‘Just eight days remaining,’ John thought and shifted a bit on the floor. Even with the cushion under his knees, the unfamiliarity with his current position did make it somewhat uncomfortable. ‘And I have 7 more Class Levels to use up. Well, when I get to level 315.’ He pulled his tongue out of the pussy before him and looked over the quivering midriff and almost flat breasts. “What do you think I should invest into last?”

Scarlett needed a moment to recover, her upper body writhing in the leather armchair. Holding onto her legs, he kept her from squirming around otherwise. He had decided to get some tongue exercise early in the morning and Scarlett had presented herself as a tasty target. Sometimes it was nice to return the oral favours he got continuously from all of his girls. Similarly, fucking the technomancer in a vanilla way was a nice way to flavour their intercourse by itself. Not everything had to be bondage and spanking.

Eyelids still fluttering, hands and slender thighs caressing his head, the redhead quietly moaned, “You should invest into my womb, you fucking mega stud.” John’s erection became dangerously hard. Scarlett relaxed, then suddenly tensed all over. “Did I just say that out loud?” she asked.

“Yes,” John kept the answer short and watched Scarlett honour her name by flushing as red as her hair. Unable to control himself, the Gamer let her wallow in uncertainty about his reaction for just a few moments and then asked, “Soooooo… you are joining the ‘I want to be bred’ club?”

“Shut up.” Scarlett closed her legs around his neck and squeezed. “Get that fucking grin off your face!” she demanded, raising her voice while she tried to strangle him with her thighs. All John felt was the satisfaction of their squishiness. If she somehow managed to actually harm him this way, that would be fine. Crushed by thighs would be his preferred way to go anyway. Scarlett’s were on the thinner end of his harem, but that still put her in the supermodel category. True supermodels, not those anorexic, pretty-faced, well-dressed scarecrows. “Get that grin off your face and shut the fuck up!”

“But are you though?” John asked, as best as he could while getting his face squished. Scarlett was incredibly weak compared to him, but she was still above the regular human. Keeping her blood pressure proper was important for a good workflow, had been the initial explanation. Nowadays, she also had a harem and its head to look pretty for.

“Maybe?!” Scarlett responded, her tone continuing to be uncharacteristically agitated. “I hate it. I hate that I don’t know. I hate not knowing things about me!” She let go of his head and took a deep breath.

John ran a hand over the inside of her thigh and asked, in a calm tone, “You want to talk about it?” Teasing her any further would have been entertaining, but he got the feeling she was earnestly confused. As a good lover, it was his job to satisfy her urges, point out her weaknesses and listen to her when she felt vulnerable. He had thought this conversation would fall more under the second aspect, but he could switch to the third with no problem. “I don’t think it’s an issue if you want children.”

“But I do,” Scarlett returned and crossed her arms. “Not with the children bit, I think. Just the sudden presence of the want. Because it’s a change I don’t feel in control of. Biologically speaking, I get what my brain is doing. I’m a fertile young woman, right, and so now that I found a worthwhile man,” she gestured at him with the overemphasized movement of the ranting, “and I’m feeling secure and happy,” her arm flew around and pointed at the rest of the room and the gathered, silently listening harem in it, “plus extremely wealthy,” she tapped her own chest, “my fucking subconscious is bombarding me with these ‘hey, you should propagate your genes into the next generation’ thoughts. ‘Your children would have a good survival rate, best do it now!’ It’s the base instinct.”

“And that bothers you because you want your will to be stronger than your urges,” John summarised.

“Yes, that.” Scarlett rubbed her face. “It started with some ‘maybe I should just be a bit more girly for this guy I love’ thoughts, that I was all fine with. Then I kept thinking if I maybe wanted kids, which I never even considered before I met you. Who the fuck has time for kids when I have an economy to run?” Her hands ran through her hair. “Then I was seriously considering kids and now I just accidentally blurt out shit lines like that.” She went still for a second, let out a very slow exhale. “I suddenly understand why some women poke holes into condoms and that’s just never where I thought I would go with my brilliance. Planning how to do something like that and how you wouldn’t catch it.”

“If only he used condoms…” Eliza mumbled in the background.

“Do you want me to try and give you advice or do you want to keep thinking about it?” John asked, genuinely not sure. When he ranted, it wasn’t often something he actually wanted an opinion on. Rather, it was to get a topic off his chest.

“I’ll keep thinking about it,” Scarlett told him and crossed her arms. “It’s my problem… it’s not even a problem, it’s just unpleasant and I’ll have to figure out how I deal with the fact that I change because of things outside of my control.” She rubbed his back with her heel, an idle gesture that was neither pleasant nor bothersome. “I don’t like being reminded that I don’t get to choose all that I am.” She raised one hand to her head and twirled a strand of her red hair. “Womanly bullshit.”

