Jack found Eliza, standing next to the corpse. His actual body was still getting up the tower, but he was at least aware that things had largely concluded. With the destruction of the IBMA, the Lake Alliance had a window to flee. Magoi couldn’t do both, keep the barrier together and hinder people from leaving, so this battle was officially over.

Seeing what John currently was seeing, through the eyes of his Extension, and having heard what Jeremiah had said at the end, the Gamer knew that things had not gone nearly as smooth for the Lake Alliance as the Art Eater had thought when leaving. Once they realized their own losses, Jeremiah would likely be in a strictly worse mood.

This didn’t really elevate John’s own feelings on the situation. To him, this entire thing had been a senseless strain on resources and loss of life. Not to mention that he was seething because, right now, he was learning through Salamander that Metra had lost a fair chunk of Astrotium.

That was something John could get worked up about, the Jack-guiding split of his consciousness had to deal with the worry for the blood mage. She was just standing there, in front of the corpse. Her exterior was close to how Thana had usually looked, but not quite there. She had the carapace and the tail, but the only wings she had were that of Bloodburn. Albeit, for the first time, not burning away. The four wings had a steady shape, thin membranes of blood, partly crystallized. It was equally beautiful and macabre.

The corpse in the middle of the crater was from a middle-aged man. A lance of bone had blown a hole through the axe he had raised in defence and his own chest behind that. Somehow, the force of the impact had made him drop to his knees, leaning backwards, arms now lifelessly dangling. He looked like an unbeliever that was forced to acknowledge the angry face of god in his last moments.

Normally, she would have noticed him by now. “Eliza?” he called out, carefully, once he descended into the crater. Aclysia and Beatrice were right behind him.

It all happened in a flash. The wings flared up again, a crimson Aura encapsulated the blood mage. She vanished, then appeared again in front of Jack. Before he could do as much as raise a foot, her claws had already ripped a hole into his stomach and went out on the other side. Only then, did her purple eyes rise.

Animalistically pulled back lips collapsed into a horrified expression as sapient light returned to her purple eyes. “J-john?” she stuttered, looking down at her arm and where it was. “I…I…”

“Shhhh…” the Gamer pulled her into his arms. “Don’t worry, this body can’t bleed nor cause me to die,” he said and stroked her hair as she began to cry. “It’ll be alright, it’ll be alright…”

_________________________________________________________________________

“Give me some time alone, please…” Eliza said, once Jack had managed to get her back to the Palace. Naked, the carapace had fallen off sometime along the way, and clearly afraid, the blood mage didn’t look anything like the threat she actually was. Slowly, Jack nodded, and allowed her to close the door in his face. Then he reverted back into the Mandala Sphere and began the trip towards John himself. Having a hole punched into the Extension also damaged the original product, so a repair session was greatly needed.

‘Beatrice, keep a watch on Eliza’s room,’ he mentally commanded from his position in Scarlett’s apartment. Once he got his confirmation for that, he let out a troubled breath and sat down on the couch that came rising out of the floor.

With him were the surviving four elementals (Stirwin was still swimming out there), Metra, and Scarlett herself. Magoi and Rave were attending via phone conference, their faces projected on a large screen covering a wall. When Chemilia stumbled in, the gathering was officially complete.

“You got hurt?” John asked, while Undine was already flowing over.

“Three of them ganged up on me and I got stuck somewhere with that extendable blade,” the pin-haired general explained. “Still not completely used to this mechanical leg thing.”

“Did it get damaged?” Scarlett asked, earning herself an unappreciating glance from John for how uncaring that question sounded. “What? It’s so much easier to mend wounds than it is to fix a mechanism THAT intricate,” the practical thinking redhead shot back and lit herself a cigarette.

“You aren’t wrong, but it still makes you look rather…” He stopped himself and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, never mind, I know how you tick… Sorry, Scarlett, just a bit tired right now. Been a long-” He checked the clock, 18:52. Given that they had needed time to get to this place as well, John rounded down to arrive at the number he spoke, “forty-five minutes.”

