“10 out of 10, must cuddle!” the Fluffsider declared and leapt from the tabletop. He sailed across the room, landing on Eliana’s shoulder, and imdiately began to braid the pretty little psycho’s hair. How he did so with the paws of a plushie was as much a mystery now as it had been every other year.
“Wha-wha-wha?” Daiyu stamred. “What is th-that?!”
“Ah, I forgot to tell you,” Lulu said. “John told this would happen.”
“This is Kyonchi, the Fluffsider,” the Gar told them. “He’s been following Nathalia around for a while, and after she started hanging out with us, he sort of beca attached.”
“It’s rude to talk about soone as if they aren’t there!” Kyonchi declared.
Eliana’s hair, usually a ssy mane with curtained bangs, had been weaved into a crown braid. A bit of the usual chaos remained, strands sticking out of the braid with decorative accuracy. “Thanks for the work, K-teddy,” the pretty little psycho said.
“No worries, just doing the most decent work I can do,” Kyonchi said, then leapt on over to Nathalia. “Ti to be braided.”
“Just get it over with,” the goddess groaned, arms crossed under her breasts.
John followed the events from the comfort of his chair. Had Nathalia demonstrated greater trepidation, he would have stepped in and banished the Fluffsider by whatever ans possible. Unwilling as she presented herself, Nathalia ultimately seed quite pleased with the singular braid of glowing orange that she ended up with.
Kyonchi darted from woman to woman, all of which had worn their hair open in anticipation of the Fluffsider’s arrival. Every one of them had their silky strands woven into various styles of braid, so simple, so artistic.
“B-b-but… w-w-what is he?” Daiyu asked, her face now frad by two little sidebraids.
“So kind of god, probably,” the Gar responded. “Observe calls him an incarnation of the human appreciation for all things cute and cuddly.”
“Still rude!” Kyonchi declared. “You’re almost as bad as that one guy that calls Konychi-Wawa.”
“…How even?” John asked.
“Dunno!” Kyonchi finished up with Lee’s hair. The dark, straight hair of the youngest mber of the harem had been put into a French braided ponytail, starting near the top of her head and ending in a little fan of open hair.
The Fluffsider did a kickflip off John’s shoulder. A sorsault delivered the teddy to Velka’s back. The Magryph lazily turned her head, inspecting that which now rode her, then averted her gaze in disinterest. Whatever Kyonchi really was, he had chosen to animate a regular plushie, sothing the thieving birdcat did not care about.
“I am Kyonchi, the Fluffsider, the Braider of Cute Won’s Hair, that is all you need to know.”
“Yeah, cute won, fucking right,” Eliana said mockingly.
“Cutecraziessayfuckingwhat?”
“Fucking what?”
“HAH!”
“…Fuck you!”
“And with that, I shall go away!” Kyonchi declared and rose to his feet. He stood proudly on Velka’s shoulders, only for his posture to slump awkwardly. “Also… I’m sorry for your loss… ‘kay, bye!” Losing its animating spirit, the teddy fell over. Velka caught it before it fell to the ground, then carried it over to Eliana, who took it and pressed it against her chest. It, like the white-black scarf she was wearing, was one of the oldest gifts she had received after her return to life.
“Stupid, cute fucking teddy,” she grumbled.
“Awkward teddy,” John muttered. He had gotten caught off-guard by the condolences from that entity.
Scarlett explored the length of her braided ponytail. “Seriously would be interesting to find out what he is.”
“An abomination in the Lady’s order!” Moira declared, her hair put into braided, low pigtails. It did make her look cute, but John found that she looked better with open hair or her regular ponytail. “Why did you get spared?”
“Holly hair,” Rave responded.
“I do not believe him to be abominable in any way,” John gave his thoughts on the nature of the Fluffsider. “Could be a god, could be a Latebloor with a very specific ability, could be sothing we don’t understand yet. Any insight, Nia?”
“Nothing that wouldn’t hurt your heads,” the pariah responded.
