The final boss of the Slime ID was a wonderful encounter. A nucleus the size of a house, attached to the ocean that surrounded the entire structure, hung under the ceiling of a beast of a room. It was surrounded by a shield that a bunch of the minibosses were keeping up and would periodically spawn enemies.

The way to beat it was to take care of the spawned enemies, take out as many minibosses as they could in the resulting breathing period and finally whack the boss once all of them had been defeated. Once they managed to do that, the ceiling would begin to rise, pulling the boss away. Even Sylph wouldn’t be able to hurt it anymore, as a new shield was erected.

Then came the swim phase. Slime would rain down on the group in heavy drops that filled the initial floor. A dodge heavy, minute-long phase, during which building blocks would fall along the goop and allow the group to slowly climb upwards as they took acid damage from staying in the slime for too long.

Once they had reached a certain height, a new floor would spawn in and the first phase would start again, with them fighting adds and trying to take out the shield. This repeated a total of three times.

It was a very video-game like boss and a very simple one at that. A design that could have been taken straight out of a Mario or The Legend of Zelda game, and John loved it for it. It was intense, fair and fun, if maybe a bit too long.

“I do not want to go into this dungeon again,” Aclysia didn’t share his opinion. Strongly enough to voice it, which was surprising given her knowledge of her master’s enthusiasm and servitude towards his happiness. Next to her, Beatrice nodded with as much relief as she could muster.

“Why not?” John asked, a bit whiny. Getting confronted with his favourite maid not liking something he did felt surprisingly frustrating.

“Sorted by annoyance factor, descending,” Aclysia prefaced her listing with the proper explanation. “Corrosive damage hurts more than anticipated. Spawns are always all over the room, making proper guarding of you, Master, difficult as magical projectiles come from every direction. Stationary enemies make it impossible to pull them into a proper position for AoE application. 1-shot, high damage output enemies are boring to fight. The slippery floor was awful to walk on.”

Those were a lot and pretty good reasons. Most of them seemed centred around the fact that Aclysia was thinking as a tank and John was mostly thinking as a problem solver and damage dealer. Where his highest priority was simply unravelling situations and he had gotten to do a lot of that in that dungeon, Aclysia’s mind was always working on getting everyone, John in particular, through the fight as safely as her abilities allowed her to. A dungeon where her abilities and knowledge on that end were impossible to apply would thusly annoy her to no end.

Also, yes, John had noted how brutal corrosive effects were on the Artificial Spirits. Little wonder, looking at their inorganic nature. Not only did they take high amounts of damage, any remaining substance on their body would drastically reduce regeneration effects.

“You raise valid points,” he therefore conceded. “Well, we got what we wanted anyway and it was a core floor, so we won’t be seeing that particular dungeon again.”

Aclysia bowed her head after they stepped out of the light and into the green plain. “My gratitude for entertaining my complaints.”

John waved his hand, wanting to disperse that unnecessary gesture like he would smoke, “Hey, you have been covering my back for so long, least I can do is not go into dungeons you don’t like. Best we find something we both like to run, it’s not about just me after all. It is about us,” he reached out, catching a strand of her hair and smelling it. “Coffee,” he recognized. He had never liked the taste, his preferred way of getting caffeine into his system had always been Monster, but the smell of coffee was unmistakable and nicely aromatic. “I love it,” he added with a glance at her that spelled out that he wasn’t really talking about the smell.

“I love you, John,” Aclysia answered with a small smile, taking the initiative for a quick kiss. “Nevertheless, we should concentrate on the accomplishment of the day,” she reminded him afterwards.

“Right,” John nodded somberly and looked over to Sylph and Gnome. Well, to Gnome, Sylph was busy energetically trying to fly one-hundred loops in a row without loosing her orientation and then tumble around like a drunk bumblebee.

