They found a nice chamber at the centre of the palace. Oddly enough, it was round and open to the sky. A private well at the centre consisted of two rings. The outer one had fresh water, the inner one was empty. Etchings at the bottom indicated that its purpose was the placement of sacrifices. At least that was what John got out of the gruesome image of a weeping woman carving a smiling young man’s heart out.

‘I am definitely not going to pretend this culture is equal to mine,’ John thought and scanned the area. There were no deliberate enchantments found. Usually that would mean that John was mostly certain he wasn’t being watched; in this case he was within the Sanctum of a god. The pocket realm was an extension of that very entity. Much like John did not need to install a camera to know something was poking him in the sides, he did not think additional enchantments were needed for a god to be aware of what was going on in their Sanctum.

That was dependent on the particular god, admittedly. Nathalia was poor when it came to scanning for intruders in her own Sanctum, but that could easily be traced to her not spending a lot of time in it. Nightingale would likely be better at it, it fit her temperament more.

‘Wonder where Nia is?’ the Gamer considered, then turned his attention to the present before their would-be voyeur could get suspicious of the quiet. “Alrighty, time to check out the Quest rewards,” he told everyone.

Immediately interest coalesced around him. As they approached, John opened up his Character Sheet to get the basic view of it all. The Quest had gotten him 5 more levels and eliminated his SEP deficit. The Stat Points were swiftly distributed between Intellect and Wisdom, as per usual.

“May be worth investing in Skill Points,” the Gamer thought out loud. He left the implication of the why unsaid. The gaming terms would be gibberish to the god of this place, considering the technological and linguistic divide. John wondered if they even spoke English here. In their time, the Spanish would have been the more likely threat to bother learning to speak with.

Buying the Skill Points would be costly. Gaia took an extra tax when he acquired them for the purpose of levelling Metracana Master. He could not fault her for it, what he got out of it was absurdly more efficient than any other Skill being raised.

“I’ll decide when Nahua gets back,” he told everyone. A window popped up a moment later. This one was from the Harem Comms.

Aclysia: On that matter, should we have the others join us?

John covertly drummed his fingers on the bench he sat on. To the unknowing observer, it just looked like he was tapping a melody.

John: No, I think it gives us more tactical wiggle room if they remain out there.

Aclysia: Understood.

Claire: But Master, I miss you TT_TT

John just rolled his eyes at that one. The obsessed maid was hugging his other body at that very moment. All of these conversations were happening in the main channel of the Harem Comms, so everyone could read along. It’d get messy if they had to have every conversation several times. If there were questions, John was present in all groupings of his harem to answer them.

Reaching into his inventory, John pulled out the rewards in order of interest.

Starting with the Epic Crafting Materials, he was presented with a bar of crimson metal. Observe had him stare at the thing with mixed feelings. It was called Bloodsteel, a less powerful derivative of the Eternal Iron that Arkeidos had used. As such, it was effectively the Mithril of the necromantically created metals. He had gotten two of such bars, in addition to leather, wood, and stone of similar quality. The total quantity was enough to make something in the general size category of a dagger.

“Mhm… might as well,” the Gamer spoke, before announcing what he had thought of. “Hailey, could you take these and try to make a weapon for Nahua?”

“Without Rel, Lee, and Licia around? Ain’t no way, hon’,” the country gal drawled, but took the materials anyway. No harm in having her store it in her own dimensional pocket.

The Legendary Weapon was next. Gripping the shaft within his inventory, John pulled it out. Between the half-moon blade and the straight shaft of gnarled, dark wood, it looked most like a ritualistic sickle. The blade was shaped from crystal that caught the light within its translucent body, shifting blue, green, red, white, and black. A particular colour coordination that implied who it was intended for. The shaft was long enough to make it a staff, the bottom twisting into a spiralling thorn.

John had not expected a new staff for Momo to suddenly fall into his hands. The support had done splendidly without items for a while and generally preferred the freedom of having her hands free. Would the enchantments on this one be worth it?

