’80 more points into Intellect and I have that goal cleared,’ John thought, stroking his chin. ‘I guess getting my Physical Stats up to 250 equally would be my next goal after that. I’ll figure out which one to start with at that time.’ He dismissed the window and instead focused on the goal for this extended grinding session. ‘4 more Class Levels. Either I get some more handouts from Gaia or I have to clear 40 more regular levels.’

It was conceivable, if he continued doing super long Assaults. With rising experience requirements, he doubted he would get 8 levels per clear though. That aside, doing that repeatedly was bound to exhaust him mentally to a point where he would fuck up and lose an entire day’s worth of progress in one go. Better to just stick to the Quests Gaia gave him.

Which meant he would have to clear a Floor I.D. all on his own.

“Master, may I ask something?” Aclysia spoke up the moment he dismissed the last windows, and John gave her the go-ahead with a simple gesture. He had felt her waiting for a while now and could already imagine what the question was. “You currently have four available Lover’s Will marks. I understand that Scarlett stands to profit from getting the third one, but there is no pressing issue for that fourth one. I would kindly request that you brand me, my Master.”

With no subtlety whatsoever, Aclysia framed the space above her womb (if she had had one) with both hands. Index fingers and thumbs joined to make a heart shape. The clothes underneath shifted, as Aclysia squirmed. A depraved look entered her eyes. She was quite clearly turned on by the sheer idea.

“If you could mark me forever with your love, my creator, that’d be my highest honour,” Aclysia took a step towards him. Her breathing was accelerated to an extreme degree. Weak legs trembled, failing to carry her at her usual height, making her head drop to the height of his shoulder in a mixture of bow and pre-orgasmic spasming. “I wish for you to be etched into my very being, visible to anyone who dares question your magnificence, I-“

“Aclysia,” John interrupted her by softly chopping her on the forehead. The flustered expression diminished and made room for a scolded pout. “As much as I love everything you’re saying right now, you’re getting a bit possessive-crazy.”

“I just want to be yours, John,” she mumbled like an innocent schoolgirl that was professing her love for the first time.

The Gamer put an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Are you saying you aren’t already mine?” he asked in his most dominant tone. He could practically see the hearts rise from her head as her expression changed into a flustered smile and the blush returned, more intense than ever. If thoughts could be visualized, hers would have been a giant pink sun at the moment.

“Of course I am, Master,” she gasped. “My purpose is to serve you; nothing brings me more joy. Whatever you ask of me, I will obey.”

“Then I must ask you to be patient,” he said, and that sun collapsed into a black hole of disappointment. He could actively feel his own mood getting depressed by the sheer intensity of it. Although John wanted to pull out of this event horizon of dark emotions, if he backed off now, he was afraid of how his weaponized maid might take it.

“Patient about…?” Aclysia asked, as if there was any doubt about it.

“About the Lover’s Will mark,” he said very slowly, carefully navigating the minefield he found himself in. He would have been lying if he said he hadn’t expected her to have a rather intense reaction to this situation.

Her brows almost met and she clenched her jaw to such a degree that John actually heard the metal components screech inside her mouth. “That’s – not – fair,” she declared, emphasizing every single word. “I have been with you the second longest, I have never left your side – except to serve your interests elsewhere. I deserve this!” In her agitation, she grabbed him by the collar. “I demand our bodies to be connected through magic and love, just like our minds are! A mark on my sex and a mark on your hand, a display for eternity. I – deserve – this!”

John knew she had the power to considerably hurt him, but this was Aclysia. No matter how mad, she could never do anything that was to his harm. It went against her nature and everything she believed in. Slowly, he explained to her, “We do not know yet what these will do in their entirety or how many I will have access to. Under other circumstances, I wouldn’t hesitate. You do deserve this. But you also have to understand that I have to prioritize holding these for those among you, my loved harem, that will stop growing at some point without them.”

