“Oh my Lord…” John gasped, feeling like he was about to climax then and there, without receiving any sort of actual pleasure. His throat was a bit sore from the massive victory nerd-scream he had let out moments ago. Now, he fell over. That he landed on hard stone didn’t quite matter, he was just happy to lie down.

The temperature in the lair had dropped immediately upon Presta’s death. It had gone from extremely to pleasantly hot. Similarly, the tendency of the floor to explode under them had ended and the tiles that were gone returned from the lava. Most of the other girls also sat or laid down for a moment.

They weren’t mindlessly stressed out or anything, since they had taken healthy breaks between attempts. Additionally, this had only been the third attempt of the day. No, the reason for lying down was the same as collapsing during or after a strong orgasm: pure satisfaction and relief. They all gathered their breath individually, then gathered in some sort of victory cuddle. Even Siena ‘degraded’ herself to be part of it, although she refused to jump around in glee like everyone else. Well, Undine also joined her in that, and although Beatrice did it, she didn’t move a single muscle in her face.

John was too happy to mind any of that. “Alright, let’s check out the loot,” he announced, and they all marched over to a stone chest that had spawned in the middle of the room. That the drops didn’t go to the Loot Basin wasn’t all that surprising, Gaia liked to give him dramatically appropriate drops at the dramatically appropriate places. It had the same aesthetic as the door, molten rock roughly shaped like box and sealing perfectly tight despite the unsteady form. Gnome and Aclysia had to lift the lid together, pulling it up and then taking a number of steps to the side before dropping the impossibly heavy stone slab.

Traditionally, the sight of what was inside should have been a load of gold, but John was presented with a less fantastic and more clinically pleasing sight. First off, there was the money. 250 million USD, except the catch-up buff quadrupled that amount to a full billion. The chest was by no means small, but even in the biggest bills, one billion dollar wouldn’t have fit into it. Instead, John was presented with a golden check, signed by Gaia.

“She has a surprisingly cute signature,” John commented, looking at the cursive G followed by an overdesigned aia that looked heart-shaped in its totality. He looked at the thing for a few moments, inspected it for anything else of interest, but found nothing. Reason being that he would never see it again once he put it into his inventory.

The currency number for his inventory wasn’t how much money he actually had in his inventory, he had found out with time, it was how much money he was allowed to pull out of ‘nothing’. The difference between the two being that he wasn’t guaranteed to get the same 5 dollar bill out that he put in, only a 5 dollar bill that was accepted as proper currency. This check would dissolve into potential value and that would be that.

Although the question how he didn’t cause massive inflation on the world stage was still open. That had to be some shenanigans on a level only Gaia could correct.

‘At least that solves my money problems for the moment,’ John thought with a smile to himself. With one billion extra dollars, he could run the country safely for like… a week. ‘Expenditures are sure to explode once government is formed,’ he realized, the first sour taste of reality mixing in with the sweet, sweet victory of the day. Before it could settle, he checked the rest of what the chest contained.

A number of scales, claws and horns from Presta wandered straight towards Aclysia and Beatrice. They were okay crafting materials, but right now he had two Artificial Spirits to feed back up to his current level.

In the Uncommon bracket, he got 2 eyes, 1 tongue and 2 hearts (oddly enough). They all came in appropriately sized jars and seemed to be of the human form. Which was good, since John could only imagine the heart of the actual dragon to have been the size of a pony. Those were all materials he could do basically nothing with, having mostly alchemical values. He would offer them to some choice allies and acquaintances, Medelnick, the eunuch Apothecary, came to mind. Also Jeffrey, the creator of John’s contact lenses.

Which reminded him, as he put these things into his inventory. “Beatrice, have we heard back from Jeffrey yet?” He had made the offer and then backed off the affair. Unless it required his direct attention at negotiation, he didn’t want to spend more time than necessary. As his secretary, the passive maid would have been the person who this information stopped at. Thanks to her personality, it was easy to trust her to make sensible decisions. If she wasn’t 100% certain of John’s stance on the matter, she would refer it to him, otherwise she would just go along his lines without questioning things.

“Yes.” But her personality also had some annoying traits, such as her stopping at that answer.

“And which version exactly did he go with?” John prodded further.

