Chapter 417: No pressure

Demi tasted as good as she smelled. Some kind of magical energy was coming out of her, surrounding them both in subtle green mist that had the same...whispering as before. It was somehow flickering between a warm and cool sensation on his skin that sent tingles up and down his body. And he nearly froze when he heard a few of the actual words.

It was like…dirty talk mixed with a woman's internal dialogue. The soft, but urgent voice, flickered between sweet romantic appreciation, and the small hope that Mason might throw her down in the grass and fuck her.

Then there were far more sensible concerns—like the fact that she'd met him about five minutes ago, and she probably shouldn't even be kissing him. He did his best to tune out the voices, or at least not to listen, feeling like he was intruding, but he had no idea how.

After a very long and sexy kiss that left his whole body ready for more, Mason eventually pulled back. As he did, Demi's almond shaped eyes blinked open. She looked at the green mist around them before flushing pink.

"Oh. God. I didn't mean..." she covered her face with her hands. Mason laughed, not pulling away.

"Don't worry. I didn't hear much. And if you could hear my inner thoughts it would be way, way worse."

Demi’s ‘mist voice’ was practically begging her to grab for his crotch. But she slowly pulled away her hands and took a breath, and the mist began to fade. She hadn't moved away entirely, though, and she put her hands pretty comfortably on Mason's chest.

"Define worse," she said, with what could only be described as a mischievous glance. Mason grinned and kissed her again. She didn't fight it, but this time ended it a lot more quickly and didn't let out any magic.

"I'm...pretty slow," she said. "I mean I was. Before whatever these things did to our brains. And I haven't..." she trailed off but Mason understood.

"Don't worry. I shouldn't have...you're just...a bit hard to resist."

Demi looked shy but her grin was not at all displeased.

"Maybe once we...after. Not in the Neutral Zone,” she said. “Back in the 'real world'. Maybe we could go on a date." She put a hand to her face again. "Wow that sounds so stupid. Do people date anymore?"

"They do," Mason confirmed, trying not to wince as he thought about literally just adding Lexi officially to his bed. And also sleeping with some random civilian at the system induced orgy.

Jesus, what the hell was he even doing? Didn't he have enough complexity in his life?

Blake was right, he started to realize. He was a dog in a pantry. Or maybe a dick in a vagina shop. He wanted Demi right here, right now, and didn't really care about problems or details. And his 'patron god' was pretty much over his mental shoulder nodding like the perverted, undisciplined mentor he was.

"Should we...keep walking?" Mason said, blinking away the lust as best he could.

"You know, I can sort of hear you too," Demi said, glancing at him with that same torn look. "It’s not very loud. But it's there."

Mason cleared his throat.

“So, what class are you? I've never met anyone else who’s nature affinity, except in the arena. I’m pretty sure we're rare.”

Demi grinned with a very ‘nice topic change’ sort of glance as she walked towards the river.

“I picked a seer class to start. Thought I'd be able to avoid danger. Now I'm a Blight Seer, technically. And an Elementalist, though I really only have one power there.”

Mason blinked. Blight seer?

“I…realize how it sounds,” Demi added. “But there's many kinds of life. It's perfectly natural. Everything decays and dies.”

“I started as a ranger,” he said. “But…then I picked up druid. Morphed into some kind of feral druid that shifts and..." Mason noticed Demi's eyes were wide and staring.

"You're the druid?"

"Ahh.” Mason glanced back and forth. “Yes?"

Demi let go of his hand. She looked like she'd seen a ghost, or else realized something she hadn't quite processed.

"You're the one who fixed the ley lines? In the North?"

Mason frowned, recalling a few mentions of 'ley lines', from the elven oracle, and from some fey trickster he was pretty sure was called an 'unseelie'. Whatever else that thing was, it had screwed with Mason in the fey and talked about rules and ley lines.

"Well. I restored the great trees," he said. "Is that what you mean?"

