It was more than a day later, and John was lazing in a lounger, looking at the endless sea. “You can sit down as well, you know?” he told Aclysia, who was standing at his side. She did a grateful little bow and then laid down next to him on the lounger. “Not what I was thinking off,” he said, “but this is better.”

So what had he been doing? Nothing really. After yesterday’s failed experiment, about which he still didn’t know what it was about, he had been gaming for about half an hour. What had interrupted him in that was a naked and very much bothered Eliza stalking around him. Nia had also been sitting there for the whole duration while Gnome and Undine had disappeared into the bathroom following a shy poke from the stone elemental.

They had respected that he wasn’t in the mood, but they had made it incredibly hard to stay out of the mood, so he eventually had closed the emulator he had been running over his laptop on the projector. Said projector was, by the way, a screen of hovering light (hurray magic) that ran over the curvature of the window. He had to scale it down to a sensible size with one of the control pads, while also finding the cables to hook his laptop on. Anyway, what happened after he had put on some nice music, rather than the sound JRPG text bubbles, was the usual. It needed no further explanation.

Gaming and sex had taken turns in a nice tandem until Rave came stumbling back in, semi-drunk, after which they had a nice goodnight orgy and people went to sleep wherever they had been fucked out of commission, which in John’s case had been the floor on the way to the bathroom. Siena had taken revenge for the feeling trip he had put her through by launching a surprise attack and then doing that thing that only she could do that made him cum instantly until his balls were empty. Twice. In an undrugged state that was more than his mind could take. Apparently Aclysia had kept the night long and cleaned up for everyone afterwards. Since then she only had good things to say about the floor.

“There are so many good things coming out of the Netherlands,” she noted, having listened into his memories. He nodded and together they watched the stars in front of them; currently it wasn’t the greatest view, but as the evening moved on and the light atop the deck were dimmed, it would become quite the show.

“Amen,” Maximillian ruined the setting romantic mood with his own two girls under his arms, sitting a table over. Darting up from her position at John’s side, Aclysia practiced that meditative exercise John had recommended her. He could practically hear the explosion. “What?”

“She is just jealous that she can’t be with you instead,” said one of the two girls Maximillian had brought with him. One of them was in Maximillian’s preferred age bracket, meaning that she was about thirty-five and had a mature aura around her, with black hair and a yoga trained body. The other girl was black with dark, smooth hair and dark eyes, a few years younger. Apparently a bi-sexual couple that had gone on the ship with the full intention of swinging around, so to say, Maximillian had been able to persuade them to give him a try. Couldn’t have been a particularly hard discussion, seeing how they weren’t even aware who he was or that he had a key card to the VIP area until they actually arrived there, where Rave had spilled the beans with sarcastic comments about him needing both of those to pick-up women.

They weren’t yet aware who he was, having only met him half an hour ago while he was basically sleeping in this lounger. As John had observed in the little time between then and now, the older one tended to, very aggressively, tease and occasionally trash talk. Which naturally put her at odds with Aclysia. “Take that back,” the weaponized maid demanded.

“Why, are you offended? Can’t take a little joke?” the woman teased, her name was Stef by the way.

“The idea that I could be attracted to any man but my master is horrendous,” Aclysia stuck to her usual position, “as such I want that statement retracted.”

“You really shouldn’t push her,” Maximillian warned.

“What is she going to do? Break her arm?” the younger one mocked. Her name was Lala, which was short for something but John had no idea what. Not that it mattered; once this cruise was over, he would never see them again.

“That is a VERY real possibility,” John used the same tone as Maximillian as Aclysia got up. He caught her by the wrist. “There is really no need to-.”

“Yeah, like that second-class girl could do that,” Stef interrupted him.

“On second thought,” the Gamer corrected himself, “why don’t you two wrestle that out in some way.”

About thirty seconds later Stef was on the ground and they had a broken table as well as a broken wrist from the very decisive arm-wrestling contest she had just lost. “My apologies, Master, I have made a bit of a mess.”

“Yeah, but she asked for it,” John said over the sound of cursing and Maximillian sighing heavily.

“Would you clean it up though? The servant’s sins are the master’s burden, after all,” he requested in a half commanding tone. John didn’t like it, but he decided to not embarrass the guy in front of these girls by saying no. Also, he didn’t like having a broken table or a cursing person on the deck. Although the latter of those he had in spades anyway, currently scattered throughout the ship, indoors or otherwise vanished. Another point the two of them were unaware about, that they were two out of over ten girls on this deck and out of those the only ones he wasn’t sleeping with. Would have probably gotten him a bit more respect.

He decided to fix up the table before the girl, just because he didn’t want to hurry Undine along. ‘No other reason, I swear,’ he sarcastically thought to himself before gently nudging the water spirit still sleeping somewhere in his soul. Luckily, Undine was a morning person, so she got up pretty quickly and soon materialized.

“What happened?” Undine wondered as the two newcomers were open mouthed at the fact that the guy in front of him had this beautiful a servant.