Taking a very slow breath, Aclysia let those words echo out. “It’s not fair,” the weaponized maid whispered, her voice delicate. “I’ve been your most loyal, the most caring, why is this mark of love another thing you have to think about in such a mechanical fashion?” The hand on his collar dropped and dangled lifelessly. “Would you let me go for a second, John?” she asked.

That she went through three different ways to address him in the past few minutes went quite the way to show how distressed she was. He obliged, let go and took a hastened step backwards when she suddenly pulled Tiemarath.

The weapon wasn’t swung anywhere close in his direction, instead the weaponized maid slammed it down on the ground as if it was a hammer. The graceless attack was accompanied by a very unladylike shout of frustration. Three more times, she struck the floor with large swings, the giant cleaver devastating the poor grass.

“Offended interruption: you’re ruining the integrity of the green field,” Beatrice spoke up. Her inability to properly read social cues threatened to make her a half-piece of sass, as Aclysia whirled around and executed an overhead strike at the younger maid. Beatrice took a leisurely step back, and the tip of the weapon sliced through the air in front of her. “Warning acknowledged,” was all she had to say.

“Hhhffff,” Aclysia drew a long breath through her barely parted lips. “Haaaaaaaa,” and let it out just as slowly. Tiemarath disappeared into her Adaptive Bladery. As a Gamer, John knew that a little bit of unnecessary violence helped the process of calming down considerably sometimes. “I will…” she slowly said, clearly unhappy about things, “…oblige your request, my John. I will be patient, even though I rightfully deserve it.”

“Thank you,” John said earnestly. Without the increase in maximum potential, Lover’s Will was little more than a symbolic thing. Its only other offer was a 5% increase in all pleasure from all sources, which was nice but negligible. A symbolic thing was quite potent depending on what it stood for, however, and Aclysia was absolutely right that she deserved the Lover’s Will mark before most of the remaining harem.

“Hug me!” Aclysia demanded in a pouty tone. Her usual behaviour had broken up a little bit under the storm of emotions and it would take a bit of caring to restore her to her usual calm. Without hesitation, John pulled her back into his arm. She buried her nose in his shirt and unashamedly sniffed up his scent.

It was weaker than before, but the pink sun knocked away the hole of disappointment. John visualized it as a star picking up a baseball bat and knocking the sadness into next week. Of course, that was an impossible chain of events on every level, but it looked interesting in his head, so he went with it.

“Anyway, I’m going to do that solo Floor next,” he announced to the gathering, while stroking the back of Aclysia’s silver-white head. “Any comments about that?”

“Are you going to try and cheese it?” Salamander asked.

She was referring to the fact that the Quest hadn’t specified that he needed to beat a dungeon of his current level on his own. By the rules as written, he could have gone into some level 15 thing and just breathed at the enemies to kill them. However, he wasn’t going to do that. “Gaia was nice enough to give me this opportunity. I’ll keep my exploitation wishes to a minimum.”

“Probably smart,” Salamander admitted.

“A little less adventurous than I prefer it,” Siena sighed. “Annoying that supreme deity of ours is second only to annoying my mother in raw gratification.”

“That a-attitude is what led to you being locked up for dozens of years,” Gnome pointed out, shrinking away a little bit when the moonshade elemental gave her a side-glance. “I-I’m just saying….”

“My path led to John, so I say it couldn’t have been too much of a misstep. Let’s call getting locked away an unfortunate side-effect.”

“Let’s not forget how long it took me to set you straight,” John chimed back in. In his arms, Aclysia started to happily wiggle her bum, which was the final sign that she had recovered. Now they were just cuddling for the sake of it. Neither of them were in any hurry to let go. “Anyway, while I’m gone, you should help Lydia train.”

The metal mage getting more levels as quickly as possible was tremendously in John’s interest. A big part of him hoped that she would develop pretty quickly. He didn’t mean her powers by that, although that would be acceptable as well, but her body.

Based on the development of Rave’s breasts, which was the best thing to base anything on, John had theorized that he had involvement in their quick growth. Either because of Lover’s Will or because of her general power increases, her body had matured a bit in some places. Because she always had been a stunner in all aspects, most of these other changes weren’t particularly noticeable.

