Getting ho was a complicated affair. To start with, there was the issue of clothing. tra was in her armour, Thana naked, and Rave in her bodysuit. None of the three could have walked through the mundane world in those outfits. Further, John’s girlfriend had a cat ear problem. Sure, they were adorable, but she also hadn’t figured out yet how to make them, the tail and the slit pupils disappear.
Because of this, John had to go shopping on his own. His face was dirty with ash and dust after all the events of the day, which earned him a lot of odd looks. At the best of tis, people with dirty faces in an inner city were a bit weird. People in extrely fashionable suits and dirty faces, buying won’s clothes, that was a whole set of questions to be asked. John turned them into jokes when soone, like the cashier, asked them and was on his way back as quickly as possible.
At least the weather played along. For December, John found it quite warm, but for the southern coast, it was comparatively cold, at roughly 10 degrees Celsius. Cold enough to justify a large coat that hid Rave from her collar to her knees. That hid her tail. An old-school hunter cap, as grey as the coat, allowed her to tuck away her cat ears and aviator shades hid her eyes.
“I look like a detective from a noir comic,” Rave said, inspecting herself through Copernicus’ eyes.
“I don’t think that works with the pink hair,” the Gar suggested.
“Won’t matter once they apply the washed-out grey filter,” his girlfriend retorted and put on her best mysterious voice. “It was a cold night, a rainy night, a cold, rainy night. I was standing by my office window, looking down at the grimy street. The black coffee I had poured myself was cold and rainy…”
“How can coffee be rainy?” the Gar asked.
“Script is a work in progress,” Rave waved off. They both shot a glance at tra, who was keeping quiet at the mont – for obvious reasons. Then they looked over to Thana, who had put on her clothes just as quietly – for mysterious reasons. “Anyway, shouldn’t ya be covered in Achievents?”
“They won’t pop up until I am relaxed, and I don’t think I can relax until I’ve had a shower,” the Gar responded. “At ho. A long, thorough shower at ho. Speaking of which, we have to think about how we get there. Normally I would suggest taking a plane, but there is no way we get through the security. I’ll see if I can have Scarlett arrange sothing.”
He did and she could. The Technomancer pulled so strings to get them on a private plane. Whatever organization she got in touch with to that end didn’t ask questions. They were mundanes, though, otherwise they couldn’t have been pre-positioned.
‘I really need my own private plane,’ John thought, before sleeping through the flight. When he awoke next, they were already landing in NYC. The reason he did wake up was tra shaking him.
“Get up, we’re ho,” she told him in her casual tone. “The shower is close.” John stretched and yawned, while tra went over to wake up Rave.
“You seem to feel better?” John asked, noting that tra had returned to her usual behaviour.
“Not a lot of use to keep dwelling on it,” the First of Wrath stated. “I didn’t expect all of these figures from my past to have such influence in the present. Not like it’s the first ti I clashed with the other tracanas though.” She looked over to him with a grin on her face and determination in her eyes. “If they’re your enemies, I’ll crush them. If we can save them, I know you will.”
“A good feeling, to be trusted,” he humd.
“I do more than trust you,” tra purred and gave him a quick kiss, before the plane ca to a halt.
There was a teleporter just east of the airport, so they managed to get ho the instant they left that maze of a modern building. Once there, they were imdiately greeted by Lee and Scarlett. The forr threw herself at John, hugging him tightly, only to depart from him with a heavy blush on her face. “You reek!” she stated.
“Out of my way,” Thana growled before John could answer, shoving Lee to the side without a second thought.
“Thana,” John tried to sound reprimanding, but the goddess of genocide just growled at him. He tried a nicer tone, “Where are you going?”
“To the parasite’s room. I’ll wait until the end of this cursed wake state.”
“If ya get bored, ya know where ya can find us,” Rave offered. Thana opened the door and was out without another word. “She’s going totes soft.”
“Good for us,” the Gar said, knowing full well that Thana was still able to hear them. “I want her to fit in with us. Eventually she and Eliza will be the sa person. It’s unavoidable at this point.” He looked back to Lee. “Anyway, we were talking about my sll?”
“Yeah, you sll like rotting tang and smoke.”
“That’s to be expected, given the last two days,” John answered and looked at Scarlett, who was smoking indoors. “No welco back from you?”
Slowly puffing out a stream of white smoke, the redhead kept quiet for several seconds. “…I really want to hug and kiss you, but you really are too dirty,” she told him. “Let’s get you in the jacuzzi and then I’ll show you just how happy I am to see you.”