“Recollection: Jeffrey agreed to move to the Hudson Barrier. Money and help has been sent,” Beatrice elaborated. “Do you wish me to inform you who was sent?”

“No, that’ll be enough.” John shook his head and smiled a little bit. Having raised Beatrice’s Mental Stats (and he had raised her Intellect in the days of the Fateweaving adjustment) had the advantage that she remembered a whole lot more about the things she was doing now. Previously, she had known everything that could be easily qualified as important. Such as his schedule, who he was supposed to meet and where. Now she also had the capacity to save some data about their target’s surroundings, personality, hobbies, what other people were associated with something by sheer chance and such things.

She was becoming a wellspring of data that John either didn’t have the time to get or wanted to double-check on. Although his memory was still better than hers in basically every aspect, having someone to cross-reference with was just reassuring.

Continuing on with the loot, John moved onto the Rare items. This was the first category he didn’t get everything in, despite the loot multiplicator. Of the five possible items to get, he was rewarded 3 different ones.

First off, there was the Red-blaze Blade, or Blades rather, as he got three of those. They each looked identical, light crimson, stainless blades, one edge, with no grip or guard and relatively short. That was quite interesting, as John had gotten numerous swords before but never just the blade. With the tang, it could be secured to basically anything.

‘Maybe Ted and Chemilia can use that?’ he wondered, turning the metal between his bare hands. It radiated a supernatural heat that intensified into a dangerous scorching towards the edge. He measured it against his lower arm, clicking his tongue when it extended from his elbow to the middle of his hand. ‘Clearly too long for Ted, Chemilia could work though,’ he thought and threw all three into his inventory to give to Scarlett for exact measurements later. They weren’t nearly as good as mithril weapons, so Aclysia would have no use for them.

Next thing he got was one Dragonslayer Plate. It was a full body plate armour. This was actually the second time that John had seen a complete set of items being seen as one solid one, the first time being the Armour of Brandenburg’s Miracle that Lydia’s father had been wearing to boost his sorry fighting capabilities. It was quite okay. That was to say, it was excellent when taken at face value, but when thinking about this armour consuming every item slot, then it was just okay. Its best Attributes were against fire and slash attacks, so dragon breath and claw swipes.

As someone who didn’t need physical defence Stats, John wasn’t a fan of armour. Between Mana Protection and Gamer’s Body, there was just no need to be afraid of being slashed or something. Better to invest into enchantment and looking stylish in battle. The latter had a fair dash of John’s vanity, but in his defence, lighter clothes tended to accept magic resistance enchantments easier.

For the last Rare item he got, he received one Core Crystal. It was a black, roughly round object. While it did approach a sphere, the surface was covered in dents and flat segments. It looked like a heavily mistreated d100, without the numbers. Apparently those sorts of crystals grew inside dragon brains and were their primary magical organ. At the size of a plum it didn’t look like too much, but apparently it was a strong crafting and enchanting material. He kept it for eventual use and would sell it if he found none.

In the Epic department, John got quite lucky. Lavaripper didn’t drop, but from the sound of it, that was another sword or scythe or some other kind of weapon that he didn’t know what to do with. Instead, he got two 15-kilogram Mithril ore pieces and one 1-kilogram piece of refined Oblivium.

The Mithril alone was worth a fortune. He had no idea how much actual metal could be refined from the pieces of silver-white veined rocks, but he was happy to have it nonetheless. The Oblivium was even more interesting.

Except for Mithril and Astrotium, all supernatural metals were created by mixing natural metal with elemental energies. The standard idea was that the strongest metal that could be created this way was Elementium, saturating an amount of metal equally with all six elements. It wouldn’t have been magic, however, if there weren’t some ill-understood exceptions (that would likely be understood one day, but that could be left to scientists).

Oblivium was one such exception and, furthermore, one that John was already familiar with. Filled beyond the standardly accepted threshold with infernal power, the black metal was created during one historical event, being the ascension of Nathalia to godhood. As that had happened in a less strictly separated time, that metal had been accidentally created over in the real world, which Gaia then scraped off and since locked away somewhere.

