Collide Gamer Chapter 1557 – Two Remaining

John did not even think about it when Rave pulled him and Undine along. The sli girl patched up the remaining wounds and then they went to town on the victorious techno lover. They kept the strategic talk and the head scratches for after they were done with her. Which, by harem standards, they did very quickly. Two minutes of foreplay, four minutes of relentless pounding, one minute of cuddling.

Just because he was superhuman did not an he was incapable of quickies.

“Two to four,” he sighed, when he plopped back in his chair.

“You have done exceptionally well,” Lydia said to Rave.

“Can’t say that was easy, but I do my job. Gotta show anyone who bullies my guy what’s what.” The feline Lightbearer put her perfect ass right in his lap and lounged on him like a queen on a recliner. “Yes, my job does include flirting with girls.”

Lydia closed her mouth without a single word said.

John chuckled and scratched his fiancée behind the cat ears. “You really do live rent free in everyone’s head, hm?”

“Soone’s gotta own everyone here and it sure ain’t you,” Rave responded jokingly. She rubbed her shoulder against his chest and purred. “Hmmm, right there… ya really know how to touch .”

“Soone’s got to satisfy everyone here and it sure isn’t you,” John pushed back.

“Dick.” Rave giggled and kissed him on the cheek. “Anyway, she doesn’t seem all too interested. In becoming a harette…”

“Good,” Lydia stated.

“…so, if it’s gonna happen, imma have to soften her up a bit first. Should take long enough for the bloat to settle.” Rave’s continuation made both Lydia and a nearby Momo sigh. “What? Don’t act like ya don’t know what I’m about.”

“Next you’re going to tell you’re working on Moira too,” John joked.

Rave shot him a confused glance. “You aren’t?” A stunned mont of silence, then the feline Lightbearer broke out laughing. “I’m kidding. I’m kinda scouting options, but I’m not actually trying to get anyone in. At least, I won’t start until I see ya look at them like ya look at certain other prospects.”

“You better; it’s bad enough with out here incapable of controlling myself.” John redoubled his scratching efforts and Rave all but lted between his arms.

Momo let out a triumphant laugh. “Aha! You CAN’T control yourself! I knew it!”

“Mock more and I’ll show you just how little control I have over my instincts.” John shot her a dark-eyed gaze, which was enough for the submissive instincts of the brat to kick in and make her back down from that line of mockery – for now at least. Once they were out of the coliseum, that would be another story.

“Back to the matter at hand,” Lydia steered the conversation, “two enemies remain and they are, annoyingly, the most botherso. How do you like your chances?”

“I think we’re favoured at this point,” John thought out loud and considered who he had left in his camp. That Rave was the weakest of them was the only thing that was certain. Whether Eliana, Nia, or tra were the strongest against their current opponent really depended on how their powers worked against their enemy. An argunt could be made for each of them.

Fact was that there were four more matches today, which ant that the remaining two of the Azure Tribe would have to beat two each, best case scenario (for them). They had the numbers and, depending on how things worked with their healing, could grind their enemy down. That was if Nia, tra or Eliana did not win outright.

The Gar smiled. “I am feeling confident about this. I am feeling very confident about everything that happens during this trip.” He gave Eliana a quick glance. That was as much as he dared to do. Plans were in motion and only ngele’s own paranoia could stop them now.

Luckily for John, the two remaining mbers of the Azure Tribe were also the strongest and that ant ngele would stay to the end, hoping for victory. Everything was aligning nicely.

“Hey there, hot stuff.” A soft whisper in John’s ear made his head turn. Salamander stood behind him, grinning ear to ear. “Guess what I just got?”

John actually had to let the gears in his head turn for two seconds before he ca to a logical answer. “An update from your Mother regarding where we should go next?”

Salamander clicked her tongue. “You and your big nerd brain,” she complained. “Can I have one thing to surprise you with?”

“You can tell who we go to next,” John coaxed her. There wasn’t much surprise to be had there. Only earth and shadow remained. Light was also still open, but Stirwin was already as steeped in the power of his kind as he could be. The Celestial Devourer predated the existence of the planes.

“It’s Siena’s mom,” Salamander told him. “Just got the intel via Flabook.”

“…Still can’t get over that whole elecnet thing,” the Gar mumbled. “I an, I get how it works these days, being a synapse in the flow of elental information and all that, but it’s still weird to know that a kind of internet is flowing into my brain.”