For the stone elemental, she was blushing immensely, her eyes darting away from John and Aclysia as if she had just seen something she shouldn’t have and was now deeply embarrassed about it. “C-can I get a kiss too?” she asked, revealing the actual reason why her face had the colour of a tomato. Pushing her index fingers together, she occasionally dared to look back to John, “I-I mean, just a bit of a kiss is fine… right?”

“You can have as many as you want, you adorable little rock,” John answered with a bit of laughter, immediately moving in to fulfil her wish. He bowed down the little distance between them, taking hold of her naked shoulders, which her yellow summer dress did not cover.

Despite her obvious embarrassment, the earth spirit did not shy away from John as he leaned in, instead bravely, if a bit overzealously, puckering her lips to meet his. They were smooth as always, her earthen nature giving her a bit of a heavy taste as her saliva-less mouth met his. Odd as it felt, it worked like always, and as little a kiss she had asked for, it lasted for a long time. Her twin-pigtails waving with happy emotions as if they had a life of their own.

John pulled backwards softly, to allow her to continue the kiss if she so desired. She let him go, however, and so he said instead, “Your last kiss in that body.” His voice was soft as he put a hand on her left cheek.

She put her own on top. “Yeah…” She was still red as a beet, but her voice was tranquil and she smiled from ear to ear. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah,” John agreed. “You ready?”

“Yeah,” the words chosen were lazy, but there was little need for any further grand conversation.

John stepped back, regretfully. He best enjoyed what came next without touching her, lest he got caught up in the elemental pillar that always came along with these. He activated the first SEP by clicking on the golden plus next to the Stone Elemental Summoning skill.

Well, that was a surprisingly easy choice. Decay elemental was not an option, if not for the beauty then for the character line. Although John already wouldn’t have taken it with the beauty alone. He wasn’t afraid to say that he was a bit shallow in that regard, never had been, never would be. If a girl was super ugly, he was way less likely to pay any attention to her. He had experienced the reverse and while it was a shitty feeling that was just how the cookie crumbled. The alternative was to be a perfectly moral but unhappy person and, as far as John was concerned, that was not a sustainable solution.

Between mountain and soil, there was a choice though. Truthfully speaking, he preferred the sound of the latter. For a bunch of semi-good to arbitrary reasons. It was in the middle, it had more words, the environmental part sounded interesting and soil sounded more like a special tree of development while mountain sounded like the simple and logical progression.

Still, he wasn’t just about to pick her fate for her, so he had to ask. “Any strong feelings?” If she really wanted to take mountain elemental, he had to respect that.

“Uhm, no, you can pick the soil one,” Gnome agreed, checking herself like a nervous first time commentator before stepping in front of the camera. Pretty useless, considering what was about to happen.

The moment John pressed the button, the earth spirit’s body was swallowed whole by a pillar of stone that appeared out of the ground. It was rough, the untouched surface of a boulder, if a bit odd in its elongated shape and all-around equal width. Brown, with golden lines running through it like layers of the very same precious metal, as well as a couple of grey, black and white ones, it looked like something that had been cleaved out right out of a cliff.

Moments of waiting ensued, all other elementals surrounding their sealed sister and waiting in silence. Well, except for the one who couldn’t keep her mouth shut unless she was paid her size in gummy bears. “Hey, hey… heeeeeeeyyyyy?” Sylph, after turning into her big form, tried to get Salamander’s attention by stabbing her index finger into the endflame elemental’s side.

The fire spirit’s scarred, black eye twitched, quite visibly as all the lines around it emphasized the motion, but she remained calm. Not used to this, the tempest elemental moved onto the next target to bother, which was Siena. Who immediately turned into her unleashed state, the pale blue of her skin turning into a pitch black, mist-like shadows rising from her form. Two terrorizing yellow eyes gazed into Sylph’s amber ones, who closed her chattering mouth and walked on nervously whistling. Even idiots had survival instincts.

