John was so mind-numbingly pleased by what greeted him at the Small Lake Pact’s former headquarters, now Aclysia’s base of operations in the region, that he could only run around with a grin.

Savage Island was quite big. Sure, it was small compared to the central island, but the airstrip that covered half of its real version still only reached about halfway down the elongated landmass. John really liked it, from a tactical and seclusion standpoint. The rundown wall running around its entire shore could use a refortifying, but Gnome could do that over the course of a day or two.

Really, John could imagine building a nice mansion here, install a proper harbour and basically turn it into a miniature version of his own Guild Hall, sadly without all the bullshit extras that came with his abilities. There were two noticeable buildings in the fortification, both within range of the only entrance at the only pier. A similarly run-down house attached to an evidently much older, medieval looking tower and a black box that John recognized as the mana factory from Aclysia’s report.

Everything else was dominated by green areas and trees. Wonderfully clean green areas, separated with make-shift borders laid out by simple bricks put down on the ground in lines. A lot of effort must have gone into that, as a massive pile of trash, old car tires and beer crates in a designated area of the barrier showed. Whatever the greenery had looked like before Aclysia came along, it definitely had been suffering.

There was so much room to expand infrastructure around here that John just couldn’t believe how barren this was. It was like he was stepping into the land of some nomadic tribe whose greatest achievements had been the discovery of houses. Potential squandered in the name of bashing each other’s brains in and terrorizing the neighbouring states.

Aside from Aclysia having cleaned up this entire mess, the greatest thing she had done had to do with the subjects she had inherited. All women around had been stuck into French maid outfits of the barely socially acceptable variety. Combining this with the general proclivity of Abyssal women to be fit and at least average beautiful treated John to the sight of over two dozen maids running around and cleaning everything.

“On one hand, I want to ask why,” Rave commented from the side. “Second, I don’t actually care. Good job, Aclysia!” she gave the weaponized maid an enthusiastic thumbs-up. John could only agree with the general assessment.

“My job is far from completed,” Aclysia returned, glancing angrily at the one maid that was with them instead of running around the place. She was a freckled redhead with a slender body and some marks along her lower lip and nose that indicated a recent removal of piercings. This did taint her beauty a little bit, but not in a way time wouldn’t be able to fix.

The reason for Aclysia’s anger was quite simply that, in the few days that she had been away, basically nothing had made progress. Just a few hours after they had realized that Aclysia had vanished, rather than employ some invisibility shenanigans, everyone had universally agreed to take a break and just not stop doing so.

“I am highly disappointed, Melthy,” Aclysia turned towards the redhead who had the only adequate reaction of making herself as small as possible. “Master’s temporary residence being not yet cleaned out is entirely unacceptable!”

‘Always fascinating to hear the odd names Abyssals can have and the normal American names others have,’ John thought, particularly thinking of the mundane born Ted and Chemilia. Then he involved himself in the conversation to prevent his Artificial Spirit from tearing the redhead a new one. “Alright, alright, let’s relax,” he grabbed Aclysia’s shoulders and gave her a gentle massage to keep her calm. “Let’s have a look at said residence first, shall we?”

The residence was indeed a shithole. It had already looked awful from the outside, plastered walls that maybe had once been white but had gotten that terrible dirty grey look to them by now. Except for the spots where it had just fallen off and revealed basic bricks behind it. The inside wasn’t better. A cement floor had only the occasional honour of the random carpet thrown onto it, with furniture scattered all throughout the main hall and cramped into the oddly small bathroom and kitchen.

The second story held the bedrooms and some more spacious sanitary facilities. That floor was even worse, however, as everything had the stench of cold sexual fluids, beer and old meat to it. Everything was sticky and the beds themselves were just mattresses thrown on the floor.

“…Well, there are Arcade machines?” John tried to look at the positive side of things. “Kind of like our starting point, right, Jane?”