“To be fair, it only looks like the internet because modern people think of it like the internet,” Salamander said. “I spoke to so senior elentals that had contractors before the internet and they said it’s always like the ssaging thods of the ti.”

Undine chid into the conversation, “That’s also because signal strength used to be worse. When there were less people, there were less Abyssals and thus less summoners. Where there are less summoners, the connection to the elecnet is worse.”

“Not that we have to worry about that, like, ever, ever, ever!” Sylph babbled. “Because we’re never, never, never getting cut off from the elecnet because you’re, like, a maaaaaaaassive beacon! You’re like a flare! Of signal strength! A signal flare! A signlare!”

“That makes no fucking sense, airhead!”

“Eat out!”

“…Fuck it, co here.” Salamander grabbed the cheering air spirit by the shoulder and dragged her to one of the side rooms John had been using.

‘They will all reek of sex by the ti we are done here,’ he thought, no small part amused. His attention shifted to the shadow spirit that was lingering in the shadow of the wall, by the railing. Her tail thoughtfully waved, as she watched Jeff break down the fight to the best of his ability. Rapid teleportation amidst an already rapid fight made for a difficult show to comntate on. “You’re not looking forward to it,” John remarked.

“eting my mother is never a tantalizing prospect,” Siena sighed.

John kept quiet. They had disagreents about Fade that couldn’t be easily, or at all, sorted out. In part this was because Siena herself could not claim that her dislike of the Mother of Shadow was logical. It was based on imprisoning the then-nightmare elental due to her homicidal tendencies. Even if her targets largely deserved it, Gaia did not look favourably upon such ddling across the divide. Fade had acted to save Siena from the consequences of her actions. Perhaps Siena should be thankful for that, but people weren’t logical creatures. Just like a dog could resent a trip to the vet, a person could resent soone for logical and beneficial intervention.

Arguing with a partner over their parents never ended well. He was reminded of this every ti he tried to push Rave a bit towards hers again. Just doing that much ended with the love of his life annoyed for days. He was going to keep things polite and occasional.

Even quiet, Siena could sense his opinion. “I know she won’t do anything harmful and I still don’t like her.”

“You don’t have to,” the Gar admitted. “Your familial relations are different from mine anyhow. From what I can see, not liking your elental ruler is a much different story than not liking your parent, even if the titles are similar.”

“Perhaps.” Siena let out another sigh and took a half step away from the railing. “Did you hear about Scarlett’s little project?” A drastic change of topic, but John let her get away with it.

“Little project?” John asked and half-turned to look for the redhead. It was made more difficult by the Lightbearer still in his lap, but he eventually found the technomancer with Hailey and Aclysia. Since the Rose was currently out of their hands, the maid and the chanic were back in the watching area. By John’s request, Aclysia did not use her available free ti to provide food again. Things would wrap up today, he hoped, and he did not want the business around the platform again.

Scarlett caught his gaze and with a little gesture of his head, he requested her to co over. Rolling her eyes, the technomancer obliged. “What is it?” she asked.

“I heard you had a new project running?”

“Right, I wanted to talk to you about that.” Scarlett played with the swing of the backrest of his chair. “I was thinking about creating AM.”

“…AM...?” John needed a mont to process that. “Please tell you don’t an the AI from ‘I have no mouth and I must scream’?”

“No, that one is correct.” Scarlett delivered those words with the sa bored tone as soone describing the wallpaper.

“…Why?” The Gar rarely was truly flabbergasted by anything his girls did, but that idea managed to crack even his erudite understanding. “Why would you ever want to do that? What possible use could you have for AM?”

“A weapon, obviously,” Scarlett answered flatly. Playing with his hair, she continued, “Currently, chanical soldiers are typically incapable of putting up a true resistance. They lack creativity and drive, sothing that usually requires an AS core to even start to fix. Too bad that golems don’t have an off-switch and can’t control more than one body.”

“And your solution to that is to build a genocidal hate monster?” The question did not co from John, but Momo.

Scarlett just shrugged. “It would take care of the drive and creativity issue.”

“May I remind you that AM’s drive led to the near total extinction of humanity and the creativity ended up with the last mber of humanity turning into a blob that was getting tortured for all eternity?” the fairy maid continued.

