John opened his eyes. He was lying in a shallow and still ocean. Above him, the stars stretched endlessly, forming dense clusters and lanes. It wasn’t the sky of his world. Lightly raising his head, he saw how the brilliance above reflected in the clear water below. He was the only irregularity in a world of light.

‘Huh, third time I’m having this dream,’ John thought, dragging his hand through the surface of the water. He watched the ripples disturb the reflection of stars. It was slightly more interesting than just lying there and observing things he had seen before.

Impossibly, the waves grew stronger the further they went away from John. When they had reached about two metres of height, they froze and then coalesced into a pillar. Getting on his feet, not sure what to expect of this lucid dream, John observed part of the water draining into the ocean and leaving behind a curvy body marked with red-swirling lines.

“John?” Undine’s melodic voice reached him, as she looked around. “Where are we?”

“In a dream,” the Gamer responded and noticed movement around him. All of the dots reflected in the ocean moved. Staring back to the origin, John was stunned. Black dominated the sky, with the endless dots having consolidated into lines. A slit pupil stared down at him and Undine with curious intent.

John opened his eyes and saw nothing.

The darkness was oddly welcoming, reminding him that he truly was awake. He rolled his shoulders and stretched a bit, trying to find out if he was perhaps awake too early. It had been nine days since the Gestalt situation began and this was the first night he could justifiably spend in relaxed sleep. While he hadn’t exactly succeeded, brooding over his decisions and what he could have done differently nagged on his mind, there was no need for him to get out before he was well rested.

‘Undine, are you awake?’ he carefully prodded the abysstide elemental’s mind. A confirming ripple hit his mind, the mental equivalent of a nod. ‘You were in that dream, right?’ Another wordless confirmation and a few images from her perspective reached him. ‘Hmm…’ the Gamer stopped stretching and rubbed his chin.

It wasn’t unusual for the elementals to enter his dreams. Most of the time they meant to do it, but sometimes they just switched over by accident. It alone wouldn’t have been reason for suspicion, but the repetitiveness of that dream and the observing presence he had felt before and seen first-hand this time made him guess that there was something more to this. Until he had that dream again, he hardly could do anything to confirm any suspicions, however.

Since he didn’t feel any of the usual signs of tiredness, he deemed himself ready to begin the day. The Mandala Sphere rose from its socket and allowed John to take a look at the bed situation. Most of the harem was still out, but nobody seemed to have a particularly deep or comfortable sleep. The main way the Gamer judged that to be the case was the fact that not a single one of his girls were snuggled up to him. Everyone had been rolling around all night, it seemed.

John found that soothing, in a way. He would have been more concerned if they could exile an entire people to their own pocket dimension and feel good about it.

Carefully manoeuvring out of the bed to allow the girls gathered the sleep they could still get, he moved into the living room. He was somewhat surprised to find Gnome there. The earth spirit was sitting in one of the armchairs by the couch, reading a book and a cup of coffee on the table in front of her. Less surprising was the presence of Siena and Aclysia. While the moonshade elemental was just generally prone to waking up earlier, Aclysia left the bed early to have breakfast ready when it was convenient for everyone.

“Morning,” he said, after he had closed the door behind the slime girl that had followed him.

“Good morning,” Siena hummed, stretching on top of the couch with the elegance of a leopard. “I hope you had a sweet night.”

“It was alright,” John returned, feeling his cock twitch. Despite the odd dream that had ended his rest, his morning wood was an inevitable certainty. He hadn’t covered the full eight hours of sex per day he usually had in over a week. There simply hadn’t been the time. What he had in terms of intercourse had been barely enough to give him one level where he would normally have gotten four. He had gotten release every now and again, but now that stress was no longer an issue, lust made itself more fervently known.

“Hey,” Gnome greeted him, putting her book down. With a thoughtful expression, she reached down to her cup of coffee. The caffeine wouldn’t do anything for her, she drank it purely for the taste. At that moment, she wasn’t even drinking it at all. She just turned the cup in her hands. Keeping his dick from taking control of the situation and ploughing into any of the four women, as naked as he was, he waited for the brunette to formulate the thought that was obviously occupying her. “Will they be fine?”

“Unlikely,” John gave it to her straight, knowing that she was talking about the Gestalt people. He walked over to the couch and sat down as close to her as he could. “I don’t think their system would successfully translate into another generation when they actually could synchronize their minds. With it removed, I expect them to eventually run into the issue of human group limits. Their attempts to keep experiences unified will fail, fingers will be pointed, their current society will collapse, offshoots rise and the game of civilization begins again. I don’t think they will be fine. However, I think they will survive. It all is up to them now and we will, likely, never know.” He put a hand on her leg and brushed over the smooth skin lovingly. “It’s uncertain and unsatisfying, but it is what it is.”

“Yeah,” Gnome mumbled and sipped her coffee, which was still steaming hot. Not that she had a regular tongue to burn.

