Chapter 197 – Tell me<h2></h2>
“I wanna knoooow!” Raveined while John was kneeling down inside an Illusion Barrier made on the house’s backwn.
It would have been really nice there in the summer. Stone bs covered the veranda floor, an oversized grill stood a few metres away from a big table. All of that was severely less attractive when made slippery by the nightly frost.
It was the morning of Wednesday, around 7 AM. The household had recovered from the conversation they had yesterday. It hadn’t passed without a trace. A few times, John caught Rave in thought and she had confessed that she was still working out how she felt about everything. Aclysia seemed to be in higher spirits than ever, while everyone else was just moving about as always. Nothing had been off during breakfast. John was keeping an eye on things, but he was hopeful.
In the spirit of keeping things moving, he had elected to go ahead and summon the new elemental he had identally gotten the option to acquire. They still had quite some time before they needed to relocate to Rome and there was no need to remain still in the meantime. New power could always be acquired.
The Ritual of Shadows was different from his previous contracts in that it allowed him to reach out to higher tiers of elementals immediately. For the reason it was capped at Tier 3, John could easily pinpoint to the fact that Sylph, the highest member of his current quartet, was at that power-level.
Nothing of this was what Rave wasining about though. “Tell me what that new armguard does!” she whined and pointed at his left arm. The new piece of equipment was strapped over the sleeve of his suit. He had chosen to wear it because it was, for reasons of Abyssal money investments, the sturdiest thing he owned. That and he looked pretty good in it. Making a good first impression on his new elemental felt key and so he had put on his entire battle regalia.
“I told you what the ne does,” John responded, grinning.
In a way it was fortunate that Nathalia had prevented him from taking Elemental Resistance 1. It would have been quite the dead acquisition, considering a better version was on the ne. Wisdom of the Inferno cranked his sensitivity to fire up to 11. He felt when someone two houses over ignited a match. Any closer and he could almost hear the fire speak to him.
“Can I keep one surprise, please?” John asked his girlfriend, who had furrowed her eyebrows in a certain way. She would keep asking until she was appeased or distracted and he would not be able to distract her in this cold.
The ne had a lot of awesome passive stuff, but the glove had two attributes that he would tell nobody about, unless absolutely necessary, just because he wanted to reveal the awesomeness in a fitting way. He had tested everything out during a quick dungeon run yesterday evening. He also had spent the 4 remaining Stat Points, which he had remaining from yesterday’s encounter with his favourite force of nature, on Charisma. With all the new modifiers his Stats inched ever closer towards ‘really impressive’.
“Fine… so, a shadow elemental, right?” Rave gave in.
“That’s what the Skill says,” John hummed and added some malicious looking runes to the basic summoning circle.
Lydia had said that shadow magic wasn’t inherently evil, but it sure did its best to convince him otherwise by the sheer amount of edge the drawing radiated once he was done with it.
“Not sure how I feel about ya summoning a hot girl that’s my pr opposite type wise,” Rave said, “Also, that circle could only look more satanic if ya drew it in blood.”
John nodded in agreement to that statement. “Well, I am only doing what the Skill tells me to,” he exined.
“Can you hurry the fuck up doing that?” Smander cursed. The fire spirit was out there with them because Rave, as per usual, could not stand the cold for more than a nanosecond. “I was in the middle of a Mario Kart tournament.”
“The fact that you have inte…”
“ele!”
“…ele ess in my head is highly disturbing,” Johnmented. “How does that even work?”
“Something about the collective shared consciousness of all elementals that are still connected to our home nes, represented in a modern way because we don’t live in the stone age anymore. I don’t fucking know the details, I just know that it gets faster the better you get at elemental magic. Now summon that new sister for our cock-loving sorority so I can get back to kicking Gnome’s slowpoke ass!” Smander gave him a quick tutorial.
“Yes, yes,” John agreed and put the chalk down before putting his hand on the edge of the circle. The goal was summoning a Tier 3 elemental. The circle reacted to the intent and sapped the required life and magic from him in a heartbeat.
“Well, look at that, now it’s actually glowing red,” Rave’s snarky remark was thest thing he heard before something alien invaded his thoughts. All light vanished and now he was in a vast space of pitch ck silence. Visually, it looked simr to the nothingness he had known from the empty barriers Magoi had created for him.
Mentally, however, this was different. The darkness of an unfilled Illusion Barrier was clean, almost sterile. It was waiting to be reced, representing a potential for something different to take its ce.
This darkness was full. It was what it was. It was sharp, ck, and unapologetically embraced him with its lightless expanse. Elemental powers roiled either openly or under a veil that John could not perceive. There was something just beyond the reach of his arm, if only he could try to grab it.
John couldn’t move most of his body, the thing in his thoughts blocking every signal that didn’t go to his eyes or mouth. Looking anywhere was useless, everything was the same absolute ck. Speaking at least pushed away the silence.
