Chapter 94 – A Moral Conundrum

John grabbed a piece of chalk and opened an Illusion Barrier in front of his house. It wasn’t optimal, but the sidewalk was flat enough to draw a ritual circle. He would have happily done it at Rave’s place, but his girlfriend had insisted on watching Anime while he wanted to watch a 40k podcast. When they couldn’t agree, they had decided to have an evening to themselves. A bit of distance was nice sometimes, which was something John could only think because he had the luxury of seeing her the entire rest of the day until evening.

Rave had waved off the idea to quickly fulfil the ritual in her cellar. Instead she had shoved him out the door with a playful smile and a quick kiss on the lips. “Not like I haven’t seen Elementals before.”

Therefore, he was now squatting on the street in his Illusion Barrier and drawing a circle. He had used the book on the way down. So far, the requirements and the ritual were the same as for earth. The circle was slightly different. A bit more fire-like than root-like knots in the design. Nothing a perfect recollection of the book wouldn’t be able to handle though.

Well, at least the enemies were nice enough to attack before he used his mana on the circle. He sighed and looked around. ‘Aclysia, can you come here?’

‘Shall I use that new skill that we acquired?’ he got a mental question back.

‘Nah, I am right outside the door.’ “Come on out, people, I know you’re there,” John declared. Around the cornercame a level 21 knight and a level 23 warlock. He didn’t bother to look at their names.

“You must be the Gamer. We will….”

“…take you and sell you to a mana factory,” John ended his sentence and rolled his eyes. A bald guy with a bad eye (Ugly Villain) and a blonde warlock with rat teeth and a staff with a skull at the end (Really Ugly Villain). They were almost too stereotypical not to predict. “Look. I hate to break it to you but you are about three weeks too late to be a threat to me.”

The two looked at each other and then laughed, “Like you could become stronger than us in three weeks. We bought the information package from two weeks ago! We are up to snuff.”

“Really?” John wondered, “Did you buy the premium daily updates version or the two-week-old one-time package?” John asked out of interest, “Because a lot happened since then. I thought people respected the growth rate of Latebloomers?”

A vein popped on the knight’s forehead. “Enough of this fucking talk, let’s smash him and…” Aclysia appeared next to the villain. The knight didn’t immediately notice and rambled on, “…take his stuff! Maybe we should rip out his arms, he won’t need those anymore. Then we take his cock and stuff it…-” The warlock had spotted Aclysia and hit the big knight with his staff to get his attention. “WHAT?...oh.” The knight's booming voice became very small all of a sudden.

Aclysia tilted her head. “Please continue. Stopping in the middle of a sentence is rude,” she blinked. “I am interested in what you would want to do with my Master’s cock. Perhaps you will tell me after I replicate what you intended to do with his arms?”

“M-master?” their heads slowly turned back to John.

“You must have been really thrifty if you don’t know about Aclysia,” he reckoned with a grin. “Now shoo-shoo.” He waved them off. He had no idea why they were that afraid of the Artificial Guardian but he didn’t care either. He wasn’t looking for a fight. Then again, there was something more to think about here. “Wait just a moment.”

The duo had been about to leave the barrier, when he denied them the exit. He never had done that before. It was an interesting sensation, like someone was prodding a rubber sheet he was holding with his mind. As long as he was the strongest being here, which he was, measured in mana, he had control over who got out. It was advisable that he looked into ways to prevent people from entering as well.

“Yes?” The warlock asked in a nervous tone. Now that he had confirmation that John’s mana was above his own he knew that they were completely outclassed. In other words: If John decided to kill them, he could. “Do I understand it correctly that you two make your living through selling people as slaves to mana factories and the like?”

“…” That was a confirming silence. The knight gripped his mace intensely.

John scratched his head. “You are putting me in a real moral conundrum here,” he lamented. “See, if I kill you, I am a murderer and that is bad from my viewpoint. If I let you go though, you are free to do what you failed to do to me. Which is also pretty bad.” He sighed and realized how earnestly he was thinking about killing those two.

‘Wisdom is to know what must be done in order to preserve what is important.’ Victoria’s words echoed in his mind. Well, she had certainly been sure of what she did. Personally, he thought Wisdom was also a pretty big load of scepticism. When one was always sure of what one did, one would inevitably slide into behaviour that was justified only by a self-serving moral code.

“Mhm, so here is the deal,” John finally decided. “I will let you two go but If I ever see you doing anything slightly shady again.” He made a cutthroat motion, “We clear?”