“If they eradicate themselves, that is their issue,” Siena chimed in, now lying on her side and supporting her head with her left arm. Her magnificent breasts caught John’s gaze, as they dropped slightly in accordance with gravity. “We’ve given them so much more than they deserve. The mess they left us, I wish I could have made them clean it up themselves.”

Siena was, unsurprisingly, one of the least affected by the resettlement. When it came to necessary evils, the shadow spirit had an easy time getting over them. As long as she still knew it was a necessary EVIL, John didn’t mind. Demanding everyone was equally depressed by any decision wouldn’t have led to anything successful.

That aside, John could agree with the general sentiment. “It is what it is,” he repeated and stood up. “Want to join me in the bath and take care of this?” he asked and gestured at his precum drooling erection. “The last of the debuffs wore off today, so I should warn you: you might not be able to leave the shower on your own feet.”

“What an odd way to ask to be sucked dry,” Siena giggled and rolled off the couch in a deliberately teasing fashion. Slowly and while extending her smooth legs and deliciously thick thighs, she laid on her chest for one moment before tipping over the edge of the couch and fluidly getting up. When she stood straight, her breasts jiggled for just as long as she stood still, then she turned around and, with swinging, wide hips, led the way towards the bathroom. Her high heels clacked with every step. “I’ll wait for you there.”

“I’ll join you,” Undine said, following Siena while John headed to the second, smaller bathroom to go through all of the other parts of his hygiene morning routine. Once he was done with them, he directly headed over. He found the bathtub, large enough for most of the harem to fit in at the same time, already filled to the rim.

“Ahhhhh,” he let out a satisfied sigh, as he sunk inside. His body displaced some of the water making it run over the edge with a calming, flowing sound. “Clean me, Undine,” he commanded, once he was comfortable on a bench along the inside rim of the tub, submerged to his chest.

“Yes, Master,” the abysstide elemental sung her desire with those two words alone. All debuffs had run out over the course of the Gestalt campaign, allowing the Gamer to once more utilize his voice to pleasure his women in ways that satisfied his dominant nature. To best heed his command, Undine split into three bodies. Two shapeshifted into her human, goth appearance and positioned themselves on either side of him. The third, Undine’s true body and her usual, curvaceous slime-self, remained behind him.

All three bodies gently rubbed his body with their slender fingers. Arms, shoulder, chest and neck, all were relaxed to their utmost. The slimes, disguised or not, had the same temperature as the water and Undine even absorbed some of it to let it run out of her fingertips as a gentle stream. While her main body grabbed a shampoo bottle, Siena stepped into the tub as well.

“I’ll keep this one to myself for as long as I can,” she seductively sighed and grabbed his cock. The delightful pressure made John groan and it only got better when she straddled his hips. Her juicy tits were now right in front of his face and he could see them with his own eyes, rather than the disjointed perspective of the Mandala Sphere. They rose when she inhaled and slowly fell when the breath left her body and she sunk down his girthy shaft. “It is time…” she whispered in her sultry tone, half way down, “…for you to…” She was almost at the base now and the folds of her tight pussy were already massaging his entire cock like a thousand tiny tongues.

“…cum,” John finished the sentence for her with a command. It reached both her and Undine and both howled when a sudden orgasm ravaged them. Simultaneously, he was brought over the edge by the hellishly intense pleasure of Siena’s inhuman pussy. It quivered and tensed around him, milking the thick, first load of the day from his balls. A load that only intensified the height of Siena’s climax.

“I’ll make you regret that,” she hissed with a grin on her face.

___________________________________________________________________________

John aimed for a return to normalcy and the start of that was to have the political process return to its regular schedule. The members of the two houses of parliament were already informed about the details of the Lorylim outbreak and temporary measures to raise security were already in the works. Of course, there was nothing as permanent as a temporary government measure, so John would have to keep a close watch on the end result and the way it was meant to be discontinued. For the design process itself, he was happy to let the people’s representatives hash it out.

This wasn’t purely a sign of trust. Because of the decisions he had made over the previous week, basically asking for forgiveness rather than permission to intervene in and resolve the Gestalt situation, he had to rebuild some good will with the legislature. For one that meant standing out of their way and it also meant he would let them take the credit for enacting the integration of the Gestalt lands. After the military had salvaged all information from it and the Fateweavers had closed every potentially infested Protected Space, the land would have to be settled in some fashion.

Letting parliament do all of that would let John avoid turning too much of his own Federation against him. Few would raise principled objections if he did everything himself despite insisting on a model that separated powers. More would complain that the powers the constitution granted them weren’t properly honoured. Nobody, politicians least of all, liked feeling their influence diminish.

The only thing John needed to assure along all of that mess was that the government’s press releases were carefully worded in how they portrayed the Gestalt, how they basically invited in the Lorylim and what Fusion had done with them. He didn’t expect this to cause too much of a ruckus, although the adversarial media doubtlessly would find some way to deem measures improper in some fashion.

Not involving himself had an advantage, however. With so much of his paperwork in other people’s hands and him staying away from the press to not say anything that could be misconstrued as him taking credit, he had some time on his hands. Two days’ worth of time. Two days that were the last and first of their respective months.