“The ever-loving hell?” John wondered and turned the item in his hands. The rusty surface of the giant key scratched against his palms. Whatever it was meant to open had to be rather impressive. The thing John was weirded out by was the limitation though.

As per Lydia’s orders (and the fact that it made logical sense), he actually had intended to just sleep through New Year’s Eve. Now he not only had a reason to stay awake but he was practically blackmailed into it. Bonus Levels were too good to pass up on. Bonus levels with a condition were certainly too good to pass up on.

It was a bit suspicious that Gaia just gave him this thing though. Something was up with this. Whatever was inside, awaiting his arrival, would be horrible, that much he was certain of. Even her Christmas boss had only been listing all the naughty things he had done after all.

Anyhow, John was heading over to Rave after having inspected that thing for the third time. It was now Sunday noon, and he had spent the morning doing another Assault in order to have a Soulpotion ready for Rave. In his opinion, Nia had already grabbed enough of those, and as he was the sole provider, his opinion was really the only one that mattered.

He was whistling happily as he headed over to the gardens where Rave was meditating. Even though the end of the day was uncertain thanks to that item, he was happy to spend it with his girlfriend. Every bit of alone time he got with her was precious. He even got the elementals to scurry off for the moment (although he would call them back when they entered a combat situation).

The moment he turned around a hedge, she already opened her eyes and looked at him. “Hurray, distraction!” she shouted and jumped out of her cross-legged position and at John. Their arms closed behind each other’s backs as John caught her, whirling her flying body around with ease.

She laughed out loud, a wonderful sound that made butterflies fly in his stomach, and he slowed their momentum. Eventually she landed on her feet, and the two of them stood here. Her copper eyes looked into his brown ones, and then their lips met in a fervent kiss. Her glossy, full lips tasted of peppermint and bubble-gum, like always, and the familiar bump of her piercing glided over his tongue.

He pulled her deeper into the kiss, not wanting this moment to ever end. As tongues wrestled, he was putting one hand on her curvaceous butt and the other at the back of her head. He squeezed the former with the usual attitude of a pervert living the dream while scratching his girlfriend behind her cat ears. In return, Rave grabbed his own butt and, after at least two minutes of making out and whispering sweet nothings, pinched it once she had enough.

“Okay, slow down, tiger, I need meow blood up here,” she joked and tapped against her head.

“Fine, fine,” John said and gave her one last peck on the lips before letting her go. Their hands quickly found each other afterwards. “So how is it going?” John asked with a glance at her cat ears. She had been wearing those since he had last seen her stumble into their bed and instantly fall asleep last night. They had made it up with a quickie in the morning, but it was still uncommon for her to be that exhausted.

It seemed that her body and technique had reached a point where she could maintain the elevated state indefinitely.

“Ah, ya know, so-so,” Rave said and turned to Copernicus; “Right, Cappy?”

“You are making advances in both combat styles, I suppose, but you will need at least four more days to tap into what I truly want to teach you,” the sun cat said, lazily lying in a ray that shone through the trees.

John found the fact that so much of the garden had been destroyed saddening; he had liked the decorative value. In the distance, he heard metal clang as Lydia continued her own training. “Aren’t you cold?” John asked, looking up and down his girlfriend who was only clad in her full-body battle suit that just left her head exposed.

While the pink thing did look impressive, it did not have the appearance of something that was particularly great at warding off the cold. “A bit, but it’s fine,” she assured; “Also, ya don’t look like ya are wearing the warmeowst stuff yourself.”

True, he was only wearing his suit, and that wasn’t the most insulating thing ever. While both the weather and temperature inside the Illusion Barrier seemed up to Romulus to decide, dictated by the massive obelisk at the centre of the city, the emperor apparently left the natural climate untouched. Only exceptions seemed to be when he wanted a specific weather for an event.

John didn’t really understand. If he could have, he would have just had it at a nice 21 to 25 degrees Celsius all the time. What use was the power over the weather if you didn’t do whatever you wanted with it? “Whenever I get my own base, it will have a nice and warm biosphere,” he murmured.

