Chapter 257 – Peculiar

Nathalia sniffed at Nia with a thoughtful expression. “I dislike blanks,” she said, “smell like nothing,” then, after licking from the blonde’s shoulders to her chin, she added, “taste like nothing.” Nia let that whole torture pass without moving, even as the dragoness circled her.

John glanced over to Thana, he half expected her to let loose another mean comment, but the blood mage kept sitting on her hands and being quiet.

After having completed her inspection, Nathalia took her by the chin. “You are a pretty little thing, I will give you that,” the goddess spoke.

“Thanks?” Nia answered with a slightly confused vibe to her voice. That was the highest amount of emotion John had heard from her yet.

“You will be a fine addition to the people here that I can fuck,” Nathalia nodded to herself. “Yes, indeed, come with me.”

And thus Nia, who didn’t utter a single sound regarding this development, was dragged into the next bedroom by Nathalia. “I don’t know what I expected to happen,” John said once they were off.

“I expected ex-act-ly that,” Rave commented and basically everyone else nodded.

“So, Jane,” John turned to his girlfriend, “what do you want to do?”

“Whaddaya mean?” the techno-lover asked, slightly confused.

“You have been handed a great opportunity,” Lydia intervened. “Not only will the fight against Nariko you so dearly wished for come to pass, but you also got another 3 days to prepare.”

“Oh, yeah, I am going to train something fierce!” Rave announced, raising her right fist. “Gonna punch mother in her bitch face!”

“I doubt that is a sign of a healthy relationship,” John commented. His girlfriend rolled her pretty blue eyes, the pink light around her pupils dancing with amusement, “Not everyone has such a great mom like Brenda.”

“While I agree that my mom is pretty great, she is also a reason for a massive headache I’ve been having,” John scratched the side of his head. “My father as well. Basically, everyone in my immediate family.”

“How so?” Rave wondered.

“Security concerns, for the most part,” the Gamer answered.

“Ah, ya worrying that someone who doesn’t like ya offs them in a dark alleyway?” she put it rather bluntly.

“Yes…,” John agreed; “It’s a useless worry for the most part… I mean, it’s like hoping that they don’t get involved in a car crash. You can pray, but either they get caught up in one or not. I still hired a bodyguard for them to take care of Abyssal assaults though. No idea if someone out there dislikes me enough to attack my parents, but better be cautious.”

“When did that happen?” Rave wondered.

“Yesterday evening,” John said. “Cost me 20 million up-front and another 2 million per month. Some girl with the codename Hex. Will need to enable item drops again to grind the money for that out.”

“Must be nice to drown in cash like that,” Rave mused. “I am pretty much broke now.”

“The battle-suit?” he asked.

“What, noooo,” she giggled in their usual routine. “Let’s say that IF I bought a battle-suit, it would have taken the rest of my money. Hypothetically, if that were to happen.”

Lydia, in the background, rolled her eyes. Simultaneously, Aclysia brought the food in. The couple sat down with everyone else (who needed to eat) at the table. “Thana, you can eat, but you still can’t talk!” John told the blood mage, who hurried over to the table herself.

“Why won’t ya let her talk?” Rave wondered.

“Because I wonder how long she can maintain this,” he explained. “Also, not going to lie, it’s a real turn on when she’s all obedient like this.”

 “Look at ya, being all bossy and smart,” the techno-lover leaned over. “How are ya with kissing nowadays?”

A quick meeting of lips later, Rave hummed in thought. “It’s so weird that fucking ya gets better all the time, but your kisses are still as okay-ish as always,” she told him.

“Okay-ish?! I was under the impression I am basically a god of love-making in every regard!” John exclaimed.

“Yeah, sure,” Rave giggled. “I mean here is a fact for ya. As the one who has been enjoying ya for the longest, lemme tell ya: You are an adequate kisser. Fucking is unfair though. I mean, the difference between sleeping with ya and sleeping with Aclysia is stark.”

“Well, at least I don’t completely ruin your perception of pleasure with sensory overload,” John said, “but can we talk about that kissing thing some more? My pride is hurt!”

Rave shrugged as she chewed on today’s meal, a noodle-based casserole with extra cheese. “Look, ya really are great at the whole ‘heat of the moment’-kissing, but general kissing? Ya gotta keep working on that. Can’t cheat your way out of everything with Skills.”

“Why not?” John lamented; “I like cheating myself out of everything with Skills, that’s what makes me special.”

“Aaaanyway,” Rave stretched the word to underline the topic change, “how did ya convince your parents to accept a bodyguard?”

“I didn’t,” John mumbled, busy formulating a plan to increase his kissing skills. If Gaia didn’t provide him with something for that, he would have to either force the issue or try to improve the old fashioned way. Maybe if he levelled Lover Boy he would get a perk that extended the reach of Pussy Eating to general tongue related activities? That was a horrible idea. He already had reached his current max of Class Levels, and he wanted to go further in many others that had more tangible benefits.

“Explain? Does she stalk after them or something?” Rave probed.

“No, remember how my parents are going for full polyamory?” John reminded her, causing his girlfriend to giggle.

“How could I forget? Like father, like son, I guess.”

“We have a polygyny, not a polyamory, important distinction.”

