John placed the last of the materials on the table. Baelementium for level ups, steel and other common metals for mass, Abyssal silicone and rubber for skin. The metadermis, Aclysia’s impossible blend of silicone and Baelementium, dissolved into its components shortly after leaving her body and was thus impossible to hand over. Beatrice had churned her way through all that was offered, only a bit of the previous and the newest stack that John had put in front of her remained.

While she did that, John faced another question: There were two class levels he could spend. One from reaching level 130 and the other from the quest he had just completed. The obvious choice was Elementalist, like always. There was just one tiny problem.

He couldn’t beat the challenge. Synchronizing with one? He managed to do that frequently and could even do it pretty much on command. Two? On a fluke, maybe. Three? He just couldn’t.

The way he currently dealt with that is that they just tried for twenty minutes every day. Until they succeeded in that, he planned to keep one slot for the Class Level open. Now he had two, and letting one sit around unused was already a waste of a strong resource.

Question was which class to push second. The quest gave him a free level in Puppeteer, but he still didn’t feel the need for extra Possession Slots. In the first place, his current plan for how to use Possession in the future was still a work in progress. He had to wait for Aclysia to produce more Baelementium.

A proper thing to chase would have been the requirements for Arcweaving. That meant he would invest in either Martial Artist or Arcanist. Another possibility was to invest into the Gamer class. Lastly, he considered the Fateweaver one, because he had the quest for the sailing license. Whether or not he really needed to be able to navigate a boat, the ability to maintain mobile barriers would be pretty handy, and that goal was reachable by level 140 if he invested one Class Level right now.

‘Yeah, let’s go after that for now,’ he decided and took his free level up he still had lying around from when he killed Gehnigm.

‘It seems Gaia is feeling lazy today,’ John thought, ‘or her calculation running World Soul side just isn’t feeling the need of giving me something good.’ Two of those three were recycled, with the one that had replaced Assault from the previous choices being a useless information gathering ability. He couldn’t claim that he remembered ALL of the monsters and the loot he ever encountered, but his memory was good enough that he was certain he could find what he needed anyway. It would be a wasted Perk.

He also excluded Investing, because (as high as his mana regeneration was) he found the downside to be too large. Therefore, the Loot Basin was the obvious choice. At least that was a Quality of Life improvement.

Moments after he had made the choice, Beatrice gulped down the last piece of metal and stood up. Her appearance was now deviating from the base figurine in a lot of ways and all of them were exactly like Aclysia’s. From the deflated shoulder pads over the removal of unnecessarily frilly parts to her taking away the blindfold she was wearing by design and replacing it with a pair of light green eyes, it all was a carbon copy.

The only thing that greatly differentiated Beatrice and Aclysia’s heads was their hair. Where Aclysia’s was long enough to reach her hips, Beatrice’s silver hair ended at chin-length, a black headband extending over it from one ear to the other. Despite the difference in length, they were unified in the silver colour and the way they parted leftwards, partly covering one eye.

For their bodies, John had actually found out that A2 and 2B had different measurements, with the former being more athletic and the latter being closer to an hourglass figure. Therefore, Beatrice had small C-cup breasts compared to Aclysia’s Bs. According to the measurements, Aclysia would have also needed to narrow her hips, but he had gotten used to seeing her with that ass, so he told her to keep that part as it was.

“Pleased to make everyone’s acquaintance,” she took a little bow; even her voice and mannerisms were the same, graceful, calm and sincere. “My name is Beatrice. I am confused. The details of my creation are… lost data.” Well, there was one difference, she had a very choppy way of speaking. “I hope to be assistance to Master. Even as a faulty product.”

John wanted to end that line of thought before it began to take root in any way. “You are not a faulty product, Beatrice, you are an individual with a flaw. That just puts you in the same boat as everyone else in the world.” He had raised all of her Stats to 15 for the moment (with the exception of Libido which was still a 0) to allow her to act in this world functionally. “In the first place, this is my fault.”

“Affirmative. This was your mistake,” Beatrice comment was quite direct. “However, it is I who is faulty as the result. Complaints about the situation are useless. Point of individual rather than product is acknowledged.”

“Good?” John was not exactly sure how to talk to her. Her mental signals were just passive, there was basically nothing to read there. From the looks of it, she just accepted that she was alive now. On the positive side, she was able to interpret all the senses she had properly now. “So, what do you want to do?”

“I have no such thing as a want,” Beatrice answered. “Should I acquire one?”

“Uhm, sure.” It couldn’t hurt.

“Acquiring want,” Beatrice said as if she was initiating a booting sequence. She fell silent and John could feel her mental cogs turning.

Eliza started laughing as it went on. “You see that?!” she said when turning to Nia. “THAT is how fucking dumb you look like when you space out.”

“I have encountered a mirror before,” was all the blank had to answer.

“Did you make any dumb grimaces in front of it or did you just creepily stare at yourself for twenty minutes, you pale bimbo?” Eliza wanted to know. “Because I bet my sweet ass on the latter.”

“I stood there wondering how I could make a proper smile, but I only came up with this,” Nia showed them an expression that was basically just her lips stretching horizontally and showing her teeth.

“That is a smile… of some description,” Rave hesitatingly chimed in. “I don’t recommend ya make that the second addition to your repertoire of expressions though.”

“I found it to be unsatisfying,” Nia agreed in her emotionless tone. “That aside, you owe me your sweet ass, Eliza.”