“Sounds perfect.” John nodded and they went to their apartnt in the Palace. Before they got into the shower, they made a stop in the living room. Two boxes of scrap tal had already been prepared for him. He pulled the cores of Aclysia and Beatrice out of his inventory and placed each in one of those boxes. Their consciousnesses were dormant and John had to kickstart the process of recovery by using Create to combine so of the tal with each of the cores. After he did that, Aclysia and Beatrice were back inside his mind. A familiar and deeply welco touch to his soul.
‘Master!’ they thought in unison, while they started to munch away at the tal surrounding them. It was all mundane material, shipped here from the Mine, comparatively soft and allowing the two to recover their bodies quickly.
Aclysia took initiative to ask, ‘What happened?’
‘Too much to put it into words,’ the Gar responded, while making his way to the shower room. While it was sowhat interesting to watch the crystals assimilate more and more tal, slowly growing tiny versions of the two maids, he really needed to get clean. Sharing his mories with the two, he brought them up to speed while rinsing himself off. When the water streaming off him, Rave, and tra was no longer black, they switched to the jacuzzi.
John also closely monitored the systems of the Guild Hall. The water they used would eventually disappear into the aether, which made this doubly the best place to shower because there was no guarantee there weren’t so spores that sohow survived being exposed to Stirwin’s radiation. When nothing out of the ordinary popped up, when the last mory had been transferred to the maids, when Scarlett and Lee hugged him from either side, the Gar leaned back in the tub and let out the longest sigh of his life.
That was when the flood of windows ca in.
John proceeded to open his nu and spend all of the points he had available. There were the Stat Points for the 17 levels he had gotten, so that was a substantial increase. The Skill Points primarily wandered into Artificial Spirit, with the little excess maxing out Apocalypse Elental Summoning.
‘Might as well check that new Class out now,’ the Gar thought and opened that nu.
“...I’ll need to invest into this Class ASAP,” the Gar said. Putting aside the incredible, if sadly quite niche, ability to work Astrotium, there was no doubt that Enki was an incredibly powerful arcanist. Learning his spells and skills could only be useful.
Scarlett grabbed his chin and turned it towards hers. “You can pay attention to what you should do later,” she told him. “Right now, you are paying attention to .”
“What happened to the always efficiently minded woman?”
“We can get back to efficiency after we counter out how worried I was about you,” the Technomancer stated dismissively. About to point out the lack of worry in her tone, he was silenced by her leaning in and claiming his lips. She sucked at formulating care, but her gestures were honest.
Without a word on her lips, only relief in her eyes, Lee leaned in and beca part of their kiss. Things in the bathtub gradually escalated, with tra, Nia, and Rave all getting their own proper welco by the two won that had stayed behind. The tingling sensations aroused further desires, which had been suppressed out of necessity and now rose back up in all their usual intensity.
He truly was ho.
_______________________________________________________________________
On the evening of Monday, things were quickly slotting back into normalcy. The seals on his spells were lifted, so the elentals could be summoned again. Apparently, they had been sent back to their respective planes while their Skills were sealed, which had given John a mont of shock. Gno, Salamander, Sylph, and Siena getting sent to their place of spawning was no issue, but Undine caused imdiate worry. Once they had summoned her back, that worry turned out to be for naught. The abysstide elental had gone entirely unbothered.
“Mother wasn’t interested in .” Undine’s singsong voice was filled with positivity. It must have been an incredibly relieving experience, to know she could return to the plane of water without having to fear persecution and imnse pain. It also fully confird what the now black marks on her body already testified for: the complete removal of corruption.
John rose from the summoning circle with a sigh of relief. “Did you talk to her?” he asked.
“I was blissfully ignored,” Undine denied. She could hardly be faulted for avoiding the attention of her abusive mother.
Smiling, the Gar pulled her up and gave her a kiss. “That’s good then,” he said. Her safety and happiness were his priorities, even if his curiosity demanded answers from the Mother of Water. “Let’s go eat sothing.” The words were directed at her and the other four girls in the room.
With the return of the elentals, the apartnt returned fully to its usual busy state. Velka was mischievously spying over the edge of the Harem Couch, waiting for her opportunity to pounce on soone. Copernicus lay on the floor, specifically the area where the sunrays cast the shape of the window. Joining Nia, Sylph decided to go to the crocodile, the two girls giving the Celestial Devourer all the pats he deserved for delivering their victory.
