John was face to face with a creature that was, curiously, immune to Observe. It had metallic skin, ran on four long, thin legs that reached out of an elongated body. Its head had a single eye between two knife-like ears and a maw that only consisted of seven teeth, four at the top, three at the bottom, and looked more like a shredder than something to eat with. Probably because this thing had no gullet food could be swallowed down. The only purpose of those teeth was to bite.

‘I wonder if they use these things as part of the anti-scrying charms I keep running into,’ the Gamer analysed. Given the overall metallic look of this thing, it wouldn’t have surprised him. Well, if it operated by the same rules as everything else, enough mana must have fixed the issue. ‘Let’s start with investing 100,’ he thought and was immediately rewarded with success.

‘Well, that hypothesis was correct,’ he thought, feeling at ease because of the low level of the creature. It was the third kind of enemy he had found in this barrier so far. Aside from it and the Dearth Worm, there was also a sort of eel in the water that evolved into the Foggy Noodles and its swarm mates.

At least all of this was rather easy thanks to all of these creatures being immensely stupid and malicious, a mixture that lead them to headless aggression towards any humanoid they saw. The Ars Hound was no exception whatsoever. The two of them were staring at each over the pushed over seats and tables of a coffee place, as John had just turned the corner to see it. It seemed like the monster had made its base here while feeding on whoever was lower down the food chain.

To its credit, that wasn’t too stupid, it blended in quite well with the metallic surfaces of the table. Well enough to be missed by things with worse eyesight anyway. John did not belong to that category. Regardless, neither of them were moving right now, although the monster was clearly waiting for an opportunity to pounce.

The Gamer decided to take the aggressive role instead, suddenly starting a sprint. His goal was to jump over the circle of toppled over furniture, into the circle the Ars Hound was crouching in and take the monster out with a couple of kicks. All entirely realistic with his Stats and Skills.

In execution, he picked up speed, began pressing himself off the floor with one foot, had his vision suddenly desynced, as one contact lens reflexively decided that the way the sun suddenly reflected into it off the polished surface of a table was way too important to ignore, failed to actually jump from the sudden vertigo, and fell like a board of wood. Except, unlike a rigid board of wood, he had a lot of squishy parts that bent when he collided with the edges on his way towards the ground.

‘God, I am thankful that I get neither injuries nor feel bothered by normal pain anymore,’ John thought as he rose back up. ‘Otherwise that would have hurt tomorrow.’ Refocusing his eyes by closing them for a couple of moments, then blinking rapidly for a few more, John slowly got up. Not unbothered by the monster, of course, the Ars Hound had gone into the offensive the second he had taken his inelegant dive.

Arcane sparks flew around every time the creature rammed its maw against Mana Protection. The skill was utterly unnecessary in this environment. Even without it, John couldn’t be killed by these things unless he decided to not struggle whatsoever, but he liked his clothes to stay intact.

“Well, that’ll take some further getting used to,” he grumbled to himself, his hand suddenly snapping forwards. To the Ars Hound, it was an undodgeable attack, and John caught the monster’s head. Then he started to squeeze. The natural born monster tried to get away, bellowed and cried with hatred. If it had shown the whimper of a dog in pain, John would at least have made this quick, but all that thing tried was to hurt him in any capacity it could. Right up until its skull could no longer take the pressure and collapsed under the Gamer’s grip like a can of tomato soup, an oily, red liquid splurging out of the sudden cracks.

John threw out his hand to get at least some of the liquid to fly away. He had made the assumption that the thing was entirely metal. At least the blood didn’t have any nasty tendencies. In his experience, the two damage types Gamer’s Body was the least effective against were poison and acid. Poison worked on him like it would on most regular people of similar Endurance, he just had the advantage of knowing what he was afflicted by. Meanwhile acid was straight-up the worst, since it would continue dissolving him even as Gamer’s Body regenerated him. Sure, he took less visible damage from it, any amount of acid that would have cleanly eaten through a person was very likely to just stop at the skin due to counter-regeneration, but it dealt massive damage to his HP pool in comparison to other types while also keeping the affected body parts out of commission for longer.

He left the corpse behind and walked back towards the beach, where Rave was building a sandcastle with Sylph and Gnome. “Didn’t sound like ya did that well there, tiger,” she pointed out when he kneeled down next to the piling hills and towers.

“Fell on my face,” he responded, more interested in what they were building than another addition to his track record of escapades. Sylph’s segment of the entire thing was just a bunch of scattered piles and holes she dug seemingly at random to get the necessary building material. Next to that, Rave had created a tower on a half-island, a deep trench running around it, dug until she had hit water. The part that Gnome was building was by far the most artful, a wall with numerous little decorations, which she formed with only her hands. With her powers she could have hardened the sand to make her job a lot easier, but it seemed the soil elemental was caught up in the simple joy of crafting.

