“You sure you have the time for this?” John asked Lydia, while he and the majority of the harem got on the boat. As much paperwork as he had to do, getting this Lorylim business checked out was his foremost security concern. If he was compromised, then the entire structure could have faults he wasn’t aware of. The fact that his paranoia was only slowly kicking in about all of this only had him more alarmed.

“This is a happenstance that won’t let me rest unless I have certainty on it,” the queen responded swiftly and followed him onto the captain’s deck. They were on one of John’s smaller boats, meant to comfortably hold no more than twenty people for only limited distances. It was the one he used to move within the Hudson Barrier. With all of the branches of the river that had been copied over, each of the Protected Space’s seven major areas could be comfortably reached by water.

Northeast were the government areas, administrative and military. Down the eastern areas were the growing elf forest, the Bae Circle and a large district that was dominantly dedicated to the housing of bachelors. Unsurprisingly, young people were thrilled to live around the red-light district and the races that dwelled in the forest were oddly enthusiastic about being employed there.

West, across a channel, was a large green area that was currently being divided between farmers and the park-planning committee. Families and richer people didn’t want to live so close to the louder parts of the city, so this space served as a barrier between those two facets of society. The farming space wasn’t strictly necessary, it had to be said, but John wanted the city to be able to feed itself in case it was besieged by something. Due to magic and low population numbers, that required far less space than it would have regularly.

The rest of the southern ‘island’ (it wasn’t exactly an accurate application of the term, but with the land connection being cut off by the border of the Illusion Barrier, it worked well enough) was covered with middle to high society things. Well-off houses, small businesses, another park, a sprawling district for families, a district for art (such as the opera he had visited with Sylph) and, at the north-east tip of that island, the university. The majority of its buildings were dedicated to Fateweaving, as that was the land that John had given to Magoi originally, but other educational facilities were sprouting all around there. A centralized bureau to overlook all of it hadn’t formed yet. John enjoyed seeing all of these schools pop up independently.

The same was true for the entertainment area that was across a thinner channel and on the south tip of the central, northwards sprawling island. The further up one wandered that part of the Hudson Barrier, the more industrial things became. First was the Fusion Port, where Thorne’s old headquarters was located, home to the expanding trade business of the Federation’s capital. John was pleased to see ship traffic there, doubly so because several of the ships were flying Fusion’s flag.

The construction of the navy was far from complete, but at least a fair amount of small merchant vessels were now navigating the waves. Because of the scope of Abyssal trade, building giant freighters wasn’t exactly necessary, but he still hoped to put at least one of them in the water. Better to have them than not, after all.

Further north was the district where large corporations were buying up land to place their massive bureaucratic complexes to oversee what happened to the west. The Hudson forked around a small island, one of the barrier’s two industrial centres. The other one was located southwest of it, on the land making up the western border of the Hudson Barrier. It shared that space with cheap worker housing, a harbour for private vessels, and a small area dedicated to the needs of aquatic species. Worthwhile to mention was also a sizable new Apothecary outpost around there.

Most of these districts weren’t set in stone since the Hudson Barrier was still dominated by empty space that could be filled in later. It was just that there were clearly observable trends. Society had a tendency to order itself into categories and it was more effective if all of the industry was packed together anyway.

As for where John was heading, his goal was the older Apothecary building on Ellis Island. It was not only still active, but a lot closer to the Guild Hall. While he did have a teleporter in the general area, he knew that it was one almost always watched by a news crew. International news organizations were part of the big business that had taken up residence in the area. He would have loved to fix that by putting the teleporter directly into the Apothecary building, but the powerful non-combat organization had given him repeated dismissal on his requests to do so.

It was no wonder. The Gamer had repeatedly butted heads with the Apothecaries because of ethical differences. While John could have just done as he wanted, it was still his turf, he wanted to keep the relations with the Apothecaries amicable. For all the crazy experimenters they had in their ranks, their services were still necessary. That was, until John could create a Fusion equivalent of their international conglomerate. A project that he had in mind but was, for now, too expensive in time and money to pursue. It would only make sense if he somehow got access to a sizeable number of defectors.

The boat cut through the water and John let the autopilot do the rest, as he turned to everyone coming along. All of the girls save Scarlett were there, and the technomancer was very much still present through the smartphone in John’s pocket. Nobody was going to miss this development. There were too many questions associated with what influence the Lorylim had on John.

