Over a dozen metres of wood were suddenly accelerated in a simple forward motion. Everyone still leaning on top of or keeping their feet under the table were disoriented. While they only had to deal with irritated elbows and some leg pain, Ron had no such advantage. The edge of the table transferred the overwhelming power of John’s kick straight into his stomach. Along with his chair, the leader of this assembly was pushed backwards all the way to the wall and only came to a halt when he was firmly squished between it and the edge of the table.

The man bent over, clearly in pain. He attempted to shove the table forwards, but only squealed when John followed the piece of furniture he had so violently displaced and put a single foot on the edge. All he had to do was press with a fourth of his Strength, and the level 65 individual was outmatched entirely.

“H…el…p,” he more begged than commanded.

“Yes, help him,” John looked at the people who stood frozen around him. “Surrendering is also an option. You lost your chance to make a good deal with me, but I will still show mercy in this battle.” He looked around. “Just how many times did your emotions switch between confidence and fear in the last ten minutes? Three, four times? You should commit to one and stop being controlled so much by your instincts.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Seriously, right-hand side, you know I can’t see any of you, right?” Massaging the bit of bone, he listened to the excitedly rising breaths. “Why would you be hopeful when I tell you that? Are you morons?”

Distantly, John heard something snap. The continued pressure on his stomach must have broken one of Ron’s lower ribs. Perhaps a friend of his or perhaps simply desperate, one of the small fry-leaders charged at The Gamer. He heard the accelerated breathing, felt the vibrations in the ground and the blade as it cut through the air. He didn’t care to block the attack. It landed on his throat. A thin layer of cool touched his skin, failing to cut.

“What the fu-“ the person began.

“You know, whenever I’m winning, I get this urge to monologue,” John said. Absent-mindedly, he took his right hand off his nose and grabbed the hand pressing the blade against his neck. For him, it was like overcoming the laziness to pluck the remote off the table. For his assailant, it must have been too quick to react. “This is going to hurt, but this is how you chose things to go.” He clenched his hand and made the bones in the arm crack.

Looking up to Ron, John saw that the guy had finally passed out from the pain and his organs getting squished together. He took his foot off the table and pulled it back a little bit.

‘Siena, you have a lot of experience with wounds, right? Is he going to survive?’

‘About an hour or two, worst case,’ the moonshade elemental responded.

That was good enough for John. “So, this urge to monologue,” the Gamer continued. “I’ve come to theorize that it might be part of my personality type. A problem of being a prideful intellectual. I just want to lord over you all that I’m smarter than you. It’s a really annoying side of myself. Reason I feel like I can bring this up here today is, for one, none of you are threatening me in even the mildest fashion.” He let go of the crushed arm and the person who attacked him stumbled back. John had never even seen them. “And, for two, I’m trying to understand what personality type you all are. I encounter you quite regularly. Sleazy, immoral, self-assured, simultaneously woefully uninformed and in positions of power. It’s like you’re the sons and daughters of a rich CEO who pampered you your whole life, except it was the luck of the draw assigning you magical powers that elevated you above your peers.”

John took a look around the room and all the frozen people. Several dozens of them and none of them were moving. Turning around, the Gamer casually toppled over the chair he had been sitting on. With a carefully aimed kick, he snapped one of the legs off. Once he had picked it up, he held it like a rapier, splintered end extended.

“I suppose it’s proof that brain drain exists,” John continued to monologue, closing his useless eye. “I also suppose it’s proof that the crabs in a bucket effect exists. Every time one of you thought a bit more carefully about the situation, he must have either left or gotten ganged up on. It takes a very specific individual of power, charisma and great timing to create an organization of note, and as it gets easier to just join an already present one, less talented people have the drive to stay and carve something out of the risky territory.”

“What’re you even on about?!” one of his opponents shouted in a cracked voice. The desperate attempt to cover the fear in their voice had only been partly successful. Testing, the Gamer swung the chair leg a couple of times. Their intimidation was almost physically manifest, yet they refused to just surrender. Every one of them refused to be the first to give in.

