Chapter 490 – Progress and Surprise

“FUCK – YES!” John exclaimed as he finally was granted what he wanted and fell backwards, away from the lying sandbag he had been kicking for the past hour. He was so happy about getting done with this, he didn’t even care about the sass. Once he had the basic idea figured out, it was endless repetitions. A proper martial arts student would have needed to be careful training, each attempt to be executed with flawless concentration as to not harm themself.

John in return took absolute advantage of Gamer’s Body, taking abundant damage to accelerate the learning process. He had self-harmed his way about three times down his entire health bar, only Undine allowing him to keep pressing on.

He landed on the blue sports mat that covered the floor. The thick layer of foam wasn’t the most comfortable thing to lie on, but there was also much worse. However, when Eliza kneeled down next to him and pulled his head on her thighs, his level of satisfaction rose by an immeasurable amount. “So soft,” he sighed, relaxing.

These skills were interesting, because they weren’t skills in the normal sense. They were called techniques instead and had several changes applied to how they functioned. John hadn’t really expected more mechanics to be added to his arsenal at this stage in the game. They apparently were martial arts exclusive and created sub-skills to Aura rather than full new skills, operating with a few important differences.

Techniques had a level cap depending on their difficulty that scaled either with John’s Stats or his level in Martial Artist. That was what a nice tutorial window had told him.

He could only use them while Aura was toggled on. In return, their cost was pretty low, but they had a cooldown which he could only skip in return for taking damage. It was a whole slew of mechanics that John had no plans to dabble in. Aura was still completely antithetical to his usual game plan, given that it disabled all MP regeneration, and he kept the skill off his list for that reason. If presented with the choice of being better in melee or use the points for Mana Protection and spells instead, John’s specialization up until this point clearly pointed to the latter.

If he had opted into martial arts from the start, that would be a whole different story, and parts of him really wanted to experience that. However, it was the mark of a good game that there were several fun play styles but only one could be obtained by the MC at any given playthrough. Too bad real life didn’t have a way for him to reset back to the beginning of the journey and allowed him to playtest all the different builds.

It did have Eliza’s amazing thighs though, in addition to her crazy smile peeking over her decently sized tits hanging above him. That was a fair tradeoff. Not to mention her ass, which he had begun fondling absent-mindedly. The spandex gave the softness a nice texture, although he would have prefered the smoothness of naked skin.

The blood mage herself was sweating lightly, an extremely rare sight given her absurd stamina. A beauty only made possible thanks to the nature of meditation in the Abyssal sense, as the body was put under strain by the internal mana, a force that usually scaled in some capacity with one’s own rising power. As Eliza could basically convert her Endurance into mana, hers was rather vast.

John wondered what sort of internal mechanics of mana prevented the blood mage from converting the extra Endurance she gained from her Active Aura to make the skill stronger and in turn give her more Endurance, creating an infinite self-scaling effect. He presented a question like that and got the expected answer.

“Just because your fucking eyes tell you that I have higher stats doesn’t mean that it works that way, you retard,” she told him. “The mana I can generate with my cocksleeve of a body obviously can’t be used to make more mana. I am fucking balanced!”

“Really? Because I would describe Bloodburn as anything but balanced and THAT gives you more mana,” John held against that and groped her butt a bit more aggressively. There was a quickly rising tent in his sports pants (he wasn’t in his suit, that outfit felt weird for actual boxing practice).

“Okay, Bloodburn I concede is fucking busted,” Eliza stated, “but I barely know how that even works. There is no downside to using it… aside from stirring up a creepy slut inside me, of course. All of that shit aside, it literally burns away my blood, it just conveniently adds the regenerative factor for that to not matter whatsoever.”

“So, if you were using Bloodburn, could you create a stronger Aura?” John wondered.

“I would try, but that’s just asking for Thana to ram her spiked tail up somebody’s asshole until it comes out through the mouth again,” she told him.

“What is this ‘Bloodburn’ thing in the first place?” Metra asked, herself busy swinging at the now vacated punching bag. She didn’t need the workout nor could she train any techniques on it, she just enjoyed the feeling of her body moving and of her fists’ impacts. “Never seen it.”

“Hard to explain, you have never seen Eliza here when she could fight thoughtlessly,” John hummed. “But it doubles all her power.”

