They headed outside where the rest of the attending harem, in this case only John’s familiars, was waiting. By some cushion politics (John liked to refer to internal harem affairs that way), they had given Lydia the room to enjoy a quiet half hour with her lover. Now it was time to attend to the next matter on the list.

“Alright,” John clapped his hands together, “Gnome!”

“Yes!” the same answered in an equally firm and startled tone. Stepping forwards, somewhat mechanically, the soil elemental was the centre of attention. Something she disliked immensely, but had to put up with for the moment. “I-is it time?”

“Yup,” he answered nonchalantly, trying to take some of the edge off. “Don’t worry, you’ve been through this twice before. Nothing bad will happen.” With her, he could say that without conjuring any bad memories. Part of why Gnome was the last of his elementals to ascend to Tier 4, despite being the longest serving one, was because she hadn’t jumped through any hoops. Sylph had just skipped Tier 2, Undine and Salamander had done their thing, Siena had arrived at Tier 3 and Stirwin had arrived at Tier 5.

“I hope so…” Gnome mumbled and, when John placed a hand on her head, let out a small sound that was as adorable as a kitten meowing for the first time. “…It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine,” she whispered to herself, while John patted her for one last time before the transformation. Eventually, she nodded and he stepped back.

Being next to an evolving elemental was a bit of a risky business. Except for Siena, her Tier ascensions had happened without any dangerous elemental torrent. ‘Differences between kinds, I suppose,’ John thought while he opened the window in question. Lydia was right next to him, watching with great interest. She had never attended one of these evolutions and was intrigued to see how it would go.

Even in a nation full of elementalists, evolutions like this were a rare thing. Normal people didn’t have access to some mechanic that just triggered them with purpose and, apparently, there were a bunch of difficulties in having elementals evolve normally. Hurdles most people didn’t jump over because they didn’t benefit them directly. That the Germans usually fused with their elementals only further decreased the amount of times this happened.

John clicked the golden plus next to the maxed-out Soil Elemental Summoning Skill, and the window popped up as per usual.

“Interesting choice,” John mumbled.

“A binary choice,” Lydia seemed to disagree. “Unless you can use your recently demonstrated ability to argue terrible choices to prove this to me as well, the spring elemental is out by default. There is no way you would profit from the seasonal bonus before evolving Gnome again.”

“That is true,” the Gamer could only nod. Sure, Tier 4 elementals took a long time to gather Skill Levels, but it shouldn’t take a complete year. He actually had a good reference for this in the shape of Undine, who had evolved to Tier 4 Christmas last year and whose Skill was currently, eight months later, at level 94. He suspected it would max out after another three weeks tops.

‘Then again, if I count all the days and weeks I spent in time dilation… maybe that would add up to something close to a year? Certainly would be enough time to get towards Spring,’ he thought and scratched his head. “I think we should ignore the seasonal bonuses for the purpose of this choice,” he finally said. “They seem rather secondary anyway. What do you think about this ‘Unleash change’ bit, by the way?”

“It’s rare, but not unheard off,” Lydia shrugged. “Much like some humans start with a generalist Innate Ability and slowly realize their true potential lies in a specific subset of that category, some elementals change their Unleashed state over the course of their evolution. The major contrast being that humans learn these differences, while elementals evolve into them. A paradigm born from our biologically, gradual advancement versus their magical plateau-based nature, no doubt.” Making sure her braid lay orderly over her shoulder, the queen of steel showed another smile. Despite that little fight, her mood seemed to be extremely good. Maybe it was even because of it that she was. “I should be surprised of this being a presented option, but it seems I have gotten accustomed to your ‘bullshit’ powers, as Jane would put it.”

“Enough exposure would do that,” John hummed and looked up from the window and to Gnome, who had been reading the contents through his mind. “Do you have any opinion on this?” he asked. He was the one who had to make the decision in the physical sense, but when it came to actually picking things, he liked to leave it to the affected.

