The rest of his day back, John spent genuinely relaxing. He took a five-minute stroll across the beach, remembered that he was a perverted nerd and went back to his new palace. It was nice finally exploring that building, although he knew the layout already, given that he was the one who made it.

The base floor, in all of its expanse, was easily defined. The square layout was divided into four evenly sized areas, separated by a cross shaped hallway that ran from the large doors to a central, spiral staircase. Two of those areas, northwest and southeast, were dedicated to guest rooms. Where the northwest had just one really luxurious apartment, the south had several rooms of about the same living standard as John had enjoyed over in Mansion Hohenstaufen over in Rome.

Northeast was one giant, currently largely empty room, that John simply had named the ballroom. Although he didn’t really expect a lot of actual balls to be held there, he wanted to prop it full with rare art to show off whenever there was any sort of party. Rave wanted to install all the necessary things to make it into a disco. Whether they found a way to do so without having the giant lights ruin the room for the upper-class purposes remained to be seen.

On the idea of it, the Gamer didn’t find himself on the opposition. One of the things he had been most careful about had been to make the walls very thick and isolating. This made it perfect to have loud sex between these walls, to throw a giant party without waking anyone not attending or to murder someone who cried for help quietly. Granted, the last thing was not in the design purposes, but it would work nonetheless.

Southeast was a bunch of differently sized chambers for the sole purpose of backroom discussions. It was a palace and seat of his political power after all, so there was a decent chance there would eventually be large gatherings of people here that’d rather have discussions in privacy.

Interesting to John, on this day off, was the upper of the two floors, however. His new living quarters were… too big. There had been too much space in the design process. Around 1600 square metres. That was more than 100 square metres per person. Under those circumstances, giving everyone their own apartment was rather easy.

Well, there was no need to give everyone their own apartment in the first place or to use the 100 average for everyone. Undine, for example, just needed a sizable bathtub (or a small pool, depending on what definition the watcher fancied). They also didn’t each need a living room as large as John had on the yacht. Or a kitchen. For the elementals, who would likely use those rooms sparingly anyway, he hadn’t included such commodities. The Artificial Spirits also didn’t need all that much space. He still gave them plenty of it; maybe they wanted to have a girls night in their rooms or something, and John wasn’t going to confine them with a lack of playground.

He had made his own complex to be the heart of the entire thing, in location and design, making it the biggest. There was a room, basically just one giant bed, big enough for twenty people to sleep in comfortably. A large bathroom nearby, with the much-wanted group shower, as well as a small living room for John and his small gathering of girls. A small kitchen attached to prepare snacks.

For the actual kitchen that Aclysia would be using to feed all of them was located just down a hallway that connected John’s apartment with a bunch of public spaces. A gaming room, a sparring room, an indoor pool, an even larger living room, a relocated fetish room with their BDSM equipment, it was all there. Some of the rooms were superfluous, definitely, but John had to do something with the space.

Up there, he enjoyed the high life. Between catching up on some game releases he had missed, filling up his Steam library with games that he would likely never get to finish due to time constraints, and getting pampered by good cooking and great sex, John Newman felt like the prior days had just been a bad dream.

Despite his best intentions, now that he had the chance to grind again, he only did it for 3 hours. Quality time with his girls just felt like a more worthwhile investment. He knew that he was wrong, of course, since he was on level 169, about to gain another class level. Thus, on the second day of his return, he forced himself to not take it relaxed and actually do what he should have been doing.

Another Assault on the usual timer elevated him to level 170. Now he had…

‘I have two class levels to spend?’ the Gamer looked at his window in confusion and did the basic calculation. ‘I am level 170, so that 17 points base, plus the three extra on the maximum I got from quests, makes 20. I currently have 1 level in Lover Boy, 1 in Arcanist, 3 in Fateweaver, 3 in Gamer, 3 in Puppeteer and 8 in Elementalist… that’s 1…2…5…19… so I only should have one to spend?’

Looking for some sort of breakdown feature inside his menu, he eventually did find the answer: the Quest he had gotten and finished while he was drunk. It had given him an extra maximum Class Level that could only be spent on Lover Boy. Between his hangover and the panicked gathering of the generals, he had completely forgotten to use that and followingly had completely forgotten about it period.

‘Well, better late than never,’ John thought, going ahead and spending that point. He had no need to beat the challenges, since he had three free level ups for that lying around.

“Huuuuh,” John blew out air as if he had just gulped down something hot. “That’s some spicy choices there. Holy moly, if this Class wasn’t so generally useless to me… and I got an erection.” There was no particular reason why he was saying this out loud. Maybe because his brain had been sapped of the necessary blood to think quietly.

