The fire grew as they approached and quickly eliminated any doubt that this was, in fact, not the responsibility of John placing the trees too close to the Bleeding Mountain. Not that something should have happened even if he did that, the lava of that Building shouldn’t have been hot enough to just make living wood burn.

Illuminated by the freshly planted Green Greens burning away, the pillar of smoke must have gained the attention of people in the city. ‘They will probably just think that I’m up to something and won’t react in any large capacity,’ John thought as he looked over the situation through Sylph’s eyes. Jack and Salamander were close behind her. Everyone else was down on the ground getting ready for a battle situation.

With some protest, in Metra’s case. “You know what the likeliness is of something forcing me to put on my armour?” she asked, even as she followed her declared king’s demands and the Astrotium covered her body. Segment by segment, it layered on top of her skin, giving it a look between scales and sci-fi-esque plating. Spikes, perfect to ram someone with, adorned the areas around most joints, making her a deadly weapon even if she, herself, wouldn’t have been armed. Which she was, of course. Wielding the massive axe that Lakamun had once owned, she looked ready to plough through whatever frontline she was presented with.

“Well, given that we have to deal with some sort of elemental force, I’d rather not take any risks,” John responded, as if there was any situation in which he would deliberately reduce his risk of winning. Raising his hand to his face and the thumb of his left hand in front of his lips, he conjured Eliza’s image in his head and then said her name.

A moment later, he got an answer. “Fuc-dging flock, I had half a heart attack!” her voice echoed out from his thumb. More specifically, the nail of his thumb. “I forgot I even wore this sh-ooting little thing!”

“Well, I can’t blame you,” John said. He genuinely wasn’t surprised.

The Communication Crystal was easily forgettable. Part of that was that they were attached in an almost invisible fashion. As thin as a contact lens and translucent, the shape the Gamer had them created in attached magically to the thumbnail. At best, the average person noticed that the nail was a tad shinier than the rest, appearing as if polished.

More importantly, they were easily forgotten because they almost never used them. There were a whole lot of limitations attached to them. Only inside owned territory could they freely establish contact between crystals. Outside of it, those communications had a one-day cooldown and a maximum duration of ten minutes. Communications going out from the Embassy itself, the Building that provided these crystals, were a one-way street.

The crystals were also fairly brittle and had a tendency to break during combat situations. Especially when it came to someone like Eliza, whose fingernails reshaped into blood claws in battle, that was a problem. Other shapes were available, but not as convenient to carry. If several were broken at the same time, the Embassy could only replace them at a rate of one per day. John tried to keep an emergency supply ready, but there was only so many he could stockpile.

In almost all situations, a mobile phone was simply more reliable and allowed for text, video and pictures in addition to simple voice communications. The only two instances where John favoured the Communication Crystals were when he knew the regular connection was being tampered with or if the person he tried to reach was not around their phone. Given that Eliza’s was somewhere inside the Palace and she was likely still playing with Velka, John had spared himself the trouble of trying to reach it.

“Anyway, could you take your hands off Velka for a second and check the west side of the island?”

“Sure, give me a second,” the answer came a moment later. Complete silence accompanied the wait. Another drawback was that any and all background noises were filtered out. It was a connection only between the people who were part of any given call. “It’s John – Outside, you creepy bitch – Fuck do I care?!” The conversation she had with Nia was therefore a bit one sided.

‘Funny how I know exactly when she left the room based on the fact that she started cursing again,’ John thought. “You see the fire?”

“Do I see the fire? How could I not see the fucking fire, half of the forest looks like my relatives during the holocaust.”

John chose not to comment on that joke. “Could you do me the favour and meet us there? I’m not quite sure yet what is going on and I would rather have too much force than too little… and come dressed, please.”

“Alright… I’ll bring the flat-ass girl.”

Lowering his hand, he looked over to everyone else. People were in whatever clothes they usually fought in. Beatrice had arrived sometime while he talked to Eliza, reaching the passive maid through the mental connection had been a lot quicker. “Alright, let’s move,” John told everyone and began running towards the fire.

The source of it was a fight between two or more entities. Crushing wood and groans of pain from different voices left no doubt about it. An occasional giggle underlined things. What exactly was happening was impossible to say; under the cover of the smoke, all the flying members of the party could see was an outline here or there.

This was the first problem John dealt with. Setting the Weather Tower to rain, he had Sylph return to the group and then combo her powers with Undine and two thousand points of John’s mana to accelerate the process in the affected area. Clouds began to gather and burst into a local rainstorm. While that failed to put out the flames completely, it greatly reduced the scope of the burning and prevented it from spreading further.

It also caused something in the fire to groan in protest.

“WHO IS INTERFERING?!” a voice like a volcano eruption rumbled throughout the landscape.

“The person whose home you’re currently setting on fire!” Jack shouted back. The actual Gamer and the harem had taken position about fifty metres away from the treeline.