“Ominous,” John remarked, partially joking.
One of the things that he had needed to accept was that the magic system of the world he inhabited was not understood. Sure, they had general ideas of how things functioned, so of them more firmly established than others. The creation cycle of a god was pretty established. Strong souls gathered up, ford a sapient monster inside a Natural Barrier, that monster aligned ntally with a human concept, and that Faith then empowered that monster, elevating it to godhood. That was how gods were created in a vacuum. Sotis, individuals like Nightingale were born rather than spawned, but that was rare.
The way magic worked in people was a lot more foggy. There was the general theory of soul types, but it was imprecise at best. According to that theory, every soul was one of nine types. There was the regular soul, unremarkable in its typing, which had no Innate Ability to speak of. Then there were the four large categories, earth, water, fire and wind, and the four rare categories, shadow, light, life and empty. People who possessed these soul types had various levels of Innate Abilities.
There were so problems with this theory. To begin with, the ‘life’ category was a big hodgepodge of different powers, ranging from blood magic to bug control. Another issue was that it could be debated if the ‘empty’ souls, like Nia, were part of the magic system at all. The most glaring problem with this categorization of soul types was that there was no ‘arcane’ soul.
John had looked into the origin of this categorization system and it had co from a German researcher who published his findings in the late 17th century. In other words, it ca from a culture that considered elental magic the most proper form of magic, so arcane might have been excluded due to cultural biases – or because there just hadn’t been enough arcane users around to research it properly.
Either way, it was an obviously flawed system. It was also useful, for two reasons. One was that it was fairly intuitive, the lack of arcane aside. The second was that it was true enough. Soone who had an Innate Ability in the earth category could check for other varieties of magic in it and would find it much easier to learn magics of the sa kind and much more difficult to find magics in the opposite category.
In that sense, it was sowhat similar to how atoms were taught to beginners and to more advanced students. The whole idea of electrons on rings was entirely fiction, but it was good enough to get an idea. The reality was more of a cloud and each individual type of magic hung out in a cluster, defying exact placent.
So, the soul types theory was good enough, while scholars the world over attempted to fully understand the way magic worked. Considering that magic was its own, ‘alive’ force, it was very well possible that it would shift under their noses to defy exact asurent.
“Alright, John has the ‘I’m thinking about theory’ face,” Rave remarked. “Ti to pull him out of that.”
“With what?” John asked.
“A serious thinking about sothing else.” Rave looked around the room. “Last Christmas-“
“I gave you my heart,” Lee spoke, as if possessed.
“But the very next day…” Undine continued, compelled by the sa spirit.
“Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you,” Sylph babbled.
“The curse is broken!” John exclaid. “Quick, Jane, continue the conversation.”
Lee giggled. It grew to the volu of actual laughter while she tried to get the words out. “Con… conver… c-conversation deez nuts!”
“That makes no sense.”
John’s complaint fell on deaf ears, Lee had cracked herself with that ‘joke’. She was the only one laughing but she did so with enthusiasm. Rolling his eyes, John hugged her and whispered little an things into her ear between nibbles of her earlobe.
“What I was gettin’ at,” Rave drawled, “is that this is the last Christmas we have without kids in the house.”
An almost absolute certainty. Between the quantity and virility of his seed, it was not unlikely that he was going to impregnate Eliana first try. Unless her biology had been adjusted in a way that made her pregnancy last longer than the usual 9 months, they would have a baby in the house by late October, possibly more.
John returned his eyes to the picture of his parents. “I’ll give them everything I can.” Then, he returned his eyes to his first fiancée. “Jane… I know you don’t want to weigh in on it…”
“Ya don’t have to… I’m going to talk to my parents soon enough,” Rave promised. “I’ve got next to no clue what heritage my mom dedicated her life to… but I don’t think she’s such a bitch that she deserves to be kept away from her grandchildren.”
“Then I won’t say anything after all… I think now is a good ti.”
