Wings like the dried leaves of trees that fell in the months of fall but in the colour of the blue sky, seldomly seen in that dreary season, the butterflies flew around their creator. The middle segment of their body then looked like the stalk, tiny pieces of wood protruding from the otherwise featureless body like tiny legs.

The Gamer really wanted to ask how these things oriented themselves, but they were animated leaves flapping about the place, so the question was not going to get him anywhere. Instead he went with the another one that promised something of value to be uncovered. “What are these?”

Gnome raised a hand and one of the butterflies landed on the side of her index finger. Resting its wings by folding them together, to the point where it looked like there was only one thin sheet on its back. It was soon joined by several comrades. They were quite beautiful, the light blue only interrupted by the slightly darker veins that ran throughout.

“I think these are… my unleashed state,” the newly ascended soil elemental spoke. “At the very least that’s what they feel like. As if they are an extension of me.”

“That’s a new one,” John commented and mentally completed the list of the unleashed states of his base elementals. ‘Salamander buffs the next attack of an ally, Sylph gets an immense power boost when she is angry, Undine switches into attack mode, Siena buffs herself with almost no cost and Chompy buffs himself immensely on my cost.’ If John had to rate those by usefulness, Sylph would be last for how unreliable it was and Salamander would be first with Siena at a close second. How would Gnome fit into that? “So what do they do?”

“That… uhm…” Gnome shrugged, uncertain, “they look pretty?” Her attempt at a joke was met with a mixed response of light chuckles and dead stares. “S-sorry,” she apologized, the butterflies scattering away when she lowered her arm in a disheartened fashion.

Salamander blew some air out of her nose, “Work on the delivery and maybe next time it will be actually funny.” The contribution fell not on deaf ears and Gnome nodded to herself, clearly motivated to do some continued self-improvement.

“Sure, b-but let’s try to actually find out what they do,” the earth spirit pumped her fists.

“Oh, we have lots of experiments to run,” John agreed with a lewd smile, wiggling his fingers at her like a creepy pervert. To his surprise, Gnome stood her ground.

“Do you want to feel me up?” she asked, blushing slightly but keeping her eyes steady.

“That is…” he cleared his throat, not having expected this sort of straight talk from her. The normal Gnome reaction would have been to take a step back and do some embarrassed pleading. “That is exactly what I want to do, yes,” John managed to get his words together.

“Well then, feel free to,” she said and grabbed her skirt, slowly raising it to reveal a pair of very nice and smooth thighs, stopping about halfway up. While John’s penis was definitely happy with this development, part of his mind just couldn’t help but be sad. He felt like he had just lost something precious, the ability to bully the cuddle rock for the cutest of reactions.

Reaching out, his hands ran up from her kneecap and over her thighs. Like their kiss had indicated, Gnome had become a whole lot more tender. Under his fingers, he could now squish the ‘flesh’ of the earth spirit, a truly satisfying feeling that only grew more intense the thicker the part of her he was grabbing.

By her last evolution, John doubted there would be any difference between how her body felt to the naked touch and a human did. Either that or there would be some earth specific differences, only time would tell.

“Mhm-Aaah,” a tiny voice reached John’s ears as his hands arrived at the favourite destination, Gnome’s backside. Now he was definitely no layman and he had touched this one fairly often, so he felt confident even without seeing it that all was as previous with her butt. Aside from the fact that it too had become softer, which was definitely great for John’s spanking tendencies.

Looking up he felt deep relief in his heart, as he was met with the crimson face of Gnome. “Do-do-do-don’t look up!” she demanded, clamping down harder on her pulled up skirt. Her eyes were dancing around, looking everywhere but directly at anybody around.

Confidence she had definitely gained and she was willing to be more direct, but at her heart the shy rock remained a shy rock. The most important question remained then: could he make her uwuwu?

“Hey, Gnome,” John couldn’t help but sound like the happiest idiot on planet earth as he spoke with a grin on his face. “Can you raise your skirt a bit more? I want to see what my hands are doing.”

“No!” she decided.

“Why?”

“No reason!”

“Hmmmm,” he hummed, fondling around her ass and hips some more. “Because I get the slight suspicion that…” he suddenly dived down and peeked underneath. Gnome yelped, pressing her legs together while also crushing her skirt into her crotch. Too slow, however, as John had already confirmed what he wanted to know. “No panties, huh?”

