Collide Gamer

The water of the pool was fantastic. Warm, it surrounded John up to the shoulders, as he sat on a bench inside, just in front of the back wall of the whole thing. A wall that was also the window separating him from the outside. He was as close to the view over the city as he could conceivably be.

Slowly, the day was fading from the city and leaving it dark. Although Illusion Barriers showed what lay beyond them, it was a lifeless representation. The many lights a city would dazzle with lay dormant, showing the Gamer a city frozen the day after humans vanish. ‘Chernobyl must have looked a lot like this the day after they evacuated it,’ he caught himself thinking. ‘Well, less modern and generally less rich, but just as oddly vacant.’

“Kind of a shame it ain’t night yet,” Rave commented when she sat down next to him. She brought a tablet with her, hovering over the surface of the water. On it were two glasses, cocktails that Aclysia had mixed for them, the weaponized maid standing next to Beatrice, both ready to take orders at any moments. They were also close to the control panel, something that the Lightbearer took advantage of. “Can ya two increase the temperature by like 2 degrees?”

“Certainly, raising the temperature to 41 degrees,” Aclysia responded and fidgeted with a few buttons. From over there, she could control water temperature, height, waves and even the amount of bubbles.

John didn’t even try to complain about the heat. She would have just countered that it was only a bit hotter than the jacuzzi, to which he would have said that these were two immensely different ways of relaxation and then they would have started play-fighting about some random topic. Instead, he asked. “What, already waiting for the club to open?”

“Honestly, the club underground here is kinda… meh,” Rave responded, reaching onto the tablet and positioning her glass in a way that she could catch the straw with her lips without needing to raise her arm again. After taking a gulp from the pineapple-based cocktail, she continued, “Not sure if it’s the actual club or the people yet, either way, way too little party and way too many breaks in the music.”

“Why do you want it to be night then?” John wondered.

“Just thought it would look pretty awesome, you know?” she said.

John wrinkled his forehead as he had a bit of trouble following her. “I have no idea what you mean by it, so not really,” he looked out the window. “I know you mean something about the view, but that’s about it…” Although he didn’t want to outright say it, he was trying to make clear that his girlfriend was sucking at explaining things again. She was slowly getting better at it, but in general Hollmeys were just not that gifted in that department of communication.

“The sky,” she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and it clicked with John.

“Right, less light pollution equals brighter stars,” he remembered. That was one of the awesome things about Illusion Barriers. Since the city outside was an empty simulation, the sky was almost untainted. “I think this building blazes bright enough that it won’t be that great though.”

“Still better than a whole city.”

“That is undoubtedly true,” he conceded and went to drink some of his own drink. He deemed it to be too sweet for his liking. Pineapple and coconut mixed to create a blend that completely drowned out the alcohol. Tasty, sure, but also extremely dangerous. At least in the sense that drinking four of them before realizing they were getting one extremely drunk was a very real possibility.

Regardless, John preferred something simpler like vodka and orange juice. That at least had the resemblance of alcohol remaining in it, reminding him that he was currently poisoning himself for fun, while also tasting quite good. Also, beer. Beer was good. Especially the imported stuff. That still begged the question though.

“Why exactly am I drinking a cocktail right now?”

“Because I felt like having some so I am dragging ya into it with me,” she reported, taking another sip. “Unless ya have something else for us to do that is fun enough that I don’t get boredom flashbacks from Misses Flung’s class.”

“Knowing you, you just slept through them.”

“Nah, I just stopped showing up to her class eventually,” Rave told him. “Like I would waste the day sleeping, who am I, Copernicus?” She looked over to the hovering tablet where a certain other light spirit tried to climb on top. Thankfully, the thing’s hovering was fixed in parallel to the floor, so that little weight caused no tilting whatsoever. By keeping his tiny claws at the rim of the black carrying utensil, Stirwin eventually made it on top.

Only to jump right back into the water when John hushed him away from the beverages with a wave of his hand. He was not going to find out what a drunk crocodile was like, especially if his dick was dangling nakedly under the surface and there was a very real chance of Stirwin becoming even more bite happy than usual. The infinity elemental went back to just swimming around by wiggling his body rhythmically, the long tail propelling him forwards.

They went silent for a little bit, just happy with each other’s company and no immediate topic to talk about. As John looked out into the Boston Harbour, he suddenly spoke up, “I may actually have something we could do, although I have no idea how interesting it’s going to be.”

“Do tell.” Rave was all ears as she finished her drink.

________________________________________________________________________

“Huh, that’s one… no, two new mechanics,” John commented on the window he got. First, Natural Barriers being separated entities from normal Illusion Barriers was something he thought just to be a title, but Gaia now officialised that by promising him specific rewards for them. In a category above that, this was the first Local Quest he encountered. There was a high chance he would meet that mechanic separate from the Natural Barriers in the future.