On one segnt of the Couch, Rave and tra were busy having a wrestling match that included an incredible amount of kisses and indecent grabbing. That was the dynamic Salamander decided to bodyslam her way into. One segnt further, Lee lay on her stomach and tried to play whatever RPG was currently moving on the screen. The efforts were sluggish, the aftereffects of her ‘welco back gestures’ affecting her in the usual ways. Undine flowed over to alleviate that pain.
In an armchair nearby, Scarlett was reading sothing on her phone, while sipping cold brew coffee with the other hand. Siena made her way over to one of the room’s drawers, where the group kept their e-readers, tablets and other such appliances, and then joined Scarlett in quietly doing her own thing. Gno stood next to John, holding his arm. The cuddle rock wasn’t yet willing to let go. He gave her another kiss, then they moved towards the kitchen.
Aclysia and Beatrice were up to their usual sizes. Unlike everyone else in the room, the two wore aprons in addition to their nudeness. It had started with a joke from Rave about a hentai trope, gained traction thanks to John genuinely liking the look, and ultimately stayed because it was genuinely useful for the two to not stain their bodies with whatever splatter happened during food preparation. As much as the Newman household loved baths, there was no need to ramp up the number of such taken further.
The maids had reached their regular size a couple of hours ago. Going purely by visuals and John’s sense of touch, they were back to normal. Their skin was as soft and smooth as ever, they could grow out their draconic claws, their hair was silky and even the orange gem embedded between their collarbones had returned. All of that was deceptive, however. Their bodies were almost exclusively made out of iron and copper at the mont, as those were the tals they could arrange the most of at a quick pace. Sizable shipnts of Baelentium were on the way, which was necessary to let their bodies approach their previous hardness. From there, they would have to enrich Mithril and Oblivium, as they had just started to before they went to the Death Zone.
The softness of their skin was a product of the Perk that gave them tadermis, a material that felt exactly like flesh but was actually made from tal and silicone. Which tal, crucially, didn’t matter and silicone could be arranged via the Abyss Auction in a matter of minutes. As per the gem in their chest, it was not, as John had previously thought, the Shards of Destruction they ate. It was their own growth of a similarly looking, but most likely vastly inferior, gemstone. The reason he knew that was that all of the Material Bonuses the two had had were gone. Luckily, their Attributes didn’t follow suit. One was bound to their physical consistency, the other integrated into the magical code that was held by their cores, or sothing like that.
As much as the room looked like everything was back to normal, there were so things that needed adjusting in order to cope with the recent happenings. The restoration of Aclysia and Beatrice was obvious. In a similar vein, tra’s body composition had to be altered to remove the parts of Tiamat inside her. John had already been looking into this before the confirmation of Mother Chaos’ involvent, but what exactly he could do was still up to question. There was the question of what to do with Ehtra’s remains, including her sword. Most importantly, Eliza had to return to them.
Beyond what they had to get straight personally, there were also the political aftereffects of this event. Assessnt of damage done due to missing civilians and evacuations. Ceremonies in honour of the fallen and making sure those left behind received the appropriate benefits. Beyond Fusion’s borders, the question of what happened to the Death Zone area and how the other powers on the continent, the world even, would react once John let out the news. The Golden Rose was of especially great note here.
“What’s for dinner?” John asked, sniffing the air. “Sothing to do with pork?”
“Soup with pork, yes,” Aclysia confird.
John turned his head when he heard the door open quietly. When the white-blue haired woman hesitantly looked back, he thought for one mont Eliza was back already. When he made eye contact, he knew he was still dealing with Thana. The failed goddess had torn off the clothes John had given her to move through reality. They stared at each other for a mont, then she entered and, as if she had every right to, sat down at the dinner table.
“If you want to eat with us, you need to shower first,” John softly scolded her and pointed her to the appropriate door. “Get that gri off you.”
Thana pulled her lips back and growled like a cornered wolf. So focused on trying to intimidate him, she didn’t notice Rave approaching her. Watching the goddess of genocide jump in her seat was almost surreal, even with how confused she currently was. “Co on, ya must prefer being clean too. Bet ya can sll yourself.”
“My sll doesn’t matter, human,” she said contemptuously, even while Rave pulled her out of the chair and then shoved her towards the shower room. That the smaller of those two naked won could wear the entrails of the other as a hat within three seconds was just ignored.
