A spear ripped its way through Aclysia’s stomach. It was a graceful and terrible piece of gear, one piece, made from a material with a metallic shine, flattened and sharpened for the entire length of it, with leaf-shaped blades that now opened by some magical mechanism, creating hooks.

John didn’t even have any idea where it had come from. Whether a trap or an enemy had thrown it. All he was clear on was that a second one came in and nailed Aclysia through the shoulder. Ripping them out wasn’t exactly an option, at least not one they could take quickly. With the hooks on both ends, pulling or pushing was out until they had snapped the damn thing and it appeared to be quite hard.

A third spear rushed through the air; this time John was at least able to make out the origin. Some sort of four-armed creature standing on top of one of the many cliffs that surrounded them. The group was inside a granite canyon, at least that was the best way John could describe it. Three valley paths stretched out from where they were, all surrounded by dark grey rock, yellow and silver layers decorating the splintered walls.

They were inside a new Raid. John had opened it to check whether they could take advantage of a few more level-ups using the high-level creatures inside. Given that Aclysia was already through three fifths of her HP, he kind of doubted it. The name was Valley of Stone and Thunder. The sky was wonderfully clear.

The creature ducked back behind one of the many rock formations above, before John could Observe it. He had more luck with another one that appeared on the neighbouring plateau between two canyon arms. His naked eyes made out little more than the silhouette, four arms, two considerably thicker, otherwise hunched over and apelike.

‘Yeah, I am not dealing with that,’ John decided, having a deja vu to the last time he had entered a Raid. This time it didn’t come immediately. Since he still had Fateweaving on his side, there were no better conditions to run a Raid. As a matter of fact, John had already created the silent policy of ‘No Raiding without Fateweaving’ courtesy of the 113 wipes they had experienced.

He did try to get one of the Sicklemen. For a whole day they tried, since one of those would easily be worth a day’s worth of grinding. It turned out to be quite the shitshow, however. The first problem was to even get on the platforms.

There was a safe spot in the centre of the crossroad area of the canyon. It was outside the throwing range and thus allowed them to stand at ease. A single step out and they were immediately targeted.

There seemed to be one Sickleman per plateau. As such, they only had to deal with one at a time if they approached things properly. That was already enough though. The spears flew quick enough that even Sylph had to pay attention to dodge them and they had an endless supply of them, judging by how carefree they chucked them around.

Anyway, from that safe spot they had to run through a field that was hard to navigate on the ground due to the cleft and uneven treading, while being nice and flat from above, letting the Sicklemen aim with ease. It was usual for at least one of them to be killed on the way. That the spears were long enough to nail a person to the floor if hit didn’t help.

Once at the plateau itself, the wall was a good fifty metres tall. Climbing it was difficult. Flying up was the superior option. As for flying in general, the Sicklemen didn’t even try to aim at the harder prey that flew above and either shrugged off weak hits or dodged the stronger ones by shrinking into a shadow. Unlike Siena, tiny spots of darkness seemed to satisfy their requirements. Not quite the shade of a pebble, but something around a book page in size was enough for them. Which was odd given their size.

They ignored flyers, unless they got in range. Then they moved with disgusting quickness and executed a combo that was a guaranteed one-shot to Salamander. Namely, they grabbed the target with their sickles, then pulled them to the tarantula-like fangs that hung under their eight-eyed head and skewered the brains of the unlucky target. Salamander had not been happy about dying like that. Sylph was too small to be affected, but she still had to dodge swipes and her attacks were mostly ignored as the Sickleman continued to pick off those who had to run.

The only exception the Sicklemen made to their ‘ignore aerial targets’ rule was when the aerial target turned into two slowed targets. In other words, getting flown up there was its own set of risks. Even when they, towards the end of the day, managed to get a reasonable number of people up there, the Sickleman fought in such an alien way that they didn’t quite know how to handle it. Like a cat or a spider, the creature often stopped moving mid-fight, only to then attack in an absolute lethal fury. Everyone who got grappled, well, that story had been told.

As John learned on the occasion: Raid enemies retained marks from wounds they had taken in previous encounters, but were healed of all wounds instantly between attempts and did not retain any crippling. By the end of the day, they therefore decided that it was not worth using the rest of the Catch-Up Buff duration on more fruitless attempts.

They had only 4 more days after all. What they did instead was easily summarized in Assaults and Arenas. John wanted items and experience, so those were the best roads to that goal. It went by largely eventless. Three days were entirely spent on that end, and the last day in the barrier was then dedicated to cleaning themselves up. According to all clocks, they would come out at about eight in the morning on John’s birthday.

Although that meant it was technically already his birthday, everyone had the silent agreement to not congratulate him just yet. Would have been odd anyway, given the time dilation and everything.

Those remaining 3 days they used in full were not as fruitful as the previous two weeks, but that was a tall order anyway. John gained about one and a half level for every day, putting him at level 211 once everything was over. Which, of course, meant that he got another Class Level. Staying consistent he improved Puppeteer further. Finally getting a Class beyond level 8 was something he liked to have under his belt, even if it wasn’t the Class he wanted.

