“Before you think I hurt the person, I didn’t.” Gamma continues. “I just exiled him, but that’s already a pretty hefty punishment if you ask me.”

“Exiled him from where exactly?” Sam tilts her head.

“I just transported him to a different world without all the fancy technological advantages from his home planet. And I made sure to not give him anything like you often see in those ‘isekai’ stories that are so popular on Earth at the moment.”

“You didn’t hit him with a truck, did you?”

“No, I just snapped my fingers and he was gone.” Gamma replies. “Hitting someone with a truck is way more risky.”

“Now it sounds like you tried that one already…”

“No, but let’s say that the concept is not far removed from certain realities.”

“Oh…”

I look at my girlfriend with a smile and put my hand on her shoulder. “I will protect you from any other accidents. Especially truck related ones.”

“Thanks, love.” She smiles back, leans in and kisses me on the lips.”But if you don’t, would you come after me and search for me in my new life?”

“Darn right I would!” I nod enthusiastically.

Sam chuckles. “And you would even love me if I was a worm?”

I snort. “Yes, but I think I would prefer a wyrm over a worm.”

“Wyrms are a lot cooler, that’s true.”

“Sid…” Veanya takes a moment to pull Sid by the arm.

“What’s wrong?” Our gentle giant is quick to pay full attention to her.

“Could you let them be gay in a different room for the moment. Their sweetness is making the stew sweeter than it should be. It almost starts tasting like dessert.”

“I’m afraid that this house only has one room.” He replies back.

“We can go smooch outside.” Sam suggests with a grin. “Although I would prefer doing it indoors to avoid the stares of the soldiers outside.”

Gamma smiles and rolls her eyes, tossing a blanket at the two of us. “Here, you can kiss under this for a while. It’s nice and cozy.”

“Sounds like a good plan.” Sam smirks.

“Don’t make any weird noises though!” Veanya ads. “That would defeat the point.”

“We won’t promise anything.” I smile. “Besides, this is all your fault. You set the two of us up, remember?”

“I know, I know.” Veanya winks. “Do as you wish, I was just messing around.”

“Ah, young love. What a great thing to behold.” Sid nods. “Things that should be cherished, that’s for sure.”

In the end we decide not to immediately hide ourselves in plain sight with a blanket over our heads, rather we decide to wait until the end of the evening so Sam and I can have a little privacy in our bedroll. While the room isn’t very big, it’s still big enough for Sam and I to lay on the other side, being relatively secluded from the others. As it seems even Gods need a good rest and therefore we decide to turn in really early.

Sam scootches up really close to me and pulls me even closer to her so I’m almost completely smothered by her chest, a rather admirable situation to find myself in, if I say so myself.

“You feeling okay, Ami?” She whispers into my ear as she hugs me tight.

“Mhmm. I’m nice and cozy.”

“And nothing’s hurting anymore, right?”

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I shake my head, tickling her a little with my nose. “No, I’m a rather tough cookie it seems.”

“Good.” She chuckles softly. “It was scary to see you get hit like that, twice, in the matter of fact.”

“Mhmm. I can believe that. But to be honest, I’m glad that we did what we did today. Even though it really hurt, we did save a lot of people as well with our actions, and I think that’s way more important than anything else. While I can resurrect people, if the enemy had broken through and had gotten into the cities behind us… Yeah, I would rather not think about what would have happened. Even though that’s the reason why we got the kids and their mom out of the settlement.”

“Yeah…” Sam rubs her hands over my back. “I’m not saying I regret our actions today either. But it is normal to be scared, right? To be afraid to lose the person you care most about…”

“Mhmm.” It’s my turn to hug my girlfriend close to me. “It is, I was pretty scared too. And I still am.”

“About what we will face tomorrow?”

“Yeah… I find it hard to believe that the creature we encountered today is the strongest one they have in store for us. Especially since we are nowhere close to their actual base yet.”

“I was thinking about that too.” Sam replies softly. “But at least we’ve already found a way to deal with them, although it comes at quite a cost.”