Now, what would it be? From a raw efficiency standpoint, Experienced Lover was probably the best choice. Assuming it needed to be stacked from 0 when he took it, it wasn’t that great, however. When he was using his Fucking passive, he was already providing over 100% more pleasure between the Skill and Lover Boy’s passive. It was also rather boring.

As of this moment, mathematically speaking, John provided double the pleasure of a guy that was already very good at pleasing the breasted half of the species. The bonus would increase that margin, but all he did at that point was what he already did but better. Since he was already brilliant at the normal things, by virtue of skill, stamina and bullshit abilities, why not go for the supernatural flavoured fun?

Enhanced Cum, while sounding fun, wasn’t exactly useful. He could imagine that some follow-up choices to it would grant some interesting bonuses though. However, for this very moment, Domination Pact was just too sexy. The ability to ruin his girls’ orgasms or halt them at the cusp of release was as sinister as it was enticing.

He could just imagine them, writhing at his feet, begging for the release that they had denied themselves by relinquishing control over their own bodies to them. That ran even deeper than simply holding the remote for a vibrator. He could even do both. The possibilities, they were numerous and he wanted to taste all of them. With that, his decision was made and Domination Pact taken.

The actual Class Level was to be used now. Currently, his priority lay with Puppeteer, so it was going to be located there as well. He just needed to beat a few Challenges to get there. Checking it, the one presented to him wasn’t particularly hard, something that cost him some time but no risk.

His left foot tapped against the darkness under his feet, creating a rhythmic sound. The nothingness of the I.D. Gate encapsulated him. ‘Well, might as well get to it,’ he thought, since he was already in motion. It was best to have the potential combat update if things had such a huge potential to turn south soon.

Through entering a couple of dungeons, many of them without enemies even, as John didn’t need them to beat the Class Challenges, the Gamer grinded out the necessary advancements. There were some odd challenges, like having a Mana Blade duel with himself using two Spellcarriers, while running in a circle around the fight. Another challenge had him possess six differently shaped stones, place them on the edge of something, and have them jump off at the same time and bounce off the floor in the same way.

Most of it seemed to aim at training him at advancing his Possession mindset. Currently, the skill was protecting him from being confused from the multiple perspectives. That was downright necessary, multiple fields of view would have confused a normal brain. However, it only kept him from being confused. Proper coordination was another thing. He could pretty reliably pilot his own body and run another object at the edge of his mind. That had been pretty easy from the start and he had done it back when he had used a bird. What if he used five birds though? The answer was likely found in one of them becoming the reason for a couple sitting behind the window of a diner to drop their coffee onto their toast by flattening itself against the glass at 20km/h.

So, it was good that John got those Challenges. It was a thing he had to train, just like his micro skills in Starcraft.

Well, that was easy enough. The middle choice was the clearly best one, especially since John wanted his Extension to be as good as it could be. He had already committed to the mechanic and would keep going. It helped that he didn’t really want the other two. Well, he could see Golem Creation being useful. Maybe one day, he would get it. Anyway, the progress had been made.

‘Great,’ John thought, clapped his hands together as if he was dusting them off and then moved out of the barrier. ‘With that out of the way I can… go do my paperwork… adulting sucks sometimes…’ Times really had been easier when he hadn’t taken responsibility for anything but himself and his direct surroundings. Not quite as meaningful, it was a nice stimulation of his pride that he was the main reason behind the safety of thousands of people, but easier. Sometimes he missed that simplicity.

From the I.D. Gate to his office in the Guild Bank was a march longer than before, one of the very few drawbacks of having a much larger landmass. Still, he arrived there in a relatively short time and walked through the corridors to the sound of distant mumbling. Several other people had set up office in the building these days, people John had hired to help him with allocating of funds, do the selling of the day’s products and take other such things that didn’t necessarily need his attention. There was a degree of trust involved in this. He needed to register those people as official members of Fusion on the Abyss Auction and other sites, but that was just the way the state took shape outside of the Gamer.

Alternatively, he could have tried to stem the pile of paperwork, growing with each person that joined his guild, himself. In other words, there was no alternative. ‘Here goes hoping that none of them will fuck up too hard,” he thought as he passed several offices. The only indication that somebody was inside was the light shining through the milky window in the door. John had also made this building largely soundproof.

He stepped past the last door before his own office, stopped, and walked three steps backwards. Then he knocked, waited for a second, then carefully opened the door. “Jane, you there?” he asked and peeked into his girlfriend’s office. Originally, they had tried to work in the same space, but that had distracted them with banter, sex and a small war fought with flying scraps of paper and erasers. Fun but not productive.