‘…I’m not quite sure if Switcheroo is powerful enough to warrant a position at Perk number 9, Gaia,’ John thought. ‘Of course, it’s good but… come on, level 9 in a Class and you give me a basic bitch teleport?’ The supreme deity was silent, so John sighed and looked at the other two choices. Switcheroo was ignored, he could get teleports elsewhere, even if this one was immensely potent.

Between the other two, the choice was pretty quick, since John already knew what he wanted and one of those choices fit the description and the other didn’t. Fighter Double was good. Like, extremely good. Detail Double, however, had the ability to speak and thus completed his ability to be at two places at once. Well, almost, the Mandala Sphere couldn’t enter or exit Illusion Barriers on its own yet. That aside, it was exactly what John wanted and he picked it without further questioning things.

Then it was time to finally upgrade the Artificial Spirits. He had spent Stat Points along the way, but could put some Perks into action. He started with Aclysia, as was tradition.

‘Huh, well, it’s boring, but at least its predictably boring,’ John decided. Artificial Spirit choices had come down to 1% upgrades quite often, so those being rolled into one window for everything was at least straight-forward. Going by pure mathematics, it was best for him to increase Strength, so that’s what he did.

The idea that this would keep him occupied for a few years struck him as rather realistic. There were a total of 90 increases he could make there, with 2 per natural cycle of the Skill being available. A Skill that already needed months to max out and only decreased in speed. ‘Scratch years, make that decades,’ John thought and moved onto the next thing.

At least that was what he planned to do until he saw that awful thing.

“No!” he exclaimed. “Why, why would you ever make it fill sideways, that’s just torture! Bottom up, make the bar fill bottom up, oh my God. This…” he noticed the girls surrounding him looking at him with amused or startled expressions, his outbreak having been rather sudden. He took a deep breath, “I am calm… I am calm…” and moved on.

‘Oh hey, that’s also new,’ John thought, then went over the choices. Sword Specialization was out, for the same reason as always when he was presented with the ability to give Aclysia ranged slice attacks: she could already do it by virtue of her weapons Eclys and Marath. There was no urgent need to give her that ability.

While Juggernaut was powerful, as anti crowd control effects tended to be, John didn’t want to give her more spenders when she had so few builders. To that end, True Block was okay. Taking damage had never been the greatest threat to Aclysia, but if she had the ability to prevent it and get all the other advantages that came with successfully blocking, such as keeping the advantage in the pacing of the fight, that was good. The choice was made and True Block was added to Aclysia’s repertoire.

He still wasn’t having kids anytime soon and Headmaid was attractive for her servant university project, but John wanted the Sex Servant Perk and for the love of everything that was holy, he would have it. The idea of Aclysia getting 100% more horny when the switch was flipped, to make her orgasm on command and whatever the hell an AMAZING pussy was supposed to feel like. Well, he had a rough idea, Siena and Salamander could create states with their sexes that were simply unfair. He needed to know more about this and there would be time for experimentation. For now, he just picked the choice and was done with it.

‘I like this new layout,’ John concluded that upgrade session. It was a lot easier and streamlined, less of the volatility between extremely boring and powerful choices with vastly different AP costs. ‘Onto Beatrice!’

‘Seems like the previous Nimble choices haven’t translated into this system,’ John observed, then picked the Swing increase. Since that was the only way he found to even increase that resource so far, it seemed best to invest in it.

John loved Elimination. Like, seriously, that thing looked absurd. However, with her limited Reverse building options, or rather the limit she had in terms of regeneration of Swing, he didn’t see much chance of it to ever be cast at a duration that was worthwhile. Especially because the spender competition Twist Position was so much better and more versatile.

Like Aclysia, Beatrice’s weapon had a ranged option, as seldom as it was used. Given that her weaponry was subject to change, it would be quite smart to get Spear Specialization 3, boring as it was. Needle Assault also didn’t strike John as all that great. 10% of Beatrice’s Strength basically meant that most strikes would bounce off the enemy’s defences, if assuming roughly equal level. It could still be effective, but John thought the general improvement of better handling of her weapon and ranged attacks to be superior and as such picked the leftmost thing.

Those were pretty juicy. Engine of Order went out first. For a start, because John thought he was already good at calling out lies himself. Secondly, because the people they had to be wary of wouldn’t be able to be caught by a lie detector test. Thirdly, because he was afraid of what would happen to her semi-compulsive adjusting of the environment if he boosted her pattern recognition further.

Enigma Code was the clear winner between the remaining two choices. Increased Wisdom already meant a higher Swing regeneration, but that was just the bonus to mind control immunity. That had been the whole reason he had even gone ahead and increased their Mental Stats. Not that he would take it back now that he had done it. Enigma Code was picked and that was that.

All of that decided, he checked both their character sheets one more time to be sure he had all their Stats correctly in mind.

He did the same for the elementals, while he was at it.