John ate breakfast, had a nice time talking to everyone, then headed out for an Assault and returned six hours later for lunch. While they walked over the green that separated light gates, the fell into the usual banter.

“Wheeeeeeeeeeennnnnnn,” Sylph stretched the singular word out for an eternity, only ending it when John looked at her. “When do you think Velly will learn to fly?”

“About a month, you already know that,” responded the Gamer. “You could just take the information I got from Judith out of my head.”

“But then I don’t get to talk to you and not talking is boring so I ask because asking makes conversation and conversation is fun-fun!” the thunderstorm elemental babbled. “Velly is fun-fun and adorbs-adorbs too; I want to fly around with her and give her sweets!”

“Unlike you, she can put on fat, so I’d be thankful if you didn’t overfeed her on sugar when she gets older,” John warned.

“Why Velly?” Undine chimed in.

“Because Velly is adorbs-adorbs and fun-fun, so I want to hang out with her and teach her how to fly a loop-de-loop.”

“No, I mean…” The ocean elemental sorted her words. “Why call Velka Velly? It has the same number of syllables.”

“Because Velly is adorbs-adorbs and fun-fun, so I want to call her something that’s cute and things that end on ‘ly’ are cute.”

“Does that mean you’re calling me cute all the time?” Salamander asked.

“Yeah!” Sylph exclaimed enthusiastically.

“I do get that.” John looked at the endflame elemental. Although she was more sexy than cute, with that curvaceous, openly displayed hourglass figure and being even taller than he was, one did not preclude the other. “This opens the question how you aren’t calling this cuddle rock,” he grabbed the nearby brunette by her butt, “Gnomely though.”

“Uwuwuwu…” the same let out a shy sound and blushed. “Probably because I am not cute…” she mumbled.

“That is just straight up heresy,” John declared and pulled her closer to himself. If they hadn’t been walking, he would have kissed her on the mouth. As it was, a quick one on the scalp had to suffice. “You’re the cutest thing ever.”

“Yeah!” Sylph declared. “So cute I don’t need to add a ‘ly’ because it’s self-evident and stuff. Super obvious! Super mega ultra obvious!”

“What about me and Undine, then?” Siena asked.

“Uhhh, I mean, you’re cute but… uhhhhhh.” Sylph hovered out of Siena’s view and hid behind John’s shoulder. “Undine is really scary sometimes.”

“But I am not?” Salamander grumbled.

“She also forgot to mention me, despite me asking.” The moonshade elemental had a similar contention with that announcement.

“Eeeeehhhh.” Sylph climbed on top of her summoner’s shoulder and sat down. “You’re way too nice to be scary. You’re a giant softie. Softie Siena!”

Too astonished to answer properly, Siena only managed to formulate, “How do you function?!” when they were almost at the house. Aclysia and Beatrice went inside and the elementals scattered all about the place to go after their individual hobbies or self-rewarding activities, like stone sculpting, bathing, napping, playing with Velka or having sex. The hour break between Assaults had to be used properly.

John walked over to Lydia. Sitting on a cushion they had placed on the lawn, the queen of Rex Germaniae was currently waking from her latest trance. Her white shirt displayed circular, damp spots around the expected areas, bigger than the weather could have caused. He reached into his inventory and retrieved a bottle of water. It still had the coolness of the fridge.

Lydia took it with a thankful nod, remaining seated but stretching her legs. “It is truly fortunate that you did not decide to try your hand at being an assassin, talkative as you are,” she remarked.

“I’m sure I would learn to be quiet,” John retorted. “I would have fewer loving girls to talk to as well. I heavily doubt I’d invest in getting elementals if my focus was on sneaking around.”

“I suppose so,” Lydia conceded the point, taking a sip of the water, while John plopped down next to her. She reeked of sweat, not in the attractive sense. She had been sitting there for six hours, likely only taking breaks where necessary. There were some people that never stunk because of their workout. Lydia was not one of those, especially not in these conditions.

The Gamer just ignored the protest of his nose and kissed her on the cheek. Something like this wasn’t reason enough to put distance between them. He would much prefer her after a shower, but a little mundane reeking never hurt anybody. “How is the progress, lemon?”

“…I…” Lydia blinked at him several times with genuine confusion. “Did you just refer to me as ‘lemon’?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Well, you always call me ‘my love’ or something to that effect, so I thought I should give you some nickname as well.” He grinned, displaying clearly that he was not serious about this.

Lydia shook her head. “And your choice fell on ‘lemon’?”

“Well, you bring something fresh into my life and your hair always smells of citrus.”

“I suggest you cease; Lydia has been fine and will continue to properly address me.”

“Yas, queen.” With a hand shaking from workout, Lydia gently punched him on the shoulder. She was sighing and smiling at the same time, took another sip out of the bottle, then spilled the rest over her head.