“I’d rather not do that again, but if we have to, I will.”

Sam smiles and gives me a kiss on my forehead. “Anyway, let’s stop thinking about that for now and sleep for a bit. Resting your psyche is also important.”

“Mhmm… That might be hard to do with your boobs in front of me though.” I chuckle back.

Sam chuckles as well. “That’s a gearshift for sure, but definitely in the spirit of what I was talking about.” She then puts her right hand on the back of my head and presses my face even more into her bosom.

“I’m going to sniff yer boob.”

“Go right ahead.” She continues her chuckle. “Just don’t get too intoxicated, okay.”

big sniff “I’m always intoxicated by you, Sam. Boob or not.”

The night ends up shorter than I had liked but at least I feel well-rested when our party slowly starts to wake up again. To no one's surprise we do kind of need to drag Gamma out of her bed roll, but even her, after a little bit of enticing, manages to get up for a nutritious breakfast. As for Veanya, she looks a lot better than yesterday, the color back in her cheeks and a glint in her eyes.

“You’ve recovered well.” Sam smiles at our oldest godly friend.

“I have. That night’s rest really did wonders.”

“It’s probably partly because of Amicia’s aura.” Sidolphus replies.

“Oh, I don’t remind telling you that. Did you figure it out yourself?” I ask in return.

“There’s always a faint healing aura coming from you. It’s not terribly obvious but I can feel it having a soothing effect on my body.”

“Yeah. I’d assume a God of good bodily health could tell.” Sam smiles.

“And how are you yourself feeling, Amicia?” Sid asks back.

“I feel pretty fine.” I admit.

“Good to hear. You are the lynchpin after all.”

We then continue eating our breakfast in relative silence until both Sam and I are done with our meal. She then comes over and sits down next to me, poking me in my waist. “Ami, before we head out, should we check out our skill points first? Might be best to power up as much as we can before heading out for combat again, right?”

“That’s not a bad idea.” I admit with a nod.

“Oooh. Skill points.” Gamma claps her hands in excitement. “I want to watch too, it’s so sad that we don’t get those.”

“You don’t?” Sam tilts her head towards Gamma.

Veanya also shakes her head. “The power of the three of us, while very substantial, will only remain constant because our connection to this world is not as strong as yours. The only power we gain is the power we gain by actual combat experience.”

“Even though you connected Ami to this world yourself?” Sam asks.

“Yes.” Veanya nods.

“Cross-world shenanigans is wonky as fuck.” Gamma replies.

Veanya chuckles. “Yes, while I’ve already mentioned so a couple of times before in a less… brazen way, that’s basically it. It’s a very complicated science we have not mastered yet, but you already knew that. It might be something connected to this world in particular, being a video-game based world, that makes it even more complicated to really get a good grasp on too.”

“To put it into video game terms. We are player characters at max level but with our customization choices locked, while you and your party are very high level characters with a developer console built into your skillset.”

“That’s the thing though, isn’t it?” Sam scratches her cheek. “You said Amicia and her party… And with party you are talking about Élise, Hilda, Nikki, me, Carol and Max… But what happens if you three hang around Amicia for long enough in this world? Wouldn’t that mean that after a while, the three of you would get influenced as well by being around her? Your connection will only deepen with the world, won’t it?”

“Hmmm.” It seems that Sam peeked Gamma’s interest quite a bit with her return question. “Maybe… But then again, we didn’t connect to this world the same way you did, using the video game console… Perhaps we could try that next time?” Gamma looks at her fellow Gods.

Sid frowns at that suggestion. “I don’t know Gamma, I would prefer to not mess around with cross world dynamics like that… At least not until the problem this world currently has, has been contained.”

Gamma shrugs. “I suppose that’s true, but it’s still an intriguing thought.”

*Maybe Sam shouldn’t have speculated together with Gamma… I don’t really want to bring the purple chaos tornado onto any potentially dangerous ideas…*