Chapter 42.1 - An Ambition Revealed

This one is going to be broken up into 5 sub-chapters.

Also, just as an FYI, I will be opening up the all-in-one version of previous chapters to All Access Patrons once all sub-chapters have been released.  There isn't much need for them to be broken up like that in the backlog, and it makes the reading experience better for those who are catching up.

Thanks!

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Have you ever seen one of those madcap comedies, like ‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’ or ‘What’s up, Doc?’  If not, I would highly recommend them.  Great fun.

Their plots tend to revolve around a confusing series of disparate yet intertwined events involving lots of characters all striving towards some sort of MacGuffin.  Then, inevitably, it all sort of blows up at the end.  Everyone figures out that everyone else is in on it, they all start yelling and—usually after quite a lot of grievous bodily injury and property damage—the whole cast gets shoved in front of some overworked judge who is left to sort everything out.

Take that, add in a bunch of naked women, cast me in the role of the MacGuffin, and you have the situation in a nutshell.  Honestly, I was torn between throwing my hands up and letting the lot of them tear each other apart… or taking the reasonable approach and diving out the window.

As near as I could determine, the list of grievances were as follows:

Jax was pissed, at least initially, because the others were interrupting our reunion coitus-meal… or whatever.  We had yet to develop the sort of vocabulary our evolving relationship required.  However, she had quickly moved on to more pressing concerns.

Namely, the fact that I had decided to rescue Arx ahead of her.  She was my First, she had reminded me.  At length.  The world could not be right without my First by my side, and I had been a fool to think otherwise.

I had tried explaining my reasoning—that Arx was the more experienced of the two—but she was not having it.  Especially once she had discovered the sorts of difficulties I had encountered.  Apparently, her area was much easier, and if I had done as I should have, this could have all been avoided.

In hindsight, I had to agree.  From the number of traps I had blundered into alone, it was obvious the goddess running the place had been practically screaming at me to try another path first.  I put it down to the sunk-cost fallacy.  The more crap someone has to overcome, the more bullheaded they get in straying from their decided course of action.  You would think, as a gamer of some experience, I would know better.

But no.

For Arx, she had been sticking up for me—which I appreciated but honestly was not helping matters.  Jax was only getting more pissed she was not bowing to her authority, which Arx cared not a whit for.  She maintained it was heroic that I had pulled off something like that for her sake… even if the lot of us nearly had died in the process.

Which turned her on.  But for my lilim, that sort of thing is scarcely worth mentioning.

In any case, her main beef was… well, I was still a little fuzzy on the details.  Apparently, she, Mia, and I had been involved in some sort of tryst whilst in the dream fabric, and she was upset that I had been wearing a mask?  But it was not a mask exactly…?

Mind-blowing as all of that was—and for a number of reasons—she had said it was a perversion of my true self, and that Mia had so readily accepted it was a crime worthy of death.  Or a sound whipping.

Jax had instantly volunteered to accept the punishment in the Faen’s stead, as long as I handed out the beating.  Because it turned her on.  Again, hardly worth mentioning.

As for Mia, she was on the verge of a screaming fit.  Perversion or not, she had been within a hair’s breadth of finally getting laid, and to suddenly get the rug pulled out from under her?  And by a lilim of all things?

Apparently, they were not known for having scruples as a species.  Who could have guessed?

And while I was not all that surprised at having a dream in that vein—Mia was gorgeous in every sense of the word and from the hints she had been dropping… well.  In any case, I was far less comfortable at having that particular set of laundry aired so publicly.  Like most every other human on Earth, I had about as much control over my dreams as Mia did her swearing.

Which she had been.  At length.  Never mind how angry she was, with the number of questions being hurled about the room, she was going to be a mess for quite some time.

However, what had really set off the powder keg was when we found out that Mia had already started down her path to vengeance.  As the arbiter of our skills and attributes, she had way more control over how our points were spent than she should have and, if there had ever been any checks and balances preventing her from fucking us over, they were certainly gone now that she was a Faen.

There was not a thing we could do about it, either.  She had us by our collective balls.  And yes, I know I was the only one with a pair.  Never mind.

The important thing is that she had spent a few of our points against our wishes.  For Arx, she had decided the Do-lilim could do with a bit more Wisdom—pretty much a dump-stat for a scout.  Maybe then, she had said, the girl would know better than to butt her horns in where they were not wanted.

Meanwhile, she had proclaimed that I would be getting a point in Intelligence every Layer from here on out until I gained the ability to remember and meaningfully interact with my own dreams.  Or she got some.  Whichever came first.

So…

That went over about as well as one might reasonably expect.