John had one of his rare ‘not that lewd’ mornings. Effectively, this meant that they stepped out of the orgy after only half an hour, had breakfast quickly and without an under the table blowjob, and headed out before the clock struck seven. It was a rare occasion, extremely so. Between his absurd Libido, his youth and all of the willing, sexy women of his harem, being less than very horny was understandably difficult. However, the Gamer was fundamentally human and so he sometimes woke up in a peculiar mood.

His harem was understanding, since they experienced such things themselves sometimes, and engaged with one another instead. Once he announced he would go spelunking in a pre-work dungeon, several of the girls decided to tag along. The elementals came along for somewhat obvious reasons. Their connection would be able to stay up through him entering the I.D. Gate, but it would be somewhat fuzzy. Coming along was just more pleasant. Aside from them, Metra decided that she would rather fight than fuck. Aclysia and Beatrice wanted to come along, but had a lot of chores that needed doing before they went to attend their government duties.

Since he just wanted to do something relaxed, he decided to look at the Arena Instant Dungeons. These were usually pretty fast and straightforward, even if the rewards were rather middling. There was a way to get a bit more out of them and John was feeling like a morning challenge anyway. Some people drank coffee, the Gamer thrived on sex and adversity. “Do we want to face the audience?” he asked.

Most Arena Instant Dungeons came with monsters looking down into the actual pit. Unless attacked, those onlookers did nothing but watch. Once triggered, however, they could prove to be quite difficult to handle, and quite often, a number of bosses were sitting in some separated areas, needing to be agitated separately. Those bosses were often designed to last for several level brackets.

John had only really used this feature once. During the tournament, Eliza, at that point still the sole fully formed consciousness in her body, had absolutely torn apart every last enemy in the watcher’s area and most of the regularly spawning arena enemies. It had been that encounter that had caused Gaia to introduce limitations on exp acquisition in the first place. For good reason, given that John had gotten a good amount of levels and great loot out of it, doing barely anything himself.

“Not sure if we can battle the extra bosses, we might be too low level for that, but if we give Salamander some space, we can probably have some fun there.”

“Yessssss,” the apocalypse elemental hissed excitedly, her orange hair growing into a flickering flame. “Let’s do this!”

“Be careful where you aim,” John told her. “If you disable Metra’s ability by accident, that’ll be annoying.” The little warning put a damper on Salamander’s enthusiasm and the fire went down. Suddenly she had gone from long hair to the buzz cut she had sported in her previous Tier.

“I take it I get to fuck up the boss on my own then, my king?” the First of Wrath asked.

“Yu-p,” John responded, letting the last bit come out with an enthusiastic pop.

“Radical,” Metra grinned. “See, this is why I want you to be crowned king of Akkad. You let me fight interesting things.”

“And that I am handsome, wise and powerful doesn’t enter the equation at all?” the Gamer wanted to know.

“Not really, no.” The ancient weapon rolled her neck, her broad grin still on her face and taking any resemblance of seriousness out of those words. “How seriously are we taking this?”

“Not all that seriously,” John told her and moments later found himself with the few clothes that Metra did wear getting pushed into his inventory by her dimension breaking magic. Now equipped with nothing but the large axe, the First of Wrath strutted after him in the nude. “By the by, I’ve been looking into getting a proper weapon for you.”

“You were going to use the materials from the Raid, right?”

“Partly.” John nodded. “Some of the crystals, the Heart of Stone and Thunder in particular, are definitely getting used. I’ll have to see what else I can scrape together in terms of elemental metals though, most of it got used up in that other project.”

Of the six elemental extreme metals, he had gotten a nice amount in the categories of fire, shadow and wind through the Achievements of learning the names of the respective Elemental Mothers. The Mother of Earth and the Father of Light had withheld their names from him so far, for reasons John wasn’t quite sure of. At least for the Mother of Water he didn’t have to guess too much.

Because John had made a resolution to use the first bits he got from all of those metals for a certain project, Metra didn’t get into the luxury of getting most or all of it dedicated to her new weapon. “At least what you get will get done a bit more reliably,” he put a positive spin on the situation from her perspective, “Marathyu should have a bit more experience working with that metal now.”

The mad smith had just suddenly appeared on John’s front door a day after they had the talk with the Horned Rat in Florida. Having said nothing about what the rat god had him do or where his loyalties truly lay, Marathyu had simply asked for a new workshop to be provided to him. Given that John knew nobody else that could reliably work with high-end metals, the Gamer had obliged. Mad or not, the scarred smith was a valuable asset to have.

John quickly located the man’s old assistants, additionally hired a few already renowned smiths and stuck all of them into the Guild Hall’s Weapon Manufactory. The intention was to learn as much as possible from Marathyu before he died, went so insane he had to be put down or simply picked the Horned Rat over John in some theoretical future conflict. Fusion would be in need of metal workers that, at the very least, could work with Elementium and Mithril without problem. Infused Mithril and the six elemental extreme metals were further out there. Astrotium was a far-off dream. As far as Metra knew, and John had found no info contradicting this, only Hephaistos and Enki could work that metal. Given that the former was part of Prometheus, the Greek member of the Divided Gates, and the latter’s status was currently shrouded in mystery but seemingly hostile, John could rely on neither.

To the point, even Marathyu had to learn how to work with high quantities of the elemental metals. Since they were so exceedingly rare, he hadn’t done so before John provided them and many work hours were lost on the mad smith melting, forging, and re-melting the metal, finding out its exact properties. At one point, he had even blown a massive hole into the Foundry. Whatever intuition he had used when upgrading John’s, Aclysia’s and Beatrice’s equipment had either decided to sleep or Marathyu was deliberately choosing to suppress it to follow his curiosity.