“Hello?” he asked. This wasn’t like the other summonings, usually the Mother of that element would speak to him and then he would be shown some vision. Even Smander had followed that pattern. Now he was just alone, save for that presence in his head. That soon changed, however.
The darkness in front of him slowly crept back to reveal the shape of a woman. Her slender arms were bound in shadowy chains above her head. Her feet, the shape of high heels whose stilettos were exceptionally sharp, dangling just above the ground were simrly restrained. Both were covered in sometex-like, almost ck, deep-purpleyer. Towards her hands it became slightly lighter in colour, covering her hands and feet, the final segments of her fingers were long ws, sharper than ss shards.
Despite her obvious imprisonment, her greyish pink hair was silky and fell over her full chest, softly curling towards the tips, where more of thattex-like exterior hugged her tits and stomach in the shape of a leotard. Nothing of her hourss build was hidden. If anything, it was all entuated by the swirling patterns. The soft rise and fall of her abdominal muscles was as clear as if painted on. The only purpose of thetex-likeyer seemed to be to shield her light blue skin from greedy eyes. With gleaming yellow eyes, the irises the shape of a snake, she looked at John. Purple lips curved into a smile.
“Anothermb for the ughter? How nice of Mother.” Every word that left her mouth was sensually drawled. It was the kind of tone that those who spoke artificially seductively wished to copy. “Come now, little man, I ampletely at your mercy. Do with me whatever – your heart – may – desire.” Every stretched-out word drew out a bit more of John’s primal instincts as control of his body rushed back into his limbs. He got to his feet and stumbled one step forwards.
Her ample chest rose and fell with a steady want, apanied by the lustful sighing of her every breath. It made the Gamer’s pants tight. All John would have needed to do was extend his hand and he could have dug his fingers into these sizable mounds of flesh.
“Yeah, no,” he said and crossed his arms instead, the presence in his mind finally gone. “This bait is too obvious.”
The shadow elemental shifted in her chains, rubbing her legs together in a desperate gesture, “Please, oh mighty neer, I have been aching for somebody like you.”
“Not falling for it,” John told her.
“Tsk,” the elemental averted her eyes for a moment, clicking her tongue, then looked back at him with pure innocence, “Mister, all I need is your cock.”
“You are not a particrly good actress,” Johnmented, “Pro-tip: Don’t start with ‘anothermb for the ughter’ and don’t ‘Tsk’ in the middle of the dialogue,pletely breaks the immersion. If this was a cutscene, they would fire the writer.”
He looked more closely at the chains, The shadow-forged links ended somewhere beyond the reach of darkness his eyes could pierce. “Usually, the visitors start drooling and just ignore all I say,” the elemental admitted and shrugged, the chains rattling in response.
“Ah, being honest now?” John asked.
“Mother evidently didn’t send you over as entertainment, or you would have been dumb enough to fall for that,” the elemental looked at John, who was walking around her body. “I only had the pleasure of quick entertainment for the longest time. I keep getting the scum of Earth presented to me. The weak, unsatisfying kind.” She tilted her head to follow him as he walked. “You might be worth wing apart?”
“I had a way stronger being suggest that to me yesterday. I am not exactly intimidated by you.” He was now behind her.
Turning her neck to a degree every human would have described as highly ufortable, but still within the realms of possibility, she asked, “What are you doing?”
“Checking out your ass,” he bluntly stated, “and I have to say: Nice. Looks firm but would probably jiggle when pped.”
“Why don’t you try it out?” she asked and wiggled enticingly. Not once did her alluring tone drop or skip a beat. It sounded like that was genuinely her voice.
“Mhm, so you get out of these chains if Iy a hand on you, would be my guess.” The elemental furrowed her eyebrows, that was all John needed to know. “Bullseye, you are a really bad actress… or you are distracting me from something else.” He walked back to her front and stopped just close enough that he could reach out and touch her whenever he wanted. “If you want to keep a secret you say something unrted, you don’t imply the exact opposite,” he gave her another tip.
“I wonder if your brain would still produce such smart words if I scattered it over the floor?” The words were calm. A curious thought, spoken out loud, rather than a threat.
John had no answer to that, he instead used Observe. Which was denied. That wasn’t to say that it didn’t work, it did, but the silent Mother of Shadows blocked the results from his vision, leaving him with only a pitch-ck rectangle in a light blue frame. ‘Well, I can’t learn her name through Observe. That would betray the usual motions.”
“If Mother didn’t send you to entertain me, what are you here for?” the elemental wondered.
“I wanted to make a contract with an elemental, the Mother of Shadows sent me here following the ritual, so it seems that’s what I am here for.” He scratched the back of his head.
The elemental giggled. “Are you serious?” she asked not him but the vast darkness around them. John did not notice anything, but the elemental’s giggle grew a little louder, as if listening to some kind of joke. Her voice continued to drip with eroticism, mixed with hope and genuine interest. “Do you know how long I have been here?”
“Obviously not, I just got here,” John remarked.