“Growing older sure is an experience,” John agreed with a sigh. “Want me to fuck some of that stress out of you?”

“By Gaia, yes,” Scarlett sighed and John got in front of her. Taking both of her hands, locking her fingers with his, he nailed her down on the armchair. The position was a bit awkward, but nothing he couldn’t deal with. The harem returned to regular chatter among themselves. A few of them looked thoughtful though. Some or all of what Scarlett had said must have struck a chord.

The girls of the harem were all going through the same experiences when it came to wealth, love and safety. John himself had been getting considerably more interested in getting kids as the months ticked by, to the point where the idea of impregnating any of them had become a bit of a fetish. The want for children was simply part of the human condition. How they would integrate that desire into their individual characters and the group dynamic remained to be seen. John wasn’t worried though. They were honest with each other and would find some solution, should a problem ever arise.

‘Worst case, I’ll just put a baby in any girl who wants it,’ John thought and had to scold himself on how carefree he was with that idea.

_____________________________________________________________________________

After checking thrice that his fertility was still toggled off and cumming inside each girl at least four times, the Gamer went outside. It had been a pretty basic orgy. No gimmicks, no ropes and no choking – even the spanking had been kept moderate. Between all of the moaning, they had also come to an agreement of what John should spend the remaining Class Levels on.

It was to be Arcweaver. With the remaining Class Levels, John could max it out and then still have one remaining that he would consequently invest into Unfound. The idea behind those choices was to increase his personal power further and then get proficient enough in Unfound that he could use Magus Step to teleport through walls.

Arcweaver Challenges turned out to be both demanding and quickly done, compared to the other Classes he had levelled in the past two weeks. It still took him about seventy hours in total, which translated to four days of work with barely any breaks and only the minimum amount of sleep, but he managed to get through all of them and he got the Unfound Perk at the side. Since he hadn’t had any doubt he would get to 315 at the time, he had started with that Perk.

Beginner Aura Reading was still alright. Acute Aura Perception could have its uses, but in a world where he had Observe and its Reveal component, it didn’t really serve him. Filtered Perception was interesting from a design point of view, but John couldn’t think of any practical application that was both likely and useful. At best it would inform him that he shouldn’t smash someone through a wall in real space because a mundane person might stand on the other side. Fighting in the real world was nothing he ever planned to do. Gaia’s Ire was way too threatening to mess with.

By process of elimination, he picked Beginner Aura Reading.

‘It’s Spellrip,’ John had thought when seeing that Perk for the first time, ‘definitely Spellrip.’ Mana Chain Strike was a repeat and still not good enough to take. Shackle was a bit more interesting, but required set-up. Spellrip was just a handy tool to have.

John wasn’t a big fan of any of these, but he knew that Shackle was out first. Between Disengagement Blast and Repositioning, John couldn’t make a clear choice immediately. Both were highly situational in their usage. Without the cooldown, he would have taken Disengagement Blast in a heartbeat. With it, the two Perks seemed about on par in regards to what they achieved. Both existed to give him escape opportunities. Disengagement Blast would do so reliably, since he didn’t have to hit anything. It did have the drawback that it was incredibly dependent on enemy action, however.

Because of that, John favoured Repositioning. Sure, he only had two Techniques at the moment (the basic ones that had been unlocked when he learned Active Aura) and, sure, landing them was far from guaranteed, but at least he could be proactive with it. Magus Step was also useful in more ways than just escaping from melee range and, between Martial Artist and Arcweaver, he could still get more Techniques to help him.

The sixth Perk of the Arcweaver Class had presented John with a mix of moderately powerful choices. Remnant Strike/Kick added two more Techniques to his arsenal, which was valuable because of the previous Perk and because they acted as a resource effectiveness multiplier, if he got to use them. Shadow of Arcana was situational, but could be pretty potent during desperate gambits. Higher Stats and an extra stack on the teleport were nothing to sniff at. Although, John had to say that the extra stack wasn’t that useful, because the cooldown of Magus Step regenerated one stack at a time. The individual stacks didn’t each have their own cooldown.

In a situation where he teleported around a lot, the difference between having two and three stacks would be pretty unnoticeable. It was only important that he had more than one, so he didn’t have a wasted second during which no cooldown was running.

Arcane Resistance 6, while boring, was potent. Any flat damage reduction was good and there was a funny mathematical thing where further decreases got more valuable despite shaving the same flat amount from the total sum. The first 10% resistance against 100 damage reduced the amount of damage received by 10, from 100 to 90, which translated to a 10% damage decrease. Going from 50% to 60% resistance against 100 damage reduced the damage received by 10, from 50 to 40, which translated to a 20% damage decrease.

Things like that were why John loved to stack cost reductions in strategy games. It had exponentially hilarious effects.