The next in line was Undine. While she did just accept the prolonged poking, John decided to absolve her of the annoyance. Especially since Sylph was starting to get very fascinated with the way her stabbing caused little ripples in the ocean elemental’s side.

‘What do you want, Sylph?’ he asked mentally, the silence somehow felt precious and he didn’t want to disturb it.

‘How long do we have to wai-?’ The answer came before the question was finished, with the pillar beginning to collapse into itself. In sudden bursts, parts of it crumbled inwards, which was an odd sight to say the least. It was like polygons all over the stone were suddenly placed a bit further in, a process that repeated until the shape of a person was discernible from the pillar. Then the shape of a woman. Finally, the new shape of Gnome.

A lifelike statue now stood there, cracks spreading over it. Like a mould of mud struck once by an artisan, the entire structure burst off.

Gnome was breathtakingly beautiful. The roots of her old form were still clear, she was the same height, and in rough details, the two of them were the same. A yellow summer dress still adorned her, less intricately designed than before. Where she had dozens of little extras before, now it was just the central dress. In a way, that meant her clothing had reverted to how it had been in her Tier 1 days, but that one piece she did wear was a piece of art.

Oriental decorations spread over the black rim of her knee-high skirt, golden lines of a fine weave. The same design was used at the upper half as well, framing what little of her breasts could be seen nicely and adding an extra touch to the strings over her shoulders, securing the dress in place. Tiny patterns of grey broke up the monotony of the yellow in a non-intrusive fashion.

Her limbs were still slender, the skin a noble pale tone. Not sickly, simply evoking the idea that she wasn’t out when she didn’t need to. Hairless and firm, it looked natural and hid the truth that the person underneath was made from stone perfectly.

Her hair had slightly changed in its do. Where it had before been bundled in just two pigtails, there were now two smaller pigtails with more hair falling down the back of her head. It looked a bit more adult but retained a young charm.

The reason, however, John found her to be that much more beautiful was her face. The Asian structure of her face had been reinforced and she looked more like someone in her early twenties now than someone around nineteen. Her cheek bones were more defined, her brown eyes had a more elegant almond shape, her face had exchanged cuteness for grace.

Grace that was immediately lost when she yelped as her first action in her new body. “Uhm,” she looked around, lightly blushing. “Does somebody have a mirror?” her voice was the same as before, light, happy and trembling from nervousness.

“Just check through our eyes,” Salamander told her.

“R-right,” Gnome nodded and checked herself out. Quite rightfully she whispered, “I look really good,” although her surprise was, in John’s opinion, misplaced.

“Would you do me the honour?” he asked, stepping forward, asking for her hand. “I would like to claim your first kiss in this body.”

Gnome blinked a couple of times, then nodded. “Okay,” she replied with a voice stronger than usual. With a new Tier came the earth spirit’s conviction to finally do more to stand up for herself. When she felt her master’s lips on hers, that goal was only reinforced. It was so obvious that it fluttered out into the minds of everyone connected to her.

For it wasn’t her shyness that bothered the earth spirit about herself, it was letting other people down. Reasons largely dependent on nothing but fate, as little credit as could be given to that concept, she was supposed to be the leader of John’s elementals and acting the part was hard for her. It didn’t use to be, back when she had less emotions. Perhaps now, in this new body and with more experience, she would be able to reign in those she already had.

John was surprised by the softness of her lips. Compared to genuine humans, she was still firmer. However, when compared to her previous self, she was pretty soft. It was like the difference between a rock and a balloon filled with heated sand. Unlike previously, she did also possess a degree of body warmth rather than being completely reliant on the surroundings to heat her.

She broke the kiss and looked around, gathering her voice. Everyone was looking at her expectantly, which was when she realized she had been broadcasting her thoughts for everyone to hear. Part of her wanted to kneel down and hide, a part now smaller than before. Small enough to not take instinctual control.

“I…” she started, then stopped to rethink her words. “I will do my best to lead you again,” she promised, gaining smiles all around, even from Siena.