One could have thought that the two of them moved soon after that window popped up. Instead, they were bound there for a while longer, John holding her until the tears subsided. Tears that kept flowing, albeit they changed from those of confusion and anger to relief and love.

When, finally, the streams did stop and he had dried her face, they stayed there until the red in her eyes disappeared. Only then did they make their way back.

It took a while, albeit not as long as it had taken them to get there. The path down the mountain and over the sand was the same, but the darkness that they had spent hours in was shortened considerably.

In the end, whether or not they had needed the Elemental Depths to sort out their issues was debatable. There was no challenge inside that they had faced, neither was there anything about the environment that had given them the clues they needed. Its existence alone had enabled the situation where Gnome’s bottled emotions had exploded out. For that, John had to thank the Elemental Depths, if nothing else.

It only took about a minute of walking through the darkness, before they were able to see the end of the tunnel. There was a light at the end of it, a bright light that shouldn’t have been possible at this hour. John and Gnome had spent most of the day in there. Even if the Weather Tower made it so the climate of the Guild Hall was always summerly, it couldn’t change the course of the sun. It was the last week of November and, in the northern hemisphere, the days were almost the shortest they would be all year.

The light greeting them was no other than Rave, making her hand glow with a shifting display of red, blue and green. It gave the cave walls a techno-party feel, while the Gamer and his earth spirit stepped out of the supernatural black. “There they are!” Rave shouted, a bunch of other figures appearing around the cave entrance.

Unsurprisingly, it was the harem. Whatever responsibilities and jobs they all had, they had gotten done with them for the day and were now waiting for the return of the two. The moment they stepped out of the Elemental Depths, Gnome and John turned into the centre of a cuddle pile. The mental connection had never broken off, so albeit they hadn’t involved themselves in any manner, the other girls knew what had been going on. Logically, John just got second-hand cuddles of approval while Gnome got all of the loving, supportive cuddles the harem had to give. Which was, by all accounts, a lot.

Even Scarlett and Lydia got in on that whole affair, the latter’s presence being somewhat of a surprise. “Are you well?” the queen of steel asked, following her embrace of the brunette. The question was accompanied by a number of inspecting touches.

“Better than before,” Gnome responded with the kind of firmness a shy person could only muster once in a full moon. “Much better… John?”

“Yeah?” the Gamer asked, busy holding an Undine in each arm.

“Since we’re all already here… do you want to…?”

John understood the implication, as did the rest of the group. They didn’t wait for his nod to start backing up from Gnome. From the very start, the decision was clear. Opening the Achievement Store, John selected the Skill Evolution Point option. 1000 GP were withdrawn from his savings and he immediately pressed the golden + that appeared next to Autumn Elemental Summoning.

The choice was obvious immediately. Reaper didn’t fit Gnome’s role in combat or her personality. Fertility was hot, but that wasn’t the choice he was making here. Season elemental was the natural progression from where she was and fit the role she had in their group dynamic. Gnome was the leader of the elementals. Even if she didn’t have the temperament to assert herself on daily matters, she was still the one who made the final call. She was the first of them and everyone liked and respected her.

John looked up to see his earth spirit give a confirming nod. Then he pressed the button.

The earth rumbled and opened up underneath Gnome’s feet. Before she could fall, the earth fountained upwards and swallowed her whole. Pebbles and dirt consolidated into a stone pillar. The surface never smoothened, though, remaining bumpy and covered with trenches, which elongated as the pillar became thinner and taller.

It stopped once it was a stone spike with the texture of bark. A branch exploded out, accompanied by a weak tremor that could likely be felt through the entire Earth Island, if not the entire Guild Hall. A second branch soon followed, along a second tremor. A third, fourth, fifth, too many to count, as the branches spawned, grew and forked off; the tree of stone grew more and more complex with each passing moment. Its colour shifted slightly, consolidating in an honest brown that could have been used to describe either rich earth or the bark of a hazel.

Whenever the tree reached the greatest complexity that could be supported by its size, it experienced a sudden growth spurt. This repeated often enough that the circle the gathered group had made around Gnome came to be completely filled by a trunk ten metres across. Massive branches above shook with the power of their own expansion. The tremors, frequent as they were, remained unthreatening in their intensity.

John heard the gathering of the island’s inhabitants and visitors all around them. They didn’t talk, didn’t wonder what was going on. The earth spirits must have instinctively known what was going on from the moment the first tremor shook the island. Perhaps they even perceived it as a call to watch. The tremor or the news must have spread faster and wider than John would have first guessed, as more and more elementals arrived not only from the Earth Island itself, but also the other Elemental Islands and the plane of Gnome’s kind itself. Bodies manifested, seemingly out of thin air, all beholding the massive tree.

A tree that blossomed.