“Travolta is spinning in his grave right now, ‘cause ya dared liken his arcade to this drug den,” Rave responded dryly, fleeing from the second floor as quickly as she could. They strutted towards an immense couch that was visible directly from entering, apparently the point where the former leader had spent most of his day. “How does anybody live here… EW!”

Rave jumped back when she stepped into something that made a disgusting squelching sound. Raising her sneakers, both she and her boyfriend made a retching sound when they saw the construct of mold that may once have been a cupcake stuck to her sole. Immediately she began the process of scraping it off at the edge of the table, covered in massive amounts of tobacco remains.

“Okay, yes, this is not a residence I am going to stay in,” John made perfectly clear. “Aclysia, didn’t you say you repaired a house on the main island out of boredom or something like that?”

“Yes… something like that,” the weaponized maid looked away and the Gamer raised an eyebrow. “I did it to forget how horny I was,” Aclysia confessed after only two seconds of being stared at. “I suppose we could move over.”

“Oy, you-“ Melthy raised her voice and immediately stopped talking when Aclysia pulled out her dagger in a flash. “I mean… Excuse me, Master, if I might interject.”

“You don’t have to call me master,” John assured her.

“Yes, she does,” Aclysia denied that outright.

“John is really good enough.”

“You will not address him with his name, disappointment!”

Rave giggle, and now it was her turn to give the weaponized maid some backrubs. “Ya gotta chill yourself before ya kill someone, Aclysia,” the Lightbearer told her. “Or do ya wanna defy John?”

“In this particular instance, I do,” the weaponized maid held against. “Look upon this filthy place. They won’t get anything done without a firm schooling in cleaning, cooking and servitude.”

“A firm schooling, huh?” John hummed and looked Melthy up and down. He could imagine one or two things about being a servant that he could teach her and her fellow bootlickers. Not like he would do anything to them that they wouldn’t expect, given how that room above had smelled and the beautiful people’s decision to just attach to the strongest person in the society. “Anyway, they must have really kept you occupied, huh, Aclysia?”

He couldn’t imagine that this amount of trash was something that Aclysia would have tolerated in her presence. “There was a rather constant stream of challengers, yes,” the weaponized maid responded. If she had to fight a lot, there was less time to clean, explaining these absolutely unacceptable conditions. “I relied on my newly acquired servants to clean. Evidently, I put too much trust in their enthusiasm, already having well-founded doubts about their experience.” Aclysia raised her dagger. “Therefore, I will now rule by fear until they know to properly serve you.”

Melthy seemed ready to just run somewhere. That the only real escape was the boat that John had the key for in his inventory was a logical problem that likely did not enter the forced maid’s mind. Again, John intervened. “Aclysia, I need you to put the yan back in the box and give me more of the dere.”

“Master, these unworthy little cunt-“

“Ooookay,” Rave laughed and shut the maid up by pushing her force reset button. In Aclysia’s case, that meant kissing her for a solid twenty seconds and not letting go until her body tension had reached non-critical levels and her face started flushing a little bit. “Ya really need to cease and desist right about now, murder maid,” the technolover then whispered and lightly slapped her on the ass.

“I am sorry about this outburst,” Aclysia took a little bow when Rave stepped back from her. “This amount of dirt around Master heavily offends me.”

“Alright… sorry, you were saying, Melthy?” John gestured for the redhead to speak.

“Uhm… yes, here is the thing about living on the main island… it’s for fucking losers,” Melthy didn’t do herself any favours in putting it like that, Aclysia’s green eyes widening to a degree that would have made a nuclear reactor feel cold from the shock.

‘Slow breaths,’ John mentally advised her and heard her very audibly inhale next to himself. Her dagger was replaced with Eclys, but the weaponized maid just stood there, staring and clutching her blade. “Okay, can I ask why?”

“Fu…” Melthy swallowed, speaking really slowly as she kept eyes on the silver-white weapon. “I mean, people that haven’t even conquered their own island are generally regarded as inferior around here.”

