“Well, I need to get stronger without you in some way, don’t I?” Rave asked as they were sitting around her room. Copernicus was fervently refusing to come out right now so Rave had eventually given up.

“Yeah but that jump is stupid high.”

“Aaaand?”

“And that is bullshit.”

“Hey, I needed twenty years to get to this point. If you grind non-stop for a week you reach this level. Now tell me whose ability is bullshit again?” Rave confronted him and John had no other choice but to sigh and agree to that. “In other news, I was wrong about Moira,” Rave repeated her earlier admission. “So what is our plan now?”

“Now we look into Victoria…. how about we call Travolta and see if he found out anything?” John suggested. With some reluctance but now thoroughly without arguments, Rave pulled out her phone, put it on speaker and called Travolta.

“What?” The annoyed voice of the guild leader echoed from the phone.

“Hey, Travy, it’s me, Rave.”

“I know, I can fucking read,” came the disgruntled answer. “The hell do you want?” There was a sound in the background like something that was rotating with tremendous speed.

“Well, I wanted to apologize for yesterday and...”

“Wait, yesterday? Don’t you mean today?” Travolta probed, his voice seemed slightly panicked, “No, the meeting was yesterday.”

“Shit… really? Where did the time go… I don’t remember sleeping… whatever, make this short, I need to be somewhere… Hurry!”

“So, we found out Moira is innocent.”

“Shocker. What else?!” Was the quick answer to that. John looked at the phone with a raised eyebrow. Sure, Travolta wasn’t the nicest person around but he usually was controlled angry, now he sounded just straight up angry and panicked. He had been acting weirdly yesterday too. The rotating sound in the background stopped and was replaced by the sound of glass clacking against glass. “What- Else?!” Travolta repeated.

Rave exchanged a glance with John, she also sensed something was off.

“Well, we’ll look into Victoria next.” John said, “Just wanted to ask if you got any leads.”

“No, I have been busy securing the arcade… don’t want any fucking people,” he practically spat the word out, “in here. That includes you. Stay out… for the time being… and look after Jimmie for me.”

Before either of them could ask about the why, Travolta ended the call. “That…wow…just a second please.” Rave said and called him again. He didn’t pick up. “Motherfucker!” She cursed loudly, causing John to jump. Mad Rave was not a nice Rave to be around. “Urgh, now I want to punch something really hard….” She murmured and threw herself on the bed.

John looked at the time. It was close to 15 o’clock. There still was time to farm a bit. He felt however like he was forgetting something.

‘Dud du duuu – whoop whoop – dud du duuu.’ He heard a bad imitation of the Skype call noise in his head. The voice was almost emotionless, with a hint of pride. The guess wasn’t hard.

‘What the hell Aclysia?’

‘I read today that just suddenly talking to someone is rude, Master, so I searched for what is called ringtones. Does it not please you, Master?’

John thoughtfully wiggled with his head, ‘I wouldn’t say that but you accidentally picked one of the three most annoying sounds I can think of. We should find something else in the future. Just a simple greeting would work.’

‘Understood. The reason why I call then: I have been informed that dinner should be ready at 15:00 but with neither you or Mistress Rave returning yet I am worried that the food will get cold before you arrive. Shall I postpone the cooking?’

There was what he forgot, ‘You are a treasure Aclysia!’ He thought and got some happy humming back. ‘The answer is yes. Can you hold for a second.’

‘Affirmative.’

“Jane, how does punching monsters and then fucking the rest of your anger out in a threesome sound as afternoon plans?” he asked. In response Rave shot up out of her lying position. Had they still been in the Illusion Barrier, she would have hated herself for that.

“But we punch something that isn’t made of wood for a change.” She demanded.

“Can do.” John smiled. Then he remembered, “but can you do it with the injury?”

“Should be fixed enough by the time we’re set up that it won’t bother me.” Abyssals really were something different. Take a hammer to the ribcage? Just rest outside of Illusion Barriers for a few hours and it would be fine. “Anyway, sign me up!”

‘Okay, Aclysia forget about cooking for now. I need you to take some money out of the household purse and use it to ride a bus to our usual hunting ground. Can you do that?’

‘I have the route memorized, Master,’ came the response. ‘I do, however, feel uncomfortable about using the money designated for the household for my own transportation.’

‘Don’t worry about it, I will put new money in later,’ John eased her worries.

‘I understand, in that case I will wait for you at the bus station closest to the designated target.’ Aclysia said.

‘Very good, see you in a bit.’

‘Click,’ She thought out loud and John giggled.

“Okay, so Aclysia will await us at the forest.” He informed his girlfriend and they got moving. It was great to not watch over Aclysia all the time. During the last week, he had the idea to just let her run the errands of grocery shopping and do the chores so that she wouldn’t spend all her day doing nothing (or worse: On reddit).

The first time he did that it was catastrophic. Aclysia had been molested, screamed at, cursed at and somebody even tried to hire her as a hooker (or escort as they called it). He had been monitoring the whole ordeal from start to finish. The second time around he made sure that he raised Aclysia’s Charisma to 10 first. Now people only stared at her when she went out because she was stunning, not because her way of speaking grated the uninitiated and she misread most social cues. Since then there had been no problems (although the escort offers continued).

Besides that she kept the apartment clean. So clean that he was afraid his mother would be suspicious when she returned. The same problem didn’t apply to the money, luckily. He just put that into his inventory and only left 20$ in the envelope to make it seem like he had spent it responsibly. Truth was that their allowance was a pittance compared to the wealth grinding had gotten him. It was odd to know he had more liquid cash than his parents.

“Oh crap! I wanted to look into mana items from the Auction!” he suddenly blurted out as they arrived at their destination.

“Little late for that now.” Rave said and nudged him out of the bus, “Well, okay, ya could actually still buy stuff but the extra you would have to pay to order it here would be massive.”

“Why though? They have flying drones, I don’t believe that it would cost them that much more.”

“It won’t cost THEM more but they know that ya would generally pay more for deliveries in the middle of nowhere.” Rave explained.

John sighed as economics lessons sprung back into his head, “Yeah, yeah, supply and demand are the factors of the price.”

 They headed over to Aclysia who was standing next to the bus sign, in the exact middle of a stone slab and perfectly still like a statue with hands folded in front of her waistline. She only reacted once John stepped up to her.

“Greetings, John,” she said, with that typical bow. She was still an odd one and still robotic around the edges, but the Gamer would have been lying if he said he wasn’t developing genuine feelings for her. Fifteen steps towards the forest and Aclysia asked, “Are we farming Treants again today?”

“No… we’ll have to figure out which one,” John responded.