Chapter 142 – Voices in the wind

“Come on, evolve me!” Sylph demanded.

“Not yet,” John closed the instant dungeon.

“Why not?” Sylph wanted to know while they walked towards the exit of the gate.

“Because I am 100% certain that the second I evolve you, you will want to bang me.”

“Oh, Johnny, you know me so well, I am flattered, but really, we can do this indoor or outdoor, just let me have that courtesan title. Oh, and the gummy bear, I feel like the gummy bear is important,” Sylph blabbered as they crossed the space between the gate and the two houses.

“Back already?” Magoi asked, peeked into the empty loot basin and let out a disappointed sigh.

“I am going to lose my virginity!” Sylph chirped, “and become John’s courtesan.”

“You go do that,” Magoi, who finally had exhausted the amount of surprises he could sustain, just waved it off. John did feel slightly embarrassed by this, especially when the Fateweaver continued. “My wife would be tempted to give you quite the lecture.”

They entered the house and went upstairs to John’s. “Hold up!” the air elemental said when they arrived at his door. John turned to her, the handle already in hand. Sylph hovered in the air and stared at her fellow familiars. “What do you think you are doing?” she asked them.

“Uhm, going into John’s room, like every day?” Gnome said, Aclysia nodded at her side.

“Well, today is not every day, today is my day!” Sylph said decisively.

“Horseshit, you ain’t gonna hog the cock for a minute, Sylph,” Salamander spat out.

“You ‘hogged’ him for a week, so shush Sally.”

“…Was a day to me but point taken,” Salamander conceded the argument, “still though, you will not have him alone.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” John wondered.

“You do, but we know you don’t really care,” Salamander informed him. “You’re a guy, you’ll stick it into whoever.”

Well, it was true, he was currently gloating over the fact that he had 4 women fighting over who would have him. This was the harem fantasy realized. That all of them were contracted to him in one way or another did make it a lot easier to keep them around, but their interest was still their own.

‘Bathtub,’ Undine informed everybody where she’d be until this was done with.

“Come on Liz, you cleared the room for Gnome, do the same for me, pleaaaasseee?” Sylph tried to get an ally in.

 Aclysia thought about it with an empty expression before finally saying, “Condition, you no longer call me Liz.”

“Caaaaaan do, L- Aclysia!” Sylph promised, “there we go, I have the Aclysia vote, I win.”

Salamander sighed and Gnome just quietly backed out with a disappointed expression.

“Wait, is Aclysia’s vote like all-encompassing or what?” John wanted to know about this, he felt that understanding the power-dynamic in his harem was important.

“She is the second oldest, so yeah, only that currently MIA girlfriend of yours would override it,” Salamander said. “Also… she’s scary.” Gnome nodded in agreement, repeatedly.

Aclysia’s bafflement was mildly on her face. Her mouth hung a tiny bit open, one eyebrow raised a bit.

“Whatevs, I will set something on fire, see you whenever you get done,” Salamander flew off. Aclysia and Gnome also retreated, saying no more words.

Sylph turned in the air, perfectly still, hands raised, the only parts of her that moved were her dancing fingers. A downright creepy grin appeared on her face. “Now, to molest you!” she announced. John just took it as the usual Sylph nonsense and finally entered his room.

He sat down on his bed and opened the evolution menu for Sylph.

He stared at the centre option for what felt like a minute before Sylph finally lost her patience. A remarkably long time for her, really. “What, what, whaaaaaat?” she asked and intently stared at the spot that he was looking at, seeing nothing.

“I am…conflicted,” John explained. “So, we got a support option here, which is nice because we lack something like that, but it really doesn’t feel like you.”

“I wanna shoot laser beams and eat cookies!”

“Yeah, exactly…. Then we have this Rain Elemental thing, which sounds okay, actually it sounds pretty good because you would make a nice combo with Undine. Question is if you could be of any use indoors,” John continued.

“But I don’t want to play with clouds, I want to soar through the sky and be all wuuuush, rat-tatata-zon-kadush! You understand?” Maybe he did? Either way that left the option that was confusing him.

“See, the last option is worrying me, because its wording indicates that it is clearly better than the others. Usually when something in the same level is better than its peers it gets balanced out by scaling worse into the late game by virtue of having less stats per level or other maluses based on experience,” John cut his explanation short, noticing Sylph’s head spinning.

“So, many, woooooords,” she said in a bamboozled tone, “Can you, like, maybe, sorta, kinda, eventually, say it in a too long didn’t listen?”

John gave her the dead eyes. “What?” she asked, “Whaaaat?”

He sighed, “Nothing. To put it simply, either you will be strong now and weak later or you are just awesome.”

“It is definitely the latter, so click that button, go go,” Sylph didn’t waste another thought on this. John was not that convinced, “Johnny, trust me, click that button, what is it called anyhow?”

