Chapter 354 – Back to Rome


    “Okay, everyone, I know this isn’t the strictly quickest way to go about things,” John told everyone once they were ready to make their way back to Rome, “but I am going to take the ne.”


    “You are going to lose time,” Lydia reprimanded him.


    “No, I am going to lose REAL time; I will spend way less on travelling in experienced time. I do not want to ride a raptor for a whole day. Instead, I will befortable in my seat in first ss,” he crossed his arms, as he had made his mind up on the matter.


    “You have flying machines in reality nowadays?” Metra asked. “I want to see that, let’s go!”


    “Yeah, gonna stick with my boyfriend here,” Rave added.


    “I am not going to leave smelling range again,” Eliza, now actually being carried by John, announced and pressed her face into his back. “You need to put that body oil on again! You still smell good, but you don’t smell amazing, and I want you to smell FUCKING amazing.”


    “I left it back at the mansion,” John said in an apologetic tone.


    “Then what the shit are we waiting for you cum hose and or dumpsters?!” the blood mage wanted to know; “Get the fuck on with your life! Anal queen can run if she wants to.”


    Aclysia and Momo also were in agreement while the elementals basically where left without a choice.


    “Hmph, fine, you all are wee to waste your time then. I will meet you in Rome,” Lydia announced and went over to the procession on her own.


    “I too feel like flying, but I should talk to her,” Maximillian fell into the conversation, scratching the back of his head while leaning on his walking stick. “The question of session is more urgent than ever now that the throne is actually vacant.”


    “We won’t continue this stupid tournament, right?” John wanted to know. After all that had happened, getting back into the colosseum and fighting thatst round sounded needlessly exhausting.


    “We will see,” Maximillian gave him an enigmatic smile; “I like to keep you in suspense. Also, I will ask Nariko out for dinner; she is going with Romulus’ group as well.”


    “Ya will not do that!” Rave demanded.


    “Try and stop me,” the king said and waved goodbye as he turned around.


    “Prick,” the lightbearer stuck her tongue out and pulled one of her eyelids down as Maximillian made his way over to Romulus, leaving John and his direct procession behind.


    Momo cleared her throat. “I have to voice a safety concern about Elizaing with us and Romulus being somewhere else entirely. Because being the devil’s advocate is basically my job with you chaotic bunch,” she informed them.


    “I doubt Thana would be dumb enough toe out in public,” John told her, “and even if, it seems that we can keep Eliza at the top just by naming her.”


    “Also, it’s not like I change out of fucking nowhere now that I actually know what I am wrestling with,” Eliza added; “As long as I am not getting close to mass murder or get overly excited by fighting, we should be fine.”


    “So we shouldn’t be involved in a ne crash or get ambushed by some stragglers still running around the ce, okay,” the support shrugged; “If you are sure it works, hey, I will only die if you are wrong.”


    “Come now, Momo,” John chuckled a bit to himself; “If you actually thought things were likely to be wrong, you would be way more earnest about yourints.”


    “Guilty as charged.”


    “Can we get a move on already?” Metra urged them, jumping from one foot on another in excitement, “I haven’t seen whatever this ne thing is in my life. So, let’s go!” She gave everyone a wide grin, the yful tomboy type that made everyone just a bit overexcited.


    “That was unnecessarilyplicated,” Johnined when they finally sat down in their seats in first ss. Getting the artificial spirits through the security measures had been rather annoying.


    While Aclysia and Momo got away with changing their entire bodyposition to stic, Metra didn’t have that particr skill, and as she was someone made entirely from some magical metal, they had needed to pull a few stunts involving Illusion Barriers, extra ne tickets and John’s newly increased Charisma to worm their way through the situation. That barely worked, only thanks to a bribe to the pilot at the end, John really needed to get his Charisma up just that bit higher.


    “We won’t be having an orgy on this ne,” Eliza, in disguise,mented the obvious as she sat down across the aisle from John, immediately got out of her shoes and put on the television in front of her. This first ss came with a lot of space, and they could change the seats to makeshift beds, although they wouldn’t need that functionality in all due likelihood, as they were scheduled tond around 21 o’clock. The war had begun on Tuesday, and now, on Sunday, it was already over.


