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The Gamer Chapter 1781 – The not-so-Small Tournament 3 – A Very Surprising Visit
🕑 Added 2024-11-11 10:47:36 +0000 UTC
John felt his arrival.
“For real?” Lee muttered, herself noticing the new and incredible presence that had just entered the Illusion Barrier. “…Wait, I’m still in control?”
“You’re strong,” John told her and got up. “Guess we have a special guest to host now.”
“What’s happening?” Rave asked. She and everyone besides Lee was some degree of confused. They did not have the senses required to notice that someone incredibly powerful had entered the Illusion Barrier. Matter of fact, three people had. John did not need Lee’s degree of sensitivity to these things to put two and two together.
“I’ll not spoil the surprise, come along,” John said and gestured. Inwardly, though, he was sweating. More people were entering the barrier even now.
They heard the commotion before they saw the reason for it. The arena had been changed back to a simple, even fighting pit. It was only a few hours later. Show fights and other displays of talent were being held down there to give the people a reason to stay. No reason to only scan for fighting talents.
Said talents were stopping. One after another, the sensitive members of the crowd and participants began to sense what was approaching. Like a living tidal wave, so did the peak of Abyssal might make itself known without any effort.
“Gnome, make them a corridor,” John ordered.
“S-sure… I can do that,” Gnome answered, apparently needing to remind herself that she was an entity more powerful even than most gods. Bringing her palms together, she connected esoterically with the coliseum wall opposite of their viewing platform. With moderate struggle, she pulled her hands apart and the wall split.
Gold and silver light cascaded through the gap, the radiance of sun and moon flanking the tall figure of a man. The talents in the arena rapidly ran off to the side, not to be in the way of things as Romulus himself strutted his way into the centre of it all. Behind him were ten knights of Rome, each equipped with ceremonial togas over resplendent armour, swords at their hips.
John glanced off to the side, his eyelid twitching when he saw Justinian attempt to make his way into the arena. ‘Should we…?’ Gnome asked.
‘No, let him,’ he sighed mentally.
“Another tyrant of the Abyss made manifest!” The blonde man leapt into Romulus’ path. “This must be Gaia’s way of showing me the righteousness of my path that I meet both the Gamer and the so-called Apex of the Abyss on the same day!”
Romulus gave the man and his sword a once-over, then looked up to John who did a hands-raised shrug and shook his head. Then, the Apex took a step forward. Another one. By the fourth, he could not advance without walking into the sword. He did it without hesitation.
Justinian tried to keep the fantasy hero pose. Like a metal pipe meeting the hull of a moving tank, the sword and the hand holding it were simply pushed back. There was the faintest flicker of uncertainty on Justinian’s face as he stared up at Romulus’ hulking figure. At two and a half metres, he stood several heads taller than the averagely sized blond man.
“I have met a few such as you in my time.” Romulus placed a hand on Justinian’s shoulder. “I have made my share of misjudgments in my youth as well. I hope you will learn from your errors before one of them kills you, Latebloomer.” Like a parent putting their child into place, the Apex moved Justinian to the side, then continued his walk.
Justinian trembled where he stood. He whirled around on his heels, ready to bellow another challenge. Sol grabbed him by the shoulder. John did not quite make out what she hissed, but it was enough to leave the self-declared hero standing quietly as the rest of them marched past him. Aware of the optics, Justinian managed to walk away and lean against the wall of the arena, trying to look calm.
“That we would meet in this arrangement,” John raised his voice once Romulus had stepped close enough. “It’s only been two years since I first stood below you in an arena like this. Must feel like yesterday to a being as ancient and venerable as you.”
“It does and yet does not,” Romulus answered in his bassy voice. “Millennia have passed me by in a blink but recent times have been turbulent and time scarcely seems to pass. Much of that is owed to you, young and ambitious being.” The Apex folded his hands behind his back. “It is rude of me to spring a visit on you so suddenly, I realize.”
“Rude but not unwelcome. Please, join me,” he invited the Apex up to the platform with a wave of his hand.
