‘Progress is good these days,’ John thought, as he coordinated a combo attack between Siena and Smlere. Mana intertwined a ball of molten rock and darkness, launched by the volcano elemental with a long hurl of her arm. It flew across the room and slammed into the chest of the boss enemy before them.

The short fur covering human-muscles was seared away by the lava. Sticking to it like an adhesive, the darkness infused attack continued to injure the large creature. With a demonic bellow, more annoyed than in pain, it charged at Smlere, pointing its curved horns at the amazonian woman.

Hooves trampled over black, uneven stone. The boss was something close to a minotaur, but more a goat than a bull in its inhuman part. Simultaneously, because of how broad its frame was and of the shape of its skull, John hesitated to call it a satyr. Either way, wielding a giant axe of a dark red colour, it was of an intimidating but fairly basic design. The same could be said about the encounter at large.

Smlere had to back off; even she wasn’t strong enough to withstand a swipe of the large weapon head on. Neither was she required to; the entire purpose between fusing Salamander and Gnome in this encounter was that the boss was largely immune against fire damage. All Smlere had to do was to keep baiting out the enemy’s attention to give the other party members openings to attack.

The axe bounced off the indestructible floor, but gave Siena an opening regardless. Unleashing to maximize her speed, she jumped onto the haft of the weapon and used it as a tightrope. The boss attempted to swipe her away, but his arm was suddenly hit by a number of slicing gusts. Only mildly penetrating the durable hide, Sylph’s attack did throw the interception entirely off course. Siena jumped off the haft and onto the boss’ shoulder.

“You should be honoured that you’re allowed to make my heels dirty,” the moonshade elemental remarked as she raised her left foot and plunged the pointy back into the boss’ eye. The reaction was a predictably wild and angry flailing. In perfect coordination, Siena jumped upwards and was caught by Jack, who carried her out to safety.

The boss had the right idea, when it started to back off into a corner of the room. Because its eyes were side-mounted, the loss of one left it with a much larger gap then any human would have. Only by keeping its head permanently reared and its back to the wall could it hope to keep all of them in view.

Of course, as far as the Gamer was concerned, this worked perfectly. Raising his left hand, he pointed Purgatory’s palm at the boss and unleashed the Arcane Ascension. There was a moment of energy gathering. Then, like bullets out of a machine gun, several dozen Arc Lances blasted outwards. John only moved his hand slightly and the boss was turned into a needle cushion.

The boss was sturdy and quick; John had waited for a chance to unload his strongest tool in a reliable fashion. As expected, being hit by so many powerful arcane spells, not even that creature could survive. Its massive frame quivered, started to collapse and scattered into ash when it collided with the floor.

John rolled his neck. “Floor based I.D.s are nice to get back into it,” he said, as he left the Demon dungeon behind without thinking a lot about it. Since there had been no loot that seemed immediately interesting, he didn’t bother to check the Loot Basin. ‘Progress is good these days… but not good enough to make me really happy.’

Probably because he had Experience of Love for so long now, he didn’t really feel like the ‘guaranteed’ level every two days was that much of an acceleration anymore. Factually, it reduced the projected time he needed to get the remaining 746 levels he could from several decades down to about 1492 days, about 4 years. That was calculating only with Experience of Love, dungeons would further accelerate the process.

John still doubted he would get to reach level 1000, his known maximum, in under three years. Maybe it was just his paranoia or maybe this was actually his Wisdom talking, but life had a tendency of having turbulent stretches. ‘There may come a time where I can’t grind or have sex every day…’ He shuddered at the thought, as he stepped out of the I.D. Gate. ‘In an optimal world, I will get access to a few more levelling tools. Not that becoming one of the strongest entities in the world, if not the strongest, in under three years is anything short of unfair… I actually wonder how long it took Romulus to get to his current level of power.’

The strongest man in the Abyss had continued to learn magic over the thousands of years he had been alive, but, according to what Nathalia had told him, Romulus had already reached his potential when she had first met him. It likely was the case that the potency of his powers had plateaued at some point and he spent the time since then increasing the variance of abilities he had available. Unless John asked the Apex himself, that was just theory crafting.

‘Given how his powers work, it’s not that unlikely that he rose to maximal power pretty quickly. Especially since Remus could just conjure Faith based creatures to ‘feed’ him with,’ the Gamer continued to ponder until he saw a black dot in the distance. Hushing past the nightly illuminations of the Guild Hall, the dot flew around in random patterns. John’s vision zoomed in, as if assisted by a scope inside a video game.

The dot was Velka, unsurprisingly. As he had planned, the Magryph was allowed to go out of her room. Now that she could fly, and she had picked it up with the speed only an animal designed to do something could learn something, John trusted that she was safe enough to not end up getting caught by someone. Especially since he had made Velka’s existence public now. He had figured that it might attract the attention of some unsavoury individuals, but he had also figured that Velka would be spotted sooner rather than later. A Magryph wasn’t exactly difficult to spot and the Gamer was pretty sure his name would serve as a reliable shield.

‘Salamander?’ John reached out to the fire spirit. The moment the boss had been defeated, the elementals had split, as was usual. ‘Can you go fetch her?’

John did allow Velka to run around freely, but he hadn’t yet modified her room in such a fashion that she could get in and out easily. Best he could do was leave the window open and that didn’t feel reliable enough. Not with how many windows there were and how high she had to fly to get there. If she got tired, she would have to spend the night outside. It was still warm, but John didn’t want her to develop the habit or, worse, feel alone and abandoned.

Salamander flew off and John took a second to look over the land. It was as fascinating as ever, to watch the number of lights on the other side of the Hudson increase. Those people were there because of his actions and, likely, hopefully, happier because of them.