“Like 32 degrees?” Rave asked. John just stared at her in response. “What?” she asked.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you like things WAY too hot?” It was a rhetorical question, he had said that to her numerous times.

“Oh shaddup, I settled for someone totally not-hot for my boyfriend!” she countered.

“Also, you don’t like hot drinks, which is extra weird,” John just ignored the quip at his expense.

“Meow tongue is sensitive,” Rave pouted and puffed up her cheeks. “We just gonna poke fun at each other or we gonna do something useful?”

“Like teaching you how to speak properly?” that earned him a light stomp to the foot. Totally worth it. He giggled in a slightly pained manner and then grabbed her hand more tightly. “Anyway, it’s up to you, just drink this first,” he handed her the potion. One quick chugging later, John put it back into the holster.

“Well, now that I have you here, not going for fighting would be boring, right?” She looked at her current instructor and familiar.

“Yes, I agree…” Copernicus yawned and then looked at John, “…let’s fight your boyfriend.”

“Uhm,” John did not like where this was heading and activated Mana Protection to get the early negation in; “You know you stand no chance against me, right?”

“We will see about that,” Rave smirked widely. “No elementals!”

“…I mean, okay?” John didn’t even feel like that was that big a limitation. He was not as reliant on them as he used to be.

Weird Quest, but John would not say no to free stats, so he accepted. “You probably won’t let me punch you for free?” he asked as he was getting dragged off in the direction of the exit gate; “Just got a Quest for it.”

“Whaddya think? Answer is no!” Rave laughed. “Ya gotta give it your best shot.”

Once they had reached the run down house, Rave put up an Illusion Barrier. Visually, nothing changed, but John got the pop-up and quickly dismissed it. “Really, you are just going to make a copy of this house our battlefield?” he asked.

“Well, sorry, mister bullshit-powers, some of us don’t just get Fateweaver powers for existing,” Rave answered, sticking out her tongue and cracking her knuckles; “Gonna enjoy beating the Brainiac out of ya.”

And with that the fight began. John barely managed to dodge the first punch. A graceless jump to the side, barely leaving him on his feet got him out of the path of Rave’s fist, cutting through the air where he had just stood. “You are way too eager to beat me up, Jane!” he complained as fire engulfed his left hand. At least she was nice enough to wait for that to happen. He also removed her from his group for the moment.

“Ya enjoy a good fucking, I enjoy a nice fight,” Rave grinned like a cat that just had rediscovered her old favourite toy; “Ya knew what ya were getting into when you started dating meow.”

“I mean, I guess?” John said, slowly inching towards a brittle looking wall as they had their little exchange; “No elementals means not using Copernicus as well, right?”

“Fine by meow,” Rave giggled and then raised her hands, her suit covering the back parts of them with the plates it had absorbed from the Miales-Gloves. Then she came at him again. Her hand collided with the Mana Protection. Blue particles scattered through the air, overcharged waste from her attack, as John’s mana bar shrunk by about 100 points.

‘Ah, I see where this is going,’ John thought as he glanced at the dense mana tumbling through the air like thick dust. At first glance it was a pure waste of mana, a showcase of a novice unable to control their exact power. However, these flakes stuck around. Concentrated as their power was, they would need a few minutes to actually vanish.

Time in which Rave could more than easily throw a whole bunch of those out. With her having two ways to regenerate mana, one being just standing in sunlight and the other being her breathing technique, it wasn’t like she was short on it either.

In other words, that one punch made John realize that his girlfriend now had two kinds of fighting styles. Her old one, where she fought without wasting mana by using light magic and her normal martial arts, and this one where she prepared a large amount of her mana to be absorbed by Copernicus.

The question was why she deliberately chose the latter when the elementals were out of the picture.

John would have loved to look for the sun cat and see if his behaviour showed approval of his summoner’s strategy, but a second punch connecting with his Mana Protection made it more urgent to act in his defence.

