“I’m this close to stopping this entire tournament, acquiring a nuke and just dropping it on this entire, blasted state,” John growled rubbing the towel over his face repeatedly. He had just managed to wash all the blood off and that was trickier than it sounded. The pressure of the Nevr’est had made them bleed in incredibly unpleasant places. Eyes and ears were what he had expected. Gums and nailbeds, however, were not what he had signed up for.

His wrath wasn’t aimed at his own injuries, however. Gamer’s Body, once the Nevr’est had vanished, had fixed everything within a few moments. Same couldn’t be said for his girlfriend. While her own reaction to the creature hadn’t been as intense, she had ‘only’ bled from the eyes and ears, and managed to keep standing through the whole of it, the damage had to be healed. Something that wasn’t possible immediately. Despite having left the room, the elementals and Artificial Spirits all had passed out for as long as John had been, being a solid ten minutes. Another point that annoyed him.

That being said, Moira had come over and used what small healing powers she had to help out his girlfriend. According to Rave, she had checked on them before taking care of herself. With no way to verify otherwise (and also trusting what his girlfriend said in general), the Gamer took that on the face of it without questioning.

“Wasn’t even that bad,” Rave tried to calm him down. “I mean, that thing was pretty terrifying, but it’s not the worst thing I ever went through. You’re just mad they didn’t say ya won.”

“Two seconds!” John threw the red-stained towel into the bin. It was supplied by the Florida guild, so he didn’t care to give Aclysia the task of washing the blood out of it. “I passed out two seconds before the whole minute!”

“Ya know ya would insist ya lost the challenge if ya had to make the call from their position,” Rave answered and then, jokingly, added, “Ya-ya-ya, I sound stupid.”

“Yes, I would,” John sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just annoyed in general right about now.”

Florida hadn’t been that unreasonable, putting aside the fact that they approved that challenge in the first place. Having declared it a narrow victory for their side, they implemented the condition as receiving yearly prune cake shipments of no stated size or quality. Basically, they had made it a quirky tradition that John would have to fund in the future.

What he had lost annoyed him less than the loss itself. It would have been a lot less infuriating if he had collapsed after a few seconds. Far away from the goal, the loss wouldn’t have stung so much and Rave wouldn’t have gotten hurt as much. His stubborn pride was to blame for both the way he had handled things and him now feeling extremely pissed about the way things went.

It certainly didn’t help that Aclysia was ever-present in his thoughts, fuming even more than he was. She had already destroyed three cutting boards in the process of gutting the barracuda. Once again, they weren’t theirs, so she wasn’t as cautious as she usually would have been. Having one messed up room in exchange for forcing someone to look at the (likely) most powerful Nevr’est in existence was, in John’s biased opinion, a pretty good deal.

“Crazy to think that Nia always has one of those running around behind her,” Salamander chimed into the conversation, when John and Rave went from the bath into the living room. Barely had she said that, when the endflame elemental made the mistake of recalling what had happened about an hour ago, and immediately started writhing on the couch. “Fucking Mother Fire!” she shouted, holding her head in an effort to think about anything else.

“Hey, hey, Sally, remember that one time when you took me out to the beach and you fired up a bunch of fireworks and it was super pretty?” Sylph darted around the endflame elemental, zapping from one position to the other like a lightning bolt. “It was pretty, you do remember that, yes? It was pretty!”

“Yeah,” Salamander nodded and sat up straight, “thanks for the distraction, Sylph.”

The thunderstorm elemental blushed and floated around while happily rubbing her cheeks. “Silly Sally, I don’t want you to be in pain, just don’t think about the grinning nightmare ca-ack!” Sylph dropped to the floor like a dragonfly whose wings had suddenly decided to stop existing. Starting to get worried about her, John stepped closer, only for the air spirit to immediately dart up again. “Never mind, I’m better now!” she exclaimed.

“Guess your short-thought nature is advantageous in times like these,” John joked and let the adorable fairy-esque elemental land in his hand. He then proceeded to tickle her with his thumb. Her carefree laughter eradicated much of the tension in the room. Even the hacking sound from the kitchen grew a bit less aggressive.

“Uhm, so,” Gnome raised her hand to get everyone’s attention, “I suggest we don’t talk too much about this for at least… a week? However long it takes for the memories to dull to the point that I don’t feel like I’m going to dry up into sand and crumble whenever I accidentally remember anything…”

“Good call,” John agreed. “Blasted Alice, putting us through all of that.”

“Ya sure Vita is Alice?”