“Yes, inspiring dedication.” Scarlett put her hand on the backrest instead and leaned on it, returning the hesitant gazes of Momo and John with her circuitry-filled, red stare. “The conditions are hardly the sa and I’m not so fucking stupid to build an AI without an off-switch. Not that I even think you can build a true AI. I’m just going to build sothing that runs on a facsimile of ‘hate’ as its core motivator.”

“That still sounds pretty shady,” John pointed out.

“It’s a fucking weapon, of course it is,” Scarlett answered drily. “I want to try and create at least a chanical side force, and an AM hivemind controlling drones that I can point in a specific direction would work.”

The Gar continued to be sceptical. “It would be a walking assortnt of potential war cris.”

“War cris,” Scarlett sounded amused by the suggestion, “another one of your mundane concepts, John. You think a platoon of hate-driven killer robots is worse than soone whose Innate Ability is to induce seizures around them? The Lorylim? Hellfire? This girl?” She pointed at Eliana.

“Depends on how much of a torture setting you put in there,” John said, only a third joking. After a few monts of contemplation, he raised his hand, stopping Scarlett from presenting her next argunt. “Look, I think it’s an extraordinarily poor idea. That being said, I don’t have to tell you about the risks involved and I won’t stop you either. If you’re confident you can create AM without all the drawbacks of AM, then go for it. You are correct in that this world is different anyhow. If your AI goes rogue, we can nuke it with a fireball.”

“Glad that we’re on the sa page.” Scarlett was about to turn away. Halfway through the motion, she stopped. “I see a ‘however’ on that face.”

“…However,” John confird her suspicion, “if this goes sideways, you’ll have to cover the damages.”

“Of course,” Scarlett answered imdiately. “This is a private endeavour.”

With that, she walked away, leaving Momo to poke the side of his head. “You really think this is a good idea?”

“I literally just said that I think it’s not.” John’s dry tone made the sassy maid roll her eyes. “AM was scary because it was a true AI that had a complex that basically ate through the entirety of Earth. It was in charge of all the nuclear weapons and troop deploynts. Simply put, the story setting made AM a god from machine. I don’t think Scarlett will be stupid enough to give her attempt at recreating the behaviour of AM in chanical bodies access to Fusion’s governnt apparatus, and even if she did, we don’t have nuclear weapons.” He shrugged. “The situation is just fundantally different. We’ll see where this goes.”

“SSSssssssspeaking of things that are hateful,” Delicia suddenly and excitedly stepped up to him dragging tra with her, “check this out!”

She practically shoved her phone in his face. Before he could even comprehend what he was looking at, he had worked out what she was talking about. Seeing the graph tracking activity in Ehtra’s magical matrix just confird his suspicions. It was also highly interesting.

“So, it was more than a fluke?” he mumbled.

“I can’t know until I take a proper look at her.”

“You want to head back ho?” the Gar asked. It would be as easy as taking the teleporter, especially since her lab had been moved, for the most part, into the now utterly fantastical Palace complex, with its multi-dinsional windings.

“I’m considering it, but I think the next step of her recovery would be too involved,” Delicia stated.

“Leave her be for a bit,” tra advised.

“”You sure?”” John and Delicia asked in unison.

“Yes.” The First of Wrath pulled her shoulders back. “I don’t want to get too excited over this. We’ll concentrate on the tournant and its aftermath for now.”

John could have brought up that Delicia wasn’t truly needed for the tournant. Since he was out, not even replacing his Creator Puppets fell under the alchemist’s duties. However, if Ehtra did suddenly spring up again, that would indeed split their attention. The tournant itself did not matter too much, but the aftermath very much did.

Ehtra would have to wait.

Down below, the illusion that replayed the last fight at a reasonable speed dissipated, revealing Romulus and his three vases. The whole stadium waited with bated breath. Which one of the two superpowers of the Azure Tribe would fight? Who would be thrown against them?

“Orkos of the Azure Tribe!” Romulus announced the first of the two. “…Versus… Eliana of Fusion!”

“Fucking finally,” the failed goddess growled.

“Their battle shall comnce in the petrified forest.”

“Yyyyyyouuu heard it, folks!” Jeff shouted into the microphone. “Lllllllllet’s get ready to TUMMMMMBLE!”