The two nodded eagerly and John let them leave the Illusion Barrier. The second he was done with the ritual he would send the bird after them. The Possession would only be able to follow them so far. The further a Possessed object went, the foggier the connection became. When he was in an Illusion Barrier and the object was not, it typically became very difficult to keep it up. Not like they could get too far away in the time it took him to make his contract though.

John returned to his circle. “Did you know these two?”

“They were a contributing factor to me running late, Master,” Aclysia said with an apologizing bow. John grunted in response. Better keep an eye on those two for a while. He wasn’t about to save the world and neither did he want to have somebody start a revenge plot on him, but he wasn’t a big fan of the whole slavery thing. One day he would, hopefully, be powerful enough to change the world. Until then, he would try to keep as low a profile as possible.

He activated the circle and was met with a voice of crackling fire. "You wish for a contract with a being of fire?” a female voice spoke. John left his body behind and became one with heat. All-encompassing, ever-present heat.

‘Yes,’ he answered with his mind. The second time around, this whole deal was less mystic. He waited for the fire to do what the earth had done and send him through the lifetime of a flame or something like that. Instead he felt a curious touch.

‘We feel an echo on you, the echo of one the fire fears and worships all the same. Long since I have felt her touch...’ The spirit of flame spoke. ‘She who carries the Heart of Volcanoes on her.’

‘Nathalia?’ John's guess was pretty easy.

‘Yes…your knowledge of her, her encounter… a child of his would be a good fit for your future.’ The female voice cackled. ‘I do love my job. Face what you seek to control.’

He was the tip of a match that got lit. The man that held him lowered him to a short wire. He danced over, igniting the gun. He was the explosion from black powder, then the heat in the bullet. It ripped through the air and through another man’s heart.

He was the fire of a mortar shell. The fire of a house burning down. The fire of a village being set to the torch and of endless acres of wood burned down in the name of war. He was the fire of oil in the tanks of a hit warship. He was the fire that moved the engine of a tank. Its treads crushed wire, wood and the bones of the fallen.

He was the fire of war. Not a single image of a fire giving warmth on a winter night, not a single image of a fire cooking a warm meal, not a single second of niceness. He was the fire of war, of destruction, of merciless, absolute slaughter. He was the fire in the fields, he was the fire in the motors, he was the fire that spewed poisonous gas into the air.

He was the fire in the chambers. He was the fire of incineration that turned all that remained into ash. That turned the remains of the fallen into ash, all individuality lost. All of him fuelled by hatred and ignorance but creating something new. Something even worse. Purple, shattered eyes. A carapace of bone. Blood burning like fuel.

He saw one last thing. He was far above a giant island. It was loud, he moved quickly. Then he fell. He fell and fell and fell towards a city. A city that wouldn’t exist in a second as the little boy exploded and consumed everything in nuclear fire. He felt how he incinerated tens of thousands of souls.

The vision was over and John almost fell backwards. ‘Do you still wish to join us?’ the cackling, female voice asked.

‘Holy shit, do I?’ John asked himself. He had thought earth was unpleasant but at least earth had nice sides. He had just lived through all of the second world war as the main contributor: Fire. It didn’t matter who wielded it, fire was the main source of death. What had he expected though? He himself saw fire as a tool of attack. Once the initial panic settled, the calm answer presented itself. “I do.”

A fire elemental appeared in front of him in the circle. Unlike Gnome she was already fully grown. A naked girl with big tits, burning red hair that wildly hung down to chin length and red tinted skin. She had elvish ears and eyes that were coal black as she grinned. However, as grown as her appearance was, her actual size was diminutive – barely more than a candle flame.

“Yo, I’m Salamander,” The fire elemental said and extended her little hand.

“I am John Newman, you gave your name and I gave you mine, we are now one.” He concluded the ritual with a little shake of her hand and stood up. Salamander grinned and disappeared, to wait for his call. “Well, that was an unpleasant experience,” he mumbled and left the Illusion Barrier.

The awareness of his Possession suddenly snapped to the foreground again. The bird had been sitting in a tree, John’s mind too distracted by the vision to operate the connection. Rising into the sky, he quickly set out to find the two villains. Flying low over the rooftops, he enjoyed the breeze through his feathers.

The movement suddenly stopped. The verdin was plucked out of the air. A hand came suddenly. A rattling sound, then a green cloud that enveloped the bird for a moment, robbing the Gamer of his sight briefly. A gas mask bowed over the bird, beholding it with thick lenses. The catcher raised a smartphone and typed something. John’s phone vibrated in his pocket.

SecretBlonde: It seems I caught your new toy.