As potent as it was, John found that he very rarely ran into people who specialized in arcane magic, and with Arcane Resistance 5 and his own ability in the field, he decided that it would be a useless Perk. Shadow of Arcana was just a bit too situational. Therefore, he picked Remnant Strike/Kick, both because it seemed the best by process of elimination and because it resonated well with the Perk picked prior.

Either his previous choice had been wise beyond the moment or this set of Perks had been generated in response to it. Given the way the system worked, the latter was more likely.

Arcane Shard could, theoretically, cause an incredible damage combo. Using a spell that hit a high number of times for small damage and then hitting a Remnant Technique could annihilate someone. Like all wombo-combos, ensuring its execution required a particular set of circumstances and John wasn’t sure he could bring them about. To start with, he, currently, didn’t have a way to reliably stack a lot of Arcane Shards. Then he wasn’t certain about his ability to hit someone. He could probably assure a hit with Mana Chains, but why would he go for a risky melee attack in such a situation if he could just blast their heads off with a well-placed Arc Lance?

Of course, all of that was true for the other two Perks as well. The difference was that both Arcane Rejuvenation and Arcane Gathering were much better in defensive situations. Landing a punch could give him the momentum he needed to get out of a sticky situation, which was better than relying on it for extra damage. Since John had very few Skills that had a cooldown, Arcane Rejuvenation seemed like the much better choice.

This was an easy choice. Blast Ray was clearly the best one among the three, even if it wasn’t that great overall and John felt that it was pretty weak for an eighth Perk.

Scorched Earth suffered from being incredibly powerful in a situation in which he had, most likely, already won. John wasn’t about to start every fight with Arcana Strike, devastating the environment and spending his entire mana bar, just to get a 300% MP Reg increase that wouldn’t return the initial cost. Aside from being highly impractical, John had the ethical concern of not wanting to leave everything he conquered in ruins and killing most people.

Magus Body was just bad. Terribly bad. It was only of use when John deactivated Particle Skin and didn’t cast any other spells whatsoever. He couldn’t even send mana to his elementals. Why he would ever do that was a mystery. Giving it to Undine or even Gnome was guaranteed to give him back more HP than this.

Therefore, it was Blast Ray. Not fantastic, but it could have its uses. Especially if he could combine it with Fusing Rays to explosive effects.

As if to reimburse him, the ninth set of Perks had been incredibly strong. Unmistakable’s value was difficult to put into mathematical terms, but it could spare John a lot of hassle by making the conveying of his emotions so strong, that it was impossible to ignore or even make people pass out. Untouchable was less exciting and doubtlessly the weakest of the three. Revenge mechanics were incredibly potent on tank builds, but he wasn’t one. Uncatchable may not have been that useful in the middle or towards the end of a fight, where he was working off teleportation cooldowns as they came in, but at the start it was an incredible tool to have.

Teleporting five times meant he could cross a hundred metres at the speed of five thoughts. If he did it properly, he could even weave Skittersteps in there. He would be, as the name rightfully implied, Uncatchable.

As much as Unmistakable intrigued him, Uncatchable had been the best choice here, in John’s opinion. Which led to the final Perk of the Arcweaver Class.

‘Well, that answers if I would have died if my HP hit 0 in the past,’ John thought, already certain what he would pick. The ability to not die once a year was just incredible. There was an argument to be made that a situation in which he died and that he then had to face again 30 seconds later was more prolonging the inevitable than a proper rescue mechanism, but John was willing to take his chances when it came to not dying.

Looking at what he gave up for it, he also wasn’t too sad. Magus Flow was, unquestionably, powerful. Especially with Arcane Rejuvenation already picked. He could empty his mana into a target, become A LOT more powerful in the process and then punch them to get his mana back, empty it again, and so on. It just wasn’t his playstyle. Invincibility Frame was a tad harder to give up on. Because the Perk didn’t specify that he had to hit anything with Technique, he could just punch the air and evade absurdly powerful attacks that way. The amount of timing that would take, plus his still low count of Techniques, made it less attractive than not dying. Few things were more attractive than not dying. His girls were – not much else.

That was simply alright. A small Stat boost. Something to keep in mind if he ever got an absurd amount of mana for some reason, but nothing else.

That was a pretty modest Overclock, both in terms of its upside and drawback. Operating without Particle Skin was risky, but it wasn’t a crippling debuff like the others tended to be. The limited active time of the Overclock also made it difficult to use at the right moment. John didn’t see himself using it outside of very specific situations, but that remained true for all Overclock Skills.

John waited several seconds for the Class Maxed window, but nothing ever came. ‘Maybe because it’s from a Skillbook?’ he asked himself. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t given the choice to evolve it further. Nothing John was sad about, he was already spoiled for choices. There was a vast reservoir of Classes he could diversify himself into in the future.