“Again, I encounter you people quite regularly,” John repeated himself. “And I wonder how that keeps happening? I would guess that, in a cutthroat, lawless society, the person that knows how to wield their power most intelligently rises to the top at a stupendous pace. Maybe the necessary level of power and intellect just doesn’t come about as often as I would imagine. Perhaps I’m making a categorical error by describing a territory dominated by gang wars as lawless. You do have a dominance hierarchy, so that is a law of sorts. Makes me wonder if something like a truly lawless space can even exist? Depends on the definition of law, I suppose.”

John scratched the back of his head and waited for anyone to answer. Nobody had anything to say, which was about what he had expected. He had hoped for more, but these people were clearly talented in disappointing him in every regard. Putting his theories about how these social structures kept cropping up aside, the Gamer turned towards a random adversary and calmly walked towards them.

It was a young, black-haired woman of the relatively attractive variety. She seemed to be of Spanish descent, probably mixed with a bit of native Mexican, creating a pleasant mixture of exotic and familiar. Her face and body were both far removed from the incredible beauty of John’s harem, but she looked good enough that John felt his base instincts tell him that hurting her really wasn’t something he should do. That she backed off as he approached didn’t help. He felt like a tiger attacking a rabbit for nothing but sport.

However, he knew he wasn’t doing this for his own pleasure. He might take some from slapping some arrogant slavers around, but it wasn’t his goal here. “Surrender,” he gave a commanding offer to the woman, once he had herded her with her back to the wall. He was attacked by the rest of the room before he could get her answer.

Perhaps the rest of the men in the room felt the same base instincts he did. There was something base to almost every person and seeing a woman cornered would serve as a pretty good motivator for those. It just needed to be the tipping point for one or two people. Once a few were moving, the rest of the room was drawn in by crowd mentality. The emotions boiled over and finally the entirety of his opposition collapsed on top of John.

John met the first assailant by ramming the chair leg into their shoulder. Next was a swipe of his left fist, ending in the breaking of a ribcage. A roundhouse kick turned one person into a projectile that caused half a dozen to fall to the floor, like bowling pins. The chair leg splintered when John smashed it against the temple of a man who collapsed immediately.

In the heat of the battle, the absolute wrecking of their comrades must have passed the people by, as they bombarded John with spells and the hacking of weapons. With the blue flaring of mana, the attacks universally bounced off him. Unbothered, he stood there, finishing them off single attack by single attack. Even as the woman he had cornered drew a knife and attempted to drive it into his side, he remained where he was.

‘At least that makes this part easier,’ he resigned himself mentally and grabbed her wrist before she could pull back. He tugged at her, made her take half a step forward and right into his rising knee. She let out a disgraceful, almost burping, sound when her stomach was compressed by the impact. As she slid sideways to the ground, John let go of her wrist. A clenched fist, the very same hand smashed into the face of someone trying to attack him from behind. He could feel the nose breaking. It was a disgusting crunch that made him feel simultaneously sickened and fantastic.

It was dangerously tempting to toy with these people.

‘Let’s end this as quickly as possible,’ he told himself, wilfully disabling Particle Skin as someone with a spear came charging at him. Knowing full well the quality of the weapon and the wielder through two quick Observes, John just faced him. He put his thumbs into his pockets, refusing to do so with his full hands due to the blood on his knuckles, and waited for the inevitable hit.

The tip of the spear rammed against his stomach. Just behind the tip, the spear splintered. John’s physical superiority to that person was so complete that his Synergy Perk caused the attack to be nullified – with or without Particle Skin.

John grabbed the spear and lifted it up. The attacker had the presence of mind to let go, but was far too slow to escape the downwards strike the Gamer then executed. Another piece of wood shattered on a skull and another body dropped to the floor.

Looking at the ring of people, unconscious or writhing in pain, around him, the Gamer raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t moved from his position since they started attacking him, little steps taken during kicks aside.

The wave of attacks had finally let off, with people realizing the futility of their attacks. John looked over to the last twenty guild masters hanging around. They were either the lucky ones that hadn’t found openings to join the crowd of assailants or smart enough to see if there even was a chance to wound him.

