In the end, that single run had taken 24 minutes and 9 seconds. Had the Slerkin gotten their hands on the sphere… well, Siena would likely have solved that predicament. Regardless, they had managed to get the object to the end location. The 3% experience John got from that was, of course, fairly insignificant. In terms of progress towards his sight, however, it had worked splendidly.

John had stumbled, fallen, lost orientation, and other such things. While each instance was mighty unpleasant, it was also the reason for the exercise. Not to mention the clear improvement that had been made in some fields.

“Alright, everybody, we’re going to take a short break and then go again,” he announced, closing the dungeon to remake it later. It was best to let everyone recover first, have Mana Protection top out again, that sort of thing. “I want you to protect me a little less next time around. Alright?”

Through their actions, Aclysia and Beatrice had minimized his contact with enemy action. Sure, they hadn’t blocked all of it, but they could have done way less. The intention here was to gradually increase the difficulty with every run. Although Aclysia didn’t like that strategy, she agreed to it. They went back in again a little later.

And then they went back in again.

And again.

Numerous times, the entire waking morning, they spent repeating that dungeon. Then they went back to the house to eat. Only to return to dungeon running two hours later. For another four to five hours, they went in to the Lizardmen Instant Dungeon. The next day looked exactly the same.

Some runs looked better than others. Generally, their clear time could be described as a negative trend. The less protection John had, the slower he advanced. This was completely expected. In a run for actual success, he wouldn’t have been the flag carrier anyway. What did improve, however, was John’s sight.

By the third day of these repeats, John felt like he had no more problems whatsoever. Gaia seemed to disagree, however, since the quest didn’t get fulfilled. Having the second opinion of the supreme deity of the world, John decided to keep going. On the evening of the fifth day, finally, did he get the pop-up.

“Fantastic!” he exclaimed, stretching with all due satisfaction. The best news was, of course, that he had beaten the Goal of the Quest itself. However, all of the rewards were a lot more tangible. Taking into account the two levels he had gotten thanks to all of the dungeon runs, he now had 28 Stat Points to spend. He hadn’t so far, because he knew he would get more and spending everything at once was more satisfying. Especially since there was no rush.

Otherwise, a Max Class Level was always good. He would think about using that momentarily, but first, it was Skill Evolution Time. He opened his menu, ready to just go ahead and do it, when he heard something odd.

“Could you do me the favour, John, and hold onto that for the moment?” Siena asked, causing John to freeze.

He had heard her perfectly well, the words made sense, but the meaning that came out at the end didn’t quite make sense. “Pardon?” he asked furrowing his eyebrows.

“I do not want to ascend a Tier right now,” the nightmare elemental spelled it out more directly. Her sensual voice spoke in a calm, melodic pattern, she was clearly being earnest about this. “Hold back, be a good boy and there is going to be some more satisfaction in it for you later. I promise.”

“Okay, give me a second,” John said, but already dismissed the menu. “You, Siena, are deliberately foregoing power for the moment, in order to pursue some sort of later satisfaction.”

Narrowing her eyes, the shadow spirit hissed, “Does that displease you?”

“No, no,” he defensively waved his hands. “It’s just that you’re more of the ‘stab first, think of consequences later’ type. So it’s kind of unusual.” He took a pause. “How long are we talking here?”

“Mhmmm,” she half-hummed, half-moaned, “I don’t think that matters, you’re already firm in your decision, aren’t you?”

Well, she was right. John wouldn’t use the SEP on her when she was against it. He simply hadn’t considered that she could be against it, thus him moving ahead and almost doing it. Since his general stance towards his elementals was to treat them like people, not tools (common sense, as far as he was concerned), forcing a change on any of them would have gone against his values.

Regardless, this did annoy him a little bit. He was just going to hazard a guess and say that this was related to this ‘bed in the woods’ surprise Siena had been somewhat nervous about. Which meant he was going to waste about 15 days’ worth of increased productivity. It was safe to say that a Tier 4 Siena would be more helpful in clearing dungeons. It wasn’t going to be some sort of great revolution of their clearing strategy, but even just 5% more efficiency could make a huge difference over any meaningful timeframe.

That and the Skill Levels he could gain in that time. There was one more evolution after that one, after all. “Well, I guess I am just going to sit on it then…” John decided. There was a window for the second Quest, the one for beating Rehab in the current timeframe, but John wanted to get his other affairs sorted before he checked out what the Catch-Up Buff was.

Therefore, it was first time to take a look at his own Stats. 28 points to spend and he had already made the decision to get Charisma to 100, so that was 22 of them gone.

And that was equally unspectacular and very, very interesting. Did that mean he could have a harem of infinite size now? That was what the numbers said, but then again, those were always a reflection of what he could theoretically do, not of the practical reality of things. As such, the limitation was likely not ‘infinity’ but ‘the number of girls John Newman can talk to regularly’.

Still though, Relationship Slots had been a mechanic he only once had really interacted with, when it dipped into the negative for a few moments, and otherwise just… faded into the background. That they were completely gone now, therefore, wasn’t really an impact on his mood.

However, since Charisma now hit 100, he also got two Synergy Perks!

Kind of interesting. Not particularly powerful, but also not the worst. Giving his girls a little bit extra Libido before sex would surely be interesting.

That was a lot more interesting. A bit of bedroom manipulation was right up John’s alley. From the way it was worded, he could tell that this wasn’t some mind-control shenanigans. It just made it easier to convince those interested in him to see things his way. Something that he wasn’t struggling with anyway. If there had been any sinister note to it, he wouldn’t have wanted it. At least not without the ability to toggle it. The idea to accidentally talk someone into something they wouldn’t be comfortable with the next morning didn’t ring well with him.