“It doesn’t matter if anybody interferes, you would lose either way.” This voice was feminine and both smooth and oddly scratchy, like the surface of an ice-skating rink.

“WHAT DID YOU SAY, YOU FRIGID BITCH?!”

“Ah, temperature puns, how creative of you.”

“Perhaps you should freeze his mouth shut?” a third voice joined the conversation. “You have the advantage now, with all the water around.”

“Which, I insist, makes our bet invalid.” John knew this fourth voice and groaned upon hearing it.

“Tilgun,” John mumbled and gave a signal for everyone to advance. The higher dragon’s presence was unsurprising, this was right around the area where Gaia said he would be. It was also simultaneously annoying and ensuring that he was there. The Maw of Souls wouldn’t harm him without good reason; he was too interested in where the Gamer would take his story.

Cutting through smoke and steam, the Gamer went into the ruined Green Greens. The rain ebbed off, but didn’t disappear, as the Weather Tower ramped up but the input from Sylph and Undine ceased. Wet ash ruined the looks of shoes and pants.

They eventually arrived at a clearing. Not the one John had put there for festive purposes, but one created by virtue of all trees in the area getting smashed into splinters. The ground there was so soggy it felt like stepping into the outskirts of a marsh. A happenstance courtesy of the several half-melted ice formations around and the two elementals responsible for creating and unmaking them.

One was a woman of pale-blue beauty. Her entire body radiated a distant cold, from the way she hid half of her face behind the long sleeve of her kimono to how her translucent blue hair sparkled in the light of the remaining fires. Her eyes looked like a cracked sheet of ice, with no difference between iris and sclera. The pupil managed to barely stand out, courtesy of being a perfect circle among otherwise random cracks. She had a lean body.

Standing opposite of her was a creature between a stag beetle, a spider and the craggy exterior of a volcano. The gaps of its exoskeleton glowed dark red and orange, and its eyes were of a glowing white. Its maw was unlike either of the two insects, made out of several sharp splinters that were aligned to make a mouth that could close perfectly. At the moment, it was wide open and frothing molten rock, slowly dripping down to the floor, filled with tiny bubbles.

Behind the combatants were two spectators. One was Tilgun. The serpentine dragon had moved about half of his massive body inland. Disappointment reflected in the eyes that sat in his elongated head. Ultramarine scales and a bleak belly made it clear what the dragon’s natural environment was. The beak-like jaws of the dragon opened and he revealed his thin teeth as he yawned and settled his six-horned head down next to the other spectator.

She was another woman and only about 1,60 metres in height. Hair the colour of wet farmland clung to her head and ran across her face. It didn’t hide her dark eyes or her grin, however. Her body seemed to be covered in some sort of mud, revealing that she was extremely curvy.

John let a number of Observes fly around and relaxed. The ice woman was called Juniel (level 111), the fire insect Gragoth (level 112) and the mud girl Hemklia (level 124). Even combined, they wouldn’t have been a threat to the Gamer, let alone him and most of his harem. Given that fact, he took the lead and stepped even closer.

“Would anyone explain to me why you’re setting my property on fire?” he asked and let a challenging gaze wander around. It did not achieve any of the wanted effect. Hemklia smirked; Juniel closed her eyes and ignored him; only Gragoth gave him an answer and it was not what he was looking for.

“I OWE YOU NO EXPLANATION, TINY MAN!” the elemental roared and lowered his horn. With all eight of his legs, he accelerated into a sprint. The evaporating water of the rain made him leave behind a trail of steam as he charged.

John didn’t move one step. ‘Don’t interfere,’ he told his girls and simply raised one hand. Catching the split horn with it, the Gamer felt the impact on his skin dissipate within moments and a chunk of his mana reserves vanish. Gragoth came to an immediate halt, as his force met an object that he could not move. Continuing to press with all of his legs, he caused more and more of John’s mana to be spent. However, the ongoing effort barely outstripped John’s mana regeneration. He could have stood there and let Particle Skin take the impact for another three hours at the current rate.

“You done?” John asked and received a growl in return. It was pretty obvious he was dealing with the kind of beast here that respected strength, so he decided to demonstrate some more. Raising his other hand, he aimed at a particularly thick looking part of the elemental’s exoskeleton. A ball of energy spawned in the Gamer’s hand. Even as it charged, the insectoid beast tried to win the contest of strength. Then the Arc Lance rushed out.

It wasn’t even a clean shot. John’s goal was to establish dominance, not to hurt Gragoth. Regardless, even the grazing attack took with it a chunk of supernatural plating. That only served to enrage the insectoid further. John sighed, conjured another attack and aimed it at Gragoth’s left eye.

“I can do this about five more times before I run out of mana, six if I can get you to stop within the first two shots,” John warned as the orb in his palm slowly shifted colour from blue to light purple. Arc Lance’s power and range increased the longer it was left to charge, maxing out at 100% after as many seconds had passed.

