“So, now that I checked on everyone, let’s get my own business out of the way,” John announced to his familiars; “First, Momo, help me with this!” he was talking about Purgatory. The glove was now empty, and if he wanted to use its capabilities, he would need to charge it again.

When he had first laid eyes on that little attribute, it had seemed a bit underwhelming. However, just a second of thought had revealed its true potential. In and of itself, it was rather boring, but with the right spell, say one that had no upper mana cost, it became a finishing move that was downright unfair.

“Why not just charge it while you sleep with your insane mana regeneration?” Momo complained but grabbed the dragon-claw like hand and started sharing her mana with him.

“You think I am going to sleep with this thing on? If I roll over, I might cut open the mattress or, much worse, I could hurt Rave while groping her butt!” John reprimanded his support.

“I concede this argument,” she sighed as it charged. With her, nowadays just insane, mana it wasn’t even any kind of sacrifice she had to make.

John decided not to comment on the relationship bit. While seeing it black on white (or blue in this case) was something new, it didn’t exactly come out of the left field that Momo swung towards the ‘women preferred’ side of bisexuality.

However, the fact that he could just take all of Momo’s mana and make a Mana Blade that still upped the one he was now saving in his glove was insane. Whenever she got some actual offensive skill that let her use all of that mana, she would be insanely strong, possibly the fourth strongest person, after him, Nathalia and Thana, in his whole group.

That was a thing for herself to decide, however. As he had set her up in the support class, the Artificial Spirit perks were unlikely to present him with anything in the direction of strong offensive usability. Once she became independent, she would hopefully be able to learn spells however she pleased herself.

The glove was filled to its current maximum, 4440 mana, and Momo took her hands off. Now they both had to regenerate mana for a couple of minutes.

While it was true that he could achieve what the glove did (and more) by just using up all of Momo’s mana, there was one important difference between the two sources. The glove could only be used for this one attack, Momo’s mana was, effectively, a reservoir of strength for John and all his familiars, making it much more valuable. To just use it on attack spells would serve them no good.

He would still do it, if the situation asked for it, but it was better to spend it in a wise manner. “Man, it will be incredibly hard to patch the hole you will leave behind in this formation,” John sighed.

“You will survive, you have a talent for that,” Momo shrugged it off. “You just need to get along until I think I have seen enough of the world.”

“I guess,” the Gamer turned over to Aclysia and pulled out Eclys. The katana, so weirdly similarly named to its future wielder as if it had been seeking her out, lay weightless in John’s hand. Well, not completely weightless, but it was so light that it might as well have been. He grabbed it with both hands, just out of curiosity. The grip was long enough for it, but in response the Ring of Ash on his left hand automatically unequipped itself.

He expected something like this to happen. For science, he put the ring back on and just held the blade in his hands. This time there was no prompt. The moment he raised the blade with the intent of swinging it, however, the ring was gone again, and he was greeted by the same window.

‘Okay, so the system realizes when I want to use an item and reacts, but if I were to just carry something with me or toss it at someone, it lets me. Important to know,’ John thought. He raised the sword over his head and just swung it downwards in a vague attempt of imitating what he had seen in way too many of the anime Rave had shown him.

The blade cut through the air with an elegant whisper. “Mhm, I expected something more to happen,” he mumbled and checked the attributes he didn’t know. Which were all of them aside from Indestructible, Touch of the Abyss and Weightless.

From a raw utility standpoint, that was nice to have. A pure mithril blade was sharp enough to treat diamonds like a kitchen knife sliced onions. It never losing any of that sharpness was nice, but nothing John would drool over.

Now THAT was awesome. Shockwave attacks were a staple in video games and fantasy related shows, but they were surprisingly hard to come by for John. Not that he was actually the one who got to use it; he wasn’t even close to fulfilling the stat requirements even if he did use swords. Even Aclysia only got there thanks to her stat bonuses; without them she would have been missing 20 Strength.

Also very good. Downright insane, even. The true value of this would seldomly shine through, but still, it was a very strong thing to have.

The last thing was pretty good, just not on Aclysia. On the Artificial Spirit, the extra health regeneration was a glass of water added to a lake. It didn’t really make a difference.

Nevertheless, he handed the blade to Aclysia. Only then did he realize how close it resembled the standard weapon 2B used in Nier;Automata. Sure, the colour scheme was slightly wrong, and the red strand of hair was definitely not part of the original design, but it was a very close thing nonetheless.

“Aclysia, can you strike a pose?” he asked and scrambled to take out his phone.

“Of course, Master,” the artificial guardian said and held the katana above her head in a way that its tip pointed at the ground behind her butt. She pushed out her chest and behind as if she was grinding against a stripping pole, even pulling up her stocking clad right leg a bit. The shining fabric stretched seductively over her long legs.