That both of these Perks were somewhat weak didn’t bother him. Libido was a vanity Stat anyway, whose solitary Perks were enjoyable enough, and Charisma had such a broad range of base applications that its Perks being relatively weak was pretty justified.

The remaining 6 points wandered into Wisdom. With that Charisma side-track finished, he really wanted to aim at the 500 Perk for MP/sec.

‘Interesting that the first sexual skill I got is the last I’ll max out…’ John thought, scratching his head. ‘Do I use my tongue that little? Well, no, that’s out by default, the Skill is at Level 99. I just use it comparatively less… Given my love of dirty talk and my more sadistic leanings, I guess that makes sense.’ He stopped in his thoughts for a moment. ‘Dear Lord that sounded cringy. I should stop analysing my sexual habits like it’s a strategy guide.’

The much better question was what to use that Max Class Level on. The choices he found sensible were Lover Boy, Puppeteer and Unfound. The middle was the most obvious choice. Classes clearly provided stronger perks in the higher levels and Puppeteer was already at 4. Plus, further upgrading his Extension, given how useful the Mandala Sphere was, couldn’t be wrong.

Lover Boy was also already at level 3 and John was really interested in where Lover’s Will would go. However, he had to admit that this wasn’t the smart choice.

Unfound was the new Class he had gotten for being blind, essentially. It was at level 0, which conversely made it extra juicy to get a first level into. Every Class had a number of bonuses, usually 3, only one of which stuck around when it wasn’t the active Class. John, most of the time, kept to Elementalist, since that provided Stat bonuses to all 6 elementals when active. Levelling Unfound would allow him to find out which one was its sticking bonus.

Puppeteer and Unfound were the reasonable things to invest in. Ultimately, he decided to go with Puppeteer. Yes, Unfound tickled his fancy immensely, but he had restored his eyesight to normal levels now, so getting a stand-in wasn’t as important. Of course, it was easy to state that it would have been wise to be able to see more than others, but was it really wiser than investing into something he knew made him stronger?

John doubted it.

‘Alright, Puppeteer… if I remember correctly… Yup.’ John switched to the Class and found he had already gone through the motions of getting it ready for the next Class Level. Wasn’t that difficult when he was always running around with at least three Possessions active.

‘Well, that’s boring,’ John thought. Those were the exact same choices he had gotten last time, except Polishing 1 had been replaced with Polishing 2. Overwrite was pretty useless still. He rarely encountered situations where that would even be useful. Most of the time he brought his own possessable objects. Plus, now that he needed to touch things to use the Skill, it was even less useful.

Golem Creation was good in theory, but John didn’t really need more things to dump mana into and crowded the battlefield further. Maybe he would go for it down the line regardless, but not right now.

Making his Extension even better was basically a no-brainer. Usually, he equipped it with Mana Blade and Mana Protection, since those were the best spells to boost offensive and defensive capabilities of the Mandala Sphere. As a third spell, Arcane Echo sounded quite good. Also having more mana saved up was always useful. It was boring, but it was an easy choice.

‘Now, onto that Buff,’ he decided and opened the second Quest window.

‘That’s so nice of her,’ John thought, seriously feeling like everything was getting back on track. Which also awoke the counter-feeling that things had to fall apart again, in some capacity, in the not-too-distant future. ‘Before I go and get stuck on either of these, let’s actually see what this does.’

To call that insane was nothing short of accurate. The buff was pretty long-lasting, persisting right up until his birthday. He would have 15 days to take proper advantage of this, which was more than enough time. While the best part for him, doubtlessly, was the EXP gain being increased to twice the usual amount, the entire array of other rewards was nothing to be sneezed at either. John still had a bunch of Equipment Slots that were filled with temporary or second-rate items. To be precise, his Head, Chest, Underwear, Legs, Feet and Accessory Slots all could use something more useful. The only thing that might stay on were the Perma Lenses and Helbrecht’s Soulpotion. However, the former were very much a stand-in for something better that he could buy down the line and the Soulpotion had largely lost its use at this point. Giving the experience it could save to Rave was like dropping water on a hot stove. Okay, it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but it didn’t provide easy level-ups for those around him anymore.

Nia or Lydia could have profited from it a bit more, but neither of them were around. Whenever he had the chance, John had instead given some of the boosting concoction to Magnus, but he was already at the edge of his potential, so it did fairly little.

So, there was a lot of loot he could potentially use. Aside from him, Beatrice could always use a better spear. It wasn’t that her current one was bad, the Deathmetal Spear was quite powerful, but it fell short when compared to Aclysia and her Mithril weaponry. ‘Well, if there is no proper drop for her, I think I could just buy her something once this is done…’ the Gamer thought, ‘Quadruple money should get my finances right back up there… maybe I can even announce a tax break at my birthday festival. That’d surely lift the mood.’

“Master?” Aclysia carefully asked when John had been lost in thought for a while. They were just standing in the darkness of an undefined Illusion Barrier. “Have you made a decision?”

“I’m having a bit of trouble right now,” he admitted, torn between two paths forwards. Originally, he had just wanted to go back to grinding Assaults, as he had always done. However, the bonus experience for higher level enemies did make him hesitate. There was one Instant Dungeon, a very special one, that was guaranteed to give the highest return on time investment here. The enemies there were much higher level than them and the bosses were said to have absolutely fantastic loot. Multiplying the experience, they got by another figure and getting more of the best loot in the game, yeah, that sounded like the path forwards.