“And that’s impressive how?” Metra asked, herself going up to 250% depending on how angry she was.

Eliza growled at the dismissive comment. “I can rip you a new one without it.”

“Maybe if you figure out how to maintain an Aura for more than three seconds or punch without causing your fucking blood vessels to explode, I would believe you,” the berserker babe made some light fun of the white and blue haired girl, who continued growling in response. “How about you stop sounding like a bitch and continue working out, huh?”

John suddenly had his head grabbed and held in a very interesting hold. His face was all up in her chest while her legs and arms were surrounding him on all sides. While hot, there was a problem where he had no way to breathe. He decided that this was, at least temporarily, not a thing that warranted complaints. It was hot and the nice kind sticky. Probably helped that he had worked up a sweat himself.

“How about you take that pair of nunchakus,” she pointed at a part of the wall that was dedicated to hold training weapons made from wood and foam, “and use them to fuck yourself in both of your holes?!” Eliza retorted. “I am cuddling over here, you metallic slaughter addict!”

“I am a war addict if anything,” Metra factually answered. “Slaughters are actually pretty boring. You just murder people,” she pulled her fist back as far as possible, “you never get to properly FIGHT!” Her weight and power were put behind that punch. Going right through the leather, her fist sunk into the filling and caused it to spill out when she pulled back. She clicked her tongue and looked at the piling sand with an annoyed face. “What a fucking disappointment these things are,” she kicked the sand in raw anger, then she turned back towards the two of them. “Yo, John, get Aclysia or Beatrice here.”

Using this as an excuse to free himself from his squishy asphyxiation, John answered a moment later, “Aclysia is busy, but I told Beatrice to come and bring a vacuum.” He looked at the berserker babe: of course she was doing this work out in her usual clothes, a thin black cropped top with a see-through middle part and hot pants of the same colour. Her muscles and midriff were on open display, rippling as they went through different motions when Metra began to shadowbox instead.

Eliza released John from her grip completely. “I will learn this shit… but I am done for today,” she decided. “I want to not smell like a unhygienic bitch that hasn’t even heard of bathing water when I meet the grandmother of my children.”

“That’s still a couple of hours away,” John told her. They had departed from New York at about 8 PM and the autopilot was set to make them arrive about 12 hours later. Right then it was about 11:30, so there was still time.

“Yes, and I want to take a motherfucking shower, sleep like a bitch, get fucked like a whore and finish the first season of Game of Thrones to see that ass Joffrey die in a giant fire,” Eliza answered. “So, there is a schedule that bursts with content as much as my pussy is bursting with semen whenever you are done with it.”

“Fair enough,” John got up. “We will leave you to it then, Metra.”

“Send me Jane or Sally if you meet them, I am going to get bored if I am alone here,” she requested.

“You can spar with Beatrice,” John told her. “You know she doesn’t suck anymore.”

The berserker babe made a sour expression. “That means I have to listen to her permanent passive sass.”

“What, can’t handle some backtalk?” the Gamer laughed. It felt like that was the height of irony, with how much retorts the ancient weapon herself usually dropped over the course of a conversation.

“I can handle all the fucking backtalk,” Metra shot back. “It’s just that her emotionless analysing of every little quip only to throw the small mistakes in them back in my face really pisses me off.”

“To be fair, a lot of things piss you off. Basically, all the things.”

“YOU are pissing me off right now,” Metra whirled around, executing a roundhouse kick that stopped right next to John’s face. He neither dodged nor guarded, simply continuing to stand there with a smirk. “But yes, Beatrice does it extra hard though.”

“Advice: take a chill pill,” the uninterested voice of Beatrice chimed into the conversation like Alexa after she had been accidentally activated. “Note: this was sarcasm. Chill pills do not exist.”

“I know, you infuriating piece of garbage!” Metra shouted.

“None of the components that make up my body are either A: worth close to or just nothing or B: the unusable remains of a product or packaging. I thus give that insult a 0% accuracy,” the passive maid continued on. “Suggestion: aim your insults at things I strongly care about.” In a surprisingly well acted fashion, she rose her hand in front of her mouth, as if she had a shocking realization. “My apologies, there is no such thing.”

“You know what,” Metra cracked her knuckles, “you sound like a perfect sparring partner.”