That still didn’t get the infernal stag beetle to reconsider. Only after John had blown off two legs and his horn, making the elemental unable to continue fighting, did he start to see reason. The surrender was still preceded by about five minutes of roaring and thrashing. When he finally growled, “I yield,” in a fashion suitable for talking rather than a screamfest, the Gamer was about to put another Arc Lance into him to drive the point home. “You win this one, tiny man.”

“Newman,” John corrected and pointed his palm at the floor. The crystal lance slammed into the ground. Since he couldn’t cancel spells, he had to leave the energy elsewhere. He looked over to the other two elementals. “Do you two want a go as well or can we solve this in a civilized way?”

“I’m not a fool like Gragoth,” the ice woman responded immediately, chuckling and dropping her sleeve a little bit. The beauty of the upper half of her face was disrupted by a grizzly maw of needle-like icicles, lipless and with cracks inside. “I… why did I even fight him?” She quickly covered it again, seemingly in a daze.

“I haven’t done any fighting since I got here,” Hemklia said in a sweet tone that made John think more of carnivorous plants than innocence.

“Fantastic,” John spoke over the growling of Gragoth towards his previous opponent. “Now, to repeat my question: would anyone care to explain to me why you’re setting my property on fire?” It was pretty obvious who the culprit was in terms of spreading the fire. However, given the signs of battle, John was more interested in the why than the who. Again, he stared at everybody. Again, he didn’t get the wanted effect.

“It was just a teeny-tiny fight,” Hemklia answered with a dismissive hum. “Nothing much, really, no big deal, no big deal at all.”

‘Okay, I’ve had it,’ John thought and turned his thoughts to someone who could teach some respect effectively. ‘Metra, if you would-‘

‘Uhm, may I try to deal with the situation first?’ Gnome interrupted.

“Oh, COME ON!” Metra exclaimed out loud. The First of Wrath had already been lifting the axe off her shoulder. As thirsty for action as ever, the green-eyed berserker looked at all three elementals with a hungry grin. “This could entertain me for an entire minute.”

“You really haven’t changed,” Tilgun laughed, milking whatever humour he could from the situation.

“Do let her try first,” John told the blonde Metracana.

“As you wish, my king,” she responded with a small bow of her head. John could feel how the anger she had fanned inside her was forcefully suppressed. He could also see Tilgun’s head rise a little bit upon hearing that title. She winked at the Maw of Souls. The significance of this action seemed to be even higher than John had thought, as the higher dragon pushed all four of his arms into the ground and suddenly leaned towards John.

“Him?” he asked and inspected John closely. “Are you sure? I can see the potential; I can’t see it manifested…”

“Isn’t this the one fucking thing in which you shouldn’t dare question me, you perpetually bothersome serpent?” Metra questioned.

“No… I mean…” Tilgun hesitated.

“I swear on Sargon’s grave that my choice is made and that I will not sway until John breathes his last.”

“I… see…” There were several moments of silence. “Interesting.” With that simple word, TIlgun backed off. He was still around, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere now. There were clear implications to this ‘king candidate’ thing that John still wasn’t aware of.

For the moment, they had another situation to deal with. With somewhat robotic movements, Gnome wandered over to Hemklia, whose left eyebrow slowly but surely wandered up. “So, uhm,” the autumn elemental began and cleared her throat, “I would have one, maybe two questions for you, if that’s alright?”

“If you make it snappy.”

“Could you please just tell us what happened without being obtuse about it?”

“No, that doesn’t sound fun.”

“Um, okay… second question, you’re made of mud, right? Would there be any problems if you were catapulted into the water?”

“That’s three questions.”

“J-just answer please… don’t want to murder anyone…”

“Psh, you’re stupid… no, of course no-“

Before she could finish her sentence, Gnome had already dragged an uppercut through Hemklia’s stomach all the way out through her head. Dark mud flew high into the air, splattering over the land and flying all the way into the distant water. “H-have respect, please!” Gnome exclaimed. “You’re a guest here and all that!”

“Okay, I get it, by Mother Mud,” the answer came out of the stump that was left behind. Over the course of about twenty seconds, Hemklia reformed her upper half. “All that happened is that those two can’t stand each other,” she gestured at Gragoth and Juniel, “so we egged them on to fight each other so we could have something to bet on.”

‘Not exactly typical earth elemental behaviour,’ John thought and scratched the back of his head.

‘Fits perfectly for fire and ice though… and Tilgun. I guess she is the type of mud that has some shadow in the mix?’

‘Are you accusing me of being an instigator?’ Siena wanted to know.

‘…Are you not?’ John returned in an amused tone, before continuing out loud, “Okay, now that we have that cleared up, let’s talk about everything else. Starting with who you are exactly and what you are doing here.”