After all this time, this was not the moment John had expected that window to show up. Adding a pleasant surprise to the current circumstances, though, only served to elevate his mood to further heights. He dismissed the window, as a steady chatter replaced the thunderous applause. Most of it was aimed at him.

“That was incredible!” “Thanks for the show, Mister President.” “What a way to be greeted.” “My compliments, truly.” These and similar comments caressed his ears.

John responded with a wide smile. “As much as I like being flattered, it was hardly my work.” He stood up and gestured down the railing. While he was being crowded by the small group of guild leaders, the entirety of Fusion’s upper class seemed to coalesce around a now reunified Undine and Siena. Despite their contributions, Salamander, Sylph and Stirwin went largely ignored. There were some that came to compliment everyone for their visual contributions, but it was clear that the two musicians were at the core of interest.

John could hardly blame them. Mean as it may have sounded, the fire, the light and roaring were all things that could be achieved by different means. The violin and, especially, Undine’s multi-layered voice work were much rarer.

“If you want to, I can introduce you,” the Gamer offered. “This is a gala to your honour, after all.”

Several of them took the offer, while others decided that they’d rather mingle with the people or descend on the buffet. Rave decided to take it on herself to cater to that middle group, while Aclysia and Beatrice did their best to keep the latter one company.

Once John had delivered the people to the musicians, he left them to be teased by Siena. Undine, as she usually did in social situations, kept her words to an absolute minimum. It wasn’t a display of shyness, Undine was largely over that emotion, but just her general disposition to speaking less than most. The same could not be said for the sixth elemental involved in the brilliant display of artistry.

“Don’t you want to take your share of the glory?” John asked, approaching Gnome who stood far outside the crowd.

The autumn elemental softly shook her head and said, “I didn’t do anything special.”

“Coordination is an important task,” John disagreed. “If it was something just everyone could do, we wouldn’t need trained conductors. They wouldn’t have any influence on the sound of the orchestra either.” He put a hand on her head and stroked her warm, brown hair. “You did really good there.”

Gnome cast her eyes down and smiled diffidently. “Thanks…” she said, not knowing any other response. John put his arms around the adorable cuddle rock and held her for a little bit. What appreciation she denied herself by keeping the amount of work she had done in the background in secret, John would give her. “…love you…” she mumbled into his shoulder, while answering the embrace. That firm and gentle way she held him was reward enough for his own kindness.

“I love you too,” he hummed and kissed her forehead. “Come, let’s go to the balcony. No need to stand down here.” He transformed his hug into keeping an arm around her waist as he guided her to the stairs. Her body under the hazel brown dress may not have been as luscious as Salamander’s, but her balanced proportions had a beauty all to themselves. Plain as the brunette may have looked among his harem, she was nevertheless a woman whose attractiveness could only be compared to the fellow members of John’s harem and a select few other females around the globe.

Still, it wasn’t her gorgeous look that John loved her for. It helped – it helped a lot, in fact, because John was such a thoroughly sexual person – but it was the way she nestled against him and gazed at him with her brown eyes that transformed lust into love. She made him feel cared for. As if there was nothing ever to worry about while she was at his side. They held each other and John knew he could have leaned onto her with all of his weight and she would keep them walking.

“I truly love you,” he repeated, as it couldn’t be said enough. The earnest tone of his words was backed up by the depth of the emotions he opened up to her through their mental connection.

Gnome blushed, but continued to look at him. “I don’t know how I deserve that,” she whispered, “but… but I like it so… we can keep going… together?”

John chuckled at the odd hesitation in her words and kissed her a second time. His target was her light red lips and he claimed them with no pushback. They were his, just as his were hers. That their ‘power balance’ was off because John had so many more women didn’t matter. He wouldn’t have ousted or replaced her for anything in the world. As long as she knew that, as long as she knew how dear she was to him, there was no strife to be had. Only the sacredness of their unity.

He didn’t even notice when he pushed her against the wall, but he did feel her nudging his side. “Not here,” she whispered when she pulled back. “Later. I’ll be happy to… help you… ehem… c-celebrate.”

“You need to stop being so adorable when I know just how depraved you really are,” John murmured his teasing response, and then they finally made it up the stairs. He sat down next to his girlfriend. Within moments, he was surrounded on all sides again, Gnome taking the chair to his left, Eliza plopping down on his lap and Lydia standing behind him. “Ladies, ladies, there is enough of me for all of you.”

“If the circumstances were different, you would be in a world of trouble,” the queen of steel told him with a straight face. “We might tear you apart. Love guides to foolish things.”

“Maybe you’ll tear each other apart instead?” John suggested.

“No,” Lydia dismissed the suggestion.

“We actually like each other, ya know?” Rave chuckled and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “If ya wanted to continue the harem despite ya not being able to, you’d have to suffer for it.”

“Guess I’ll have to either maintain or exceed current abilities then,” John stated with a grin. “What a horrible fate, for a man to have to live up to the expectations of his women. You know that, in return, I demand you all to make my life heaven, yes?”

“Fuck, there is no way I can help with that,” Eliza grumbled. “All I do is use my monster claws to tear into your perfect life with the shit stain grip of a useless trash heap of issues and ineptitude.”