John took the photo and made it his unlock screen. A picture of Rave smiling at him remained his actual background, but he could not resist taking this one. “Okay, now please show me that shockwave thing, I am curious,” John said.

Aclysia took an actually useful stance and sliced diagonally through the air. While it looked graceful in a way that only a skilled sword fighter’s attacks could look, there was no further development.

The artificial guardian looked at the blade for a moment. “My apologies, Master, I will need to try again,” she said, and after John allowed her to do so, she attacked the space in front of her a few more times. After her tenth strike, she quietly nodded to herself.

A vertical strike, the tip of the blade blinded John for a moment as it reflected the sun overhead, a vibrating sound, as if someone had hit a tuning fork, followed and a slice of silver cut through the air, cutting a thin scar through the ground in front of Aclysia.

The shockwave travelled quite far, slowly losing strength until it dissipated after almost thirty metres.

John let out a small whistle, that was impressive. “Congratulations, Aclysia, you now have a ranged attack… which makes you even stronger,” he patted her on her white-haired head, something which she reacted quite strongly to by pushing her whole body against him.

“Am I useful to you, John?” she asked as she added Eclys to the empty slot in Adaptive Bladery.

“Very much so,” John said and kissed her on the cheek. She exuded a happy fragrance of fresh watermelons, a welcome, warm choice of smell in these cold winter days. He breathed in deeply. “You are practically cheating with that adaptive scent of yours,” he informed her and kissed her on the mouth to taste the fitting aroma in her saliva and feel the happiness radiating from her spirit whenever he did.

Feeling her happy like this made his innards churn in the best of ways. It was hard to describe love, but it just felt good. John was eternally thankful in how much of that feeling he was surrounded by at any waking moment. It beat the lonely days in front of his computer by miles.

“Anyhow, next item on the list, I need to beat one more challenge to get Elementalist levelled up,” John said and checked what it was again that he needed to do.

That would be mana intensive, growing plants wasn’t cheap. But, as it was his responsibility to fix his elementals’ messes, he still started. First, he needed to buy some seeds off the auction, Gnome and Undine together couldn’t just create plants out of nowhere. Well, actually, they could, but it was so stupendously costly that he would rather invest the money.

Once the Abyss Auction drone had dropped that off, they got to work. John did his best to remember the original form of the destroyed parts. Where memory failed him, he was not afraid to improvise with a stone bench or something.

It took him a whole hour, but by the end it finally ticked as complete. Not the most fun way to spend the morning. “I like this,” said a muffled voice at his side, causing John to jump in surprise. “Deus Vult, infide-“ the knight cleared his throat. “I mean good morning, John Newman.”

“Good morning to you too…?” John said in a confused tone.

“Do you not recognize me?” the knight spoke in an overacted hurt tone, putting his gauntleted hand against his bucket-helmet; “I am so deeply saddened by this heresy. It is I…”

“Konrad Kamradsrat!” Sylph interjected and flew over to land on his helmet; “I know that voice. You are funny, I like funny, can you say ‘deus vult’ again?”

“If Deus Vults that I say Deus Vult, then I shall say Deus Vult!” the knight declared; “And if I am given any other excuse as well, I shall proudly declare DEUS VULT!”

“Yay!” Sylph laughed, riding the knight’s helmet as he made a bunch of overbearing gestures.

“To the point though,” the knight said. “A nice new patch you made there, although it will need some further fixing. I see unsatisfactorily hanging branches on that hedge! KNIGHTS OF TEUTON, TO THE GARDENING SHED!”

“DEUS VULT!” half a dozen knights, appearing seemingly out of thin air, shouted in agreement, stomping off and leaving John wondering where on this island the gardening shed even was.

‘Well, let’s look at the goods,’ he thought and tapped the ‘Class level up’ button.

‘By 2B’s glorious booty, which I possess indirectly, not another elemental,’ John mentally groaned as he just ignored the light elemental option. He did not have the stomach for this right now, Siena wasn’t even properly integrated into his group yet. Signs were good that she would be eventually, but for now she wasn’t.

He knew that the option would continue to show up, this was the second time he had seen it already, and chances where he would actually take it one day, but for now he didn’t want to.

Elemental Bolt he had also seen before, and he had no reason to take it other than maybe wanting to see what it would give him afterwards. Typically, these choices had follow-ups that either improved earlier spells or gave new ones in the same ballpark.

Which made the last choice so much more interesting. Combination wouldn’t solve any problems John currently had, but it also didn’t impede on his style either. There were more than enough situations where he could imagine one extra-powerful elemental to be more useful than two average ones.