“Uwuwuwuwuwu.” He indeed still could make her uwuwu, and as such, John was indeed the happiest idiot on planet earth as it turned out she was still perfectly bulliable.

‘When I say it like that, I feel like the villain,’ John thought and got up to give Gnome a nice and deep hug. Unable to hold any contempt, as she did secretly like this on some level, the soil elemental returned the gesture. Cuddling the cuddle rock was always a great experience, as she gave the best hugs. Firm, but not crushing, with her face pressed trustingly against his chest and full body contact. A hug that was an artform. “You are adorable,” John let her know.

“Th-thanks,” she stuttered. “I, uhm, I l-l-l-l-love you!” If it had been possible to grow any redder, she would have then and there.

Now, the sadistic part inside him urged him to say, ‘I know’, which would double up as a pop culture reference. However, there was only so much he should put the poor girl through at any given day. “I love you too,” he therefore responded with the truth and kissed her on the forehead.

A minute of cooling down later, they went back to the actually important experimentation of what the butterflies could even do or how they were created. The latter answer they came to first by simply destroying one of them and waiting. Conclusion was, after several repetitions, that there was a maximum of ten and they respawned around Gnome in intervals of thirty minutes. No matter how many of them were missing, the complete number would be restored the moment that time was up. No amount of mana or willpower changed this.

They had a hard time finding out what they did though. They had no offensive capabilities, bestowed no buff, were flimsy enough to be destroyed with one direct hit and were thus a mystery. Until Gnome said the following words, “I think I got it!”

What followed was a traditional clusterfuck, as the soil elemental transformed, with a very confused outcry, into an earthen shape and began uncontrollably darting from one butterfly to the next. Like a living landfall headed by the outline of a beautiful girl, she ravaged the thankfully empty barrier, leaving tall walls of stone and dirt in her wake.

She could not tell over direction nor speed, which was certainly faster than the earth spirit’s usual speed. Rather, she was simply transported from the closest butterfly to the most removed one, using every single one in-between as corner points. By the end she came stumbling out in her usual shape, falling to the floor as she failed to recover her balance from the unusual experience.

“Well,” John scratched the back of his head, “that is a mess.” He was referring to the very chaotic arrangement of walls she left behind, a slalom of slanted walls. “Very useful ability though, given your Agility. Seems like we will have to put some work into mastering it though.”

“I-I can do it!” Gnome declared, and they finally moved onto the second girl awaiting evolution.

Sylph had waited patiently. If periodically asking if they were ready, breezing through the sky and chattering about could be defined as patient. Which it couldn’t, but John had watched her hold her breath several times in an attempt to not be overly disruptive and he appreciated the effort.

Now that she felt that attention was shifting to her, the tempest elemental was unleashing her blabbering. “Is it my turn? Yay, I want to be the best ever concubine, so gimme dat extra power! I will go whoosh and be totally adorable while I do kick their asses with wind!” She jumped and a gust whipped outwards in return. “And lightning!” She jumped again and small arcs of electricity crackled out of her highly raised arms. “And rai-eeeep!” The cloud she conjured above herself came down on her head in a sudden and very heavy ejection of water. It looked more like a gardening hose than rainfall and vanished as quickly as it started.

Sylph shook her head and scattered water everywhere. Turned out that hair longer than her body could hold an immense amount of liquid. “Stop that, you airhead,” Salamander growled, walking over to dry her up while John spent the second SEP.

“I really get the feeling that Gaia doesn’t like air elementals,” John muttered.

“Whaaaat, whyyyy?!” asked a googly-eyed Sylph. “We are totally adorbs-a-dorbs! Look at me, all small and helpless! Somebody should save me, somebody with strong arms and a manly face and a fancy suit and hat with a cute feather! Yes, Johnny, you should save me, save me from Gaia’s undeserved hate! Your concubine demands it! Your strong, totally independent – but also very helpless – concubine”

“I am pretty sure I cannot work that miracle,” John answered while still going over the choices. An opening window got between him and staring thoughtfully at the names.

John closed that window and went to make his choice. It was, again, quite the easy one. Cloud elemental was straight out, because John was a combatant first and there was no way around that fact. Then presented with AoE or single target, the answer was definitely the latter. For area damage he had Salamander, so it was better to specialize Sylph for the job she was already doing.