‘It’s just a stroke of luck that it was finally raised,’ John thought. ‘Although it’s sort of bad luck that it didn’t happen earlier. I suppose if there is something happening with me, then those connected to my mind would be affected as well. Jane isn’t especially observant, Eliza has incredibly little experience in the field, Scarlett doesn’t think about the topic too much, Nia is… well, Nia, and Metra ticks similarly to Jane. Lydia really is the person who would have pointed something like this out… Lydia or Momo.’

Throughout the short trip, they went more and more silent. Sylph and Rave worked together to keep the mood from becoming too strained, but the anticipation of an answer was thick in the air. An oversight of such magnitude had to be resolved quickly. They all knew it. They all feared the possible answers as well. Aside from John, Undine was the most worried about all of this, for quite obvious reasons. Salamander expressed some doubts as well, but the Lorylim never had properly manifested in her body. The time she had gotten infested, the first foe seemed more interested in using her as a bridge to get to John than actually corrupting her.

When the boat pulled up to Ellis Island, John found Dokt Medelnick already waiting for them. The eunuch Apothecary was as much of an oddity as ever. The top of his head was a chrome dome. A literal, or almost literal, one in his case, as the bald area had been replaced with a plate of metal. The sides of his head, however, still spotted a surprising amount of black hair, gelled up into a wall that shot straight upwards. Under his nose, he had a moustache that had the shape of a horizontal line. His eyes had been replaced with reddish-brown glasses, set into metal frames.

Given all of the things going on around the man’s head, John wouldn’t have been surprised if the fat body under the laboratory coat would have hidden all manners of further modifications. The Gamer wasn’t interested in checking, though, and Medelnick didn’t seem interested in offering. “Come in already,” the eunuch growled. “I have sixteen more experiments to run before I can justify a nap.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Eliza shouted back. The blood mage had a general dislike of experiment happy scientists and Medelnick’s tendency to be brash with all of them meant that they got along like oil and water.

“Sounds like you want your fertility blocker back in place. I will get that done when I take your blood again,” Medelnick responded. Both were things he could very much do. Since Medelnick had his dick removed and had a Libido of 0, he was one of the few, if not the only, men John was comfortable with to inspect his girls in the medical sense. Because of that, he had more or less become the harem’s doctor. A basic thing he had to do recently was to remove the fertility blockers of everyone. A not so basic thing was that he was in charge of inspecting and administrating Eliza’s blood.

Since Tamara’s appearance several months ago, a couple more people influenced by Eliza’s blood had appeared here and there. All of them had to get their fix or fall into a state of mind that could barely even be described as sapient. Since it would have been a pain for Eliza to be on call for such things, she let some of her blood be stored by Medelnick, who distributed it and noted the changes in the affected individuals. This was a part of the job the crazy eunuch rather enjoyed. Of course, John kept a close eye on what happened with that blood. Medelnick knew that John would have him killed if a single vial of the blood went somewhere or he experimented on it in ways the Gamer didn’t approve of.

“Come inside already,” the Apothecary continued his complaints. In order to appease the man, John skipped the proper anchoring procedures and just jumped off board. The rest of the harem followed.

“Unusual for you to come out and greet me,” the Gamer remarked.

“Miss Thorne already told me what’s going on. Tell me next time when something that interesting is hidden inside that impossible body of yours,” Medelnick told him, while they headed inside.

John looked around for any people that might have listened in. Not because Medelnick had just dropped Scarlett’s proper last name, that was within what John wanted, but because he didn’t want to let the public know he may be compromised. There was nothing good that could come out of that. Rumours would be overblown or taken out of context, and before the Gamer knew it, everyone would think he himself was a Lorylim. ‘Well, not everyone, just everyone who doesn’t like me,’ John thought. ‘Which will justify their aggression towards me further in their mind which just can’t end well.’

Since there were people moving around, he opted to not say anything until they were inside the complex Medelnick alone supervised. The Apothecary had a substantial ranking in the organization, but he hated assistants and other people in general. That made him more trustworthy, oddly enough. John knew exactly why Medelnick put up with his demands, being money, and if there was any leak about any medical information about him or his harem, there was no question who to blame for it. They had a very easy agreement.

“Alright, what machine are you sticking me in today?” John asked.

“That one,” Medelnick stated and pointed to an upright, milky white tube. “Lose the shirt and get in it.”

John appreciated the simplicity. More talkative doctors might have explained what the machine was or how it worked. This one just wanted to get this over with. If John wanted to know more about the machine, he could research it in his own time. After dragging his shirt into his inventory, he stepped into the tube. Several rings mounted on rails came to life with electronic buzzing and began to rotate while sliding up and down. The process took about thirty seconds, then John stepped out.