    The separated and headless remainders of the Blood would probably pull a Muslim terror organization on everyone and remain a rebel group out in the woods somewhere for the next decades, but the guild itself had been crushed between the forces of The Sons of Odyn, Rex Germaniae, Illuminati and the Sons of Rome (also, to a lesser extent, the Iberian branch of therger empire, Prometheus and the Great Sultanate). Basically, the whole Europeanmunity.


    “Ja, sad,” Rave, in her own brown-haired disguise (this was Russia after all, no need to gain the attention of the airport staff), responded to Eliza as she took her seat next to John. There was a small barrier between them, but it wasn’t particrly high. They put their arms on there and held hands.


    Momo and Aclysia seated themselves nearby, thetter in a white shirt and ck leggings that she must have bought on her own at one point while the former was in her usual monochrome outfit and immediately began to read on her e-reader that John reached her from inside a normal bag. A bag that he had bought just for this ne ride. Money was basically a toss away at this point. To disguise themselves, both Momo and Aclysia had coloured their hair brown, which John didn’t like, but it was what it was.


    Metra, in the meanwhile was checking everything out until she too dropped into a seat and fidgeted with the television. “The future is rad,” she said and zapped through the channels.


    With everyone upied in one form or another, John took to finally taking care of that score he had to spent.


    ‘Well, those are some insane rewards,’ John thought. He hadn’t gained a whole lot more score on thest day, as Romulus had given him rtively few opportunities to fight, but still, he managed get together quite a sum.


    It wasn’t even a question what the first thing was that he wanted: The extra max ss level. That thing was way too good to be passed up. He was 109 already, so the next level he got would give him another one, and the perks he got from his sses were usually pretty good. He bought that one and was left with 183 points.


    His eyes fell on the 50 Skill levels he could buy, then he looked up to Momo who was looking his way expectantly. Artificial Spirit was level 50 right now. If the invested those 50 points into it as well, that would, theoretically, give Momo the chance to be independent. It was way earlier than he anticipated, but he was given the choice now, and the support urged him with her eyes to take it.


    ‘I know we have to wait until we know what happens with the remaining tournament fights,’ she let him know, ‘but this is the quickest way to get me there. Please.’


    John didn’t n to disappoint her, so he picked the points and hammered them all into Artificial Spirit without further hesitation. Of course, that wasn’t the most effective use of these points, but efficiency didn’t need to be the number one priority in all cases. Especially since he could finally grant the wish of a girl that came to be not exactly a lover (despite what Aclysia insisted on) but a great friend.


    ‘We will throw you arge goodbye party,’ John promised and left the perk system for her untouched for the moment. As Momo pointed out, they couldn’t go through with them actually parting until the tournament was over, as she technically wouldn’t be his golem anymore and thus disallow her from fighting with him.


    ‘You better, seeing how much my mana worked for you,’ Momo threw a yfully meanment his way; ‘What are you going to do without it or me nagging at you, I wonder?’


    He was probably strong enough without her, but that didn’t make 7000 mana something he didn’t want to have. Mana of that quantity was a big insurance, a gargantuan one even. For the nagging part, John actually didn’t quite know if that was necessary, but given his recent discovery of his own inted pride, maybe not having her around would create some nasty side effects.


    Left with 8 more points, he bought some experience points and then three crafting materials to be made into moneyter.


    “Hey, Metra,” Momo turned to thetest addition to their line-up, “You have been freed from your original creator, right?”


    “More or less,” came a sarcastic answer, “more than less, why?”


    “Do you feelrgely different?”


    Metra shook her head pretty much immediately, “Nah, was the same fun life as before, although being changed into a contractor stage was pretty annoying. Guess that won’t happen to you though.”


    “Do you want something to eat or drink?” a stewardess, obviously paid enough to not care about entric rich kids randomly tapping the air and talking about video games (to the best of her knowledge), asked. John felt Aclysia staring daggers at the woman, jealous of her position as the current ‘maid’ of the flight.


    “Yes please,” John said with a friendly expression on his face. Rave ordered what he did while Eliza just ordered as much as she could get away with.


    “I am fine,” Momo sent her away in a nice tone. Metra didn’t even notice that she was being asked, just staring out of the window. Sometime during John’s score distribution, they must have taken off, and now she was just busy looking out.


    “I don’t need anything,” Aclysia, barely withholding contempt and half a dozenments about how to properly address John and when to bow while speaking, said with a forced and mildly hostile smile. The stewardess left to get what was ordered.