John knew better than to ask. He would only get half-sensical dribble in response. Better to just wait for the final result, which he was certain enough would arrive in time.

“It better not fucking break,” Metra told her master. “We aren’t using Mithril, right?”

“We are if I get my hands on some,” John retorted. “Otherwise, no. Just elemental metals. I’ve been synthesizing as much Elementium as I can but the mana cost and time investment is really abhorrent…” Using all six of his elementals, John could infuse a regular block of iron (or other metals, for that matter) with enough elemental power to eventually become the strongest of the regularly attainable elemental metals. Because that infusion cost exponentially more for each elemental involved to create a quality product, there was a limit on how much John could feasible have produced. The elementals also had duties themselves, having to overlook their islands, so things went slow. Slow was better than the prices on the Abyss Auction, however.

“If you put Mithril in there, make sure the guy doesn’t blacken it,” Metra responded. “I fucking hate black Mithril. Some of the sharpest stuff out there, but fragile as all hell. White Mithril is WAY better. If it gets damaged, it just gets a dent. I don’t like my weapons shattering into a thousand irreparable pieces.”

“Technically, I think you can glue them back together, but point taken,” John said and stopped in front of the I.D. Gate. “I’d go with Trolls, anyone against that? The only alternative is Steampunk.”

“I’m fonder of things that bleed,” Siena hummed and, although the rationale wasn’t shared, the rest of the group agreed to go with Trolls.

While John opened the barrier, he continued the conversation. “What do you want again? Another halberd, right?”

“I can fight with whatever, but that’d be my preferred weapon, yeah,” Metra stated, weighing the massive axe in one hand. “Halberds are fucking fantastic pieces of weaponry. You can stab, slash and pickaxe someone, all with the same weapon and at a considerable range. Only drawback is that you are a bit open in hand to hand range.” The metracana beat her chest and grinned in the usual carefree fashion. “Not a big problem for this girl.”

“As long as it doesn’t cost you another foot,” John grumbled. He had meant to say it as a joke, but his mood had gone sour quickly. Until she was actually healed, joking about one of his girls getting harmed couldn’t sit well with him, even if he said it himself, apparently.

“I’ll get that material back,” Metra nonchalantly responded. Although the ever-present anger rose a bit higher as she said that, she maintained her composure and a relaxed attitude. For all her rage, Metra was one of the easiest to get along with tomboys to ever exist. A big part of her charm, in John’s opinion.

The Arena formed around them. It was a grand structure of Aztec-leaning design. Large blocks of stone, stacked on top of each other, were decorated with skulls of all shapes and sizes. Some of the skulls were simply carved into the stone, others were actual bone plastered against the walls through some form of mud. The walls rose fifteen metres high and then transitioned into an incredibly steep watcher’s area. The wall bulged out and eventually curved back inwards. Rather than a place to sit, it was a giant, egg-shaped construction. The top was open, letting ample sunlight fall into the structure and the battlefield in particular.

Hanging onto a network of ropes that were attached to the walls were the onlooking trolls. They had massive arms and stubby legs, their body shape somewhat resembling that of a gorilla. Where they differed rather drastically from those animals was in the massive tusks that grew from their lower jaws and the leathery texture of their dark blue skin. The mocking screams were deep and impatient.

Calmly, John put his hands into his pockets and scanned their situation. They were standing in the ‘shallow’ curve of the egg-shape. Behind them was a simple wall, around them were the looking trolls, and all the way on the other side, at the pointy tip of the arena, was a wooden gate. Above that was a plateau, the only place where someone could properly sit, which was separated into two levels. The lower level had a single, particularly large troll on it. Aside from the size of him, that one stood out for the fact that he wore more than a loincloth. Some sort of primitive mockery of a human suit covered that troll’s body.

Above him were three more. Two were females, different from the males only in the fact that their facial features were a bit softer and that they had breasts. Neither was enough to make them desirable. Between those two, on a throne of solid gold, sat the leader of this artificial civilization. Smaller than his brethren, but with longer limbs and a magical glow surrounding his ornamented form, this troll emperor radiated authority.

Authority that left John cold. The more powerful the Gamer got, the more he could justify his pride in his abilities and achievements and the less he found himself impressed by other authority figures. ‘I suppose my subconscious is letting me know that I have less and less in the way of equals,’ John thought and waited for a certain reptile to admonish with as much as a warning squeak. Nothing came. ‘Interesting. Is it because thinking that I’m superior to most in terms of authority is an observation of reality and therefore not an issue of arrogance? That me realizing my position only is negative if I use it as justification to do what I want for personal gain over what I need to do for the world to improve?’

While he thought that, he raised Stirwin up to his face. Disconnected from the Light Island, the infinity elemental had reversed to his hatchling state. Letting out a single, confirming squeal, the crocodile then transformed into its egg shape. John looked up to the proper arena, while fixing the item form to his pants. All of the screams from the trolls came to a stop when the suited troll raised his voice.

“Dere will be a fight, my mates,” he spoke with a very unpleasant mixture between an Australian and Jamaican accent, both amplified to their stereotypical extremes. “Creat’d by our bloody, golden emperor himself and all that tossage…”

When some abomination of British slang entered the mix as well, John tuned out of the cutscene. If this had been a videogame, he would have hammered the escape button by now. Instead, he just observed the levels of the optional enemies, deemed them to be in the beatable range and turned to the assembled harem. “Metra, you will go ahead and face whatever comes out of that gate. Fight it in the middle of the arena. Salamander, Unleash on the announcer. Once the rubble clears, we attack.” With the plan confirmed, John raised a hand up and fired an Arcana Strike into the air.