Chapter 277 – Will you listen?<h2></h2>


    John’s first reaction to his girlfriend arriving back at the top of the tform was to awkwardly step in front of her with his arms open. Her eyes were hidden behind her bangs, a mess that looked even more dishevelled than usual. There was no other indication needed than the ppy state of her persisting cat ears.


    She took a weak step off the tform, and two quick ones followed, then she pressed her head against his chest, and he closed his arms around her. “I was too hasty,” Rave mumbled, her muffled voice trembling.


    “Yes, you were,” John said in a tone that was as gentle as possible. She wouldn’t want him to be anything but honest.


    “I blew all my powder from the start, and mother just strung me along while she waited for me to get tired,” there was something like a sniff, then a bit of a giggle, “I was totally the mouse there, not the cat.”


    “Your mom is a cougar,” John joked and was rewarded with a minor gut punch for that.


    “Weirdo,” Raveughed, and that sound alone repaid him for the pain. He gently rubbed her head for a few more seconds before she calmly freed herself from his embrace. Copper eyes slightly reddened and with some tears still dwelling inside, she turned to Lydia. “Sorry, I totally lost,” she apologized.


    “Yes, you did,” Lydia’s arms were crossed, her fingers danced over the sharp turn of her elbow. Then she sighed. “This was the anticipated oue. We will have to strategize about how to go forward.”


    A grumbling noise came from Thana, and John, keeping an arm around Rave’s shoulder, looked over to the blood mage. Most likely in an attempt to prevent herself from saying anything stupid, Thana was biting down on her hand. To be more exact, her overly sharp teeth were applied to the squishy bit on the outer side of her left palm, below the little finger. There was no blood drawn, but it still looked rather ufortable.


    To aplish this rather awkward task, Thana had bent her arm in a way that made her elbow point at the ceiling. It looked quite silly. Which is why Raveughed in her face for it. The emotions of confusion and anger both shed over Thana’s face, then she startedughing as well. Quite a bit louder than Rave and a tad (a lot) crazier.


    “You fucking suck,” Thana told her at the end. “Why would you blow all your load at the start? If you have premature ejaction issues, at least tease a bit!”


    “Cause I suck,” Rave smiling in a way that was almost usual, if it wasn’t for the dejected way she looked at the floor.


    “Time to get that fixed.” Copernicus walked along the railing of the tform. “A good start would be to understand why you were fundamentally wrong in your training. You fight as if I don’t exist, Jane,” he said; “You fight like your mother, alone, when you should be thinking about how we should fight together.”


    “Wait, why do ya tell me now? And didn’t ya, when we made our contract, say that you will just empower me while I fight?”


    “I am a cat, I change my mind,” Copernicus yawned. Funnily enough, that was a valid answer. Cats could be pretty indecisive dicks. “If you give me reason to assist you, I will. I take no pleasure in my Lightbearer losing. You are supposed to be capable enough so that I don’t need to help you, but now that you have been properly humiliated, I think it is time we further our bond a bit.”


    “You dyed this to humiliate her?” Lydia asked in a disapproving tone; “And lose me a point on top of that?”


    “I already told her and I will tell you again, Lylytina,” the sun cat mockingly meowed. “I am not bothered by your nation of sinners’ struggle for power. All I care for is for my Lightbearer to provide me with a secure and interesting life.” Copernicus’ eyes wandered back over to Rave, “As luck would have it, that includes her being the strongest she can be. I do not usually fight, but once in a while, hunting is fun.”


    “Basically, what you are saying is that even a house cat kills a mouse sometimes,” John, who had seen all of thising from the moment Copernicus had spoken up yesterday, teased.


    He earned himself an annoyed hiss. Copernicus jumped at Rave, and she caught him. “Ya are such a stupid little kitty,” Rave said and scratched his belly as she held the cat in her arms.


    “Of the two of us, the stupid one would be you,” the suncat answered, working on Rave’s hand with his paws, ws retracted.


    “So ya gonna teach me how to punch mom in the face next fight?”


    “I will try,” Copernicus purred. “You are not allowed to lose unless I want to teach you a lesson, Jane. Having a weak summoner is a disgrace.”


    “Well, I will live, learn and move on!” Rave eximed.


    “Ehem,” there was a female voice that John barely knew clearing her throat. They looked over to a green-haired girl waving at them, apanied by two knights clearly ready to drag her away if Lydia told them so.


    “Hey, sis,” Liz, Rave’s younger sister, greeted.


    She had the same teardrop shaped face and stunning good looks, although the Asian heritage shimmered through more intensely in her. The curse of her family manifested in an intense green colour. Her hair was much straighter than Rave’s by andrge, but still curled excessively towards the tips, especially at the back.


    The two of them also shared their glossy pink lips, which ignited the wish in John to see both of these lips slide over his dick. Banging two sisters at the same time was somewhat of a primal desire for him and most men, he had no idea why. Probably because Rave was hotter than the sun (at least in John’s opinion, his girlfriend looked better than Sol), and having a girl that looked a lot like her at the same time was double the awesome.


