Interlude Five

I woke up at 5:03 again, this time without a nightmare and the following wet incident. Extracting myself without waking anyone seemed impossible, so I didn’t even try and shoved as needed. Yet, it didn’t wake up anyone. I had half expected that—something was weird about this time.

I got to the toilet and enjoyed the relief before I started worrying. Have you ever savoured this feeling? There’s something magical to it; it feels so nice. Not in a sexual way, more like someone you really, really value highly comments you on a job well done. But I guess it was natural some people would confuse the two and want to share this one with their partners.

There were way more unhealthy things to do in bed, I told myself. Like what I had done for that customer, my only one so far.

I was stalling. The last two days had been a wild ride, and now, with my mind free from any influence, there were so many things wrong with it.

For one, we had accepted that the system, be it Alpha or something else, had intentionally created our little group out of girls who loved Livia. Because there was no doubt in my mind that Samantha and Geraldine never got over her and still felt it. They had jumped at the chance and not even hesitated when confronted with the whole harem thing like any normal person would.

I could accept Livia and I being open-minded, that was what brought us together in a way. We wouldn’t have stuck together if what we did in the time apart bothered us. But what were the chances for those girls who fell for Livia to be the same kind of “pervert’s fantasy” inclined? Hell is colder than Heaven, but not by that much.

And the guy Livia called to help us with Greg being an NPC necromancer who just happened to be able to adapt and run a ritual of this magnitude perfectly? That was so not subtle that we even noticed it during the day. Yet we hadn’t questioned the why behind it.

If the system had just wanted us to team up, it could have timed it so that we arrived in time to save Geri. Just as it had with Samantha. Samantha had been less than a minute away from becoming goblin fodder, even though they had been toying with her by stripping her naked.

Law of probabilities again—what were the chances of none of the dozens of hits she had taken cutting deeper than those shallow cuts she had received? When the goblins used pointy weapons? The aforementioned snowball again.

But then, why had Geri been dead when we arrived? I don’t think we messed up or delayed to an unforeseeable extent. Her body had been stone cold when we assembled it, so we didn’t miss by anything less than a couple of hours. Also, the troll was an NPC monster. It would have been trivial for the system to make him tie Geri up, throw her into his pantry, and take a nap.

No, us resurrecting her as an undead was deliberate. Had the type of undead been a real choice? Unlikely. I couldn’t see us making her a Lich when she lacked the illusion magic to appear human, or a puppet who’d fall apart in short order. We might have gone for a traditional one, but the way Bill had shoved that diagram into our faces…we were meant to see those options.

Maybe we had some real say in the exact mix, but my gut feeling told me anyone who knew me would be able to guess the levels I was ok with. Thinking back to it, I wanted to ask how much control a vampire with a level three feeding ability had to kill or not kill their victims. If they had that control, there was no reason not to give her level three in everything. We all had skills and abilities that could kill; no gun control needed with those.

Had I honestly not thought about it, or had that been part of what kept me running with the situation as it presented itself without protesting reality? If it was the latter, then there indeed had been no choice at all.

Then, there was the one big elephant in the room. Not this one, the Hameswood bathroom had in no way the size one would expect a crime lord to have. Which was another thing I was questioning—was that family background really real? I hadn’t noticed any unexplainable discrepancies, but it felt mightily convenient. That money and those connections had already proven helpful, and I had no doubt they would be in the future as we developed as a group hunting monsters.

No, the elephant I was avoiding was death. Risking death, dying, killing. Sitting here in the dark, it made my heart race in fear even thinking about it. I could not fathom wanting to face a monster in a life-or-death fight. That was something completely different than showing up with a group to mess someone up. Back then, we never, not a single time, had been in a situation where we had any kind of serious resistance. We brutalised untrained helpless victims, not went on gang wars against other goons.

Just like Greg and Bill downstairs. They sat in that ready room day in and day out, not risking their lives but deterring people who might think taking a knife to Livia would be a great way of not paying their due. This wasn’t the gang wars of a hundred years ago in the States, those famous mafia shootouts depicted in so many movies. Even running with my old gang in London, I could count the times we had caused more than a couple of bruises from roughhandling on the one hand.

Sure, there had been that one guy…but had Chester really expected me to kill him? He never taught me how to do it, aside from pointing out what kinds of hits and holds could cause lethal damage. But you needed to know that as much for avoiding it as for doing it on purpose. I tried to remember his exact words that had sent me into berserker rage, but I couldn’t. I had run through the situation in my head so often over the years—mostly for my amusement, I have to admit—that I wasn’t sure anymore what was real and what I had added. Had he said, “kill him” or “finish him”?

But even if he told me to kill him, we had been safe. The guy was on the ground, held down by two sturdy guys, with three more guys and gals standing around him. A 5-year-old could have taken him out. If she had a knife, that is. Then there had been Lee. That look on his face, like he was ready to throw up. Chester had taken me by the shoulders and led me away. What had he said? “We’re done here. Guys, clean this mess up.” Something like that. The part where he said something about rewarding me with a fuck was just a fantasy I had dreamt up while masturbating years later.

And now? Oh, I had enjoyed ripping those goblins apart. For a short second, then, the result of their squishiness had showered me. That was less enjoyable. I should have been disgusted by that, but it didn’t affect me that way at all. I was more annoyed about it. Then, the fight with the troll. Ripping apart his face and stomping his manhood out his other side were great. But where was the fear for my life? It threatened to make me shake like a leaf now, but not then.

Same for the aftermath. I had woken up in great pain, yet I hadn’t even entertained the idea I could succumb to my injuries or take permanent damage for a split second. That hit had been heavy enough to push parts of my innards out of my arsehole, for God’s sake. Yet I had shrugged it off like a paper cut.

My trousers had been filled with shit, blood and bits of intestines when I had taken them off in the shower. A good three fistfuls, to my estimate. Yet I had walked around the troll’s campsite as if there was nothing while all that disgusting stuff rubbed itself in everywhere. I sat down on that stuff in the car on the way home without even noticing it. That was not normal.

And then the others had helped me scrub it off—with their bare hands. If anything, this was proof that we didn’t think like sane human beings. Oh, but I knew that already. I had realised that every night, aside from yesterday when whatever nightmare I had had had knocked me out after losing control over my bladder.

Still, I had no idea what to do about it. I hoped these nightly sessions would help me keep my sanity should the influence ever end. Having all that trauma—and that’s what it was—come all at once for weeks or years of living such a life would be devastating, I imagined. But then, would I want to keep my sanity when everyone around me, Livia included, lost it?

With that thought, I flushed and went back to bed. My last thought before falling asleep was that being in a harem relationship with three sexy girls was not something that weird influence made me accept. I liked that all on my own.