Chapter 264 – Santa Claus is going to town

About an hour later, John was holed up on top of his fortress again. Once again he had gone for the three hour Assault. He had found an interesting tidbit about these dungeons though, being that he was chained to the currently appropriate level bracket. Probably something Gaia did to prevent him from overly exploiting the system. If she didn’t, he could just relax in something like 20 levels under his for 72 hours, put the girls on shift duty, and get insane sums of experience for very little risk.

Either way, he was now fighting level 95 Bugpanthers, because why the hell not? Without Firstkill bonuses, there was no incentive for him to go and fight enemies he didn’t know already. Aside from searching for specific loot, maybe. From John’s perspective his current Equipment was pretty much good as it was, he was only missing something to wield in his last Hand Slot.

He threw a Mana Ray at a Bugpanther that, in an attempt to prepare another ambush, was limping away from Aclysia. The blue ray hit the thing straight in the head; heat and crackles of pure mana, akin to electricity in its looks but fundamentally different in a multitude of ways (the most important one being physics vs metaphysics) ended the monster’s life in a flash of blue.

Whispers of Mana triggered therefore and John yawned as he watched his mana tick up again. He had been almost topped off in the first place, otherwise he would have been more reluctant to use Mana Ray.

For all of its virtues, long range, high burst damage, great accuracy, the mana cost was still enormous at 300. That was more than a fifth of his current max mana. Which was why he only used it to snipe off enemies that tried to escape or provide disruptive fire where no one else could cover.

If he was being honest, he was the most useless part of his own party. Momo provided strong buffs, the elementals all had jobs only they could fulfil, and Aclysia was a tank that could take on pretty much every enemy in a one vs one thanks to a mixture of high defence and solid offense. He? Well, he could provide ranged support with Mana Ray and Arcane Explosion.

But he was also the summoner of everyone else, so technically he was this whole party. Also, he could divide his mana to everyone else, giving them plenty of opportunities to punch above their, already pretty high, weight class. He looked kind of useless because he had divided his power in a way that multiplied it. Taking him as the sum of his parts, he was stupendously OP.

Jack flew over the battlefield in wide circles. The forest below was burning, as per his usual strategy, and he could see Bugpanthers stalking around the edges, searching for a way to sneak through the flames unseen. The group’s strategy was so successful that Undine hadn’t even had to materialize once in the past hour.

‘Don’t,’ Momo immediately told him.

‘Why not though? Not like I am in any danger, and we still have your mana if things go south,’ he was already ready to do it.

‘…I am going to give you the lecture of a lifetime if this goes south,’ Momo mumbled.

John used Arcana Strike, and all of his mana went poof. The thing flew north, around a hundred metres away from them, to a point that John deemed far enough for them to not get wrecked by the explosion and stopped. It was dark blue but quickly increased in brightness, and once it would be painful to look at, John could fire it.

He had done some minor testing with Arcana Strike and found out two things: A, it was super cool, and B, sadly, he couldn’t abuse it. It had pretty good base damage, but due to how it worked, if he fired it at low mana, it needed three eternities to charge up. As he couldn’t use it before it was at least baseline charged, it would just hang in the air. If he then fired it as soon as possible, it had about the same impact as a Mana Ray. He couldn’t just spam it either, since there could only be one Arcana Strike active at a time.

With over a thousand-mana poured into it, this one charged up rather quickly and would cause some major havoc once fired. John decided to let it sit there until he had to fear that it would rip down his fortress on the outskirts of the explosion. Should make for a nice firework.

He sat atop his fortress (Gnome had made him a stone chair) and just waited as his familiars fought below. Was he useless right now? A bit. Did he care? No, he was still handing out emergency orders. A general didn’t have to fight in the front lines to dictate the battle.

About ten minutes passed.

Wait, what now?

A wooden sleigh appeared out of a portal above the burning battlefield, drawn by five enormous reindeer. With wonderful, bell decorated antlers and hooves that treaded on the air like it was solid ground, these majestic creatures pulled the sleigh over the tropical forests. The one that was alone in the front row had a red nose. John was just going to assume that was Rudolph.

