwise. The SEP was particularly noteworthy since Nightmare Elemental Summoning was maxed out now. With it, he could ascend Siena to Tier 4, that would be a nice power boost.

John continued making his rounds around the furniture, occasionally opening both eyes for small stretches of time. Although he didn’t immediately fall anymore, his steps were stumbling at best and the only thing keeping him from losing his orientation was his familiarity with the surroundings and the replacement sphere following his moves.

Well, she was right, this was a pretty non-intrusive opportunity to patch things. ‘Wonder if that Possession rework will help with my current problems or if that is just an appliance thing,’ John mentally mused as he walked around the table. Formerly, Possession was as quickly cast as a thought. With the whole touching thing, it was like he was bending the flow of the spell to his new needs, resulting in a delay that could be pretty significant in a life or death situation.

With one hand jumping from rest to rest, John dared to open both eyes for a few moments. As always, the reward was a complete jumbling of his sight the second he took a step. By pure accident, he managed to lock both his views on the same object, allowing him to take the first sure step with both eyes open in a while. A lucky victory, to be sure, but John took it with a grin.

“I am making slow progress here!” John stated to the two people in the room with him. One was Salamander; the endflame elemental had been surprisingly caring in helping him. Whenever he was practicing, she was the first to volunteer as the person to catch him in case he fell. John was very happy with this, since she was the second-best person to fall into, with her squishy chest and all that. First was Undine, since she was just squishy all around.

Sitting on the couch and equally following him and the abyssal news show running on the flat screen, Eliza had been watching John pretty closely for a while. “Slow progress is good,” the blood mage said, glancing in his direction. “…slow progress is good…” she repeated more quietly, then groaned in frustration, crossed her legs and closed her eyes. After a few moments, her aura appeared around her, only to flicker, vanish, reform and do it all over again.

The Hidden Tradition had told John that they were ready whenever he was, and John was ready whenever the blood mage was. Over the last few days, Eliza had done primarily three things: watch over John, train her self-discipline and visit Tamara. She was even eating only as much as a normal human, Aclysia not being around to cook may have been a supporting factor in that.

These were all good signs to John that Eliza was taking this as seriously as adequate. Currently, the war with the Lake Alliance was cold and John had delegated so much of his work that very few things needed his immediate attention. That came with an ever-present fear that somebody would fuck things up, but so far there had only been easily corrected errors.

Nothing exciting was going to happen until Eliza felt ready.