    John went back to his menus; he now had a ss level to spend. Luckily, he had already grinded up Elementalist to the threshold because that had been a thing he had the time for.


    John went right for Combination 2. How couldn’t he? It was literally an increase on his already game breaking abilities.


    The utilities ofbining 3 elementals was just incredibly likely to be pure amaze-balls. It made him versatile to the point where he was basically unpredictable. The addition of another 5 minutes to the existence of the two-typebination was also stupendously good. As a matter of fact, it was the thing that dragged a fewbinations out of purely niche usage. Like Darkness, who didn’t exactly get a lot of stalking done in the old time limit, or Cumdump, a pure sex-bomb of abination that he barely got to shag thanks to the temporal constraint put upon her.


    Although the new ceiling wasn’t exactly enough for proper sex as John liked to have it as well. It would have easily been enough when he still had beenrgely normal andsted for like 5 minutes of actual sex tops. Nowadays, he could cum as many times as he wanted in a row and abused that shamelessly.


    But the implication here was that there was going to be an increase of time with each uing level, though, and there were going to be another 3 of these if his math wasn’t off as it had to reach all the way to the six-typebination.


    Which also meant he had to take the light elemental along the way.


    John looked at the food that was ced in front of him and thanked the stewardess. “You want to know something interesting?” he asked Rave.


    “I just want to hear ya talk about anything; this program is pretty dull,” she answered, “so I am going to do the creepy woman thing and listen to your voice but not what you say.”


    “Pretty sure that’s just a creepy lover thing,” John pointed out, “but fine, if you are amused by my voice and I get to talk about stuff while doing it, that’s fine by me. See, Lydia exined soul types to us a while back, right?”


    “Right,” Rave stretched cattishly before flopping down back against her chair andzily transported food into her mouth. “Whaddaboutit?”


    “Well, I can only have one elemental of each type for bnce reasons,” John said; “Guess Gaia has some sense in not allowing me a giant hoard of elementals.”


    “Nice to hear that your bullshit has some limits,” his girlfriendmented.


    “Right, here is the kicker thought. Lydia said there were 8 kinds of souls: Fire, water, air, earth, light, dark, life and nk. I obviously can’t contract a nk elemental, since those don’t exist or don’t not exist or something; however it works, they aren’tpatible with any normal magic. I got five of the remaining elementals down and light is something I have the choice to take basically every time I reach a level in Elementalist. Here is the kicker though: Life elementals don’t exist.”


    Rave looked at him for teasingly long as he waited for her to ask to exin. Eventually she grinned; she knew exactly that she had him by the ropes in this conversation and could tease all she wanted. Thankfully, she handed him the opportunity to say what he wanted today without derailing the conversation. “Okay, Brainiac, I’m gonna give ya this satisfaction: can ya please borate?”


    “There are skillbooks for ‘life’ elementals out there, like blood elementals for example,” John said, “and I bought some of them for research. Whenever I tried to learn them, I got a pop-up telling me that this elemental slot was already taken. This leads me to believe that the life soul type actually doesn’t exist and that it’s just representing an omni-colour soul, the actual counterpart to life.”


    “And how do ya exin that it’s so much harder for people with a life-type soul to learn stuffs outside of other life-type magics?” Rave asked just to let him talk some more, for which he was grateful. After all, his girlfriend may have been giving him attention, but that attentiony with him first and what he was actually saying second. He was fine with that, as long as they kept being interesting to each other, their rtionship was still pretty healthy; it was when one talked and the other would have rather listened to silence that they would have been a problem couple.


    “I think that has something to do with all the different elementsyered on top of each other causing disruptions. Anyway, it’s just a theory I have,” John shrugged; “It could also be that life elementals don’te as only life. Maybe it’s an element that only exists in a pair with another one, and the same is true for the soul types. I don’t know.”


    “So, when ya getting that light elemental?” Rave steered the conversation towards another topic; “Maybe it’s going to be that moon chick that wanted to have a contract with me?”


    “Right, that would be nice, although I think now that you said it, it’s going to be that weirdly muscr dude.”


    “He was mean to Copernicus. If it’s him, I am going to kick him in the shins everyday,” his girlfriend threatened.


    “I don’t think beings of pure light have shins,” John proposed a revolutionary idea that made Rave roll her pretty blue eyes at his semantics.


    They continued to banter for the rest of the flight.