Chapter 1572 – First of Hatred

“Imagining a peaking microphone output, that’s what that looked like,” Delicia explained.

“A normal man I would tell that their mind would break if they tried to make a contract with Ehtra as she is right now.” Metra’s tail wagged ever so slightly. “You are no normal man. Ehtra was among my stronger siblings and we reconstructed her with enough Astrotium to bring her up to me in that regard.”

“Wait, we did?” John looked to Delicia. “Why?”

“It integrated best with what she was.” The alchemist let out a long and unhappy sigh. “Not like I just had a reliable list of what her proper material balance should have been. Unlike Medelnick with his bit of Tiamat, I didn’t and still don’t have a lot of her left to compare magical signatures. All I can tell you is that her body accepted and wanted a lot more Astrotium than she was initially made with. I managed to add some crystals and stones to it after her skeleton was completed. The more of her that works, the easier I can guess what’s missing.”

“Like a puzzle.” John understood that part. “It’s easier to get this when you don’t talk about Monekai’s Lines or such things.”

“Not my problem you don’t get what this peasant is saying.” Delicia stuck out her tongue. A moment later, Metra hugged John from behind.

“My king,” the First of Wrath purred into his ear, “my candidate, my beloved, ruler of this great realm and holder of powers that can grind mountains to dust.” Behind every syllable was every ounce of respect, desire, and love she had for him, flowing through the mental connection as much as her vocal cords. “You are about to revive one of my treasured siblings and for that I owe you. I hope you can forgive that I have nothing left to give you.”

Her hands trailed up and down his chest. One, rather forwardly, cupped his crotch. “You don’t owe me for this,” John assured her.

“I disagree.” Metra pulled her hands into less dangerous territory. The minimalistic clothes she wore did barely anything to keep the softness of her petite breasts from pressing against his back, nor her general heat from arousing his senses. “You are aware where a contract with her will inevitably lead?”

“Is it inevitable?” John asked. He was curious, not disapproving.

“You’re my king candidate. She’s one of my siblings most similar to me,” Metra put it simply. “You were already thinking about breaking her in. You will. You’ll make her just like me. Maybe even a little worse. Unlike me, she’s rebuked all desires of the flesh. Once you break that barrier… I think you’ll like it.”

John’s inner hormonal teenager was quite attached to the idea of making Ehtra another one of his maids, with all the proclivities that typically went with that. She’d fit right in there, alphabet wise.

Then his eyes landed on the nightmarish thing before him again. “One step at a time,” he stated soberly. “We are not waking her up because I want another haremette. We are waking her up because she’ll be a powerful ally against Tiamat and the Lorylim.”

“There’s always the next war, my king.” With those words, the First of Wrath pulled away and left John to kneel down in front of the basin and the thing within. He placed two fingers on the forehead of the First of Hatred and sent an explorative spark into her.

A mind running on fumes flared up like a magnesium torch. Chaos reigned, a muddled cacophony of colours and memories, all flashing by too fast and with too much overlap to be analysed. From the primordial stem of her consciousness, the aspects of her being forked out. Hatred rose from chaos, turned into pure rage. ‘BETRAYER! MOTHER! BETRAYER!’ the hatred screamed and turned its attention to the only outlet there was.

It shattered against the might of John’s mental fortitude.

As the broken pieces coalesced again, the Gamer projected his intentions. “I am John Newman. I am the one that dragged you out of the Death Zone and that burned Tiamat’s touch off you. I am the king candidate of Metra, First of Wrath. I am here to offer you a contract.”

Ehtra’s mind had fully reassembled itself. Like a wounded animal offered a piece of food, she lingered at the edge of this space of their contact. Every second he remained, he got a clearer image of her – as clear as they could be within these mental landscapes. She had brown skin, darker than Metra’s but not by much, and a female physique, although he could not make out the definitions of her curves. Neither was John certain of the colour of her hair or how long it was.

What he could make out was her naked back, covered in a myriad of wounds. Small and large draconic wings covered the ground around her. John did not remember seeing her rip them out. It was likely that these torn representations of Tiamat were just part of her psyche at this current point.

Ehtra straightened up, a tall figure, skeletal in one moment, feminine in the other. She stared at John with colourless eyes. “You offer a contract?” she asked, her voice was deep for a woman and harsh. “What vengeance do you desire?”

“Tiamat and the Lorylim must die.” The mental landscape around him pulsed, the walls flashing and cracking like luminescent glass. “I will strengthen you and in return you will serve me as part of my operations. Once Tiamat is defeated, we can decide if you wish to serve me further.”