“It’ll be an even longer night for me,” Magoi made himself the centre of attention, using an urgent tone. “Listen, the barrier collapses once I go to sleep or otherwise lose consciousness, so I just want your quick agreement with this plan: you know the near-finished IBMA we have been preparing for Boston? I would call the best Fateweavers I currently have and finish it in the next twelve hours. Any problems with that?”

It could cause some strain with the people in Washington DC, as that was where that anchor was originally meant to be placed. Not only was John sure they would be understanding, given the situation, but he was also certain that he could smooth over any differences this could cause. “Yes, go ahead,” he therefore gave the go-ahead.

“Then I’ll leave you to this,” Magoi stated. On a joking note, he added, “I better get some time off for this overtime work!”

“Sure thing.” John forced himself to at least smile at that. The half of the TV dedicated to Magoi went black, then was completely claimed by Rave’s face. Continuing on, the Gamer opened the Guild Hall menu. Although most damage had been averted thanks to Eliza and his girlfriend, there was still quite some repair cost to pay.

The Midnight Forest and the adjacent areas of the Commercial District, Newman Shire and the Elemental Islands were all wrecked and displaced. The surviving fairies had taken temporary residence in the green areas further south, but that wasn’t a state to last. Because there was now a flat, former volcano instead, the whole area had to be reshaped before the Buildings could be repaired. At least Silicate Island was only damaged to an extent that would fix itself over the course of two weeks, although John would be able to accelerate that process by paying real money.

‘Shitty freemium mechanics,’ he grumbled mentally. “Do tell me, how did that fight against that elf go again, Jane?”

“Was pretty boring, gotta tell ya. We both had basically infinite resources, so we just continued throwing stuff at each other the entire time,” his girlfriend reported. “Didn’t help that she was fighting defensively the entire time, apparently she was just buying time for that lava guy. Remia was her name, by the by.”

“Right.” John nodded. Originally, he had wanted to come along with Jack to help her in that fight, but the growing volcano had pulled his attention first. Not that it mattered, by the time he would have arrived at either location, the entire battle was already ended by Jeremiah smashing the IBMA.

If there was a single solace in this entire thing, it was that the smug expression the Art Eater had on his face when getting away would most certainly be wiped once he learned of the losses on his side. It didn’t do much to lift John’s mood, but it did help a little bit. The next part put a dampener on it again.

“How are we in terms of casualties?” he asked, looking at Scarlett.

“Still compiling accurate data,” she replied. “Right about now, it seems 29 of ours and 31 of theirs? We also have 62 confirmed captures.” That roughly covered the amount of people John had fought on Governors Island.

“Surprising that many of them stood to their word,” he had to admit.

“That figure apparently includes Theron,” Scarlett continued, which actually surprised John less. “That green-haired punk you talked about is gone though. Seems like both broke out of the little confinement you made for them, but Leslek didn’t decide to stay.”

“Sounds about right,” John sighed. “I need to find a better way to confine people after beating them if I want to keep being nice.” He suddenly felt how dry his throat was, reached into his inventory, and pulled out a bottle of water. Before he could open it, a mechanic tendril moved around to offer him a bottle of vodka. After thinking about it for a few seconds, John grabbed the bottle and took a heavy swing.

The cooled alcohol ran down his throat and left a pleasant warmth in its path. In that moment, that feeling was dangerously seductive and John realized how people became alcoholics when he took the bottle off his lips. Then the aftertaste of pure vodka set in and he shook his head in mild disgust. It was, however, a day like this. He gave the bottle back to the tendril, and Scarlett had it offered to Chemilia as well, who took a smaller gulp. Then the elementals had their own chance at it. It was just a day like this.

The only person in the room who couldn’t drink was Metra. Something that Gnome only remembered once she had offered the Metracana the bottle. “S-sorry!” the soil elemental hastily pulled the offer back.

“I would if I could,” Metra responded, more amused than anything.

“N-not just for that…” Gnome continued. “We shouldn’t have gotten involved at the end there… maybe…”

“Yeah, and I should have estimated the durability of my weapon better. Shit happens in battle, I’ll survive.” Metra crossed her arms over her cropped top. “Although I’d be a fucking liar if I said I wasn’t immensely pissed off.”