“You’re very much part of my perfectly imperfect life,” John asserted and squeezed the small women between his arms. The cuddles with Eliza were a different kind of satisfying. Protectively embracing a vulnerable being just tickled his dominant and masculine instincts. Emotionally vulnerable, it had to be said. It would take something incredibly dire to physically hurt Eliza. “What did we say about you insulting yourself?”

“…I can do whatever the fuck I want?” the blood mage asked.

“No,” John growled, as if he disliked repeatedly instilling this lecture into her. “You’re mine, Eliza, and you don’t get to insult what is mine. Critique yourself all you want, better yourself where you can, but don’t diminish your importance. You have value to me. An appropriately high one, at that.”

“Appropriately high when describing me is an oxymo-“ Eliza started, only to have her mouth sealed by John’s hand.

“Not another word from you.” He reached into his inventory with his left and covertly pulled a butt plug from it. It wasn’t a small one either, and vibrated quietly in his hand as he charged the internal mana engine. Once that was done, he pushed it under the waistband of her tight leather pants and into the crease between her pelvis and lower body muscles. Afterwards, he pulled her black shirt over. Although her look was similar to Salamander’s in its simpleness, the differences were pronounced enough to give Eliza a bit of a slouchy and clearly more gothic look. It hardly mattered to the gala, but in this moment the less tight nature of her top came in handy.

The shirt settled on top of the base of the butt plug. The sex toy was hardly invisible, but the way it was lodged against her pale, blue-tinted skin at least obscured what it truly was. Eliza’s breathing accelerated and she looked at John with literal hearts in her eyes. The golden dots and lines had reshaped inside the fractured purple of her supernaturally brilliant irises. This sometimes happened when she was incredibly turned on. John very much liked seeing it, not only because it meant she had switched out of her self-loathing mode.

“What you will do, is go to the bathroom and masturbate silently and unseen until you have lubricated this enough to slide it inside you,” John ordered her. “You will not – absolutely not – bring yourself to orgasm. Once it’s inside you, you’ll come right back here. You’ll be composed, you’ll make no hint towards what you did or that there is a butt plug vibrating inside your tight little ass. You won’t get to cum either. Not until I bind you on the wooden horse tonight.” He bit her ear with enough force for his canine to leave a momentary imprint. Her regeneration power had it removed before he returned to whispering. “Now go.”

“Yes, Master,” she gasped when he removed his hand. She jumped on her feet and started walking as quickly as she could get away with. Her high boots and leather-clad ass made that a thigh jiggling display of wonder.

Lydia took the opportunity before anyone else could and plopped down on his now empty lap. The question hovered in his mind why she wasn’t scolding him for this. Telling Eliza to wear a butt plug in public was several steps below fingering Metra at the table, but it was still in the same indecent category. When she grinded her backside against his clear erection and he felt something hard between her soft cheeks that wasn’t her bones, he knew the answer. Lydia was many things (a fair few of them negative, as it was with every person) but she was not a hypocrite.

“Aren’t you being a naughty girl?” John wanted to know.

“I came here for two reasons: to support you and to enjoy your services,” the anal queen responded, ending her grinding now that he had noticed the toy in her own back entrance. “I’ve prepared myself accordingly.” She glanced over at the buffet. “A shame, the buffet does look rather appetizing, but the risks are not worth it.”

John didn’t need to ask what she meant. Even if it felt fantastic, anal sex had certain risks associated with it. On the hygienical side, their superhuman bodies took care of most things, but there were certain filthy aspects that were best avoided out of instinct alone. Even those were somewhat mitigated by who they were. Yet, without a minimum of precautions, he may come to push stools in that weren’t the kind one sat on.

The realities of the human physique were often unpleasant to think about and so John decided to direct his mind somewhere better. Lydia made that easy by asking, “I spotted a window appearing before you earlier. What was it?”

“I beat the Elementalist Challenge,” he told her. “Mostly by accident. Still, a win is a win.”

“Oooh, nice, ya were stuck on that for a while,” Rave remarked. “Ya gonna get the next Perk right now?”

The crowd below didn’t seem like it would disperse anytime soon, and even if it did, John didn’t expect anyone to bother him. Until the signing and validation of the annexation contract later, he should only have to do the basic socializing. That aside, it wasn’t as if there was any doubt regarding what he would pick. “Yeah, let’s see what’s on offer…”

It was a harder choice than John wanted it to be. Of course, he would take Combination 3. His completionist brain didn’t give him any other choice. There was no denying that Boiling Down and Borrowed Ascension were powerful though. The former diminished his advantage in numbers, but the payoff was a steady access to Combinations that could punch way over their pay grade. The reduction in cooldown by 25 minutes was almost more potent than the Stat boost. For the latter, it gave them a heap of damage cooldowns that could come in beyond clutch. Notably, it was a way for Stirwin to become immediately useful.

The five-kind Combination had a longer cooldown, but John was also convinced that the reward would be more potent to compensate. Neither the potential nicheness of these Combinations nor the warning about control difficulties could convince his wish for completionism to abate. He pressed the button and it was done.