They still checked on each other regularly during the work hours. Not that it was hard to go next door. The wall between them was definitely necessary for things to work in an office space, however. Right now, he was more surprised to find her here, although that was following a trend. The more Rave had involved herself with internal affairs, the more she had found herself liking it. Much to her own surprise.

Seeing her boyfriend, she pointed at her smartphone at her ear and then raised her index finger. ‘Just one minute,’ her gestures said and John sat down on the office chair on the guest end of the table.

“Okay… Ja, nein, I don’t get that,” Rave spoke into the device, rolling her eyes. “See… no, gimme a sec to explain this,” she kept her good mood in her voice though, “you’re not getting additional funding for the project. I like ya, I like your hair, but ya can’t keep giving me nothing and expect me to just rub my hands together and create money for ya. No, I won’t further this to John. I started this project, so I will see to it that it gets done. You promised me some tracks and all I got is a bunch of construction sites in the city. You’ll have to make do with what ya have.”

She stood up and leaned against the table, one hand resting on it and tapping against the wood. Her pink eyebrows were furrowing slowly as a suddenly very whiny voice came from the other end of the line. Although her clothes were still distinctly more fitting for a jog around the park than a bank office, her body language was pretty business-like. As a matter of fact, John wasn’t used to seeing her like this and it reminded him of the mother that best was not named.

No matter the disdain Rave had for Nariko, seemed like some of her attributes stuck. Not that that was news. “Ya know… Okay. Okay. Yes!” she smiled. “That’s the spirit, ya go, girl! You get me that and we can talk again about extra funding.” The talk ended shortly after that, and the Lightbearer put a giant check mark all over a form that required at least 250 words per field to actually count as filled.

As she threw it onto the ‘completed’ stack on her table, John had to point out, “You know that’s not proper procedure, right?”

“Ja, do ya know that the stack of papers on your desk is that small ‘cause I ignore proper procedure to keep making calls and go to meetings?” Rave placed her phone on the table and sat back down. Not in her own chair, no, she circled the table and took John’s lap as her seat instead. Touching his nose with her index finger, she smirked, “How about ya let me get off with a warning, big bad boss? Unless ya want me to lose hours writing boring things that’ll settle dust in some closet.”

“I am lean and at least true neutral!” John complained grabbing her wrist, giving her his darkest possible glare. She looked back with a smile. He continued to glare. Her smile got broader. His cheeks twitched. She winked. Suddenly they were both laughing; something about the situation was just funny. “Okay! You win!” he agreed, wondering if Nariko was also terrible at paperwork or if that was a trait her daughter had built up in defiance. Anyway, as long as it was just her, there was no real damage to his apparatus. Most of the things she did didn’t require proper remembrance anway.

Rave’s main contribution were her people skills, be it via phone or going out there to meet in person. Administratively, she wasn’t all that useful, but the fact that she could get differences between people out of the world with relative ease was valuable. Where her charm failed, which did happen, her brawn was also a good tool to have in the field. “Didn’t see myself ever becoming an office worker,” she admitted.

“Neither did I,” her boyfriend agreed, although that wasn’t the term he would have used. “I thought you would just keep training and fooling around.”

“Yeah, that’s fun and all… but it doesn’t really feel like I am helping this society you are cobbling together.” Her attractive nose was suddenly surrounded by wrinkles as she made a heavy grimace. “I think I am becoming an adult. Taking on responsibility and junk. This is your fault!”

John acted like he was taken aback, opening his eyes wide in shock, “How, what, why?”

“If ya hadn’t shown up in my life, I could have stayed in Springfield and killed time by having small gang clashes and doing fuck all,” she stated and slung her arms around his neck. “A way easier life!”

“Mhm, but would you be happier?” John wondered, and she was leaning in to answer that question with a kiss.

Both of their phones vibrated at the same time. One of them, they would have ignored, but this seemed like too much of a coincidence to actually be one. Rave was actually closer to his phone and thus fished it out of his inner breast pocket. The device recognized her aura and unlocked accordingly. Her eyes travelled over the lines on the display.

A sharp inhale, followed by a long and quivering exhale, along with the emotionless look on her face made it clear that these were bad news. Wordlessly, she turned the phone to John. A couple of sentences on the unlock screen previewed a longer message.

Scarlett: I caught a secret service message from the Little Maryland. Fort Washington was razed. No survivors. They found Imerella’s corpse. What are we…