That one was already incredible for Momo. The sassy support had plenty of passives dependent on cooldowns. Two applications that came to mind were to either instantly refill all of her Fireflies after using them all or to finish the channelling on her teleport spell to get out of dodge without the usual delay. Neither were fight winning, but it was the kind of advantage one would not want to miss.

The ‘moments later’ in the description made the Attribute slightly less awesome than it sounded. Momo was slow to start with so adding a delay to those attacks assured that these would effectively never hit if she was attacked by a melee combatant of comparable level. Still, a free attack option was nice.

That one was actually just insane. It was most powerful in combination with Nahua. It also worked nicely with Aclysia and some others. Fundamentally, it was the simplicity of this Attribute that made it so good.

That one was interesting, although not particularly powerful. It gave Momo some room for shenanigans and that was worth stuff in and of itself.

Same old, same old.

This one had… interesting implications. John did not know what the ‘bones of the fae wilds’ implied exactly. The only fairy he knew that was bony was the Horned Rat. It could also mean that the fae wilds was literally built on bones and that those bones were, in some ways, even more powerful than whatever archfae existed. John had very little definitive knowledge of the fae wilds, even after all this time. Any attempt to learn from Momo or Methania had ended with them clicking their tongue in frustration and shooing him away.

Since John and Momo were both generally opposed to sacrificing anyone or anything, this would likely not see use.

This one, alone, was worth having the item in Momo’s hands for. In regular combat, he did not see her using this ever. Throwing another mediocre combatant into the mix was likely to just add more confusion to it all. However, what this was good for was assuring that, even if she was caught alone, she had something to at least try to intercept blows.

That one sounded insane. Application would have to show how costly it was and how much damage it dealt.

That was… worrying fairy shenanigans.

Yet more worrying fairy shenanigans.

Looked at in totality, the weapon was absolutely worthy of the Legendary tag and it was good even for their level. It had a couple of drawbacks in that none of the effects were individually fight winning. Skill Acceleration and Swift Spell Storage were the only effects that were guaranteed to work when Momo wanted them to. Everything else had conditionals or costs, but it was still nice to have them.

There was one massive weakness to the weapon though, that being the absence of the Indestructible Attribute. Just the potential that the item could break completely made using it go against John’s ‘keep every item forever’ brain. He knew Momo suffered from the same, which was why she took the staff as if the heavy shaft was made from hollowed out driftwood.

In both her hands, she held the weapon, and the world around her seemed to tremble. For a brief moment, John saw another Momo standing there, one with hair drifting in strange currents and covered only by a frayed, extended poncho. That Momo had eyes like moons, white on black, and the aura of silence hung around her as a heavy mist.

As soon as it came, the vision was gone. “Am I the only one, or…?” John asked and looked around. The others gave him a look that answered his question. “Weird, I usually just get visions when I use the lenses… fairy shenanigans.”

Scarlett: Should you use those anyway?

John: In my experience, the visions are too unreliable. Plus, if I do, I compromise my eyesight.

“Aaaaah, I want to try this!” Momo swung her new staff. The gesture was one of frustration and thus lacked the intent to actually slice the air. “Why do I get my fun stuff while we’re guests somewhere?”

“Because being Momo is suffering,” Rave joked.

“You say that in jest, but you have no idea how hard it is to put up with you people.”

John smirked and closed the inventory window. Knowing that the Mythical Ichor was in there was good enough for now. Pulling it out in this environment felt like he was inviting disaster. What it would go to was a question he intended to work out another time.

What he could work out right then and there was the next Class Level. Opening up the list had him glance over at Velka.

The Magryph lay lazily in the sun, occasionally scratching at the collar around her neck. It was a new addition. Collaring a cat already felt weird, collaring a bird-cat was incredibly weird, but he needed something to cast Possession on to keep close tabs on her. There was treasure galore in this place and she was fast enough to cause plenty of mischief. Worse would be if she was not fast enough to dodge the consequences of such.