‘Well, I guess with how Jane is nowadays, it could take up to a minute,’ the Gar thought with a smile. ‘Having Eliza back would be a lot better, but this is progress in its own right.’ Rave managed to get Thana into the shower and ca back after so shouting by the goddess. “Does she want her privacy?”
“Doesn’t even make sense, she’s already naked!” Rave complained. “And it’s not like I don’t know every nook and cranny of… their body.”
“I don’t think logic is involved with anything she does at the mont, it’s all a scrambled ss of conflicting intuitions,” John told her, and was then distracted by the sound of one of the many phones buzzing. Like the tablets, the phones of the harem had a dedicated gathering spot. Being always naked at ho ant that most of them didn’t have them on them. Because many of them also had obligations for which they needed to always be reachable, the phones were almost always in the room.
On vacation days, there usually was only one phone switched on (the one John used for ergencies), but this was less a vacation and more of a recuperation. The one currently ringing was John’s business phone. Sighing, personally ready for so lewd activities to work up an appetite, he went over and picked up the phone.
“Hello there,” a deep voice, underlined with squeaks, reached him through the speaker.
“Horned Rat,” John greeted him, not the slightest bit surprised who he was speaking to. “Interested in talking to about what happened?”
“In a lot of ways. I must comnd you on your intel policies. All I know for certain is that you are back from the Death Zone – victoriously.”
‘That could be an admission his spies are only in the ranks of common soldiers or an outright lie,’ the Gar thought. “So, you want to ask about what happened?”
“Essentially.”
John considered a couple of seconds, then decided to ask, “Did you know Enki would be there?”
The answer was silence. “…So that’s where he went?” The Horned Rat’s question caused John to groan into the phone.
“Just answer ,” he demanded. “Give an answer I’ll believe or you can wait for the press releases, like everyone else.”
“No, I did not know, for certain, that Enki was there,” the Horned Rat obliged him. “After the prophecy I made on your birthday, I knew for certain that the Lorylim had their teeth in him. Not where-”
“That Tiamat had her teeth in him,” John interrupted and tapped on the table.
“Indeed,” the Horned Rat responded.
John pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why did you keep these things from ? What benefit do you get from not being certain? You’re not like Tilgun, keeping things from solely for your entertainnt, so what goal do you have?”
“My goals, regarding you, remain twofold: to see you grow and to have you act in accordance with my endga.” The god of future calamity said those things plainly. There was no use for secrecy in this regard, they both were clear about their relationship. “I will not reveal the latter to you, obviously, but you deducing and evaluating the intel you gain yourself is certainly helping you grow.”
The Gar would have liked it if his growth was limited to dungeons, but the Horned Rat was broadly correct in that assessnt. “It won’t be of use to when I’m dead.”
“I trust that you’re stubborn enough to escape that fate,” the voice from the other side reported. “You killed the Starforger, after all.”
“…How do you know that but not what else happened?” the Gar asked.
“I didn’t know it for certain, and I still don’t know how, but the fact that we are talking right now made it the most likely outco of your expedition,” the Horned Rat mused. “You killed a god… the god of stars at that. I will need all the details.”
John was willing to give them to him. None of what he said next were things he wanted to keep for himself. Because it ca right from his mouth, the Horned Rat was getting more of the gritty details, but everything else was in accordance to what the press would learn soon. The god was amused by many parts of the tale, proud about the accomplishnts of Nia, taken aback by Rave’s transformation, and finally impressed with the way the Gar had won.
“A splendid sche,” the Horned Rat said.
“Thank you,” John responded in earnest. If there was one thing on which he acknowledged the Horned Rat’s expertise, it was long-term planning. “Now, as a loyal ally, I have inford you about Fusion’s latest developnts. I would appreciate advice on what you will think will happen next.”
“You will have your advice – in person,” the Horned Rat stated.
John raised an eyebrow. “I’m just wondering about the international repercussions this might have, I don’t think that necessitates you crossing the Atlantic.”
“You are right about that, but there is more to talk about than just the aftereffects of this,” the Horned Rat said. “We have much to talk about. More importantly, to kill a god and stamp out such a massive infestation of Lorylim with primarily your own power – contracted or not – I would deem that as an accomplishnt of divine proportions.”
John’s heart jumped in his chest. “Are you saying…?”
“I’m willing to bet Nathalia would agree.”
End of Season 3 Arc 6.
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