“Right, I have two questions about that,” John chimed in. “One, does the loss weaken you, and two, if we recovered the Astrotium, could you reabsorb it?” Metra didn’t have the Living Material Attribute, she couldn’t eat things like Aclysia or any other AS could. What she had was Stainless Life and the Chaos Principle. In combination, they set her body composition and made sure she always returned to it, with enough time.

“Honestly, I have no clue.” Metra shrugged. “Something like this happened before, Jeremiah isn’t the first creation devourer ever encountered, but I didn’t care to listen back then.”

“Well, by the wording of things, it sounds like you could absorb any piece of Astrotium to make up for what you lost. Like, as long as it restores your natural balance of materials, the origin of it doesn’t matter.”

“Fucking fantastic, so we just have to find any old piece of star metal, along with small parts of numerous deceased gods,” the ancient weapon laughed. “As to the weakening bit, I feel physically the same, but the armour will be a bit thinner. Shouldn’t have too much of an impact, I always had the most of the metal among my siblings.”

“Alright… let’s hope we get lucky,” John answered, only to growl, “unless we can rip those pieces right back out of Jeremiah, that is.”

“That does sound like a fun time.” Metra grinned from ear to ear.

“What’s the status on the remaining damage?” John turned back to the actual discussion. The alcohol was unfolding and it made him more pissed. It also helped him comprehend the situation as a whole. More alcohol would have definitely shut that latter bit off.

“We have lost immense amounts of government documents, most of the skyscrapers that were copied have been damaged in some form, what can be salvaged of the fleet remains to be seen. I would estimate the damages to be anywhere between 2 and 5 billion, not including private property.” Scarlett hung on the bottle of vodka without a care in the world, her liver was trained to get through more than the rest of them. “The good news is that we have 0 civilian casualties.”

“That is pretty good, indeed.” John nodded, then his hands drummed on the edge of the couch. “The way I see it, this whole thing ended in the worst way for both factions,” he summarised the matter. “Even if not as widespread as they may have wanted, they did manage to cause wide economic damage to us. However, they did lose two of their strongest fighters, with another one captured. Fusion can recover from this in a few months, but it will take them generations to find people like that again. Basically, we got fucked less by this whole thing.”

“So,” Rave asked through the connection, “what’s the plan?”

“The plan is to take them, metaphorically bend them over and have our way with them,” her boyfriend responded. “The Lake Alliance is no longer a threat to us, at least not an existential one. At worst, they’ll become to us what the Small Lake Pact was to them.”

Scarlett lit herself a cigarette and blew smoke into the air. “We have to be very careful while we engineer that peace deal,” she stated. A statement absolutely true, since John wanted to avoid having a terrorist neighbour at basically all cost. There were also other eventualities to take into account.

“Yeah,” he agreed and rubbed his eyes. Just as the Mandala Sphere entered the room and he threw it into Create for the repair. ’35 hours. When I could use being in two places a lot right now…’ “Alright, here is what’ll happen,” he continued nevertheless, “I need to have a chat with a number of people. Scarlett, I trust you to hammer out a modest deal that’s in our long-term interest…”

“Economic enslavement, got it,” Scarlett stated with a straight face, huffing deeply through her cigarette. Only when John raised an eyebrow in her direction, did she give him a dry chuckle while exhaling. “No, no, I got it. I have a contingency draft somewhere that I can fit to this whole fucking situation.”

“…Alright.” John nodded. “Getting a list of bullet points is enough. Send it to me for approval and give it to Aclysia once you have it.” He would have done it himself through Jack, but he would rather have the Mandala Sphere fixed as soon as possible than lead what should be the easiest part of negotiations.

“Aclysia?” Rave asked. “Ya think that’s going to end well? They went against us, kinda sure she is in a stabby mood.”

“I am in a stabby mood,” he retorted. “That’s the point. Aclysia will not ask nicely for them to come to the table, because we don’t have any reason to be nice anymore. If I don’t have a peace deal by tomorrow evening, they will be having a bad time.”

“Alright, I trust ya know what you’re doing, tiger.” Rave smiled, and even through the filter of the screen, that did make everything a little better. “Imma go mingle with the people a little bit, help with cleaning, be a role model and all that bee’s wax.”

“I’ll join you later,” John assured her.