A blood red wave of energy parted the still body of water, the special attack from Marath. Apparently, Aclysia was betting on area attacks now. “Guess we gotta step away again,” Rave said, having noticed the same. Shortly after they retreated from the sandcastle, the turmoiled water washed over it, leaving the halfway good-looking construction as an assortment of bumps in the now universally wet sand. “Don’t ya have some Combination that would get this done quickly?”

“Normally I would have Massacre,” John responded, scratching the back of his head as he thought about this himself, “but she isn’t good in the water and the range of her aura is limited.” Massacre was one of the few triple exclusive combinations, with the special ability that beings less than half her level around her simply started dying. Sounded immensely powerful, and it was, but the drawbacks were rather… hefty.

Because the aura couldn’t stop at anything less than murder. When she killed 10 beings with the aura itself, she also let out a banshee shriek that killed eligible targets instantly. Combining John’s general dislike towards killing people and the disability of Massacre to discern between friend or foe, she was basically a giant disaster button. Didn’t help that she was a thoroughly terrible, self-loathing person who just wanted to kill and nothing else while she existed.

Regardless of all that, in situations like these, where there were only weak enemies around, she would normally be optimal. Just, sadly, she wasn’t a great swimmer. “It’s only five more enemies anyway. No more worms, right?”

“I can’t sense any,” Gnome responded, still looking sadly at her ruined castle wall.

“Then we just have to wait for Undine to track down the remaining…” in the bay, an elongated body was suddenly thrown into the air and consequently eradicated by a fireball, “…eels. Four more.”

It was a great blessing for John that he had elementals that could localize enemies within their given habitat, otherwise this whole effort would have taken way longer. “Have to say,” Rave commented, while John watched the quest counter slowly tick up, “was an okay way to spend an evening, but I’m now firmly in the mood for some clubbing.”

“Well, I do not condone that,” John gave her a well-acted disapproving look, “even if you wanted to do that, there aren’t any baby seals around.”

It took Rave two seconds for that joke to click. “Oy!” her shout of protest was accompanied by her stemming her hands into her hips. “Do I look Norwegian to ya?”

“I think you could rock blond hair.”

“‘Course I could, doesn’t fix the facial structure tho, now dozzit?”

“I guess you are right about that… anyway, I might actually come down into the club with you.”

“For serious?” Rave raised an eyebrow. “Are ya that bored?”

“I at least want to check it out once. I’ll probably leave after showing off that you’re my girlfriend to everyone,” he honestly stated with a grin. “Then I’ll… well, I still have to beat Witcher 3, but I don’t think the laptop is going to run that really well. Divinity Original Sin might work out better.”

“We wanted to play that together!”

“Right… well, I’ll find something.” The Gamer was looking forward to spending a few hours on actual video games. Days were he got to do more than sneak in the occasional Hearthstone match, or other relatively short games, were good days, in his book. “Aaaaand, quest done!”

The mass of Faith at the heart of the barrier suddenly destabilized, exploding upwards as a fountain of shimmering triangles. They hung in the air for a moment, then became a vortex that dissipated, leaving them in an unusually large, but otherwise now completely normal, Illusion Barrier. Seemingly, the presence of monsters kept Faith energy shackled to a location.

It looked quite pretty, but was over so quick that John didn’t really get to appreciate it. It was like seeing a single firework go off. Instead, John decided to check out these rewards he had gotten. First off was the new Building, the Butchery. It made it so that, everytime John pacified a Natural Barrier, a number of corpses, presumably scaling with the Tier of the Building, would automatically be teleported back to the Guild Hall and then processed into all pieces that could be further manufactured or eaten.

Interesting, but, as far as John was concerned, not all that useful. Especially since he didn’t see himself making a habit out of hunting for Natural Barriers. That would have required a lifestyle in which he had less societal responsibilities to take care of. If he had taken a more small-scale path in life, like staying with a local guild somewhere that didn’t really take part in global affairs, then he could have done so. Summarized, it was another one of those mechanics that he could have used, had he chosen another path in life. As it was, it was just a nice addition of flavour to the core mechanics he actually utilized.

The Monster Hunter Class also fell under that description.

John would probably invest in it at like level 900, just to see what the potential perks where, but there didn’t really seem to be anything there he had a use for. The only part he was remotely interested in was the compass, being able to sense Natural Barriers sounded like something useful, but that was nothing so good he was going to invest the phenomenally limited Class Levels he had.