“Uhm, I think autumn elemental would be the best choice,” Gnome spoke up.

That definitive an answer surprised him, he had expected more fidgeting, stuttering and perhaps a mild suggestion in any direction. “Any reason why?”

“I… uwu… I, uh, I-i-i-i…” Now that was more like what John had expected. Patiently he waited for the leader of his elementals to calm down and continue. “I think it would match best with the colour of my dress…” she finally mumbled, turning a light shade of red.

John couldn’t help but start laughing. “That’s it?” he asked, not in an accusatory tone. For a decision as potentially important as this one, it just seemed like a very flimsy justification. She was right, of course, the sunflower yellow of her dress would harmonize nicely with the gold of fallen leaves. “Well, as you wish then, my cuddly rock,” he smiled and moved his finger towards the option.

“You’re going through with this based on a colour preference?” asked the queen at his side, stemming one hand into her narrow hips with a disapproving expression.

“I have done dumber things for only slightly better reasons,” John responded and gestured towards Salamander. Opening her mouth a bit, the endflame elemental shook her head and let the issue pass her by without an argument. John’s hand connected with the window and the confirmation was made.

A quiver went through the ground under them, flowing towards the brunette in their midst. Dirt created more dirt, breaking out of the lawn in a circle around Gnome and swirling up in a brown vortex. With every passing second, it became denser, until John could no longer see his earth spirit among the flying soil. As a pillar of solid dirt, it finally came to a standstill.

Everyone kept the distance they had previously taken. The pillar was a strangely artful thing, courtesy of its whirling shape. It was strangely symmetrical as well. Almost like several helixes overlapped.

John had only started following that train of thought when the outer layers of the pillar changed colour. Dark red, brown and gold, the layers peeled away as butterflies with wings of autumn leaves. It was a gargantuan swarm, being freed ever more by the dissolving pillar. They completely engulfed the surroundings in their beauty.

After about thirty seconds, the butterflies began to glow, the veins on their wings becoming clearly visible, and fell apart into glowing particles. It was a mystical sight, gorgeous and melancholic, thanks to its short-lived nature. John reached up, several butterflies landing on his hand.

He presented those small, leaf-winged creatures to Lydia. They were surrounded by them on all sides, a swarm that was tumbling about, glowing, dispersing, growing and fading away, all at the same time. “Is it normally this spectacular?” Lydia asked, as the ones on John’s arm, one by one, followed the same fate as all their brethren.

“It’s always different,” he responded.

There was a gradual shift as the rate of fading stayed consistent and the newly created butterflies became less numerous. The swarm slowly cleared, leaving only a humanoid figure, covered in leaves, standing there like a mummy of autumn.

The leaves were closely sticking to her curves; John could see that little had changed about them. Gnome was still a balanced package. Averagely sized breasts, a softly swung, not overly narrow waist and well-curved hips that fluidly continued into long, slender legs. There was a bit more definition to her midriff, John felt, a little rise in athleticism and the firmness of her breasts, but no changes to her figure that were particularly outstanding.

Slowly changing their arrangement of the autumn colour spread to the single rule of a golden yellow, the leaves melded together into one unit. Parts of them crumbled away as a fine golden dust that swirled around and gathered elsewhere, combining to make her new clothes.

A gap was created between her shoulders and lower arms, a dozen centimetres where her pale complexion could be seen. The separation made the remaining gold around her hands gloves and left her shoulders to flow on as the main dress. A similar thing happened on her legs, becoming free from the base of her legs to halfway down her thighs, creating stockings this way. For a moment, it seemed like that would leave her torso covered by a sort of leotard.

The dust of the fallen leaves attached to her hips, however, and spread out as veins into the air around. Becoming black, the typical yellow-gold of the dress grew between them, then the entire construct fell as a skirt with two large, frontal splits, similar to the maids’ or Gaia’s outfits. Its rim, just like the rim of the gloves and stockings, was an unsteady display that seemed like a mixture of the many shapes leaves could take.

