Collide Gamer

Chapter 228 – Watch the Hat

John dismissed the window. ‘Not as strong as you thought, huh?’ he thought, lying on the cold ground of the run-down house.

“I’ve had it for today,” Lydia announced. Even with the knowledge that it just had been a copy, she was still shaken to the core. Justifiably, as John had to agree.

“I will be taking a break too,” he said and his elementals took a relieved breath, even Siena. That miscarriage of an eldritch horror had taken the winds out of their sails.

They returned to the mansion. Aclysia went to tag out Thana when it came to Nathalia duty. John, who still had to stay abstinent, stayed in the living room. He was thankful that the dragoness had taken a room on the third floor. All of the moaning that, without a shadow of a doubt, went on up there did not reach his ears. As long as he did not let his curiosity check on what his familiars were doing, he would be fine.

“So, what is your idea for the rest of this fucking day?” Thana asked, “And I mean fucking day literally for once.”

“Well… depends on Jane.” His girlfriend perked up a bit. “What is your plan?”

“Ya know, meditate, train martial arts – Why?”

“Because If you wanted to continue running dungeons I would be up for going back in like thirty minutes. Otherwise, I’d grab miss madness here…” He gestured at Thana who laughed and waved. “…and do a speedrun for the other Quest.”

Rave tilted her head and tapped her index finger against her glossy lips in a steady beat as she thought about that. “Mhm, nah, I feel like I am close to tapping into something nice with that cat form, you know? Gotta practice something aside from my stats. Unlike ya, I don’t get to do it all at the same time.”

John nodded. “Thought as much… small addendum to the plan: we will return for a small break whenever the Flask is filled up. I don’t want to waste resources any more than I already have.”

“Sounds great,” Rave smirked and kissed him on the cheek. “See ya later. Hopefully you’re allowed to use your dick again by then.”

Following that whisper she left the room to do her training somewhere more isolated, leaving John with Thana. Everyone else was doing their own thing or had gone incorporeal. Not like John would need them for what followed

“So, when are we going?” Thana asked. “I want to punch something so hard it literally fucking explodes again. That was fun.” Her gum-revealing grin was accompanied with a small bit of cackling. It created little echoes in John’s head.

“I want to just sit down for a moment first,” John told her and relaxed on the couch. Luckily, he didn’t have to worry about his suit getting wrinkly. Enchanted cloth was awesome.

He pulled the new Legendary acquisition from his inventory and looked at it with some surprise. It was a black fedora, fitting for his suit, with a white band running around it. The small feather on the left side made it look slightly cheesy, however. ‘I don’t know if I want this to be good.’ John had more than a few opinions about fedoras, all of them informed by ‘M’lady’ memes.

‘Huh. So that’s a thing. Now what do those attributes do?’ he tapped on them one after another.

 Mental Resistance and the Stat bonuses were easy enough. Form-Fitting meant that it would fit his head perfectly. Perfect Hair was weird, apparently it would restyle his hair when he had the hat on? Time to test that.

He put on the hat. He let it rest there for a few seconds. He looked at the woman who followed his actions with a raised eyebrow.

“Okay, Thana, tell me earnestly what you think of my hair now,” he said and took it off again.

“Is that thing a fucking hair washer?” Thana asked with confused eyes. “‘Cause your hair just got smooth as fuck. I want to touch it, I will touch it,” she was touching it. “That’s unfairly soft. You can’t make me jealous over your fucking hair. You are a guy! You are supposed to wash your hair with the same bottle of lube you scrub your ass with!”

John did not respond to that, instead putting the hat back on and grinning at her. Either because she was jealous or she wanted to touch his hair again, Thana tried to rip it back off. To both of their surprise, it remained in place. “The fuck?!” Thana growled and pulled a second time – stronger.

“Stop it, you’re going to break my neck!” John pleaded, feeling the pulling in his bones. Thana immediately obliged, putting her hands high where he could see them.

That was, without a doubt, the Unmoveable Attribute. John also noticed what Sightless did a moment later. The rim of the hat didn’t interfere with his vision. Much like his windows or the blue hue of Mana Protection, the hat was both see-through and did what a hat did, shielding John’s eyes from the lightbulb under the ceiling.

That only left Tip as an attribute he didn’t know about.

That wasn’t bad. It wasn’t outstanding, as the shelf life of the Tips was limiting the hat’s abuse potential, but it still was free mana. The Stats alone made it worth it to equip the fedora. John added it to his battle equipment. Maybe he would look good with it?

That out of the way, John put his new Stat Points into Wisdom, as per custom, and moved on to another question. Should he use his Skill Evolution Point? The elementals were still a long while off level 100, so there was no real reason to hoard it. What to spend it on though? The Skills eligible for evolving, aside from the summons, were Sneaking, Arcane Explosion, Mana Ray and Possession.

Possession did exactly what John wanted right now, so evolving it was a novelty. Same for Mana Ray and Arcane Explosion, albeit to a lesser extent. Sneaking, however, had been part of his toolkit since the very start but went unused forever. He simply wasn’t someone who snuck around. Maybe there was something useful to be gained out of evolving it?

Camouflage was the only one of these options that had a sensible mana cost. It was also just Sneaking+, so nothing he would use ever. Invisibility had a certain ring to it, but it was also absolutely not what John needed. If he wanted to hide he was better off having Gnome dig him a tunnel or something. Blink, however, was a ‘get out of shit’ card he could actually use. Sure, 1000 mana was a chokingly high cost, but it was preferable to dying because he stood in the fire too long. Blink it was!

Evidently, Gaia’s templates were not made to display all Skills equally. The amount of wasted space here hurt John’s eyes. ‘Anyhow, time to test this,’ he thought and closed his eyes. It said he needed to see where he was teleporting to, but was that limited to his own pair of eyes?