‘I will fix the issue with Velka’s room tomorrow,’ John thought. ‘Might as well, since I will be upgrading the Guild Hall.’ The warning that it would happen had been sent out earlier today. It was on rather short notice, but there was no Federation going along with it. The notification simply existed to keep people from being overly surprised. He could have also thrown another festival, but organizing and financing another one for that purpose didn’t feel appropriate.

Stepping away from the edge of the star fort, he made room for Salamander when she returned with Velka between her arms. Limp and loose, the bird-cat was surrounded by the endless warmth the fire spirit’s breasts provided. “The second I picked her up, she fell asleep,” the endflame elemental explained.

“Can’t say I blame her,” John chuckled. From first hand experience, he knew just how comfortable resting between those pillows was. Reaching out, he scratched the Magryph’s head for a little bit. “Did you exhaust yourself, hm?” he asked, and received a dreamy cooing in response. Velka didn’t open her eyes, she was as deep in the land of dreams as cats could be. “Well, I wouldn’t want to take her out of the comfort zone. Can you take her to her room?”

“Sure thing.” Salamander grinned, stroking a little bit of the soft fur with her thumb. That was as much as she could do while still holding onto Velka. “Let’s get you tuckered in, you thieving little shit.” The endflame elemental wandered off to the Palace, as did the other elementals and the maids. Only one person remained up there with him.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Gnome asked, now walking up to the very edge of the walls. It was a sharp drop to the ground below, but that was of fairly little consequence for the earth spirit.

John found himself questioning whether the first of his elementals had engineered the situation. He dismissed the theory quickly. Aside from her not being the type, he would have noticed at least some mental currents. Completely hiding whole conversations from him, especially ones between several of the elementals and the Artificial Spirits, was difficult. Doing it on the back that he wanted to stay on the edge of the star fort for a little while longer, a spontaneous decision, was basically impossible.

While all of these things went through the back of his mind, his eyes focused on Gnome’s elegant profile. “I can name many things that are beautiful about the view,” he responded, all of his attention focused on her.

She gave him a quick glance and blushed. Aside from that, she kept her composure. “I mean the actual view,” she said and made a sweeping gesture. “The land we have built, the forests we have made, the river that we have cleaned.”

“We?” Even in this situation, John couldn’t help but be a bit of a tease. He stepped up next to her, put an arm around her shoulder and asked, “Do I hear an iota of pride there, Gnome?”

“M-maybe?” she stammered her answer, then defiantly stomped once. “Is that wrong?”

“Not really, no.” He smiled and looked away from the lights of the civilization that was prospering under his rule and down to the nature that was blooming in its presence. “If you have no pride in what you build, then why build anything at all? Just don’t become someone like me, ready to throw a fit when what you build is being scrutinized too intensely or arrogant in expanding it.” He chuckled, what he said was so widely known that he was able to take it with some humour. “I don’t think Fusion can carry more than me and Siena in this regard.”

“I won’t. I just thought it is all so much bigger than what I could conceive when I was a little pebble,” Gnome confessed, playing with her fingers. Slender and firm fingers, perfect for forming sculptures and caressing friends. It was hard to imagine from her looks alone how much power sat behind those tiny fists. “You aren’t even looking at the landscape, you’re just looking at me,” she pouted.

“You know who I am,” he laughed. “If you want me to pay more attention to the land, my need to sense you needs to be satisfied otherwise.” A small motion towards the floor and they made the silent decision to sit down. Gnome’s head rested on his shoulder, as they stared outwards. Their legs dangled down the smooth stone walls.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?” John wondered. They were having a tender and serious moment out of nowhere, but he had long learned to appreciate these whenever they popped up. Having a harem of over a dozen girls meant that many took the opportunity for more earnest conversations as they presented themselves. That wasn’t a bad thing. Really, it should go to their credit that they were this patient.

“My innermost desire. You know, both Undine and Salamander… you had moments with them, that allowed you to evolve them to Tier 5. Only Undine got there yet, but I still wonder… what would it take for me to get there? What do I want so badly that it makes our understanding complete?”

There was a long silence after that. John felt like he had to say something, but he didn’t want to intrude on her thinking too much. A simple joke was what it would be. “I hope you haven’t come to the decision that you, too, want to measure yourself up against the corrupting forces with way too many teeth and eyeballs.”

“You’re stupid.”

“Wow… that actually hurts when you say it,” John confessed and got himself a kiss on the cheek to calm down his slightly aching heart. The pain vanished immediately and was replaced with a content smile. “I take it you haven’t found anything at all then?”

“I want peace and quiet... but how would you give that to me?” Gnome wondered and gestured again at the landscape. “I also want you to keep building all of this. I want more than us to be happy because… uhm… b-because I love you for doing the right thing… so…” Now it was his turn to calm her. A bit of repositioning and he embraced her that little bit tighter. That was all she needed. “…so I can’t just ask you to stop. I want a world where I don’t have to fight, but I know I have to fight to get there.”

“Hmm,” John hummed, thinking about that statement and the past incidents that had allowed that gate to be unlocked with the other two elementals. “Leave it up to me.”

“Wha-? This is my issue!”

“No, it’s not,” he told her. “It’s our issue, Gnome. I showed Undine that I was able to focus my energy and my emotions in a battle. I showed Salamander that I was willing to listen to my gut and passion over cold reason when I allowed her to face the Lorylim. I have to show you that I can construct a prosperous world through the means of the least suffering. At least that’s what I think you need to see.” He beat his chest with his left hand. “If it is about me proving that I’m worthy to call you mine, then you can leave it to me. For those I love, I will do and learn all I can.”

“Umu,” Gnome let out a cutesy little sound and snuggled closer against him. “I won’t leave it all to you,” she let out a meek protest, “but I’m happy to share this with you.”