“About 99% sure, yeah,” John returned. “That thing was obviously the Cheshire Ca-“ He stopped when he, and every one of his familiars, developed a sudden and violent headache. It was as if someone set off a flashbang in the middle of his brain. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he growled when he wiped a trail of blood away from under his nose. “Okay, last comment on the topic: once this is over, one of three things has to happen with that woman. One, I never see her cuntish face ever again. Two, I get to beat the shit out of her. Final choice, three, I get to hate-fuck her into the floor.”

“I get the feeling ya would prefer number three.”

“Honestly, right now, I’m so pissed I would take two over three,” he said, rubbing his temples. “Ask me again tomorrow, then you will probably get the expected answer.”

“Big scary Gamer is mad,” Rave mocked him in a friendly fashion.

“Seething,” he admitted and looked at the door. “Honestly, I don’t even feel like fucking right now.” He looked out the window. There had been another thunderstorm earlier today, but that had passed and left everything hot and humid. “Want to go out and explore Miami for a bit?” he asked. Aside from the beach, they had done fairly little of that, and making some new memories to layer on top of the one they were trying to ignore sounded like a good idea.

“Sure,” Rave responded and the rest of the harem agreed just as easily. After they had lunch, they all got dressed appropriately, the elementals putting on their disguising clothes and the Artificial Spirits morphing into their proper shapes.

Appropriate, given the weather, meant rather skimpy. Sleeveless was the norm and most of the girls picked either hot pants or skirts that reached no further than their knees. Rave and Siena went so far as to even show off their Lover’s Will marks, everyone else wearing tops that hid the midriff or summer dresses.

John was torn on that point. Normally, he was absolutely in favour of everyone showing off his brand. However, what was just another oddity in the Abyss was an outstanding reason for people to stare in their direction in the mundane world. They would already garner a lot of attention due to their attractiveness alone. Every last one of them displaying the marks on their crotch could have motivated some annoying questions. John guessed that the extensive markings on his hands would get him wrongfully identified as a member of some sort of gang, but he could live with that.

They went out and headed roughly in the direction of the first tourist attraction Google spat out. Not exactly hard-pressed to actually get there, they just did as the harem always did: walking and bantering the time away. John was usually at the front of the group, always one of his women under his arm. Which one changed throughout the walk. It started with Rave, but she eventually decided to have a chat with Sylph and Salamander, so she dropped to the middle of the group. Normally, Aclysia would have taken the place, but the maid was busy verbally fencing with Beatrice and Siena over some minor disagreement in the local style of architecture. Instead, Undine took the chance to cuddle up to him, but soon changed places with Sylph, when the goth slime was called on by Gnome to help decide whether or not taking staircases was better than elevators, something the architecture discussion had devolved into.

None of them were having extremely serious conversations. A steady back and forth between friends and lovers, filled with jokes on their own and each other’s expense. Disagreements were played up for entertainment, the girls that liked to curse cursed a lot and those that liked to berate gave advice. Neither did it so much that the other side would get annoyed. They all knew each other for a while now and wouldn’t deliberately step on any toes.

Maybe it was because Miami was such a popular tourist destination, but people generally knew better than to try and flirt with any of John’s women. He assumed that, because this was a subtropical area where a lot of celebrities spend their free time, scantily clad models weren’t that big of a deal. People were still taken by the beauties around him (and there were more than a few of those mundane models that looked in his direction), but he didn’t have to deal with any entitled businessmen like he had in NYC. Perhaps he was just lucky, though.

That wasn’t to say they went unmolested. Not because they were attractive, but because they looked like they had money. The people running tourist shops charged in their direction, basically shoved their wares in their hands and said something along the lines of, “You like this, right? You should buy it!” repeatedly, both in English and Spanish. Sylph bought a large hat at one such occasion, but generally they got away. Those things also didn’t happen too often.

It definitely helped that they stayed away from the crowded areas. With a group their size, it was too easy to get lost, so they only skirted around the famous malls and museums. They did visit the zoo though, for the lack of anything else to do. To the entertainment of everyone, a giraffe decided that a large sun hat on Sylph’s head looked like food.

One of the zookeepers secured the headwear after a bit. Less out of respect for Sylph, there was a sign warning about these things, and more because they had to make sure the animals didn’t eat anything wrong. It was already chewed through and covered in giraffe saliva, so they just threw it into the trash. It had been an impulse purchase by the air spirit anyway and Sylph found it hilarious herself. The advantages of having a lot of money was that an overpriced hat bought at a tourist shop could be sacrificed for cheap jokes like that without any worry.

It was starting to get late by the time they decided to get out of the zoo, so they went back to Paradise. Not to go after the usual recreational activities, but to find something to do close to their stay. Since the Florida guild headquarter was such a random combination of all kinds of things, they were sure they could find something to do.