Romulus gave the knights behind him a simple signal of his hand. They relaxed, a sign that they had been dismissed. A moment later, Romulus and his celestial goddesses leapt up to the platform. “A moment in private would be appreciated,” the Apex mumbled.
“It is already assured,” Nightingale weighed in. “Even the Horned Rat would be incapable of listening without me noticing someone is meddling with my obfuscation.”
“Mhm, I find it difficult to believe that claim and yet we must assume it is true to ever know a degree of security,” Romulus said.
“Fret not, beloved, I’m joining my efforts with hers,” Luna assured.
The protection of night and moon given to the words that left them, both men left out the rare sigh of a ruler unobserved by outside forces. Shoulders slumped slightly, the heroic posture expected of them dropping in favour of a more relaxed display. Neither of them fell into a lazy or bad posture and both still made for proud sights. It was the difference between a natural stance and one meant to communicate a titanium spine.
“To what do I owe the sudden visit?” John asked and gestured at a couch in the back. He would have offered a chair, but the ones they had were simply not enough for the shape Romulus typically chose. A shape that he diminished to stand at a more reasonable height of two metres as he would. He sat down, Sol and Luna, dressed in ornamented clothes in the opposite’s colour, cuddled up to him as haremettes were known to do for their beloved.
“First… I would like to apologize for making it so sudden. I wanted to visit in an official capacity for the transfer of the Aztecs. When I made that intention known, I was met with resistance by the court. You must be familiar with the many demands of lords and ladies by now.”
“Different names, same problems,” John groaned and sat down opposite of Romulus. Nightingale and Nathalia got to him first, his own godly duo to cuddle with. “I’m not offended by secrecy, just very curious about your visit.”
“Yes… it has reached my ears that you have found the remains of Atlas.”
John had to withhold a relieved outcry at the revelation of Romulus’ purpose here. He had suspected that this was the case but there was always the alternative that Romulus was present because he had deduced that Remus was stirring in the former Gestalt lands – an area that he would have been uncomfortably close to had he managed to attend the transfer. A lucky break for John that it was pushed back until now.
“Yes… and I had to destroy them,” John confessed. “Considering the size of the titan, there was still much left, but it was the Grim Reaper that took them, not I.”
“I heard from him, so that is no secret,” Romulus stated. “I intend to visit the grave he made soon. Truthfully, I am not here to talk to you about him.” The Apex turned his head, directing his dark eyes to Lorelei. “Seer of the Order of the Golden Rose, I heard you witnessed his final moments?”
“The Lady made me privy to his life in the parts that mattered,” Lorelei answered.
“Would you… share them with me?” Romulus asked and John wasn’t sure if he had ever seen the man so vulnerable. “I understand that your Order does not hold me in high regard.”
“We do not,” Moira weighed in. The Warden was still in the room, a fact that John had almost forgotten about. The redhead was just hanging around his general sphere (mostly Rave, Lorelei and Hailey) so much lately that it was easy to ignore her. “You are the eternal adversary of the Lady’s vision.”
John raised an eyebrow. He was admittedly not deep enough in the Order’s scriptures to know of the finer details of the mythology, but what Moira said implied that they had at least some kind of version of what had happened with the creation of the green-haired avatar of Gaia. Either that or Lorelei had shared the tale without asking… or Rave had. Actually, that latter option seemed a lot more likely.
“Yet…” Moira continued in a gentler tone, “…it would be unbecoming to withhold from even a man worse than you the fate of his family.”
Romulus nodded his head in genuine gratitude, then waited for Lorelei to speak. “My visions were short and not deeply detailed… I cannot tell you what he thought of you in his final moments. The Lady saw fit to reveal to me your fight in the alps, where you clashed under the name Epimetheus.” She paused for a moment. Romulus sat there as if frozen in time. “Treachery by Macuil was his end. I… sadly have little in terms of satisfying details to offer you, Apex.”
The emperor remained wordless for some time, his gaze directed inwards to the land of memory. It was the gentle touch of Sol and Luna that stirred him back to the present. “I had hoped for more, but I understand that this was vain.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “I knew that he had perished at some point. He renounced me as his brother, but I could never do the same and so I tracked him when I could. When he did not appear in the lands of Eurasia for over a thousand years, I finally admitted to myself that I was alone.”