The black veins then spread outwards. They spread over the torso, skipped the skin and continued on the gloves and stockings. The further out they went, the more the black drained into a reddish brown. At the chest, the veins split into many branches, only to unify as the edge of the dress shortly below the collarbone, too far up to create any sort of cleavage, appearing like a flattened V. Above that line the remaining leaves began to peel away, leaving yet more of that wild border, and revealing the remainders of Gnome’s new form.

Her slender neck came into view first, a round chin, lips of an elegant shape, as red as a ripe apple and almost as sultry as Lydia’s, a cute, stubby nose and finally her almond shaped eyes with the fitting colour of hazel. Unlike last time, Gnome didn’t seem to have grown any older in her appearance. Of Asian facial structure, she seemed somewhere between 20 and 25 years old, mature and adorable.

The remaining leaves on her head were slowly pushed apart as the hair underneath gained its volume and shape. The yellow surface broke into evenly spaced segments, and six butterflies, like the ones that had surrounded them earlier and had manifested for her previous Unleash, beat their wings as the elemental’s brown hair fell. It had, perhaps, changed the most. The intense brown was no longer separated into twin tails. Instead, two braids confined it to the sides of her head. Those braids met at the back, became one, and fell down with the remaining tide of her slightly wavy, brown hair. That new hairstyle, combined with the intense colour of her lips, helped make her look more adult.

“D-d-do I – dammit!” Gnome stumbled her first sentence in her new form and cursed as adorably as anyone could curse. “Umu…” That was a new sound, less panicked than the usual ‘Uwu’ but no less embarrassed.

“You do look wonderful,” John assured her, knowing what she had been about to ask. The reborn elemental let out a sigh of relief and smiled while blushing softly. Even while appearing like she was wearing the autumn forest itself, the earth spirit remained the same easily flustered thing she had been since her first evolution.

“Thank you, John,” she said, grabbed the sides of her skirt and did a curtsey. “I have once more become stronger thanks to your care. I hope we make the one year we spent together into many more.” This sounded like something she had prepared to say on the actual anniversary of their contract. Like her, he felt it more appropriate at this point. Had the timing for her evolution lined up properly, that day would have been even greater.

But there was no use crying about that. What was important was that he went through a few things now that she had evolved. First and foremost, he desperately needed to hold her. Sure, finding out about her Stats, new Unleash and item form were all important, but what he really cared about the most was what she felt, smelled and tasted like now. This was the same soul he loved in a new body.

Gnome must have thought something similar as the two stepped towards each other in unison. Their arms wrapped around the other’s body and embraced them closely. Out of a sudden impulse, John picked her up and whirled her around. She was so much lighter than she used to be that he entirely overdid it. They whirled around twice, then his miscalculation threw him off balance and they fell into the grass.

They landed on their sides and wasted no time with getting up. Their lips pressed together and John’s senses were filled with her presence. Her body felt soft, as soft as a human’s, without any need to concentrate from the autumn elemental. All of her was squishy in all the right places, although the texture of her dress, something between paper and a dried leaf, provided some oddity. More than that, she had the feel of a human, but she had the warmth of mid-autumn, only about half of regular human’s temperature. Not that John found that off-putting or unusual in any way, none of his elementals really had a human warmth to them.

Her lips were hot and her tongue wet, as it coiled around his. They were making out in a slow, loving fashion. They were exploring each other. Her earthy taste filled him, a taste echoed by the smell of her hair. It was the scent of the forest after rain, pine needles and the breeze that brushed through the last remaining flower beds of the year. They were all intense sensations, similar to what she had exuded previously, but more defined and detailed.

Once his hands groped her butt, a firm and round pillow, and didn’t move anywhere else to explore, they knew they were done with this for the moment. Unable to control himself, it was only thanks to Gnome that the kiss finally ended. “We have many other things to do today,” she whispered with a smile, her perfect embrace surrounding him with security and love.