Demi squinted and shrugged like she wasn't sure. "I use...a different kind of natural magic than you," she said, almost carefully. "All I know is a month ago I felt a huge shift in the magic I draw from. It got stronger. Easier. I felt a source to the north, and the system wanted me to go, but...I didn't want to leave my cabin."

Mason nodded, trying to take that in. A different kind of natural magic? Did she use something more like the elven seer? The ‘trickster’? It made sense, he realized, based on what he’d learned of the ‘emotion’ magic once described by a librarian in the elven city.

And he could understand her hesitation to leave somewhere safe in the madness. But he also knew you didn't get more powerful in this game by playing it safe. As annoying as it was, you had to move in the directions it guided you towards and face whatever insanity got in your way.

The mood of increasingly hard to resist, pure lust was at least broken. Mason didn’t try to take Demi’s hand again, and was about to ask more questions about exactly what sort of magic she used and how it worked when the system blared.

[Attention, players. Exciting news! The tournament finals will be begin shortly. Another series of team and individual duels will commence in five minutes, continuing every fifteen minutes until every final winner is decided. Good luck! And as always, we're rooting for you.]

Mason met Demi's eyes as the message stopped scrolling. The human moment they shared squashed and banished beneath the imminent violence.

"You can wait on our balcony, if you like," Mason said. "But no pressure."

Demi smiled, but shook her head.

"Thank you. I'll go to my room. I'm pretty good at fast napping, even for a few minutes when I get the chance between fights."

Mason nodded, moving back towards the sci-fi like exit portal just hovering a bit above the grass of their fake but not fake earth escape.

"When this is over, I'll come find you," he said, fully intending to still recruit her, no matter what else. "I know enough, I think. We have a decent map of the continent."

A more natural smile found its way to Demi's lips as she nodded.

"I might not come back right away," Mason said as he realized. "I'll be exploring. So I can either get you on the way down or the way back. I move pretty fast, though, so you probably can't really..."

"I can keep up," she said with total confidence, then shrugged and put some hair behind an ear. "I can sort of...latch onto things. I can keep up."

Mason grinned, kind of excited to see all her powers. But…preferably not in the arena.

"OK," he said, "when this current horseshit is over, it's a crazy apocalypse date."

He held out a hand to help her towards the exit. After a moment of hesitation, and through a little awkwardness, she took it.

* * *

The five minutes ticked down as Mason stood in the promenade, silent with a few of his players. He went to each and slapped an arm or put a hand to a shoulder without a word. They were all in their own minds and knew the score by now.

As the last seconds ticked away, Mason just said 'see you after' before the world disappeared.

Then he was waiting in the holding cell with his profile telling him it was a single duel. He didn't bother with Streak for now, then rose up to what looked like a long, metallic corridor.

He crept forward, bare feet making no sound as he activated his Sleeves, skin taking on a greyish hue. There were more corridors practically every ten feet, all of them ending in the same metallic walls with more passages leading on.

It didn't take long before Mason realized he was in a maze. He heard a whirring sound from somewhere to his left, a clanging to his right. It was definitely different than the other arenas he'd seen, but he knew others had experienced some fairly wild scenarios like the tops of skyscrapers.

Mason's paranoia told him whatever those noises were he was wise to avoid them.

So he did his best to head in a different direction, no idea how he was going to find his opponent. After a few more corridors he changed his mind and activated Call Beast.

Streak appeared with a lazy yawn, but leapt up with excitement when it saw him.

"We're hunting," he said, not needing to explain anything more. The wolf growled and turned in a circle, obviously confused by all the metal walls. But as ever the wolf adapted to reality with surprising quickness, never burdened by all the questions of man.

All Streak knew was that there was prey in this place, and he had to find it. That was it. That was all. And it was enough.

The wolf took off with a growl like he'd smelled something, and Mason followed a few feet behind with a smile. As far as he knew, whoever was left had little chance against him, but he had no intention of going easy.

It was time to end this damn tournament and get the rewards, then get back to the 'real' world. He had a continent to explore and hopefully unite. And a new phase to deal with along with whatever the hell it brought. But first, apparently, he had to kill a rat in a maze.