“Will you take revenge on me?”
The question caused Romulus to open his eyes and behold Nahua. The demigoddess stood behind John, apparently ready for the fight. “I once had a child. She was born with little powers, one of my few that were not blessed and yet she was among my bravest. She lived on her own with her husband on the coast of Anatolia, and one day when I came to visit, she and her entire family had been murdered for a slight that I had committed. I stopped believing that children should bear their parents’ sins that day.” He looked down at his hands. “Besides, it was my brother that made that vulture into a god. Had I been smarter, I would not have cast him into the Sands of Time before I knew the scope of his projects…” Romulus snorted drily at a private joke. “A man that only knows hindsight indeed.”
John let the Apex linger in his dejected mood for a few more seconds before asking, “You aren’t a titan yourself, are you?”
Romulus glanced up and smirked. It was obvious that he knew that John was directing the conversation out of the dark place and that he was thankful for it. “No. Remus is my only blood sibling. Atlas was our brother by oath. He was also the one that introduced me to Sol and Luna.”
“The only person we could agree on liking,” Sol spoke nostalgically.
“Before Rom, of course,” Luna added melodically.
“I think they can infer that.”
“You’re in a habit of being just a little too vague, Sol.”
“I don’t want to hear that from you, miss moonlighting.”
The playful bickering made John chuckle. Ten thousand years of romance and yet some things never changed between men and women. “Not the answers you were hoping for but the answers we have… a different question: do you want to stay?”
“I do enjoy a tournament,” Romulus hummed. “How long will it run?”
“The next four days.” He gestured at the plan on the wall behind them. “I expect it to be quite explosive. The Justinian fellow that harassed you on the way in is in the upper field of the contestants, but he’s not even the strongest.”
“Oh?” Romulus rubbed his chin. “Making this trip for such a short conversation alone would be a waste. Very well, I shall watch this.”
John turned to Lee. “Could you and Gnome make sure our guest has their own viewing platform? Preferably next to ours?” Aesthetically, opposite would have been the best, but John did not want to run the risk of having some fun in the back of his viewing area and crossing eyes with the only man strong enough to pierce through the obfuscation magic. For all his diminishments in shame, John still preferred not to interact with men in any form while he was balls deep inside a woman.
“Sure, lemme just rearrange the stadium,” Lee chirped.
“Why are you being sarcastic about something you can do in thirty minutes?”
“Lemme cope!”
“Cope with what, being the only human to ever get actively involved in a god-lock?”
“Stahp!”
John rolled his eyes and now it was the turn of the ancient trio to chuckle at the bickering of the younglings.
There were such simple ways to connect.
Comments
FluffyButt Sr.
A full answer would explain what macuili was trying to do with atlas and how he resurrected the giants corpse - which is probably something the apex could infer with his intelligence. I would say it's safe to assume that John would fill him in with some of the details in private - or that the apex would guess the result.
FluffyButt Sr.
I think the only confusion is that the audience knows a bit more from the last dozen chapters - but the author probably wants to avoid a full recap of those chapters.
barak43
In my mind, what Romulus wanted to hear was way more personal.
Funatic
I don't agree that's what he is looking for, no
Cofi
Something along the lines of "Whenever Atlas traveled to the Aztecs Macuil greeted him with a feast. Until one year he poisoned the food, rotting Atlas from the inside while clouding his thoughts and causing him to kill the Aztec pantheon before dying a painful death. In his last lucid moments he was glad this insanity wouldn't reach the mundane world". That's not much, and I'm not sure the reader needs that recap, but it seems like the kind of detail Lorelei got from her visions that Romulus traveled here for, despite already knowing the Reaper's version of events
Funatic
What more does she know about Atlas' final moments than those few sentences?
Cofi
Seems like Atlas hit a nerve when he called Romulus a man of hindsight. I like the detail of the Order disliking Romulus. He did try to kill their deity (though the order at large might not know the full extend). It's a bit unclear, does Lorelei share the little she knows about Atlas's final moments, or does she literally only say that one sentence? Because the latter feels a bit unfair with how open Romulus has been with John so far