    Sadly, Liz had a boyfriend, so that route was blocked. Not that Rave was likely to agree to this in the first ce. “Whaddya want?” the pink haired girl in question said.


    “Well, mom can’te here herself, because newspapers, so she sent me over,” Liz looked over to John. “I would have just called, but somebody switched numbers without telling me.”


    “I am fairly certain that I sent you an SMS with my new number,” John said and checked. Indeed, he had.


    Liz clicked her tongue after looking through her phone for almost a full minute, “Who uses SMS? Write me on WhatsApp or something! Whatever.” The green haired girl made the motions of adding someone to their contacts and then put her phone away, “I am supposed to ask you whether or not you are willing to talk now, sis.”


    Rave continued to scratch Copernicus’ belly, deep in thought. That in and of itself was making John smile a bit. His girlfriend usually just decided things in the spur of the moment; the fact that she didn’t just outright refuse or agree meant that she was actually considering what she wanted, not just now but going forward.


    “I suggest we go,” John said, squeezing her shoulder in what he hoped to be an encouraging disy of his love. ‘I got your back,’ is what he wanted her to understand, and the fact that she leaned against him made him sure that she did.


    “Okay, I did get to pummel her for a bit, might as well hear what she has to say,” Rave agreed, and as if a thorn that had been stuck in her side for months finally had been removed, she rxedpletely. The fearless smirk returned to her gorgeous face.


    John understood immediately. It wasn’t the question whether or not she would even talk to her mother which his girlfriend had been pondering over, it was whether or not she could forgive her. Back when the two of them had announced their candidacy for the tournament, it clearly had been a no.


    If she had found the will to talk to her again, then Rave, so it seemed, had found it in herself to listen to her mother in earnest and judge whether or not she would forgive her. That was a clear step-up from the question of ‘could’.


    The fact that John understood all of this just by the smile she wore on her lips made him realize once again just how lucky he was to have her. Between the smile and her slightly red eyes, he saw her for who she was. She was a certainty in his life, a lovable anchor that he shared his world with. Finding someone that he could understand on such a deep level, that could understand him the same way, was beyond fulfilling. How long the odds must have been for him to run into her?


    It was a useless question, and the answer didn’t matter anyway, it only mattered that it hade to pass. As if guided by an invisible hand, John bowed his head as she stretched her neck towards him. Their lips met in a kiss that sent shivers down his spine.


    Her lips tasted of saltwater and tears of defeat. Nheless, they were the lips he loved most in this world, these pink glossy lips; no matter how they may taste in a bitter moment or sweetest of victories, the person they belonged to was the one that he wanted to remain in his life forever. No doubt about it.


    As the shiver spread through his body as a pleasantly warm tingle, their kiss, a kiss only romantic and not filled with any lust, continued. Only when the warmth had spread so far that it basically had be part of him, neither having cooled down in the slightest, did they stop.


    “That one was awesome, more of that,” Ravemented under her breath. Then they had Liz guide them to wherever Nariko was waiting for them. Lydia excused herself from the affair, as did Momo. Thana had to be promised cake in order to follow the support. Nia simply vanished when they weren’t looking for a moment.


    On their way over, John made sure that nobody followed them by using Jack. The bird was equipped with Reveal. Which was a thing he really should get used to, but he disliked using Spellcarrier needlessly. With its base cost of 3 Possession Slots, of which he had 5 in total right now, it cost him a total of 3 Mana per second, which was more than half of his current regeneration of 5,59.


    While far from uneptable, it wasn’t something he really wanted to pay all the time. He would feel less inclined to not do it if his mana regeneration was bigger, which was a work in progress. Math aside, however, he did spot someone following them.


    Their driver hadn’t even raised questions. The Abyss was a weird ce wherever one went.


    They stepped out of the car and looked at the building in front of them. A giant tower with a design that was a sessful marriage between modern day skyscrapers and an obelisk, being primarily made from finely worked stone. The building was several dozen stories high. Most of them were open at the side, allowing delivery drones to fly in and out.


    The basic stone skeleton looked, like most bigger structures in this city, ancient but also wlessly maintained. It was a bizarre look into a time long passed that still stuck to this city and this city alone. A culture that had risen and fallen in the history that John had known before all of this began, amplified by the powers of magic which defiedmon physics.


    Aside from that basic structure though, the walls of the tower with its quadratic base were mostly ss and metal. It appeared that the base structure had been modified countless times, whole floors had been ripped out and reced with another business.


    This was thergest bureaucraticplex in Rome outside of the imperial pce itself. In the second ring of the city stood this behemoth of paperwork, profit and nearly uncontrolled capitalism. The Abyss Auction Rome Headquarters.


    “Mom is waiting inside,” Liz said.