It also made the combinations of their attacks less janky. When he wanted a lava attack, he could just have Salamander and Gnome fuse, and the resulting elemental would have a way easier time (and by extension take up less of John’s mana) doing what he needed. He had 10 different combinations to pick from, at least a few of those would have to be good.

Therefore, he picked Combination and promptly looked at the new skill.

John looked at several things at this sheet. For a start it was obviously worded in a way that let him know that there would be future levels of this, so he had an extra incentive to level Elementalist if this turned out to be good. Not that he needed it.

Furthermore, there was the interesting unique aspect to it where it would only level upon perk acquisition. There was an internal cooldown on each elemental instead of a cooldown on the ability period, also rather interesting.

Most interesting, however, was the name of the school. ‘Game Breaking? Does that mean using that skill is something that just shouldn’t normally be possible in the magic engine of the world?’ he theorized. ‘Better ask Lydia about this later, for a start…’ He looked up from the window and at his gathered elementals. “Now, who of you to combine for a test run,” he said in a good mood.

“Combine me, combine me!” Sylph immediately volunteered.

“…She has already rendered my point moot, but what if we don’t want to, huh?” Salamander asked. “I happen to like me.”

“Well, if you are absolutely against it, I won’t force you to fuse outside of situations that absolutely demand it,” John tried to ease her worries, “but you should at least try it.” Salamander flew up to his face and stared into his eyes.

The challenging gaze of her coal-like irises burned into his retina as the flames that barely covered her decency flared up. The flame on her head flickered once in thought, then she nodded. “Fine, I will do it,” she said.

“Really, you will fuse with me?” Sylph exclaimed.

“Maybe another day, but no,” Salamander turned to Siena. The shadow elemental looked up from scratching a little piece of dirt off the claw of her index finger with her thumb to meet her sisters-in-summoner gaze with surprise. “You and me are going to do this, bitch,” the fire spirit declared.

“Why me?” Siena asked, obviously against the idea. “You have such an eager playmate.”

“Because, you arrogant fuck, despite you being an asocial bitch with extremely unhealthy obsessions and a bad attitude...,” Salamander laid into her, “…I am willing to give you the chance and prove to me that you can actually work with us. Now do you want to keep being the ostracized bitch who we all barely tolerate or do you want to actually try and get along with us?”

The fire spirit had changed into her tall form during this dialogue. Now standing above Siena in sheer height, Salamander’s hand reached out to the nightmare elemental. Not in a gracious way, not in a saving way, not in anything remotely resembling anything other than the invitation to try, not to necessarily succeed.

John didn’t say anything and kept his spirit shut. He didn’t want his expectations to have any impact on the decision Siena was about to make, even if it was rather obvious what he wanted. The fact that Salamander did this out of her own volition surprised him, but pleasantly so.

Siena looked at the hand with an indecipherable look on her face. The glass-shard like ends of her still raised hand twitched. “I don’t need you to like me,” she finally hissed but grabbed the hand regardless.

“Didn’t say I would,” Salamander countered.

Their forms become blurry and pulled towards each other, overlapping, then forming a sphere. All of it happened in less than a second, but at the end a new girl stout her limbs.

A predictably even mixture of both Salamander and Siena met him. A tall, big-titted girl with dark red skin, hair growing upwards and flickering like a black candle flame, shadows rising from it like thick smoke. Her eyes seemed inverted in colour, a black sclera with a white iris and a yellow, snake-like pupil. With a curious expression she looked at her knife-like fingers.

John inwardly sighed at the supremely edgy name of the glass cannon in front of him. Was this because Siena was in there? Further experimentation would show that.

The fused elemental started cackling. “Let’s see what I can do,” she said in an ecstatic voice, and suddenly purple fire was set to vast amounts of space around them. Spaces, as John quickly realized, wherever a shadow was.

Not all shadows, she didn’t set fire to the gaps between blades of grass, but the shadow the newly made hedge cast was very much alight, just like the sun-turned side of it. “Wow, calm it!” John shouted out, he had just fixed that thing.

“But burning is so much fun,” Shadowflame complained, her eyes falling on Sylph. “Let’s burn something that screams!”

“Oh hell no,” John said and stepped into their line of sight. The scary thing here was not only that pretty strong ability, the lightless flames burned with intense heat, but the fact that the edgy elemental there was faster than Sylph – not by a small margin either.

“You are going to relax, deactivate that fire and wait for the timer to tick down!” he firmly stated.

“Mhm, I will listen, but only because it’s you,” Shadowflame folded her arms underneath her breasts as the hedge and floor stopped burning. A scorched branch fell into the ashes as the so-called Gamer’s Bloodhound pushed up her breasts. “These seem smaller than usual,” she noted as they waited for the timer to tick down.