Four leaves, each time, two large and two small ones, formed from short-lived flowers of pure energy. Each cluster of four had its own colour. Gold, purple, red, blue or green, they lit up the tree with their soft, elemental light. Every twig and every branch was crowded with leaves. Their multi-coloured lights covered the world around with spots, as if each was focused through a coloured lens.

Then the leaves began to shiver. With another tremor that made the tree and John’s being quiver, hundreds of butterflies made of leaves took flight into the night. A second tremor and a second wave followed. A third, a forth, a fifth, and so on, until the leaf-winged butterflies filled the night sky and spread their light far past the Guild Hall and into the Hudson Barrier.

In a fluid transition, the tree itself began to disperse into butterflies. Bark peeled away, revealing underneath more of the same, and turned into brown-winged leaf-insects. They followed their earlier siblings into the night. Wave for wave, the tree shrunk, the tremors becoming visible as every butterfly bounced up and down in the air as if affected by it. Circle after circle spread through the loose swarm that covered the sky.

The tree was only just the trunk by the end, smaller even than that which had swallowed up Gnome originally. Last vestiges of bark cracked and crumbled away, bit for bit revealing underneath a humanoid form.

They all watched as Gnome peeled out. Visually, she was almost completely unchanged. Her body was the same, her proportions well-balanced and simple. Her legs were long, her thighs slender but not thin, her hips and ass inviting, and her chest decently sized. Equally, her face was the same as before. She was a fair woman, her chin and jaws on the rounder side of things, her eyes brown and almond shaped, her hair hazel, long and slightly wavy towards the tips. Two braids ran across the side of her head and were tied together at the back.

The sole difference John could spot was her dress. It remained of a particular design, as if made of melded together leaves. It still left most of her shoulders and neck bare, and was continued by gloves on her arms and stockings on her legs. It did remain yellow, with veins, like those on a leaf, spreading out from the middle of her torso and over her chest. In addition to all of what was the same, some of those veins pulsed magically with the colours of the other elements. Some of the leaves, particularly around the edges, were a winterly blue rather than the golden brown and yellow of autumn. Subtle changes, but changes nonetheless.

With the last of his elementals reaching Tier 5 came an Achievement.

‘Good thing I already took the week off,’ John thought, repressing a sigh. Doubtlessly, there were some nerfs incoming. He couldn’t complain about that too much, Gaia only nerfed him as he could handle it and, factually speaking, it was her taking the training wheels off his Innate Ability. As for the other rewards, they were pretty amazing.

The Elemental Court required that John have all Elemental Islands built, which he did. However, the Room Slots and upkeep required to maintain it were not something he could afford at the moment. Its effects were numerous, primarily boosting the strength of elementals that could step over from their respective planes and the speed at which the Collimets formed. Both boons he wanted to have, but none he was so eager to get that he would restructure what he currently had over it. The last Tier of the Guild Hall would be achieved in its own time.

Getting 100 GP and 1 SEP effectively meant that John had been paid 100 GP for this final evolution. A small boon, but nice nonetheless. The Max Class Level was more a quality of life boon than anything else. John hadn’t been lacking access to Max Class Levels since the scaling had doubled in frequency. Having the level for Elementalist, of all Classes, guaranteed meant that he could pick it up whenever he finally beat those last Challenges.

John smiled when he looked up and saw his six elementals. Gnome, who had evolved the completely normal route. Salamander, who stood there proudly, having recklessly fought what she had to in order to ascend. Undine, who had forced a double evolution once and caused a mess because of it. Sylph, who was such a perfect representative of her kind that she got to skip Tier 2, but had otherwise evolved without dangerous happenstances. Siena, who he had contracted at Tier 3 and with her wanting to stab him, who had only let him choose her last evolution and who he now had a truly healthy relationship with. Finally, Stirwin, the Celestial Devourer whose true potential he still couldn’t awaken.

The Gamer hadn’t tickled all of the power out of his elementals he could. They could always get better at teamwork, combining their powers or their bodies to fit situations they hadn’t yet thought of. Only time would tell what the last level of the Elementalist Class truly offered. The last Perk was very likely to be the combination of all of his elementals, but the Modification and the Advanced Class that stemmed from it would be a different story.

This avenue of evolving them, however, had reached its final destination. It felt good to get done with one aspect of his powers. The completionist inside him rejoiced and his mind could stop considering the possibilities there and turn to other options.

“Ehem,” Gnome cleared her throat, trying to get everyone’s attention. “So, uhm, if I could… maybe make this night about me?”

“Of course,” John was quick to confirm. It was basically tradition that he gave the recently evolved elemental his exclusive attention for however long they wanted. “It’s all about you, my beloved cuddle rock.”

“Umu,” Gnome made a pleased, slightly embarrassed sound. She glanced at her fellow elemental girls, one after the other. “So… here is the thing…” she started.