Rave did a few stretches next to him. Something she was quickly interrupted in by some sort of worm creature breaking out of the cement under her. Big enough to swallow her whole, its brown, segmented body ripped upwards next to John. Its hardened head parted into four jaw segments.

‘Well, it would have had a better chance if it could have opened that jaw from the start,’ John thought, not alarmed whatsoever by this development. ‘Sucks for it that it had to break the concrete first.’ He threw a quick Observe at it before it would doubtlessly perish.

Rave had kicked herself off the opening jaw, having easily created enough distance between herself and the biological pit below her. “Gross!” she shouted, aiming her left paw down the depth of the open maw. A ray of light burst out, flew down without resistance. There was a hissing sound. Whether that was the mouthless being’s cry of pain or just the sound of its insides being cooked, John wasn’t quite sure about, but it curled together like a waterless snail, Rave bouncing off its slippery body and managing to land gracefully just a metre away from where she had stood. “Super gross.”

“Well, it won’t get worse than that,” John promised her. “Observe said that was the strongest one.”

“For realsies?” Rave looked more disappointed than glad to get that information. Not all that surprising, given that she was out to fight something that was at least a bit dangerous. Enemies a third her level and dead after just one attack didn’t really fit the bill. “Kinda expected more…”

John could only shrug. “So did I, but this is a place marked for regular clean-up, so it’s kind of expected that nothing too bad will hang around.” He looked at the corpse, anticipating something to happen.

After all the time he had spent hunting things in his Instant Dungeons, seeing a monster that didn’t fall apart into ashes, dust or other small particles the moment it died was outside his habit. He had heard it often enough that he wasn’t surprised, but just seeing a regular old corpse was, well, it was disgusting, with all of those smells and liquids the shutdown body systems of the half-cooked creature exuded.

He took a large step back. Getting into this barrier had taken them a bit of time. First, John had to ask if he was even allowed to. After all, this was the source of a good amount of income Amacat could generate on their own ground. Naturally regenerating or not, he was essentially asking if he, the leader of another country, could lead a mining operation on their soil.

The answer he had received had been a resounding yes regardless. After having made such a good impression on everyone, including the CEO of the corporation in charge of most monster killings, they were all too eager to themselves get into good graces with him. Especially after he assured he would leave all the corpses to be harvested by the local people. He was quickly pointed at a location where a barrier had been confirmed and been marked for cleanout tomorrow. Essentially, he was giving the fighting forces a free day tomorrow.

After all of that had been done, they still needed to get over. Not that huge of a problem either, as there were a number of drivers just waiting to chauffeur some of the rich room renters around the city. Traffic had been the worst enemy, but eventually they arrived at Pleasure Bay, a location within the city.

Most of the Natural Barrier covered the huge swathe of water that gave the location the ‘Bay’ part of its name. The cause of the Natural Barrier also ended in the middle of that half-encircled bit of water, being a small hill of fractured pieces of shifting lights, like polygons of a rainbow, radiating away its energy. A temporary oddity from the leyline must have caused a stream to run along this course for a little bit, causing this mass of Faith energy to become entrapped here when it fixed itself.

John wasn’t all that knowledgeable about the way Natural Barriers actually spawned. It seemed like something he should look into. Because the leyline only partially ran through New York, he didn’t have a reason to really do it so far. What he knew, however, were a lot of statistics and battle tactics.

“To the normal fighters that thing could have been pretty dangerous,” John reminded his girlfriend. “The average is level 25 to 50, after all. They would have needed to group up and all that. Thinking about it, this means the local army probably has an absurd amount of battle experience.” Feeling a slight rumble under his feet, John stepped to the side, only to have another worm break out of the concrete. That one was a bit smaller and only level 52, but would still be able to swallow him if it tried enough.

Well, John had just dodged by taking a leisurely few steps and now he ended that threat by summoning a quick Mana Blade, slicing the thing into two halves. Black blood squirted out, luckily bouncing off his Mana Protection before it could do any harm to his suit. “Not the most interesting monster hunt,” he conceded while this second worm collapsed, “but I do really want that Guild Perk, so…”

“Well, alright,” Rave continued her stretching as if nothing had ever happened. “Hope it’s not all worms around here. Can’t hunt stuff that I have to wait for being dumb enough to attack me.”

“Right, Sylph, can you go scout around? Salamander, Undine, I want you to take care of things that are in the water. Beatrice, Aclysia, you go around the beach and shallow water, you won’t be harmed if something drags you under and all that.”

“Affirmative,” Beatrice answered for all of them, the elementals appearing then quickly scattering to follow their assigned jobs. While this whole thing wasn’t all that challenging, it was still somewhat entertaining. That aside, John could use it to train his sight a little bit more.