“This looks good,” Rave said after opening a door and checking what was behind. The answer, as John found out when he followed her inside, was a bowling centre. There were ten lanes, coming in pairs of two, a reception desk and a small bar area that served alcohol and some basic food. John didn’t get to give his opinion on the matter, as his girlfriend marched towards the reception desk and just decided this was what they would be doing now.

As his answer would have been positive anyway, he just tagged along. While he and the rest of the harem followed, Gnome tapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll be going to the toilet for a second and change out of these clothes,” she said, gesturing at her mundane get-up.

Siena, her skin and hair already resuming their regular colours of silver-blue and purple, handed her choker and glasses to John, only to point at a sign. ‘Stripping encouraged,’ it read. “Just do it here,” the moonshade elemental suggested, her tail curving around amusedly, “It would be rude not to show off, Gnome.”

“M-maybe it would, b-b-but I can’t do that!” the autumn elemental declared and darted towards the toilet. Everyone else was just changing into their regular forms and whatever clothes or other forms of hiding their nudity was provided by their nature. Only Undine stayed the way she was, likely sensing that John was really in the mood for some pale-skinned goth girl action today. All she did was fix her clothes a little bit so her cleavage was emphasised more. Maybe she even made it bigger, John was too busy staring at the round display to notice. A contradiction, perhaps, but a regular one.

“Alright, we can have two lanes,” Rave said when she got back. “Y’all ready to get stomped by me?”

“Don’t we have to wear provided shoes to protect the floor or something?” John asked, never having been to an Abyssal bowling place before.

“Nah,” Rave waved off, and John decided to not chase that any further.

“How would I even go about that?” Siena wondered, looking at her permanent high-heels.

To that, John had no answer, so they just relocated to their assigned lanes. Inside her autumn leaf themed dress, Gnome came after them before they stepped onto the smooth wooden floor. “Here,” she said, passing her clothes to John, for safekeeping in his inventory. Not that they stayed there for long. He was having Jack take them out on the other side and put away for washing whenever Aclysia returned to their home proper.

They sat down on the seats that came with their lanes, right next to the left-hand wall. “We got the worst placement!” his girlfriend complained.

“Why?” John wondered.

“We’re furthest away from the bar, we’ll have to walk an extra fifteen steps to get there!”

“But we’re closest to the toilets, so that’s good,” John pointed out.

“I can hold my pee, I’m not some little girl!”

“I mean, no, you aren’t, but you also can’t, especially after you had two beers.”

“Look who’s talking!”

“Hey, I never said I was better.” John raised his hands defensively. “That aside, I shouldn’t even drink. Who knows what tomorrow will throw at me.” Rave looked at him with a dangerous pout and John couldn’t but concede at that. “Alright, maybe a few beers,” he sighed and started typing his name into the score tracking machine. Everyone else followed his example, giving him some time to look around.

The place was relatively well lit. It was at a level where it was clearly intentionally less bright than the day, invoking a cosy feeling. Numerous bowling balls were stacked into specifically designed shelves. They stood along a waist-high wall that separated the playing from the bar area, with only cut-outs in the middle and at the sides allowing to get through. The furniture over there was of dark wood and the carpet a simple dark grey. The walls were a deep red and the roof, segmented into square plates, had so many excess lights in it that John had a feeling this place had rave evenings. The speakers, way too large for the soft music that currently played, seemed to underline that.

The other eight lanes were almost all claimed. On the other side of the room was a group of three with no one else in the lane right next to theirs. Other than that, there were always enough people to fill each pair of lanes.

Next to him and his harem was a group that, notably, was exclusively made of women. Most of them were big-titted and of slightly older appearance, the MILF type that John wasn’t as much into as other men but he had to admit was attractive regardless. One of those women was some sort of minotaur, judging by the horns and the truly absurd size of her jugs. A younger looking, but no less stacked girl, was some sort of gnome (the race, not the earth elemental), and a dark-haired elf with an athletic, pear-shaped body closer to John’s taste was happily chatting with a hawk-winged, Asian looking woman.

Much like with John’s harem, there was a tendency towards the one theme in that group, but there was still variety. ‘Wonder if that is pure chance or if there is someone missing?’ the Gamer asked himself, as he heard the bathroom door open and close behind him.

A moment later, he got his answer. “Would you look at that, there is a celebrity present,” he heard a familiar voice behind him and turned towards the separating wall. Leaning on top, with the cocky smile that seemed to accompany him everywhere, a good-looking young man raised his hand in greeting. “I thought I would run into you, buddy.”