Rave considered teasing him on the words for a moment, but relented. Of the lines in the sand John could draw, sharing his harem with other men was certainly one. “So ya introduced that bodyguard as your dad’s new lover or something?”

“Basically, yes,” John sighed. “She took double for that undercover role.”

“Well, judging by you, your dad isn’t the prettiest face out there,” his girlfriend poked fun at him.

“You are pretty mean today,” John complained.

“Am I or are ya just giving me way too much ammunition to shoot ya with?” Rave giggled and gave him another kiss as his payback.

Meanwhile, John was still scheming how to get better at kissing. He couldn’t practice with Aclysia, she would just swoon the whole time, and he would get no constructive feedback whatsoever. Lydia wouldn’t give him that time of day. Literally, she would not give him time for kissing practice. Gnome would die of embarrassment, Siena would do the opposite of Aclysia and just curse him the whole time.

‘Sylph is also out,’ he thought. ‘I would learn about the latest happenings in Narnia rather than what I could do better when kissing people…’ He slowly eliminated everyone in his mental list until he arrived at a singular person.

“No,” Momo said out loud and turned a page. The humans on the table looked confused as John let his head hang in disappointment.

After the meal was finished, John repeated his earlier question; “So, Jane, what do you want to do?”

“Training, obviously,” Rave answered.

“Yes, but what kind?” he probed further. “How I see it, you can train in three different ways. Either you run I.D. with me, giving you Stats, or you spar with someone, giving you practice, or you train your skills, giving you mastery.”

“How did ya just category me, a normal person, into game mechanics?” Rave wondered.

With a shrug and wink, John continued. “If you want my personal take on this, I think the most efficient way for you to train would be to spar with changing opponent while I drop off an EXP-pot occasionally. When you are recovering you can do some aura training or whatever. This way you get the best of all worlds.”

“Mhm, yeah, that sounds pretty efficient… also nothing against running I.D.’s, but it kinda gives ya bad habits. Mother might be a bitch, but she ain’t no acid breathing panther, so training how to fight those guys is kinda useless,” Rave agreed.

“Exactly. Also, this way I can train myself up as well,” John said; “So we all win!” “I find myself in agreement to this plan as well,” Lydia said; “I presume you want to use that Assault dungeon you have newly acquired.”

“Use?” John shook his head with the smile of someone who just found a game-breaking strategy; “I am going to relentlessly ABUSE that thing. Even with diminishing returns, which I don’t know if they exist, that thing is crazy.”

Up to the first hour of combat, the Assault dungeon was barely worth it. What he killed was basically decreased in value. Once he hit the one-hour mark, the gains were tremendous. Not only did the mobs inside the Assault dungeon give more experience than the average enemy, once that point was passed, but the value increased further over time.

The calculation was quite simple. The monsters inside the barrier had a fixed experience value attached to them. In the current Instant Dungeon, that number was 425. This value was then further amplified by the 15% experience bonus he got himself thanks to fidgeting with the setting for a bit, denying him loot in exchange.

That alone came to a total of 489 experience per enemy killed if he set the duration to one hour. Currently, he needed 282560 experience points to reach a new level. In other words, he would need to kill 579 enemies within an hour to reach this level, if he started from 0.

Sadly, that was a bit of a stretch. He managed to kill only 28 of the Bugpanthers within 12 minutes. Now, the interesting part came after that. If he went for a longer amount of time, for example 3 hours, not only would every mob be worth more experience, but he would have more time to kill more enemies. It was a stacking effect of the best kind.

In an optimal world (so if Gaia decided to not nerf this) going for three hours meant that he would get 300% experience. That meant that he would need to only kill 193 enemies instead. Not only was that way more conceivable within the broadened timeframe, but everything he killed beyond that still had that extra experience bonus. And all of this was without taking bosses into consideration, which were worth the tier level times 200 experience.

Long story short, surviving a long assault was absolutely glorious.

Of course, there was a drawback to this. Even for John, three hours of continuous fighting could become straining. Mentally he was probably fine, years of gaming and his heightened Wisdom gave him the mental fortitude to get through lots of exhausting situations, Endurance did the same for his physical form. Three hours was most likely fine. If he pushed into the realm of 6+ hours, John wasn’t quite as sure.

The second thing that was worrying was him surviving. While he had an emergency exit in the form of Escape Rope, the Gamer Perk that allowed him to, once a week, leave an I.D. instantly, if things got heated he would much prefer to not use that. The reason for that simply being that an Assault gave its rewards at the very end of the dungeon, so, if he used it, all of the experience he already earned himself would disappear into the nether.

Long story short, again, SURVIVING a long assault was absolutely glorious.

“Okay, so let’s form teams,” John said. “My familiars and I will go fill the experience potion. The rest of you train, either with Jane or on your own.”

“Sounds great,” Rave agreed and everyone else currently in the room did as well.

He left the less flattering thing unspoken, which was that Lydia and Rave would probably do more harm than good to his grinding efforts. Helbrecht’s Soulpotion did a lot to manage the gap between them, but in a three-hour engagement, they wouldn’t have the same endurance as him.

They weren’t like his elementals, which simply kept up with his level at all times, or the Artificial Spirits, for whom he only needed to ask Nathalia to provide some scales again. They just couldn’t keep step with John and his combat potential. They weren’t weak, he was just stupendously strong.

A gap that was likely to keep widening…