There was a brief mont of confusion on what he ant by that. Aclysia registered it first, clapping her hands together to gain everyone’s attention. “On the matter of Fianna joining the harem, the maids are of one mind. We affirm the decision.”
“O-oh, that’s what we’re doing, uh.” Gno turned her head one way, then the other, then back again, trying to get a hasty read on her fellow elentals. “I think no one here has any problems with it either?”
“Nope,” Salamander responded with a pop of her lips.
“I have zero problems, besides that stupid sugar limit you put on , that is so unfair, that’s a big problem, a huge problem actually. Yeah, I have a huge problem, but not with Fianna, Fianna is cool! Cool and sexy and-“
Undine put a hand on Sylph’s mouth to keep her from babbling on forever. “No complaints from .”
“I’m certain she’ll purr along nicely,” Siena moaned.
John scanned the reactions of the rest of the harettes, who commonly were satisfied with contributing a nod. There was simply less to be said for Fianna. The one with the biggest concern around likely was John himself, who would have preferred it if the sniper had a bigger goal than supporting him.
Fianna followed the confirmation with a stoic face and a nervous back-and-forth shifting of her weight. When no one spoke up against her, it was on John to rise. Lee got out of his lap and moved next to Nia, who was scratching Copernicus’ ears.
The arm of the tiger woman twitched halfway up to her shoulder, before she forced herself to relax. “This isn’t the ti to salute, is it?” she asked, excitent trembling in her voice.
“No, this is no submission,” John said. “This is an equalizing. Whatever else you want our relationship to be, in love we are partners.”
John put his hand on the side of her face. She grabbed him by the collar. Before he could consider anything else, her pink lips were on his. The brief startle he felt was imdiately overpowered by his honed instincts. He t her tongue with his, holding her by the back of the head, and took control. Fianna’s initial aggression lted away and they shared a unity.
She was not a shy kisser nor an inexperienced one. Fianna had not hidden the fact that she had been in previous relationships, nor had she advertised it. Before eting him, she had been a rcenary, a woman in a profession where every deploynt could be the last. John did not care that she had her needs t a few tis before they even knew each other, she was going to be his now.
For the second day in a row, his power flowed through eting lips and swirling tongues. Fianna gasped when the tingle of Lover’s Will hit her. In a hurry, she embraced him, her breasts squishing against his chest. She was a tall military woman, but she was still shorter than him. The softness of her front contrasted nicely with the hardened contours of her back muscles.
She trembled, she sighed, she moaned, she stepped out of his embrace as soon as the tingles subsided and swiftly raised the hem of her shirt to reveal the mark upon her womb. It was, as expected, the Servant variety. The mark that John gained in return was the fourth on his left index finger. A position shared with Beatrice, Siena and Nahoa.
“You will be bestowed the uniform first thing tomorrow,” Aclysia promised.
“Wonderful…” Fianna blinked the wetness in her eyes away. “I apologize for being emotional… it’s not often I get everything I ever wanted.”
“Get used to it, nothing short of that is good enough for one of mine,” John responded. “There are many perks to being with the emperor of a world power, you know?”
“I will experience it no doubt, John.”
He smirked. As enticing as it was to have won who needed to sotis be corrected on when to use what title, it was also nice to have those that could make the distinction of what was appropriate when effortlessly.
Fianna beca the centre of kisses and congratulations for a while, before slotting in next to Lyndell. The two newest harettes clearly had a bond, no doubt originating from whatever scheming Lyndell had done over the weeks.
After that, it was just… tranquillity. Hours spent in a kind of peace that nothing else in the world could compare to. The Quest Completed window could wait until the next day. There was talk and there was quiet. Laughter and reminiscing on mories good and bad. They had their Turkheir, prepared to perfection, a juicy at that all but lted in the mouth.
Two hours after that, they continued to lounge and talk, until all of the food had settled. Once that was done, Rave licked her lips and said the phrase that John wanted to hear most of all, “Tiger, can ya step out until we call you back in?”
John most certainly could.
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