On the sleigh, a red and white paint-job decorated with golden depictions of mistletoe, sat the man himself. Santa Claus, as often depicted, was a man in a mantle of such supreme fluffiness that it managed to add another few kilos to his already corpulent form. His white, long beard was a bit curly, and his reddened cheeks showed a wide smile.

He adjusted his hat, which had the same colouration as his sleigh and mantle, the end with the large, woolly ball dangling about like decoration from a Christmas tree. “Ho-Ho-Ho, John Newman,” Santa Claus shouted as he circled around the forest.

In a display of ‘stupendous bullshit John would never accept that it happened ever’ a series of laser beams fired from Rudolph’s nose, taking out all the Bugpanthers.

“Noooo,” John lamented, that was a lot of experience that he now didn’t get to lay claim to.

‘They will respawn,’ Aclysia tried to ease his sadness.

‘Yes, but respawning enemies never have the same density… I have been charging this Arcana Strike for 10 minutes! It should be able to one-shot a boss and then some!’ John sighed heavily, looking up to Santa with an annoyed expression.

The overweight man was grabbing his sack, an enormous brown thing that was next to him (not in his pants) and reached inside. He pulled out a piece of paper. “Let’s see what my naughty report says about you,” Santa mumbled, his voice magically reinforced, as he put on his glasses. “Sex outside of marriage? Kids these days are so down bad! A lot of it as well. Uncle Santa does not approve of this, young man. Didn’t your mother teach you to respect women?”

“I don’t think there is a direct correlation between respecting women and a lesser number of partners…” John said. “Also my mother has her own, unique views on sexual relationships.” An image flickered up in his mind of his mother getting railed by two guys. It was grotesquely accurate. ‘Fuck you, Siena!’ he shot at the source of that imagination.

‘Oh, hit a nerve?’ Siena giggled. ‘You know, your mother would properly suck your dick too, if you asked nice enough.’

John growled. ‘I am not interested in my mother. What kind of pervert do you take me for?’

‘Sure, you are not,’ Siena mused.

He had enough of this conversation already. ‘Behave!’ John told her and was met with nice, un-teasing silence.

“…Okay, so I have to add a potty mouth to that naughty list,” Santa grumbled and went on; “I also read that you have killed, more than once in fact!”

“Sadly, yes,” John admitted with a heavy expression. “I didn’t like it, but I would do it again if that was needed. The circumstances weren’t exactly civilized, you know? We are talking about people that were holding an innocent girl contained in a glass tank!”

Why was he answering this? Well, he was halfway expecting Santa to just leave him alone and with some presents if he was convinced that John wasn’t evil. Otherwise, well, the poor old fool had stopped his sleigh north of John’s position.

“So the ends justify the means?!” Santa asked, outraged.

“I mean… yes?” John asked. “At least in some part? Are you telling me that war is evil and we just shouldn’t shoot each other, while the other side is getting their cannons in position?”

Santa did not provide an answer for that, simply clearing his throat and going on, “You tortured a woman out in the open!”

“You mean Janna Lenko? You know, the woman who stalked me to sell the results to my enemies? I think that falls under self-defence.” Not that he had felt good about it.

“Well… uhm…” the copy of a holy man was clearly not sure what to do against logic like this.

“Guess judging real people isn’t all that easy, now is it?” John shouted up. “It’s almost like we are all three dimensional and have at least somewhat solid reasons. Can’t all be constructs of Gaia sent to tease me.”

“Moving on!” Santa Claus shouted. “You accepted a bribe to fight in a war you have no involvement in.”

“It’s called the free market, buddy; it’s what made the USA the strongest nation in the world.”

“Whatever! I hereby declare you naughty!” Santa shouted and reached into his sack again.

What he pulled out was a glove-like weapon that had three blades attached to the back of his hand. “And as a naughty boy, you will feel the wrath of Santa Claus by the hands of the Santa Claws!” the boss exclaimed.