“And?” the Gamer asked, watching a 3D model of himself appear on the screen Medelnick was looking at. When he received no immediate answer, the Gamer raised his voice again, “Dokt? What do you see?”

“Nothing,” Medelnick spat out. Touching the screen, he rotated the display, zoomed on John’s arm, and looked around. “Your body is as odd as it has always been. More of a human elemental than an actual human, with your concentration of mana circuitry. Still, there is nothing specifically off about your arm compared to the rest of your body. At least on this level of analysis.” The Apothecary looked over to John, two dots of dim light showing the focus of his gaze. “Describe your symptoms. In detail.”

“I couldn’t tell you if I have any, that’s the issue,” John returned. “There just seems to be a blocking of selective topics in my mind or a lessening of certain interests.”

“Sounds like a lesser mind control effect… are you aware of what you are unaware of?”

“Only what has been pointed out to me and I feel it bothers me less than it should,” John responded.

“An indoctrination spell, that would require continuous effort to keep up, at least at lower levels,” Medelnick grumbled and twirled both sides of his spacebar of a moustache. “I need you to think about that thing during a second scan.” John obeyed and kept his mind occupied with the lack of distress he was experiencing at the moment. Before he was even out of the tube again, he heard a satisfied click of Medelnick’s tongue. “What did you find?”

“You are infected.”

“I already know that,” John drily responded. The Lorylim Corruption debuff was pretty clear on this. The bar only picked up from where it previously had left off, meaning that some amount of Lorylim matter was still in his system. He had just thought it to be completely inactive. “I want to know what the effects of this are and if you can treat it.”

Medelnick stared at the screen. “It will end eventually, I think,” he said and opened the two scans side by side. Faint as it was, John could see the outline of his scars on one image but not the other. “There was an expenditure of energy during the second scan. This means that the Lorylim matter left inside your body is consuming mana to influence you. Bar other sources of energy, I’d assume it is consuming itself.”

“And until it has used itself up, my decision making is compromised?” the Gamer wanted to know.

Medelnick shrugged. “Assuming your description is the full extent of it, you should only find that certain reasoning is unnaturally motivated or suppressed.”

John tapped his foot and thought about the implications of this new revelation, as did the rest of the room. “I think that explains why my corruption bar didn’t seem to move when that invisible Lorylim attacked me,” he said. “They were just refreshing what they had on me. Luckily, that appears to be very little. If I was a marionette, they’d control a single string. That’s enough to tug me in a direction, but not more than that.” He sighed. “Not that that isn’t bad enough. Undine, get in next.”

“Yes.” The abysstide elemental had only waited for the call and was quickly scanned twice herself. Then Salamander followed. The results were as expected. While Salamander was completely clear of corruption, some was still stuck to Undine. Less, however, than to John. “That can’t be right,” Undine asserted. Unflattering as it might have been, John tended to agree.

“Get another Apothecary to tell you that. I read my instruments correctly. The amount of magic used up here is less,” Medelnick declared.

John rubbed his chin. “It could be the Lorylim just messing with us,” he mumbled. “We don’t know if this is a conscious effort or one they just set. If it’s the former, it’s possible they just caught onto what we are doing and are now messing with things. Another logical explanation could be that they sacrificed a lot of the corruption on you to make you do something already,” John made a sour expression, “and I get the feeling I should know what that was, but I don’t.”

Another option was that the Mother of Water had been partly successful, despite her declaration that the cleaning hadn’t been proper. John didn’t like giving credit there, because of how painful it had been for his beloved slime girl, but the possibility had to be entertained.

“I still don’t know what to make of all of this,” Rave chimed in. “Should we be worried or what?”

“We should always be worried, but in this case, we need to just keep an eye on me and Undine,” John said. “The rest of you aren’t compromised. You just need to treat me like an idiot whenever it’s about something that might help me defeat the Lorylim. I would assume that’s their primary angle.”

“So, I gotta treat ya like always, gotcha,” Rave joked.

“Pretty much.” John grinned and crossed his arms. “Their influence on us is limited. That’s the silver lining here. Problem is that this makes my job on a policy level a lot more difficult.” He rubbed his temples. “If there are people infected by Lorylim that don’t even know they’re being influenced, there is basically no way to tell them apart from normal people… and I can hardly put everyone out there through magical scans…”

“This method wouldn’t be effective for regular Abyssals anyway,” Medelnick told him. “They lack your body.”

“…Right…” John agreed and tried to come up with something to do about all of this.

“How about ya up your resistance against this corruption stuff by doing the Corruption dungeon? That’s what that’s for, right?” Rave asked.

John blinked a couple of times.