“She called Aclysia a second-rate woman,” was John’s answer.

“She called Creator a second-rate male, indirectly,” Aclysia said in the same moment, so outraged she fell back into old titling habits for a second.

“Ah,” Undine’s blind eyes portrayed a complete lack of interest. Evidently, she was pretty non-caring about such minor insults. She just took the broken wrist and enveloped it between her hands, producing some of the green healing slime.

“I never lose arm wrestles in pubs,” Stef said by the end of it, looking at Aclysia with some newfound respect now that the pain was gone.

“Please don’t hurt her again, I just want to relax in the pool,” Undine decided and inched towards the body of water.

“Who are you anyway, if you are strong enough to go here with your boytoy?” Lala asked, jumping through some logical leaps here to assume that John was the attendee. Which also put her listening comprehension skills into question, given what Maximillian had said just a few seconds earlier and the way Aclysia addressed John. Assumedly, that was what Stef whispered into her ear a moment later. “Whaaat, you are here with him? I thought that weird Asian girl was… wait a second.” The gears started turning in both of their heads, and then they said in unison “If you are here with him, then she is here with him, and she is his summon and… how many other girls are here exactly? A dozen?”

“10, they are all mine, I do not lend,” John couldn’t be anything but dry about this. “Although I guess I could be persuaded to...” Maximillian shook his head quite firmly in the background; he had heard all about his sex skills by now and, with all that he had seen John do already, did not want to take the risk of putting it down as normal guy-to-guy bragging. If John got his hands on these two, Maximillian looked pretty certain that he would not see them again. “…get a grill going with you people so you can get to know them,” he thusly turned it around.

_____________________________________________________________________

“And you all fought in that tournament thing?” Stef asked.

“Most of us,” Rave corrected, after John had sent a mail around saying he wanted to do a barbeque and sent Aclysia to get all the things to that end. Luckily the jacuzzi had an option that replaced it with a giant grill. Unluckily that replaced the jacuzzi. A huge design flaw, as far as John was concerned. “He didn’t exist back then,” she pointed at Stirwin, throwing his neck back to swallow a piece of cooked meat, “and neither did she,” the finger travelled over to Metra.

“Wat?” Metra raised an eyebrow at Rave. “We both existed, we just weren’t here or had the current forms… weren’t you there when I was pulled out of E-mhmrph.” John held her mouth closed to prevent the excavation of personal secrets.

“What she is saying is that she existed prior but that I didn’t feed her enough materials to be relevant until later,” he presented a believable lie, now that Stef and Lala knew that he could make Artificial Spirits. Then he took a forced step backwards when Metra rammed her elbow in his stomach.

“Next time it’s a kick in the balls, your Gamer’s Body can stand that, right?” she threatened with an angry glare before walking away. Then she sighed and bent towards his ear, “But we should get some sort of mental signal for when you want me to shut up. I don’t get words, but some flare should get through… I will seriously kick you in the ball next time you hold my mouth closed.”

“Please no,” he wheezed as the pain vanished. Just because it hurt less didn’t mean he needed to face that sort of torment. At least the people around were amused by this, especially Salamander as she kept checking the grill. The blaze elemental was surprisingly good at grilling.

‘I just know when something is burned to the right degree,’ she explained. Phrased like that it made total sense that she was good at this.

“Anyway, I only heard of the tournament and saw the headlines of that disgusting monster that came in by the end,” Stef said.

“Fuck you,” Eliza shouted from the other end of the gathering, where she was seated as to not trigger any sudden flashbacks in Maximillian. In return she was closest to the table where Salamander put the meat that was ready but wasn’t currently claimed by anyone. The table was basically empty.

“What’s wrong with her?” Lala wanted to know.

“I don’t think you should be asking that,” John made fun of her and thus steered the conversation elsewhere. No need to face them with the fact that they were less than 10 metres away from the potential annihilation of everyone.

“Aclysia, can you make me another one of these?” Maximillian asked and shook his cocktail glass. To his credit, he had been sober until the meat had arrived.

“Me too, if it’s not too much of a hassle,” Stef was quite a bit nicer.

“At once. Master, a water?”

“Sounds good,” he responded and looked at the water. “If I can’t have my jacuzzi, I am at least going to go swimming again.”

“Count me in on that,” Rave smirked. “How about a round of waterball?”

“You know that you are going to win…unless I am allowed to use some tricks,” he pointed out.

His girlfriend raised an eyebrow, “Oh, I know your tricks. Whenever we play something and ya even have a slim chance at losing, you pull the old vibrating panty trick!”

““Vibrating panty trick?”” Stef and Lala asked in unison.

John gave a little demonstration by possessing the half empty glass of Lala’s and then vibrating it. It felt roughly similar to humming, just with his whole body. His whole alternative body, which made it okay again.

“What the hell?” they looked at that with interest, and then John made it stop. Lala was the first to raise her eyes again, “That looks like one interesting sex trick. Max also has one of those.”

“Oh really?” John asked out of curiosity.