Meaning John could very well have been the only one to have access to it. Purgatory was made from that material, as was the Necklace of the World Ender, two items that he had worn for a long, long time now and had no intention of replacing. As for its strength, it appeared to be physically inferior to Mithril, but when it came to Elemental Resistance, particularly fire, it was a fair bit better. Not immensely so, if one would give all the natural Attributes of the two metals points and counted them, they would arrive at roughly the same number, but enough to be relevant.

‘I do wonder if these can be blended,’ he thought as he put both into his inventory. He already had a rough idea of what to do with them, especially once he got to legendary and got even more lucky, receiving one of each item.

Hoarding Space was, however, unspectacular. It increased his Inventory Space by 10, from 70 to 80. Good, very good even, John had long wanted his inventory to get bigger so he could carry more emergency food and the like, but just boring for the Legendary label. Dragon-blessed Mithril was slightly above that, but also just a crafting material. The difference between it and normal mithril being that it was simply better.

Regardless, John was happy to have it. More ore meant more material to work with. He wanted to make a weapon for Beatrice with this. The Deathmetal Spear was good, but Mithril was simply better.

Once the chest had been plundered, John got a new pop-up.

“Oh, fuck me yes,” John smirked as he looked between the choices and then picked the right one with a firm move of his hand. Loot was nice, but not nice enough to forego two SEP over. “Alright, let’s get out of here, I have a lot of points to spend and then I am just going to…” he tried to find an eloquent way to put it, but failed, so he resigned himself to being blunt. “I am going to fuck you all so hard until I can’t feel my own legs anymore and I have drained every last drop of cum I pent up the last few days inside your tight sexy holes.”

“L-lewd!” Gnome exclaimed, waving her hands in embarrassed motions in front of her beet-red face. “Too lewd! Bad John, you can’t just… can’t just say that out loud…,” her voice petered off as she looked to the floor. “…but I miss having you inside me so…”

“Lewd!” Salamander echoed her elder with a mocking cackle, patting the Asian looking soil elemental on the back. “Calm down, cuddle rock, this’ll be awesome.”

“I don’t doubt that, t-that’s not the point!” Gnome got worked up, only to push her fingertips together and then mumble something. “…kinda wet… don’t… needy… masturbated….” Was all John could make out before he got all of them out of the Raid. Using Escape I.D. opened a window asking him if he was sure he had done everything in the Raid. He confirmed and then was back in the darkness. A few more steps brought the group to the grassy plane.

They went back to their house and all just relaxed. Some girls went to take a shower, others a nap. The maids went to wolf down more of the items they had hoarded to give them level ups when needed. John excused himself for the moment and went to his room alone. He wanted to have some peace and quiet while he made his upgrade decisions.

Putting on some Metallica on the laptop he had put up there, he threw himself on the bed and got casually comfortable. Pants were off, his chest was covered only by a light t-shirt and his toes wiggled in the air as he rested against the wall. He opened his Character Screen and scanned everything.

‘Alright, what all do I have?’ John wondered and listed. ‘Minus the 50 points for Libido, I got 49 Stat Points to spend. 2 SEP, setting aside the one for Siena. One Class Level.’

He went with the Stats first, since he had already set himself a goal. 22 Points went into Agility, 25 in Endurance, leaving him with another 2, which he just put into Intellect and was done with it. ‘I guess I am going for Intellect 500 next,’ he just decided. Unless a better goal presented itself, more mana wasn’t necessary, but seemed like the most useful thing.

Up next was the Class Level. Luckily, he had already gotten the Challenges for the next Puppeteer level beat. It had just appeared rather obvious that he would end up in this situation soon, so he had taken the break presented by the Fateweaving adjustment to get this done as well. He was actually kind of excited for this next Perk, this whole Mana Double thing was just nice and had proven quite useful in the Raid already. He couldn’t wait to see how it developed further.

‘Quick progress is nice… too bad this is likely the high-point of it,’ he thought. There was no way this absurd levelling pace would keep up. Unless the next Raid was easier than this one had been, something very doubtful, there was no way they could beat it quickly. Knowing Gaia, the enemies in that next Raid would be around level 300, and that would be… difficult. With 5 more days, they might be able to kill a few more normal mobs, but John was keeping his expectations low. He had already gotten around 40 levels in the span of two weeks, so there was really no reason to ask for further niceties from Gaia. ‘Anyway, Perk.’