Taking a little bow, Beatrice answered, “I will oblige you. Correction: I will oblige you, after I cleaned up the mess you made.”

John and Eliza left the room at that point, as it was clear that there would be violence the second the punching bag had been disposed of. ‘Hopefully they only destroy the dummy weapons,’ he thought as they entered the corridor.

The hallways that connected everything in the yacht were as nice as everything else. They were broad enough for a group of people to walk comfortably and the floor was of a dark blue colour. John wasn’t quite sure what it was. He knew it was a layer over the metal that lay at the heart of most of the ship’s walls, making it quite the sturdy work of craftsmanship, but for the exact material plastered atop, he was unqualified to make an answer. His guess was some sort of oil-based paint or lacquer, enhanced magically for extra durability.

As everywhere else on the ship, the floor was spotless and, as they were on an outer walkway, allowed a nice view of the starry sky outside, stars magnificently spanning the firmament. Little city light was here to block out their brilliance. A fair amount of distance was between them and the coast, after all. They simply shone over the dark, endlessly stretching waves of the nightly ocean. Through untinted windows, it would have looked ever better..

John followed a sudden impulse and shoved Eliza against the wall. “What the fu-,” she began to complain, but the Gamer grabbed her by the throat with one arm and forced her to be quiet by squeezing as strong as he could. Her eyes went from annoyed to ‘Oh, my, yes!’ in a couple of seconds as she realized what John wanted.

“I have a lot of pent up frustration right now,” he said in a dangerous voice, a pure act to play to her submissive fantasies, “but most of all I desperately need a drink, so you will shut up. The only thing I want to hear from you now are moans, are we clear?” She nodded and John let go of her, his hands moving on to rip open the sports bra. The tearing sound was followed immediately by the spilling of her firm tits out of their compression hold. “I will buy you something prettier later,” he promised as the ruined cloth fell down behind her feet.

He bowed down to lick her nipple and tasted the salt of a good workout. It was delicious, for the oddest of reasons, and precum began to create a dark spot in his pants. However, John didn’t plan to use his cock quite yet, he wanted to indulge more in Eliza’s body.

After roughly kneading, sucking and biting her tits and nipples for a bit, John kneeled down on the floor. He peeled the pants off her, the damp cloth refusing to go easily. A strand of clear liquid connected a particularly wet spot on the spandex with her bare pussy.

“No panties, you naughty degenerate,” John observed his meal and then pressed his face right between her thighs. Tongue pushing straight inside, he was greeted by a small gush of her honeypot’s liquids, which he slurped up greedily. Reaching behind her, his hands clawed into her ass and pulled her closer, stretching his tongue as deep as he could inside her, his mouth sucking on her pussy and clit.

She moaned loudly, like he loved her to do. Her voice broke sometimes and small giggles accompanied some of his actions, sounds of a crazy girl. A girl crazy for him and insanely sexy in general. Pussy hair caressed John’s face; it was at a good length, not so short that it felt like he was getting stabbed and not so long that it was a genuine obstruction. Generally, he still preferred his girls smoothly shaven, but this much wasn’t a problem whatsoever.

Looking up her body, her saw her face between her heaving breasts. Her eyes were closed and she breathed heavily. Her lips formed a single word, but she only gasped quietly as she suppressed saying it. He could read it, she wanted to moan his name.

He redoubled his efforts and moments later felt her pussy contract. The folds, usually working on milking his dick, were now clamping down on his tongue. He stopped, simply witnessing her writhing body and letting her experience a mellow first orgasm; the proper fucking would follow soon after.

She opened her eyes again, smiling down at him with that massive grin that showed just the slightest bit of gum in addition to her pearly teeth. Then, her purplish lips froze in position and she looked up. “John…” that single word was enough to tip him off; if not for the fact that she was suddenly going against his wish, then because of the serious tone.

Immediately he turned around, looking out of the window. The sky was gone, as was the ocean or anything else they might have been able to see. A greyish white, slowly swirling and shifting directly in front of the window, that was all the world was now. It was so thick that it looked two dimensional against the translucent barrier.

“When?” John asked, obviously an easily answered question. Sometime between him shoving Eliza against the wall and her opening her eyes again. Speed, density, location, it all left little doubt about this being not a natural phenomenon.

“We better fucking get everyone together,” Eliza said the reasonable thing.