There was also the possibility that neither of those two things had anything to do with anything and Rave had just continued to grow as her genes had laid out.

If it was the Lover’s Will mark that had an influence on things (mostly doubtful, given that it was a mechanic and nothing to that end was in its description), then Lydia would pretty up some more soon. If it was the level increases (likely enough, all things considered, to have some effect), then power levelling her could aid in making her even sexier. When it came to her face, there was little to improve, at least in John’s opinion, but Lydia’s breasts could use a minor or fair size and firmness increase, her figure a bit more narrowing around the waist to transition from a lean column to an hourglass shape and, to that same end, her hips could be a bit wider to give room to a rounder ass. Also, her thighs. Those were definitely too lean for John’s taste. They didn’t have much to squish and he loved having thighs to squish.

Nothing of that was necessary, Lydia still could have easily squared a place in a model career, but it would have elevated her to that supremely unfair level the rest of the harem was at. John doubted that there was a denser concentration of ludicrously beautiful women on the planet. Then again, he was quite biased.

“We’ll help her train!” Sylph promised. “We’ll make her stronger and more beautiful and then we’ll have lots of lesbian sex while you’re away! Why? Well, uh, because I want to! I want to have lots of fun and then I want to have more fun while you’re around!”

“She doubtlessly is your familiar.” The ‘her’ in that sentence came out of the house, wearing a white shirt, buttoned up completely, and black, wide cut pants that were stuffed into her boots. The outfit of a fencer and fit for training. “I anticipated you to pursue your own training by the time I could properly feel my legs again. What are you mismanaging your time for?”

“Cuddles,” John joked, while Aclysia slowly distanced herself from him. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised the weaponized maid.

“Just be sure it won’t be a return by Fateweaving, Master,” she answered. “Your success is paramount. I wish for all of your harem to find its happiness in the path shared with you.”

John gave her a broad smile. “You’re the best, Aclysia,” he told her and quickly kissed her on the forehead. “Out of interest, what are you going to train?” he asked Lydia. The queen of steel had her Innate Ability, so that would be the obvious start, but it wasn’t like there weren’t other things she could look into.

“I will not be training any specific one of my abilities today – with a sole exception to be made for fencing, since you already skipped out yesterday’s agreed session,” the auburn-haired royal answered. “I am unsure as to how this improvement of my potential actually works. Does it simply raise how far I can go with my current abilities or does it allow me to pursue magics and skills that were previously unavailable to me on the basis of my talent in the field being subpar?” She held up a book that John recognized as basic instructions for martial arts. “I will spend today on finding what this new opportunity you have opened for me truly entails. Be it that I will be able to fix my embarrassing mediocrity in melee combat, learn more advanced techniques of metal control, or if it is only that my Stats can now rise higher without any improvement to my actual abilities.”

“I think your melee performance is pretty good,” John let her know.

“It’s only adequate on the level of skill.” Lydia shook her head vehemently. “I fence better than most people, but fencing alone does not win melee engagements.”

“There is that trick with your hair…”

“Do you want for me to bald after a few combat engagements?'' Her joking tone accompanied her lowering the book. “The trick I used on Ankleshanker during the tournament was entirely reliant on his size, the forest environment and the bad lighting. I wouldn’t bet on it, not in that form, to win me any usual combat.”

John didn’t miss the dependent clause bit in the middle of that last sentence. “I’ll leave you to your experiments then.” He smiled broadly. It was clear that Lydia had spent a good amount of time thinking about how she could get more powerful. There was no way she had prepared in the half hour between the orgy and right now. That book, for example, must have been something she had already carried with her in her pocket space.

John could easily imagine Lydia realizing she had peaked when her training sessions stopped yielding real progress over the course of days and weeks. It had never gotten to months, since he had stepped in now. Knowing that he was the sole reason she could get more powerful was great. He would have been lying if he said that the bit of power he felt over her because of this didn’t feel good. Much more intense than that was the knowledge that he had helped her. Making a positively defining change in a loved one’s life was often a reward in its own right.