He used Shardbound, combining the four that spawned into a pair that flew at Rave. One of the light blue crystals was aiming for her shoulder, the other for her stomach. The lightbearer quickly dodged the fairly harmless projectiles, just as John had wanted her to. If the enemy didn’t know about the colour coding, then they had no way of anticipating the danger of the individual shards.

While Rave was occupied, John punched the brittle wall with all his strength. While not strong for an Abyssal at his level, he was still superhuman, and Purgatory provided such excellent protection for his fist that it was more effective than using a sledgehammer.

The first punch made the wall and the stones inside crack, the second one turned the old thing into shards. “Hey, you are supposed to fight meow, not the house!” Rave complained, dodging a widespread hail of small shards that John threw out behind his back.

“I know!” John said and punched a third time.

His fist broke through, and as he pulled it back, he took with him another stone. The upper half of the wall, now without proper support, crumbled and crashed to the floor. Dust and dirt scattered into the air, impeding sight slightly and making breathing a bit of a raspy endeavour. John’s goal had been neither; instead, he threw himself against the remaining wall and then broke through another wall with two punches.

Rave just watched him with bamboozlement. “Have you gone cray-cray?”

“Nah, just exploiting the fact that you don’t remember jack about my options,” John taunted and threw a brick at her. Rave effortlessly smacked it aside. He wasn’t done tossing things though.

In quick succession Rave had to dodge a bathtub, a sink and a toilet bowl as John dismantled the former bathroom. The bowl hit the floor with a satisfying shattering sound while John was working on the next wall, guarding the space between him and Rave with a wall of 1 mana Shardbound crystals.

It was really just a bluff. Even a mundane person could have walked through that wall and only felt barely inconvenienced. He had to work on his actual objective before Rave caught wind of it. Too bad that he had given her a hint just now.

“…Oh dang it!” she cursed and started running, raised her arms in front of her face and broke through the scary looking wall of shards that covered the hole in the second wall John had taken apart. By the time she arrived at the scene of John breaking through a third one, it was almost too late.

The ceiling was dangerously caving as John had deliberately targeted the walls that looked the most like they were responsible for carrying the structure. Only a bit more and everything would collapse. Rave assaulted his Mana Protection with a quick series of blows. Then she went for a long-winded punch to deal as much damage to the solid, near invisible thing as possible.

Only to find it gone just before the moment of impact, with John turning to the side. She had too much momentum to stop, and the former bathroom hadn’t been big to start with. She punched another hole in the badly tortured wall, and John added insult to injury by swinging at her.

Although she did dodge by bending her upper body away, John did succeed in hitting the wall. It crumbled, and the two-story building came crashing down on them.

Fine dust and splinters of cement covered both of them as they threw the building off them. Rave had a way easier time with this than he did, but he was getting better by the second; the whole destruction had made him quite a bit stronger after all.

He didn’t get it fully stacked, but this eased the gap quite a lot. “Now we can actually duke this out in a melee!” he announced and went close.

“Oh, you are welcome to try!” Rave smirked and their hands clashed in a grip lock.

“”Big mistake,”” both of them said at the same time. John’s hand was seared by an explosion of light and mana while Rave’s arm was pushed back and then pierced down to the elbow by a Mana Blade that took most of John’s remaining mana.

They both jumped back, checking their injuries. Rave slowly clenched and unclenched her left hand, her fingers trembling. John had gone for the soul damage capability of Mana Blade to spare her having to live through getting her crippled arm getting stitched back together by Undine.

While that prevented her from taking any physical harm, that arm was still pretty useless, being numbed and unable to use magic for a while. Her battlesuit also negated a good amount of damage, apparently, as she was still able to move that hand at all.

In return, Gamer’s Body had already stitched his own right. “Seems like I win!” John announced and went to engage her again. His right successfully connected to her face, then it was grabbed.

Rave smirked. “I still have an ace up my sleeve, tiger.”

Blinding light and a few seconds later, John found himself on the floor.