“What do we pick in this Class,” he mumbled to the rhythm of Whiskey in the Jar. Projection was still attractive, but he liked the other two choices more, so he once more skipped out on it. Copy Double and Power Double were both immensely useful. On first look, Copy Double may have been the clear winner by the Physical Stats bonus alone, but there was an important difference there. Copy Double gave the BASE Stats, Power Double did not. So, despite the percentage actually decreasing from 60 to 50%, it was an overall increase due to scaling from a higher value.

John spared himself running the math about when 80% Base was better than 50% total, as he had already made his decision, however. Power Double was fantastic, gaining access to his inventory was tremendous and the fact that equipment was mentioned to not work at that point was a hint towards it being possible down the line.

A thing that needed to be kept in mind though was that the Mana Double could kind of already equip weapons. They wouldn’t give any Stat bonuses or activate other non-passive Attributes, but it wasn’t like a sword in the Extension’s hands just popped out of existence. Unlike with John when he went over his equipment count, in which case items did just automatically get drawn into his inventory.

All of that said, he went with Copy Double. The Gamer wasn’t looking for another melee DPS, tank or frontline fighter in any way. What he wanted was the ability to be in two places at once. To that end, Copy Double’s lower upkeep cost and further detailing was exactly what he needed. Once he had picked the Perk, he immediately tested it.

The copy was, indeed, flawless. John felt like he was looking in a mirror and grabbing the arm no longer produced the feeling of grabbing a solid metal-man. There was heat and the softness of skin and fat over loose muscles and the feeling of soft fabric to stretchable clothes. All of it a copy by magical means, but an accurate one regardless. However, there were still two ways to check for the authenticity of the copy. For one, it didn’t smell like him. Where John’s cologne was basically ingrained into his being, a pleasant sweet, smoky smell underlined with vanilla, fresh sap and something spicy, the Mandala John smelled of metal, plain and simple.

The second and easier accessible one was that the Mandala Sphere had a different aura than him. As a Possessed item, it did have one, but it was pretty clearly a shard of a bigger one. If one could even see that much. The ability to see the auras of Possessed items itself was already uncommon. Basic aura sight was not. If the average Abyssal would check on this double, they would see nothing. Maybe some would mistake that for him being a blank, but only if they had never looked at a blank before. Their auras were more like empty frames than completely gone. More likely than that even, they could think he was hiding his aura with an item. That could cause its own series of uncomfortable questions in some cases though. It was, however, at least going to make the double seem like the genuine man.

‘Well, let’s hope it gets further obfuscating with future Perks,’ John hoped and checked the Challenge, expecting something wholly unreasonable. As Puppeteer was now level 8, it was at the same point as he was stuck at with Elementalist. However, what he found was quite reasonable. “Huh, just another racing challenge,” he said to himself, literally. “That sounds possible, doesn’t it?”

Mandala John opened his mouth and even moved his lips, but failed to produce any sounds. John proper furrowed his eyebrows.

“Can’t speak either… well, there is always more Perks,” he noted down and decided to give this state of the Mandala Sphere some nickname that would make future talks about it less confusing. ‘Twice? That could work, but seems like it could lead to some misunderstandings in casual conversations. Maybe just go with German and call him Doppel? Would also work with Doppelgänger… but Jane and Lydia will never stop making fun of that. Twoman? No, even I wouldn’t want to hear that pun every day. Mhm… ah, Jack! I’ll go with Jack.’

That had been the name of the mechanical sparrow he used to Possess. Seemed to work rather well and was nice and short. He reverted Jack back into the Mandala Sphere for the moment. At 20% of his mana regeneration, he could justifiably keep that up all the time, but having to control a body double at all times was a bit awkward and likely confusing for the girls. Better to hover around as a sphere. Was easier to use as a flying eye anyway.

‘Now, what to spend these SEP on?’ he continued to wonder about things. His first instinct was Mana Protection. It seemed best to increase his defence first. Nodding to himself, he clicked on it and checked out the choices.

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ John thought. Arcana Isolation was out, no question about it. Strong effect, but very niche and way too high costs. Thornshell was okay, but more for a tank build. Particle Skin forced John to give up the pre-charge, but in return freed him of the necessity to activate it. The reason why the pre-charge was neat was because John usually picked his fights, this was especially true in dungeons. However, in public life, having something that just automatically activated when somebody tried to stab him in the eye or shoot him with a sniper round was incredibly useful.