‘Can a man get some more power just shoved in his face around here?’ John thought, knowing full well that he was complaining on a ridiculously high standard. ‘At least I got a Guild Perk, been a while since I got one of those. Three more and I get the next Guild Hall Tier. Progress on that front has been pretty stagnant recently.’

He withheld on spending the point immediately. Since he wanted to invest into the Diplomacy tree and that would unlock the Federation mechanic, he guessed it was best for him to be available and at home, before a bunch of people were suddenly surprised by whatever this change entailed

Shortly after, they returned to the hotel. They simply left the barrier behind; it would likely persist for long enough for the actual soldiers to enter and do the clean-up. If not, John hadn’t been told to contact anybody once he was done and he had no intention of making calls to find out what the right course of action was, all while waiting on an empty beach.

They returned to their suite first, to take a shower, relax for a little bit and slip into some more comfortable clothes. While lounging on the couch, nakedly just cuddling, for once not in the mood to immediately get nasty on every surface they could find, John remembered a little thing that he had forgotten over a hungover morning quickie.

“Right, Jane, I wanted to tell you something,” he immediately cut to the topic. “I got this new Skill from a Class Level recently called Lover’s Will. It increases all kinds of pleasure we get from each other by a bit. Its permanent, unless you stop loving me, I can only target one person and I need to tell you all this so you can give consent to it. Want me to, or no?”

“If it weren’t you, I would say no to that,” Rave let him know, “cause that skill sounds a bit shifty, if I am being honest.”

“If it were in the Puppeteer class, I would definitely agree with you, this seems like the kind of thing that could mutate into mind control or something like that,” he nodded. “However, it’s from Lover Boy and it has limitations on that you both need to love me and give consent, so I think it’s fine.”

“Something something, love is the most reliable shackle, something something,” Rave blabbered, giggling about her own parody of philosophical talks. “I trust ya, John, so you can go ahead and use it.”

That she knew fully well that magic like this was a bit creepy if one thought about it for more than ten seconds, but still agreed because it was him, made John extra certain that he couldn’t have landed a better girl no matter how long he had searched the world.

They leaned towards each other, chests half meeting, hands brushing over skin to revel in the other’s warmth, while their lips met in a loving, tender kiss. Their little pact was sealed, John feeling something flow into her from him. At the same time, something of her also entered him. Nothing more than a trickle of magic, a mutual exchange of something deep.

John felt a hot tingle on the back of his left hand. Likely feeling something similar, Rave parted from their kiss at the same time, looking down on herself. The tingling concentrated in an area, the knuckle of his middle finger, then suddenly ceased. A dark blue, tiny mark appeared there, like a self-spawning tattoo, winding lines that partly reached up to the finger and travelled down the attached sinew. John had to say he found it quite aesthetically pleasing, even though he wasn’t all that happy about being marked like this without being asked.

“Huh, didn’t sign up for that,” Rave had a similar complaint, and looking over to her, hers felt a little bit more valid, even if her tone was as nonchalant as he felt about this. Her mark stretched horizontally, rather than vertically, while maintaining that same aesthetic with the heart in the middle. More importantly, it was in a slightly touchier area, between her vagina and navel.

John couldn’t help but immediately feel turned on. Marking the area above her womb with a spell that, in essence, bound the two of them together even more tightly was right up his alley. The dark blue shade even resonated nicely with the bright pink of her neatly trimmed pubic hair. Small as it was, it looked good and played right into his more possessive desires.

Then it disappeared.

“Huh,” Rave let out another surprised sound, noticing John’s slightly disappointed look following that. “What, ya liked seeing that?” she asked, giving his sudden erection a little poke. “Want me to keep it?”

“Can you do that?” he asked, to receive an answer in it appearing again on her groin. Before asking any more stupid questions, he just looked at his own mark and tried to will it away. Without any hitch, it obeyed. When he wanted it to come back, it simply drew itself again. “Huh,” it was his turn to make that noise. “Neat.”

“So ya want me to keep this or not?” Rave asked, the two of them leaning close again until John could feel her words on his lips when she spoke. “Because I’m completely fine with everyone seeing that you have changed me forever.”

“God, can you stop making that even hotter to me?” he asked, giving her a quick kiss. “Yeah, I want you to keep it visible.”

“Everything that shows you own me, right? What about your mark?” she asked teasingly, already knowing she was going to like the answer.

“Like I would take anything off that shows people that you own me,” he said simply, then they rewarded each other with a much deeper kiss, bodies so close only the physical impossibility prevented them from actually becoming one, even though the moment they shared made it feel like they were regardless. It was easily the best kiss of their life so far.

The Lover’s Will mark was only one of a few reasons for that.