“Okay, so let me take this slowly,” John tried to wrap his head around this. “Your local culture has it so everyone is specialized in trap magic of the kind best used for terrorist attacks, so you can fortify the islands you fight over with, essentially, landmines. Your leader is whoever is strongest. People that can’t even conquer or suck up to someone who doesn’t own his own island are treated as dirt and you somehow do all of this without an honour code that prevents things like night assaults or assassinations.” Melthy had no comment to any of that. Sparing himself the exasperated rant about how backwards all of that was, John just asked, “How did you all not get taken over an eternity ago?”

“…Well, in the past, whenever some outsider challenged and beat the current leader, they either integrated because they wanted to keep all of us trophy girls around,” the redhead didn’t even seem the slightest bit ashamed about calling herself that, “or we removed them in another way.”

‘Oh, now I get it,’ John thought, ‘the people maintaining this style of society aren’t actually the fighters… its all of the harem cliques acting as the reward or poisoning people that want to change stuff… although I don’t really get why…’ John racked his brain a bit about that and came up with the answer that traditions, particularly of the brutal kind, could often stick around much longer than they had any right to. On some level he could also get that this allowed for the protection of the charismatic by the strong. Primitive but effective, in some way.

Understanding all of these things made the choice of residence a whole lot harder. The Small Lake Pact culture was maybe something he wanted to work on to reform rather than eradicate. For the purpose of raising some elite individuals, having a corner of his Federation where people could steadily compete over ownership of islands wasn’t too bad. It would also give all of the battle hungry types some outlet.

The parts he didn’t like were the utter dishonour with which those people fought, the way the harems just changed their central figure willy-nilly with little emotional bonds and this concentration of self-indulgence once somebody had made it to the top.

Battle codes were probably something he could spread quite easily, especially since Aclysia had already forced out all individuals that were a bit too unruly. Who remained didn’t care enough to risk their necks over changes or were the survivors of the old system, likely happy to see it replaced with something less toxic. Making it so people didn’t attach themselves to the winners was a bit harder. Self-indulgence was also something not quite as easily fixed.

Nevertheless, the Gamer had already decided he was staying in the area for at least a week, so he might as well try to lay some foundations. If he wanted to be respected enough to get changes boxed through, he had to respect the parts of the local culture that weren’t downright stupid. “Alright, we’re staying here,” he finally announced.

“I hope ya don’t mean here,” Rave pointed at the floor, “here. Lemme tell ya that I am not gonna sleep in that bed.”

“Well, I mean this island… but no, we’re not putting up with any of this,” John agreed and checked his clock. It was around 2PM now. “Okay, we are starting a grand renovation effort,” he said and led everyone outside.

“How grand?” Melthy asked, oblivious to the amount of sweeping changes John was about to make to this island whose dirty state she had called home for however long.

“Okay, see everything around you right now?” John asked, gesturing at the many miniature homes, the green area where the only paths were those made by repeated walking, the cyclopean wall, the gate, the house they had just left and the mana factory in the distance. “Once we’re done the only parts I still want around are that,” he pointed at the mana factory, “and that,” he pointed at the medieval tower. “Instead I want some proper houses, a garden with crops that aren’t marijuana, a new wall, a better harbour, walkways and, you know, a bunch of things that you would actually expect at a place of the 21st century.”

“That’s going to take a while,” Melthy suggested, causing the trio of John, Aclysia and Rave to smile, leaving the Small Lake redhead confused. “What?”

“We’re going to get it done in three maybe four days,” the Gamer declared and put his arms around two girls that shifted out of their incorporeal state. “Isn’t that right?”

Undine simply nodded, while there was a quiet, “Uwuwuwuwu…” from the soil elemental that had just appeared only to immediately have her butt fondled by her summoner. “I-i-I’ll see what I can do!” Gnome promised after a few moments.

The gold-digger in the maid outfit still looked unconvinced, but John would show her the error of her ways in due time. “Do gather everyone for me, Melthy. Before we start with anything, we need to discuss what buildings we want where. Plus you should get whatever things you have out of the current buildings before we knock them down.”