That aside, John had been wary for a while of people like Metra, that could open a portal behind Mana Protection. They were exceedingly rare, sure, but one of the ‘people’ he had seen use a spell like that was Izha, the Lorylim that kept appearing on his path. Better to be secure against that now that he had the opportunity.

So, while Mana Protection (and Thornshell by extension) was better in the dungeon environment, Particle Skin made him more secure in day to day activity. Given that he found other humans to be the more challenging aspect of living than things he beat up to gain levels, Particle Skin was the choice to go. On a sentimental note, the Skill sounded almost exactly like Abraham’s Nano Mana, but the difference was that Particle Skin was above the skin while Nano Mana had been in it.

‘Now, for the second SEP…’ The choices were manifold, but he was mostly torn between Shardbound and Mana Blade. The thing between those two was that he had come to dislike having two variable spenders. Shardbound’s immense flexibility was outstanding, but it also made the Skill difficult to use as there were so many things that had to go into it. John had found that he was using it either as a spray and pray or in the same sniping way as he had its predecessor Mana Ray. It was highly effective at both, but it could always be more effective.

Mana Blade’s primary drawback was range. Its size was dictated by the amount of mana spent on it, making uses below a certain threshold, about 700 mana for 1-2 metre length, somewhat useless. As damage also went up with mana spent, John sometimes ended up with massive swords when he wanted to hit something right in front of him. That could be a problem when an ally was right behind that same enemy. That aside, he was never really using it as a sword. It was always either a limited range beam or, nowadays, a whirlwind on the Mandala Sphere.

Both of these were already immensely effective though, so he would rather improve on Shardbound than on Mana Blade right now. That Shardbound was maxed out while Mana Blade wasn’t helped to come to that conclusion.

‘Not looking for specific AoE, even though Mana Glass does look pretty good…’ John thought and then looked at the other two choices. Swarm Splinters seemed to be Shardbound but better, sacrificing the flexible costs in part for tracking. The spell sounded like what Sylph had encountered during the Little Maryland fight against the sky fortress. If it was the same, that was quite potent.

John looked at Arc Lance with the greatest conviction. It had always drawn him to long range, high damage spells and this seemed to be the next iteration of that path. The one functionality he would lose was the ability to set traps, it sounded like. He had seldom been able to take advantage of that though and Arcane Echo did the same job well enough.

Picking that concluded this proper upgrade session. ‘Alright, girls, I am ready when you are, waiting in the bedroom,’ he sent out the mental booty call. To his surprise, Aclysia responded first. The surprising part being what she responded with.

‘Beatrice and I will be joining you later, we are going to prioritize cooking for the moment.’ The weaponized maid didn’t sound annoyed in anyway. On the contrary, she sounded quite happy. Clearly there had been some sort of background deal made. Siena also stayed silent, while the four other elementals all signalled that they were on the way.

Before they arrived, John quickly dumped the remaining points into Libido. It was time to see what those Perks were.

That was nice. John, in his whole career as a lover, had always had an eye for whether or not he could make his girls climax before he did. More often than not, he got them there several times before he did himself and then they had a synchronized orgasm at the end regardless. That was all willpower, knowing his lovers well and skill. Now he had something that would make it extra eventful when he filled them up and that just made him grin.

He could hear it already, the girls begging for that creampie. Not just because they were in a naughty mood and wanted the dirty talk, but also because it would give them a genuinely awesome orgasm.

‘Good, good,’ was all John felt at that. It was a start, but he was more interested in where this would go.

Now THAT was a fetish dream come true. What man didn’t want to have his cock sucked enthusiastically? He could see it, girls swallowing the load with the deepest fervour, moaning in delight as they tasted the cum on their lips and dripping on the floor as it made them orgasm themselves. Fantastic.

And THAT was John’s DEEPEST fetish wish come true. The begging part he barely cared about, it was just there should he have been a submissive (or for the days where he was taking the part, rare as that was). That ability to tell his girls what they had to do and being able to reward them for it with raw pleasure, even more, to tell them to simply climax, that was the greatest gift he could have asked for.

And (a shower later) it was time to put all of that to use.