“That pun might be the most amount of damage I will take today,” John mumbled and released Santa’s doom.

“What is this?” Santa asked, seeing a sudden, thin ray of light ending on the bottom of his sleigh, between his feet. He looked up just in time to see that spherical mass of mana that was John’s Arcana Strike slam into the sleigh.

The explosion of pure energy tinged the burning forest below in a blue incandescence that made the fires look like candle flames in comparison. The sleigh wasn’t just destroyed, it was downright eradicated, just a few splinters of wood, bristling with mana on the surface, made it out of the explosion but burned away during their flight.

John nodded to himself, “Yes, that is a nice firework.”

“You killed Santa!” Sylph complained.

“He was a bit of a moralist douche,” he defended himself.

“You KILLED Santa!” the air elemental sniffed; “I wanted to give him cookies and talk about elves!”

“Well, sucks to be you,” Salamander cackled.

“Nice, good rewards,” John admitted, although he had no idea what to use these SEP on. ‘Ah, I will sleep on it!’ he decided when he saw the first Bugpanther assault the fortress again.

_________________________________________________________________________

“So, how did ya do today?” Rave asked when they stepped out of the shower together. After John had returned from grinding they just had hurried there to get naked. A day of fighting and all they had yearned for was each other’s touch, talks could wait until after- which was now.

“Quite well,” John responded. Assault continued to be an insane grinding machine. He had gotten 9 hours in (before time alteration) in segments of 3 hours each. That had gotten him a sum total of 1’991’158 experience. He expected the nerf hammer to come down on that eventually. For the moment, Gaia seemed fine with what was going on. John was happy. Why wouldn’t he? He had gotten 3 levels out of today.

“On your side?” John asked.

“Mhhhm,” Rave tipped an index finger on her lips, their natural glossiness only reinforced by the remaining wetness from the shower, as she hummed. “I don’t have a nice numerical representation of stuff, and I also don’t get stronger just from doing stuff, ya know? I think I am doing better, but Lyly has no compliments to spare. I feel like I am in the army.”

“She is the princess of steel after all,” John giggled as they passed the empty bathtub and went to their room.

They didn’t bother putting on clothes. There was no one in the house they should be ashamed about seeing them naked, save maybe for Nia, who appeared and disappeared like she was a ghost according to Rave. Also, they were going to bed, and they were not going to put on clothes for that.

“Oh, fluffy carpet,” Rave said the moment they stepped into their room, “how I missed ya! Hello, bed!” Those last words were muffled as she fell face first into her pillow. She rolled over to John’s half of the bed and in the process wrapped herself into the blanket.

“Unfair!” he laughed and jumped onto the bed as well.

“Fairness is for people that need it. Ya don’t, mister broken game mechanics,” Rave stuck out her pierced tongue. It was kind of adorable to see Rave wrapped up like this. A burrito with gorgeous filling and feline attitude.

“I am not going to sleep under these conditions!” John said, sitting next to her with playfully stern eyes.

“What, without a blanket?” Rave asked. “Wait, no, don’t answer that. Ya mean without touching my butt!”

“Guilty,” he grinned.

“This is where I would toss a pillow at ya and call ya a pervert if I wasn’t nice and cosy in this blanket cocoon right now!”

“Let me touch your butt!” John demanded and threw himself at the techno-wrap.

About half an hour, some playful bedroom fighting that went into another round of sex, later, they laid in the bed. Rave rested her head on his chest. They were breathing softly and just looking at the ceiling.

“So, tomorrow Undine is going to tell ya what’s up?” Rave wondered.

“Yes,” John answered with a single word. His thoughts had been going back to that ever since the festivities had ended.

“Let’s hope it’s not overly complicated,” his girlfriend said and yawned. “Problems suck, let’s try to not have any.”

Shortly after, she fell asleep. John looked at the ceiling for a little while longer and wondered. He reached out for Undine, but aside from the fact that she was talking with Thana and Siena, he couldn’t sense anything.

‘Tomorrow,’ he told himself and closed his eyes.