Ehtra carefully stepped out of her safe area, walking towards and then around him. She inspected a myriad of strands that connected John to the rest of his familiars. Plucking a particular, grey string like a harp, she created a short flash of Metra’s presence in the space.

Afterwards, she circled back to his front. “Then you will be my 13th master,” she stated and extended a hand.

John took the hand and let her in. A string connected his back to her essence and soon a vital flow of intel rushed back and forth between them. The contract of a Metracana was different from Artificial or Natural Spirits in many key components. Her appearance would change depending on what he wanted, consciously or subconsciously. Her powers, too, would have changed depending on what he required, but that was before she had rejected every last material of Tiamat in her body. Without the backing of chaos, changing her abilities entirely was not up for grabs, sadly.

Opening his eyes, John was greeted by a window.

‘I will not be judged by you regarding my taste in women!’ Pushing the sassy Achievement aside, the Gamer instead followed Ehtra’s change.

The nightmarish, half-melted, frozen blob of Astrotium and faux flesh flowed like hot wax. The dorsal spikes receded, the spine straightened itself, the offshoots turned into a proper ribcage. Her head snapped forward, neck properly slotting into its socket, while legs parted out of the goo and arms consolidated into proper shapes.

The First of Hatred tried to move. She clutched her sword. The tip of the grey weapon sunk into the ground, Astrotium cutting into the Baelementium basin. Although her body was rapidly assuming a proper humanoid form, her limbs were too thin for her to stand properly. She collapsed and the blade screeched over the ground. The beginnings of human lips were pulled into a sneer. Eyes turned from colourless to green, retaining her disdain all the while.

“Delicia,” John said, to snap the alchemist out of her interested observation.

“Yes! Right!” The alchemist hurried over to various stockpiles that she had prepared at the side. Now that John’s Perks were active, Ehtra would find it much easier to integrate various replacements for the divine materials she had lost.

The First of Hatred reached out and shoved the material down her throat. It had been a while since John had seen such a base display of an Artificial Spirit regenerating and the Metracana’s form of doing so seemed to be even cruder. Where modern Artificial Spirits pulled from excess materials stored in a dimensional pocket, here the freshly swallowed materials emerged from her gullet within her half-formed torso.

What were accepted clusters, ingots, bars, or other forms of chunks of materials became thin strands that wove themselves in flesh and muscle fibre around the Astrotium bones. Those materials her body rejected, either outright or after Ehtra noted they were not properly integrating, clattered to the ground underneath her.

Delicia kept measuring Ehtra’s development. The margin of error, not to mention the speed at which Ehtra was absorbing materials, was upped tremendously now that she was under contract. The fresh mana John sent pumping into her defeated the lethargy. Metra looked at her sibling impatiently.

John, perhaps, was the most interested in the ongoing transformation of Ehtra from a creature to a person. Although he had not made any specific requests, she had reached into his mind to gather the references of what she was going to look like while under his contract. What she was going to end up as was going to be a mixture of what she was like as a baseline and what he wanted. Since there had been no active wish, this was going to be a window into his subconscious.

A point was reached where Ehtra’s body, in its major materials, was restored. Just keeping general tabs on the situation, she had devoured tens of thousands of Tokens worth of materials, and that was without taking into account the Astrotium already inside her or the divine bits she was now trying to digest. The excess of what they had from Fenrir filled the gap of Tiamat.

Compared to Metra, she needed little. The First of Hatred was part of a set of three, all materials that she had been created with had been split between herself and her direct siblings. ‘Perhaps that’s why she could devour that much Astrotium? She made up for what she could have had, had she not split?’ he theorized. He couldn’t know for certain. The already mushy rules of magic got even more bent and broken when the goddess of chaos was involved.

When it came to replacing the parts of other gods and goddesses, there was a vast selection to offer. Fusion had good relations with many gods by this point and many Raid drops were approaching or exceeding comparable levels. Of the offered godly materials, she primarily devoured feathers of Nightingale.

While they disappeared inside her now fully formed torso, details of her appearance were finalized.

She had white hair, which was the least surprising development John could have guessed. She had white hair in most forms, he had been told, and his love for it was something he was acutely aware of, especially when there was a part of him that hoped that she would continue his alphabet assembly of maids.

Her hair was a mixture of semi-wild strands and braids. Two relatively thin braids began above her ears, curved around the back and then settled on her shoulders. A larger one reined in the excess of her cascading hair at the back, although much of it remained open. It created an interesting cascade between practical and natural, creating a different variety of the warrior woman vibe that Metra had.