“A waste of perfectly good drinking water,” Lydia mumbled to herself, even as she pulled the hairband off the end of her braid. With a few motions of her hands, she fanned out her hair. Gently waving, it fell over her shoulders and halfway down her back. The few strands that loosely framed her head normally were now part of an auburn whole. Where the sunrays hit her, the dry tips of her hair were more of a copper red.

“You look cute with your hair open,” John commented, playing with it as if it were his own. He didn’t even try to keep his hands off her. Not that the metal mage minded. Quite the contrary. She put a hand on his leg and they continued their conversation without paying any mind to this.

“My progress has been satisfactory,” Lydia stated.

“From you, that sounds pretty good.”

“It is decently positive. Positive enough that I think we can consider the next stage.”

John’s fingers parted her hair into several strands. “I’ve got two more Mithril pebbles. I guess you would want to start with the Elementium though?” It was the weaker of the two metals. Not by a wide margin, but by a margin regardless.

“That is correct,” Lydia confirmed and then looked down on herself. “Let’s prepare, then.” Quieter, she added, “I do hope we planned this correctly. As little as I like the risk of being crippled, I want to be stronger.”

“It’ll be fine,” John assured her. They had used the last few days to make sure everything about the theory was sound. Everything about it was working in theory and had been used by other prodigies in the past. It was the powerlevelling of talented Abyssals. Those that dabbled in martial arts, at least.

They got up and went inside to go through the preparations. The first step was to liquify the pebbles. Lydia was only half a metal elemental and lacked the teeth to properly chew them at that size. Like with everything else, optimal absorption of nutrition (being mana in this case) only came about if the intake was properly diced down. Both metals needed an individual way to go about this.

For Mithril, this was an easy but nevertheless involved process. The pebbles were dropped in a container filled with mercury. The container was sealed and its pressure decreased with the help of Sylph, and then cooled down by virtue of Sylph and Undine combining their powers in the old-fashioned way. Of all the Combinations John had, none were an ice elemental, oddly enough. Regardless, with those two, they managed to skip the entire industrial requirements. Not that it would have been possible if Lydia hadn’t already possessed the remaining equipment.

With the pressure lowered extremely to 0,2 millipascal and the temperature cooled to about -39 degrees Celsius, mercury had reached its triple point. John would have loved to see the metal rapidly change between solid, liquid and gas, but it was all happening inside a metal container. He could have theoretically used Possession to look inside, but that wouldn’t have served him in any way since there was no light source in there.

As for why they were doing all of that, apparently one could ‘boil’ Mithril this way. It was how smiths got it out of ore. The resulting product was a liquid mercury-Mithril alloy, which could then be further processed by separating the mercury through some magical furnace action. John didn’t know about that and it was outside the scope of what Lydia needed.

Elementium had no such processes, so they had to go the physical route and slash it into a bunch of tiny pieces and toss those into water. Aclysia got busy with that, using her dagger, Salver, to slice the pebbles into ever tinier pieces. It was an unusual application of her cooking skills. Lengthy as well, slicing an Elementium pebble with an enchanted Mithril knife worked about as well as cutting a dried kidney bean. Absolutely possible, but mishaps were to be expected. More than one wooden board and parts of the kitchen counter were destroyed by Aclysia slipping up. If this hadn’t been a temporary kitchen, the weaponized maid may have thrown a small fit.

After the physics experiments and the dicing was concluded, however, they had several bottles filled with power sources for Lydia’s meditation.

“You should plan for a pee break,” John joked, while Lydia sat down. While all of this had been going on, she had been able to take a shower. Something that would be undone pretty quickly. The coming mediation would cause massive physical strain on her, with all the usual consequences. Although he joked and the research was done, he was still nervous about the potential failure. This had been his idea and they wouldn’t pull out now, but messing with martial arts was still something that was very painful if it went south.

“I already have,” Lydia responded, giving him a side smirk that indicated that she was joking herself. To start slowly, she took the first bottle of Elementium. Shaking it so that the metal particles would be scattered throughout the liquid, she took a small sip, then closed her eyes. Everyone looked at her with anticipation. Undine was nearby, ready to start healing the moment the group interface showed Lydia’s health bar dropping in any capacity.

There was a slight diminishing. Half hugging, half flowing around Lydia’s back, the ocean elemental attached herself to the queen, and the HP went back up.

“It’s working,” Lydia announced, then grabbed the bottle again and downed the rest of it in one go. There were no further words and John stepped backward, taking everyone else, aside from Undine, with him. He wanted Lydia to have the quiet she needed to concentrate.

‘What will we do in the meantime, Master?’ Aclysia asked, everyone else listening in on the mental conversation. ‘Shall we resume grinding?’

‘I don’t want to head out without our healer,’ John denied. ‘More than that, I don’t want to leave while Lydia is doing this. We’ll hang around and just kill some time. Maybe I can finally get Velka to like me enough if I spend some hours with her.’ That last bit he added just to do something productive. Outside of playing with the Magryph chick, he would likely game and fuck the time away.