Jack bounced around on the dinner table, looking at the hooded back of Thana. “Just as a heads up,” John warned, “I am going to be behind you in a moment.” He had no desire to trigger one of Thana’s panic attacks, get punched through the stomach or both.

“Okay?” Thana asked, amused at the thought that John could somehow move quicker than her.

John felt himself scatter. It was a tickling feeling; his body and items were disassembled and returned to their natural state in a frame of time too small for his mind to really comprehend. He opened his eyes again and looked at a wall. He also realized he was still in the same pose as he had been on the couch.

Thana put her hand on his back, preventing him from toppling over. “That’s kind of impressive,” she told him, as he stood up.

“I thought it would also adjust the way I faced and all that…” he mumbled and scratched the back of his head. He clicked his tongue when he noticed he did. The gesture left a bad taste in his mouth since Herman.

“It’s still pretty fucking good,” Thana assured him. Her eyes travelled to something in the corner of her vision. The party interface, as John swiftly realized. “You can’t pull that parlour trick out of your ass too often though.”

“Nope, but one day I might. I still have over 900 levels of potential growth,” John countered.

Thana grinned, then tilted her head. “If you had managed to teleport the way you wanted, what would you have done, hm?” she asked and wiggled her hips. The motion was a bit clunky and the black robe hid most of her assets. John needed neither to be perfect to remember her backside. His mind went to all of the jiggle he was missing out on by not spanking her. She was grinning all adorable-like.

John was halfway through bowing down to kiss her, when he realized where this would go. “Damned be that Quest!” he exclaimed and stomped off. “Let’s kill things to take my frustration out!”

“Now you are speaking my fucking language,” Thana giggled and followed him. “What do you have in mind? Level 300 content? Because I can be fucking guaranteeing you that I can still beat that shit without problem.”

“Tempting, but no.” John softly shook his head. “I think that we could probably get some rather strong items and Achievements out of the deal if we went there but A: I do not look forward to getting one-shot by some assault you can’t react to on time and B: Gaia will totally come and patch that up if we abuse it. Oh, also C: The Quest is for Tier 15 specifically, and I want to beat that.”

“I very much doubt that there are level 300 mobs that I can’t murder double-fucking-dead before they get to you, but sure, have it your way,” Thana agreed, and they left the mansion grounds again. Well, that was the plan, but John noticed something on the way.

There was someone. That someone was wearing full templar armour: a bucket helmet with a golden cross over the front, heavy chainmail, a white tabard and cape. John could see the black cross on the cape, together with the eagle on golden ground. He was pretty certain that the same coat of arms was on the tabard, but that was hidden underneath an out of place gardener’s apron.

The knight was trimming the hedges with a nail clipper. Each little clip was executed with perfection in mind. His sword and shield, the latter also bearing the coat of arms, lying on a respectfully spread blanket. “DEUS VULT, guests and allies of the great princess of Prussia,” the man greeted them in an overly enthusiastic manner.

‘Can you even use Deus Vult as a greeting? Ah, whatever,’ John thought and raised his hand to return the greeting. Thana’s laughing interrupted him before he could say a single word.

The shrill sounds echoed throughout the garden. “What the fuck are you supposed to be?!” she asked.

“I am Konrad Kamradsrat, Großmeister of the Knights of Teuton… DEUS VULT!” The templar spoke with booming pride.

“That does not answer my fucking question,” Thana continued to snicker. “I mean, why are you clipping this hedge?”

“I was strolling on the daily patrol when I noticed that this hedge was not perfectly trimmed. See here!” He gripped a giant water level and held it up against the hedge. “The hedge tilts 2 degrees out towards the top! Unacceptable! Therefore, as the highest servant of her majesty, the princess of mighty Prussia, the one true country standing for our glorious order, I saw it as my DEUS VULT given duty to correct the error of this myself. My apologies, you should not have seen me.”

John was hardly holding back his laughter as well by now. The guy was a very meme-matic figure. “Just out of curiosity, what do you think about Israel?”

“WE HAVE RETAKEN JERUSALEM, THREE HURRAHS’!”

“HURRAH!” One knight suddenly appeared from a sideway.

“HURRAH!” another one peaked out from behind a bush, holding another nail clipper in his heavy gauntlets.

“HURRAH!” A third knight appeared from a trap door right in front of John.

“DEUS VULT! Comrades, let us vanquish all of the asymmetric branches in this garden and then resume yesterday’s patrol duties! For the princess!”

““DEUS VULT! DEUS VULT! DEUS VULT!”” the knights chanted in unison as they continued their work. With a smile John went on and left the building. A smile that died the moment he was outside and no longer needed to put up a show.

Thana was still grinning, but there was a confused sparkle in her eyes. “They said they were there since yesterday,” she pointed out.

“Yes… did you notice them?” John wanted to know.

The blood mage violently shook her head, white and azure hair flying, “Didn’t hear a fucking thing.”

“Observe didn’t work on them either…” John informed her. He had tried it on every single one of the knights. None of them had shown any windows whatsoever. Aura sight had revealed very little: the glow had been suppressed and was only leaking out from their visors. “I’ll have to ask Lydia about this later.”

The fact that there was an order here that was so good at hiding that not even Thana with her insane senses noticed was simultaneously calming and discomforting. At least they were pretty obviously on their side.

‘Well, Lydia’s side,’ John reminded himself. He wasn’t her underling, he was just repaying a debt; once that was over fate may pitch them against each other one day. There was no way to know for certain. He liked to imagine that they were close now, but he had been burned before. ‘Best I become stronger. That’s the only way to be safe.’