“Ehm, a Tempest Elemental.”

“That sounds ultra-rad, do it, do it, do it, I demand!”

Well, John was stuck so he might as well obey the demands of the whimsy elemental. He almost clicked the button and then hesitated. “Are you sure you want this?” he asked one final time.

“Oh – my – gosh, okay, let me spell it out for you.” Sylph landed on his hovering hand. Sitting cross-legged, she stared up at him with serious eyes. “I am not that smart but even I realize what is at stake here, John. You are more likely to survive the next encounter with that Thana-thingy-girl if I am stronger. Even if it means sacrificing some of my future strength, I’ll do it if it means you succeed and live.” That was surprisingly clear, John was already convinced but Sylph kept babbling. “I mean, sure, it would suck to be weaker than the rest later, but I’ll overcome that too. All that matters is that we get the opportunity to keep growing and having fun together.”

“Sylph, come here for a moment,” John said and waved her close with his free hand, the other hovering closely over the accept button. He had a close look at her, the tiny thing, with her light green hair, in her Valkyrie armour, her whole body made of energy in the shape of an athletic woman. He gently kissed her on the head. “You are a bit annoying at times,” he spoke his true feelings, “but you are also a great, little thing.”

“Of course, I am! Now make me a great, big thing!” Sylph laughed and John pushed the button.

Luckily, he had pulled his head back, anticipating the localized storm that formed and consumed Sylph’s form. The wind was a pale green and impossible to see through. It unravelled from the bottom upwards, revealing light green shoes that went up to her knees, parting a bit at the sides. They were without decorations but had a weird mixture of design choices, looking like a cross between a dancer’s and a jester’s shoes. Next John spied the skin of her thighs, healthy and white in colour and bare up to her hips. What clad her torso was a green leotard, extremely tight, the only decoration being a golden rim at the upper edges. Between her C-cup breasts lay a red ruby held in place by a necklace that had the shape of a butterfly.

Sylph waved with her arm, covered by a long glove that reached all the way up to her shoulder, most of it was the same pale green as the rest of the outfit but underneath the elbow it changed into a creamy brown colour. In response to the motion the storm whirled upwards, revealing a cute face that smiled widely, eyes closed. The storm slowly calmed and became her hair, a pale whiteish green, unruly and longer than her entire body.

That may have been a problem if it didn’t refuse the laws of gravity and instead waved in some non-existent breeze. Two elvish ears grew from her head and as a last touch four flower-petal-like wings unfolded behind her back. Sylph opened her lids, the eyes behind were of a beautiful amber colour and glowed softly from within.

“I am bigger than you! Hurray!” she exclaimed and jumped on the bed.

John felt bad to ruin her moment of triumph. “Sylph, we are on the bed.”

“Yeah, and?” Sylph laughed and kept jumping, falling and rising with weird, inconsistent speeds. 

“And I am sitting and you are standing,” John elaborated.

Sylph stopped dead in the air. “Uhm,” cold sweat ran over her face as she slowly hovered over to the ground and then landed in front of him. Even standing there she was barely taller than him sitting, 1,50 metres, that was John’s estimate and, as previously established, he was pretty good at guessing.

John made a quick calculation in his head. Normally people had 5 times their level + random base as their total stats. In the case of Aclysia the base was all 1’s (except Libido, which was a 0). The elemental girls had started with all zeros but because they had started at his level that was never really apparent. If he calculated Sylph’s stats correctly, which he did, he had that much trust in his math at the very least, she had gained 63 points from the evolution. That was either the weirdest number ever chosen or Sylph had been raised from 5 to 6 skill points per level and been gifted all of these 63 points retroactively.

The added information in her Character Sheet also suggested that no real harm had come to her. On the contrary she seemed to have been blessed. After processing all of that information John said, “Sylph, you are awesome!” and she made a cocky smile in response.

“I know, I know, now to the sex! I want that title!” she announced. Looking at her newly acquired Libido, John was certain that being called a concubine wasn’t all she wanted.

“Tsk, Tsk, Tsk,” John clicked his tongue and closed his eyes, “my dear Sylph, don’t you know that I have a few months worth...” ‘That doesn’t sound good at all, try a different angle,’ “…many encounters worth of sexual experience? You should not underestimate me…” he opened his eyes again to find that Sylph was naked already, her pink nipples hanging right in front of his face.

“Why do you still have clothes on? Come on, get naked! We doing this or what?” She said and started to tug at his pants. “Ey, what is this thiiiiiiing?!” she complained while taking her frustration out on his zippers.

“Wait!” John stopped her. He did not have a high number of pants left, just this one to be exact. He would prefer not buying further replacements off the Abyss Auction. That was a giant money sink.

“You have 10 seconds, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go,….” To the sound of Sylph cheering him on, John started to undress.