“Give me your power, Vecht,” he heard a growl and looked over. The words had come from the strongest person still in the room. Another woman, less beautiful in John’s eyes than the Latina he had taken out, courtesy of her immensely square jaw.

“…I… fine!” the addressed answered. “Everyone, gather your mana, I will channel it into Aura!”

‘Some kind of rivalry being overcome to beat me?’ John wondered and started walking. Not towards the group, but to the windowless side of the room, where there were less bodies that could get caught up in the crossfire. Mana drifted from the entire crowd towards this Vecht and from him towards Aura. ‘A combination of mana taxing and buffing his allies? Could be powerful… but I could have gotten in there and started wrecking things three times by now.’

Aura raised her hand to the ceiling and gathered all of the mana she received into a growing fireball. It started as red, but soon switched into a pale blue that clashed with the growing heat. Hopeful murmurs echoed through the room. The flickering fire magic grew from the size of a volleyball to that of a small boulder.

“It’s not going to work,” John told them. “Spare yourself the renovation costs and dismiss that useless thing. Surrender.”

“I’ll see you burn!” Aura shouted back and tossed the fireball.

‘I guess I’ll just take it head on,’ the Gamer thought. ‘Could break the spell with Purgatory, but I don’t exactly have it on me at the moment. If I fire an Arc Lance into it, it’s just going to explode before it reaches me and catch them. What a bother.’ John sighed and resigned himself to taking the fireball.

The heat intensified as the flung spell approached. Bundled together, the energy was unleashed into an explosion the moment it came into contact with John’s naked chest. He felt pain and the outer layers of his skin being burned to a crisp. It spread out from his upper chest, searing the entire front side of his naked torso and even part of his throat. His pants protected the parts of him he was less keen on letting get burned. While the pain wasn’t strong enough to overcome his tolerance, the attack had managed to take a substantial chunk of his HP, about a fifth of it, in one go.

“HOW’S THAT FOR NOT WORKING, HUH?!” he heard the woman shout, while fire still consumed his field of view. Shaking his head, John started walking. “ARROGANT CU-“ She stopped when he broke out of the smoke. The wound on his chest disappeared just as he stopped in plain view. “How are you unscathed?!”

“I’m not,” John answered, brushing some scattered pieces of wood off his shoulder. It was a gesture meant more to express his uncaring attitude than to actually try to clean himself. The incineration had left most of him covered with ash and dust. Behind him, several of the chairs, or what remained of them, had caught fire. “That joint attack did actually do a fair bit of damage. Well, considering I let you, that’s not much of an accomplishment.” He activated Particle Skin again, an invisible change, but one that would protect him from further attempts regardless.

“Again, Vecht!” Aura declared.

“We… we don’t have… it’s useless!” the man responded.

“I said AGAIN!” Aura screamed. “ITS DEATH OR FREEDOM RIGHT NOW!” That seemed to convince them to at least try and gather enough mana for a second attempt. They hadn’t considered John in their plans, oddly enough. The Gamer picked another chair leg off the floor and hurled it like a spear. It slammed right into the side of Vecht’s head and made him fall over.

“If you make plans centred around one person, don’t make it so blindingly obvious who that one person is,” John gave a mocking word of advice.

“RAAAAAAAAAH!” was the incredibly intellectual response of Aura when she ran towards him. With blazing fists, she jumped at him from two metres away. Easily, John sidestepped the attack and then delivered a kick to her passing-by back. The speed of her lunge more than doubled and she was sent flying towards the door through which John had entered.

Loud sounds of splintered wood, then a commotion and laughter, clearly belonging to his girlfriend, accompanied Aura’s entrance into the foyer. John followed, first to check if Aura was knocked out and then to look at the public reaction. All of the henchmen stared with big eyes. There was no way they could have missed the commotion next door, but they had evidently resolved to stay out of it and expected a wildly different outcome.

“Congratz, tiger, ya finally mastered the Shirtless Fist,” Rave said.

“As if I needed any more experience in doing shirtless activities,” John bantered right back.

“Well, ya might need another minute to clean up?” she suggested, looking past him and at the remaining people still standing in the conference room.

“No, I think we are about done here.” John looked over his shoulder, challenging anyone to disagree.