“Neither do I,” she said, ignoring his implied question. “I know why I got here, however. Possessing the dreams of mundanes is skirting the lines of the divide Gaia put up. Making a sad prostitute murder her pimp was apparently a bit much.” She sighed and stretched. “Ah, that moment when those who think they have everything have it all taken away – how I miss it.” Thest part was spoken with sharp, tantalizing intent. Enough to send a chill down John’s spine. “How much do you have?” she asked.
‘This girl is cray-cray.’ John decided to look for another elemental who was less homicidal. He was a pervert, yes, and she was hot as fuck, yes, but without assurance he wouldn’t stick his dick into that, or allow her to pull some other stunts like that when he would have to take the responsibility in front of Gaia.
‘I can give you assurance,’ a toneless voice said in his head. It was like somebody was scratching words into the inside of his forehead. ‘If you take her with you, she will have to obey five rules you can set-up however you want and you can change them however you want.’
‘Seriously?’ John thought, ‘What If I make one of the rules: Kill yourself at 11 PM.’
‘She will have to obey whatever rules you set,’ The scratching repeated. ‘If you do something as foolish as that, know that you will not find any shadow elemental that is not your enemy. I wish to make it your charge to show my wayward daughter a way to live in the world again. Do this for me.’
John rubbed his forehead with both hands to get that disgusting feeling away. “Mother doesn’t seem to like you enough to use her pleasant voice,” the elemental’s tone was vibrating with amusement.
Raising an eyebrow, he said, “You are an awful actress, but pretty good at picking up small things.” With a shrug, the elemental took both the insult and thepliment.
“And, what did Mother whisper to you? That I will be difficult to handle?” the elemental licked her lips in a gesture that was both seductive and bloodthirsty. The chains pulled taut. “Because I can imagine very few things more fulfilling than seeing you bleed out. People like you deserve the reminder.”
“People like me?” John asked, out of sheer curiosity.
“People who have everything they wish and get everything they want, people whose life just seems to reward them for existing,” her wide grin showed sharp, white teeth, her yellow eyes glowed brighter and her hair rose until it stood upwards, swaying like the me of a candle. “The happiest people, the ones who are shatteredpletely when their boundless sess suddenly ends.”
“I am pretty blessed,” John admitted, “the ability I have is supremely strong, I have the best girlfriend in the world, a harem and enough money to buy just about anything I could ever want.” He looked into her eyes, “But to say I get everything for free is unfair.” The desire to gouge out his throat and do things to his corpse that even a butcher wouldn’t be able to keep his stomach in check for was spelled out so clearly in there that John had to smirk. “Well, even if I tell you my life isn’t without hardship you are going to stay convinced to kill me, aren’t you?”
“Whatever hardships you face are probablyughable. You’re a Latebloomer. I can sense the power of your soul radiate in this ne,” the elemental responded, struggling with renewed vigour against her chains. “I’ve seen many like you. You think you do good and cut down too many in your path. Someone ought to w you back down to reality.”
Tendrils of shadow extended from her back, each of them ending in a long de. Their size varied, but each was sharp and ready to skewer him. They stretched towards John, but failed to quite reach him. The same magic that kept her chained also made this act of aggression mere show.
John wasn’t certain of that in the first few moments, and had taken arge step back. “You know, just yesterday, I showed another woman who the world thought to be nothing but a monster that she was beautiful. I think your Mother wants me to do the same for you. I’m inclined to try,” John offered.
“My desire is to ruin you,” the elemental didn’t raise her voice. Even now, it was the same, purely sexual tone. “Why would I agree to a contract with you?” The question was bait, she wanted to get out of here and they both knew it. There was something else that she wanted, however.
“How about a bet?” John said and carefully stepped closer again. The ded tentacles were forced away, unable to ovee an invisible barrier around John. His hand hovered up from her legs to her chest and finally her face. Careful to never touch her, he continued, “I unshackle you and you get one shot at killing me. If you win, congrattions, you hurt me a lot, even if you can’t kill me here. If you fail, you tell me your name and we make a contract. I should add that your Mother told me she will give me the power to enforce 5 rules you will have to obey once we are outside though.”
Her eyes became darker, quite literally; where normal eyes were white, hers were grey and now they became pitch ck, only intensifying the yellow of her iris by contrast, “Why would you tell me that?”
“Because I don’t want to base our rtionship on lies and your disappointment that you cannot try to kill me outside of here.” John smiled and shrugged. “I’m a good guy, I’m reasonably certain. I don’t always act like it and you don’t believe me. Admittedly, I can be quite selfish.”
The tentacles increased in number until he saw dozens of them to each of his sides, like the needles of an iron-maiden waiting to close, telling John what her answer was going to be. “I ept your wager,” the elemental sighed. “Let’s make this quick and messy.”
With a smile, John stayed his left hand above her chest. He leaned in and ced a kiss on her full lips. ck pupils thinned to a razor-thin slit. The tendrils rushed towards him from every direction. There was fire and a sh.