Everybody distanced themselves from the air spirit after she gave her confirmation that she was fine with whatever choice. “Why are you walking away?” Sylph proclaimed her lack of short-term memory.

“It’s about to get stormy, is all,” John joked and pressed the button.

“I be stormy!” she declared as her last words before her body dissolved into a green tornado. The elemental energy of her body was unleashed as the process of evolution took place. While her physical form was in this untamed state, her spirit was travelling rapidly into her home plane, absorbing as much power as her expanded soul could hold before returning and forging herself a new vessel. It was a quick and largely passive process, the elementals themselves having very little input on the final outcome. Indeed, John being able to even dictate a type could already be considered cheating.

The tornado darkened with black clouds and flashed inside to the roars of thunder. As a tempest elemental, Sylph had always used minor amount of fire and water, but now that balance was changing drastically. John jumped back after a lightning bolt struck in front of his feet. ‘This is easily the second… no third, most dangerous transformation so far,’ he thought, ‘or second after all? Not sure how to count Undine.’

It didn’t take too long for the now accurately existing thunderstorm to pull back together. Green was still the predominant colour, but in the storming energy crackled clearly black and yellow. Assuming first the shape of the small elemental, the tornado created the details of Sylph’s new body.

It was… almost exactly her old one. Black shoes not unlike a jester’s, now decorated with golden ornaments shaped like lightning, hid her legs up to above the kneecaps. For her size, the thighs that followed were quite thick but still fit with her lithe frame. A nicely balanced figure curved from hips up to C-cup breasts, her torso hidden underneath a green leotard beset at the upper rim with a second, similarly golden ornament that curved elegantly around her cleavage.

Her hair was as long as ever, a very light green, and tumbled about the place without any regard for gravity. Elfishly long and pointy ears peeked out at the sides and her amber eyes looked onwards as she presented a victory pose to John, stemming one hand into her hip, she raised the other. Index and middle finger were parted in a V shape, the green glove that reached from their tips up to her shoulder giving the gesture the extra flare.

Pink lips in a wide smile, she announced, “This concubine does not require large physical changes, for she is super cute already!”

She wasn’t wrong. ‘Her Mental Stats rise from time to time but she stays pretty… dumb,’ John failed to find a better word. ‘I guess this is much like with women who have all their fat in their breasts, it all goes straight into mana rather than brains.’ Not that she had a lot of mana. Of all the elementals, she was by far the one most dependent on John to back her up. Thankfully, her required resource was usually around in abundance.

“Okay, here I go, becoming an item, dunno how, but I will do it,” Sylph suddenly announced. “Three, two, one! Flabbergasting.” With that word she change into glowing, lime green energy that quickly condensed into the shape of a sword.

To be more specific, Sylph turned into a rapier. An incredibly thin blade of a green-tinted silver reached out of a black guard that looked more like artistry than proper protection. Nevertheless, it curved around an entire quarter of the grip. Despite their filigrane apparence, the elemental items were usually rather sturdy. Their condition was directly linked to the elemental’s life force, after all.

John managed to catch the thing by the green grip just before it fell to the floor. That was a disrespect he didn’t want Sylph to experience, even if she changed without warning.

It was a very odd weapon to hold, for it weighed absolutely nothing. With movements that only looked good but would have caused any proper fencer to shake his head, John made some testing thrusts and slashes. As always when he equipped one of his elementals, their minds were as one, and as such thunder and cutting winds came at the perfect moments.

‘Just sad that I am really bad with weapons,’ John thought, having only ever used any when there had been an absolute need for it. He didn’t even possess a bit of experience in wielding them, a skill was a farfetched dream that he didn’t want to invest the time into. Point was, this was an item form he wouldn’t get any value out of. ‘Maybe Aclysia can equip her sometimes?’ Unlikely to yield any meaningful results, but it was at least a possibility.

The Gamer thought back to Sigmund, who had been equipped with at least four elementals. His air elemental had blabbered about that much, although his latter usage of an unfinished super-attack revealed he also possessed a fire elemental that John did not know about.

Either four or five compared to the average one. John obviously wasn’t the only one who could break the rules of the world in a limited capacity.