Ehtra’s skin, unsurprisingly, was a shade of brown. It was a tinge darker than Metra’s, and stretched in taut smoothness over her figure. There was more muscle to her than most women, but not quite as much as Metra. Her abs were defined but not cut, her biceps showed but not immensely so, and her thighs had just enough squish to them to take out the hardest lines of the fibres.

Her figure, all around, was on the balanced side. While her thighs and butt were nice to look at, they weren’t overbearing. Her waist was reasonably thin, a flat stomach that was healthy and certainly away from the stick category. Surprising was the size of her breasts.

From two small bumps on her taking shape, over the middling swell of boobs, to two truly large bags of squishy chocolate, they grew. They stopped there, not reaching the truly enormous category. Rivalling Undine’s in size, those light brown mounds were tipped by deep brown nipples. They were the second darkest part of her, only outdone by her dark, almost black, lips.

They would have been the bottom piece of a truly gorgeous face, had the First of Hatred not immediately pulled them into a sneer. The skin left of her nose crinkled, while a bit of her white teeth became visible. The wrinkles continued up to her sharp eyes.

There was a special something about the way she fused being beautiful with being disdainful of… something. “Why these?” she demanded to know, cupping her large breasts. Her fingers sunk inside, revealing just how firm and squishy they were.

“I honestly have no idea,” John answered. ‘Do I have a craving for a big boobed maid?’ he asked himself. The answer to that was ‘sort of yes’, especially once Ehtra stood up. Tall and well-endowed certainly was a new taste among his servants – if she became a servant, which his perverted brain just kept telling him to assume.

Standing, Ehtra was 1,83 metres tall, which put her the slightest bit under Metra and John himself. That she was naked did not seem to bother the First of Hatred. That there were measuring tools all around her, however, did. Expertly moving her sword, she put its tip against the end of one of the mechanical arms and shoved it out of the way. She did not destroy it, nor did she damage it, but her expression made it very clear what she thought of its presence.

Interestingly, the Astrotium weapon had changed with her. Considering it was a part of her, this was within expected parameters. From a crescent blade, it had changed to a more European longsword. The blade was broader than was typical and it was one solid piece from tip, over cross guard, to the pommel.

Ehtra stepped out of the basin and immediately glared at her breasts again, jiggling as she moved. Her glare immediately moved to John. The new mental connection radiated a casual disdain for everything. Much like Metra could find a reason to be angry in the fact that she had to breathe, so too could Ehtra find something to hate in everything around and inside her. It was in her nature and that nature she had under control.

The disdain was secondary to curiosity. She reached out through the mental network. For all the thoughts she had about her new appearance and its cause, she did approach respectfully. That respect waned a bit as she scanned his personality past what she had seen so far. It waxed, also, as she scanned through his deeds, although she only got the cliff notes version before John gently pushed her out of his mind again. Ehtra accepted it willingly. She had respect for the fact that there even was an open connection. This was not the norm for a Metracana contract.

“King candidate,” Ehtra acknowledged and turned her gaze to her sister. “After all this time looking for one to present to you, here I am ending up in the service of yours.”

“Finding allies was never your strong suit,” Metra pointed out and walked back to John’s side. Tail wagging side to side with glee, mirrored on her face, the First of Wrath hugged John’s side. He put an arm around her immediately and she hummed. “Not that it’s mine either. I just happened to get lucky.”

Ehtra eyed the way the Breaker of Armies snuggled up to him, then her tail and wolf ears. “You’ve changed,” she stated, deliberately neutral in her tone.

“In a lot of ways, but not at my core,” Metra answered with an easy-going smile. “You will too. This is an interesting age.” Her smile dropped. “When were you last active?”

“Before Mother Chaos betrayed me?” Ehtra growled, her eyes flashing whitish-green for a moment. She put a hand to her forehead, then sneered. “Tsk… I can’t quite… recall… I remember a contract I had with an… Indian…. Enki had him killed and then… it gets muddy.” The First of Hatred clenched her blade so hard the entire weapon quivered. “What year is it?”

“2019,” John answered.

Ehtra moved her lips silently as she thought to herself. “700 years?” she estimated. “What a waste of time. Like this conversation. I was promised power. Also, does anyone have clothes? I tire of your leering, master.”

The way she spoke the title, plainly without respect, invoked a challenge in John’s brain to take her down a peg. ‘Is that just my inner brat-breaker talking or is that my inner brat-breaker noticing something?’ he wondered. He asked a more important question, “What’s your opinion on stockings and French maid outfits?”

“The hell are those?” Ehtra asked.

Not exactly perfect.