_________________________________________________________________________

“Stay still!” John demanded. He was in the bathroom with a girl and for once he wasn’t having fun doing it. He also wasn’t naked, only sitting next to the bathtub, in his right hand was a comb and the left was holding the cat-bird that really didn’t want to be in the water.

Velka let out her protesting call, a mixture of synthesizer and a fire siren, and managed to wind herself out of his hand and climb out of the bathtub. With his Agility, John could have stopped her, but he was vaguely aware that he would have a future of terrible annoyance in front of him if he forced the Magryph into the bathtub now and made her develop a fear of being washed. He could make her clean through some rough means at the moment. Once she got bigger, this wouldn’t be an option.

He had to make her get into the tub by her own volition and he had to show her that it wasn’t that bad. ‘None of this would be an issue if she hadn’t toppled over that orange juice glass,’ John thought. It had been a small incident while he had played with her. In an overenthusiastic motion, she had done a triple roll and knocked over the glass. The resulting spill covered her.

Usually, Velka was pretty good about keeping herself clean, neither magpies nor panthers were known for being ungroomed animals after all, but being covered in sticky fruit juices was too much to handle without a bath.

Watching the Magryph scratch on the closed door, creating tiny trenches in the mundane wood, John scratched his head and sighed. Then he had an idea and opened his inventory. Withdrawing half a dollar in coins from his inventory, he put the miniscule value between his hands and shook them like a rattle.

Velka’s ears turned towards the shiny click-clack sounds, then her whole body stopped its escape attempt and instead went to investigate. When John revealed the coins he was holding, she came running his direction. First, she tried to jump up. When she realized she was much too small for that to be a success, she started climbing his leg.

With clearly telegraphed motions, John stretched out his arm and let the coins fall into the tub. Velka used her position on his leg to get on the rim of the tub. She let out a single caw and looked down at the clear water below. The tub was only filled to a degree she could still stand in. The surface was softly rippling, and on the floor settled the shiny coins.

“Mrrrawww,” the Magryph let out a mixture of meow and caw, as her head moved several times to allow her to inspect the coins from multiple angles. Then she stared at John for a moment. Whether she wanted to say ‘Can you get me those shinies?’ or ‘Really, that’s your strategy?’, the Gamer wasn’t sure. Maybe she was just looking at him because he was standing there. Whatever it was, he wasn’t moving, only taking the comb back in hand and waiting.

Eventually, Velka jumped into the tub. Once in the water, she splattered around for a while, clearly uncomfortable. Once she realized she could stand though, the Magryph calmed down considerably. About a minute after that, her greed overcame the wish to keep her head above water. One by one, she picked up the coins and placed them in one corner of the bathtub. After she had sorted them by size, biggest at the base, John tried to clean her again.

He didn’t have to do too much. He went through her cat parts with the brush and let her do the rest herself. With the natural aversion overcome, her cleaning instincts must have kicked in. The way she was splashing around, however, made it pretty clear that John had put way too much water into the tub.

‘Note to self, get a baby pool,’ John thought. If Velka was cleaning herself like a bird, that was the best way to give her a shallow water supply. ‘Although I am somewhat sure she will just claw a hole into it… I guess the best would be some kind of shallow pond with a soft waterfall attached to it?’ Having a pet, particularly such an exotic one, sure created a lot of things to think about.

“Alright, let’s get you out of there.” The Gamer reached down to pick up Velka and her newly earned coins. “You get to keep one,” he told her, spacing them out in front of her. He held up his index finger and pointed at the coins in sequence. “One,” he repeated slowly. Velka seemed to understand and let out two caws. “One.” He didn’t budge. The Magryph lowered her head, waiting for John to change his statement. As he didn’t, the Magryph eventually picked the dime of the bunch and looked after the remaining coins vanishing into his inventory with sad, dark red eyes.

John felt sort of bad for taking things away from her, especially since she found out how to maximize her adorable factor, but he couldn’t just give her things all the time. Otherwise, her hoard would grow too fast and, if he really overdid it, she would grow up to feel entitled to things. “Now,” he grabbed the air dryer, “stand still.”

When it came to being dried, Velka was all willing. There was a moment of surprise when the hot air hit her. After that, however, she just closed her eyes and purred while John moved the electronic device around her tiny body. Feathers and fur puffed up, making Velka seem like she had turned part sheep.

He turned the air drier off and a now clean Velka laid down on the floor, immediately falling asleep. At the same time, a window opened.

‘And there we go,’ John thought, satisfied. The Quest being completed in this manner underlined the decision to keep her to make it a certainty. Before he had a look at the rewards, he wanted to move, however.

Carefully scooping Velka and her new coin up, he stepped out of the bathroom. He placed the sleeping Magryph in her dog bed next to the stairs. After scratching her between the ears one last time, he got up. The tiny thing stretched out in her sleep, reaching a pose that would never have been comfortable for any human.

“I guess Magryphs are just as liquid as cats are,” John joked to himself. He was ready to check out the Tamer Class, when he got another window open.