“Did you just fucking say that with a straight face?” Eliza was actually dumbfounded. “You couldn’t even spank me properly if you tried and your dirty talk sucks.”

Nia stared at the blood mage for almost thirty seconds. Having two empty faced girls churning over something in quiet was weird. The large difference was that Beatrice would, in all due likelihood, come up with some robotic answer by the end, while Nia would spout something on the border of nonsense.

The pariah turned very slowly towards Rave. “I wish to trade Eliza’s sweet ass against cuddling Copernicus,” she finally said.

“I mean, both of these things are basically publicly owned around here?” Rave finally asked.

Nia fell silent again. After another ten seconds of her pale blue eyes drilling into the pink-haired techno-lovers skull, she added, “I hope you liked this joke.”

Before anybody could be surprised at the fact that Nia even managed to be aware that she had just made a joke, Beatrice finally spoke up again. “I have concluded my acquisition,” everyone waited, “I do not know what I want,” and was disappointed. “Suggestion: My want shall be given.”

That was not quite how John wanted this to go, but she was literally minutes old. Trying to force this issue was unlikely to lead anywhere. “Okay, how about we do it like this: Aclysia, take her to Metra.” The berserker babe was still guarding the Enclave. “I want you two to look after Beatrice and help her find something she wants to do. As fellow Artificial Spirits you are more qualified to understand her than I am.”

If Beatrice was unable to find anything she wanted that was most likely down to her not yet having experienced anything she could have wanted. Maybe, if they just exposed her to the world a little bit and showed her how others like her operated, she would form some sort of character. As of right now, it seemed like she was just a robot.

Aclysia bowed, “May I request that you raise her Stats to the currently available maximum beforehand?”

“I don’t know how to weigh them yet, so I have to deny that,” John told her.

“Can you at least give her the 10 Libido threshold?” she continued her requests. “I understand your reluctance to, Master, but a complete look at human life seems impossible without a sexual drive of some capacity.”

Usually when Artificial Spirits got their Libidos, they were ready to just have sex immediately. No real wonder, considering they were horny for the first time in their life and didn’t have to go through all the confusion of adolescence that usually came along with that.

That was why John hesitated, he didn’t want to nail someone he had created five minutes after throwing them into life. With Aclysia he had taken his sweet time because he didn’t know what he was doing. Momo had gone months without knowing what lust was and had only agreed to him doing it after talking it out. Back then he had almost done it without telling her and she had been understandably displeased. This time around, he was a bit more thoughtful.

Now here was this girl that seemed more like a robot and he was just going to put it on her? He had no idea how she would react. However, Aclysia was right. Maybe Beatrice would come to realize that the thing she wanted the most was to be a sexual servant of his. That would be unorthodox, but if that was her decision, then that was that.

“Okay, fine,” he finally went in and raised Beatrice’s Libido to 10.

“I have access to new emotions and body components,” the robotic spirit let them know, but she didn’t act on it. As a matter of fact, the complete passiveness of her spirit didn’t even waver despite this. That was new on all levels. “As I understand it, my current mission is to follow and obey Aclysia. Is this correct?”

“Pretty much,” John confirmed but then remembered something else. “Right, I forgot something over the shock of my initial fuck-up,” he told everyone and reached into his inventory. He pulled two identical sets of clothing from his inventory for the both of them. “As great as the Nier clothes are on every scale, it’s time we dressed you in something original.”

Aclysia and Beatrice immediately got into the eating part, and a few minutes later they were both transformed into that new set.

Of course, it was still maid oriented and, of course, it was still sexy. The shoes were the first replacements, fashionably sharp things of polished black but separate entities from the stockings that ran up their legs to the edge of their thighs. From there, strappings reached upwards, over white lace panties and connecting to the garter belt.

That garter belt was only visible if someone shamelessly lifted up their skirts. Their old dress skirt had been very short, basically hiding nothing. The new one reached about three quarters down their legs. A slit on each side of the hips brought the sexy back by showing off a scandalous amount of leg with each step though, and the skirt was stretched around the hips with the clear intent of leaving no curves to the imagination.

Similarly, a black corset-like article covered their waists, a gap at the front, where strings ran criss-cross from one half to the other, showed off the white shirt underneath. That sleeveless shirt was held around the back of the neck by simple strings and covered their medium sized chests. The upper edge of the corset underlined the bags of soft fun quite nicely.

From the shoulder downwards to the fingertips, their arms were covered in black satin gloves, not a single wrinkle on them, which were decorated with lines the colour of the two sister’s hair. Two empty circles right at the upper edge of the gloves evoked a slight feeling of emptiness, as John wanted to put Collide’s emblem there, but they didn’t have one yet.

Overall, the new outfit looked like a mixture between maids and classy but sexy ladies. That was exactly where John wanted to go with that. Whether it was better or not than the previous one, he didn’t want to make the judgement. He just liked having something original.

“You look beautiful,” he told them nonetheless.

“Thank you, Master,” Aclysia immediately had a little smile bloom on her face.

“That comment does please me,” Beatrice said. She wasn’t confused about it, she just noted that discovery about herself and moved on. Her lack of strong feelings had advantages, evidently.

For John, the fact that there was something that pleased her was already great to hear. “Okay, we do as planned then,” he said this both in reference to Scarlett’s plan and the current job he had given Aclysia.