‘Pushing her to 200 won’t make a difference here,’ he decided, then checked on his other priorities. ‘I did reach level 8 in Silver Arcanist, so I could get the 9th level in Starforger. Mhm… but that probably won’t give me the most combat power. Not only is there a chance for an Opportunity Cost that may cripple me for the coming days, I also would have another difficult Class Challenge there that I have no chance of beating. If I go Silver Arcanist instead, I could conceivably get the 10th Perk in it. Could also go Monster Girl Creator… no, high level Perks will doubtlessly be better.’

A short ponderance had him select Silver Arcanist. It was simply the prudent decision in this situation.

‘I have made the right decision,’ the Gamer thought and read through the descriptions. “All of these are insane,” he told the interested crowd of haremettes around him. “There’s a clear mathematical winner though.”

“Beyond clear,” Scarlett agreed drily.

Magic Absorption and Shock Absorption both suffered the simple issue that John was everything but tanky. Assuming the best case scenario, in which his various damage resistance effectively quadrupled his HP, he would only regenerate about 5000 MP before he dropped. His current MP was well above 30’000 and he had regeneration of about 70 in excess of his costs.

Cooldowns, at his current Intellect, granted him a free cast of about 3000 mana every 10 seconds. In other words, Cooldowns was a mana regeneration increase of 300 per second. A simplified view to look at it, given the restrictions of timing and school of magic, but correct enough to outline just how much better it was than the competition. In addition, while the two Absorption Perks would have him invest in a Stat he did not want to, being Endurance, Cooldowns had him invest into Intellect. Intellect made his spells hit harder and expanded his mana pool, which also made him tankier.

Wisdom would still be superior as the mana regeneration Stat, most of John’s expenses in a fight went to fuelling his elementals, but this made Intellect an even more effective Stat to raise.

Cooldowns was so vastly superior, he did not have to think on it any longer. One press of the button and it was confirmed. ‘Alright, so the next goal will be to try and get the Silver Arcanist Class Challenge cleared… that may be an issue. I can’t open Illusion Barriers inside a Sanctum.’ He decided to turn his thoughts towards Nahua.

‘Y’ello, the cutest axolotl in the world here?’ she responded to his gentle prodding. ‘Any reason you annoy me during daddy time?’

‘If your lord father allows, I would like to take to a quiet corner of his domain to do some training and testing,’ John told her simply. ‘To kill the time.’

Temporary silence, then a swift and dismissive bombardment of information regarding a corner of the Eternal Sanctum that he could use to that end. Immediately after, the connection was harshly cut again. “What’s gotten into her?” Gnome wanted to know.

“Yeah, this is the non-fun kind of bitchy behaviour!” Salamander joined in the complaints.

“To be fair to her, I spent the last couple of weeks insisting that her culture is backwards and her history tainted,” John said out loud. There was no use in not saying it, Nahua would spill those beans anyway. “In her view, I haven’t spent the necessary time grovelling.”

“Ya gonna get on that?” Rave asked.

The Gamer gave his first fiancée a sideways glare. “I hate grovelling.”

“What about this, mmh?” the feline Lightbearer parted her legs. With it parted the bodysuit she still had on, revealing her tanned skin and slit.

“I suppose I went on my knees for that before.” John glided off the bench and crawled the short distance towards her. Unusual that he was the one putting on those moves. The approval in Rave’s eyes made it worth it. He kissed his way up her thigh, towards her pretty petals. “There it is, the entire reason I put a ring on your finger.”

“Dick!” Rave laughed and wrapped her legs around his head. Among his haremettes, she was one with more modest thighs. Still, there was plenty of meat, particularly muscle, to squish his head. Held in place against her cunt, he ventured into the already well-mapped folds. His tongue would revisit these places many times. “In your defence, we’ll have beautiful children.”

“So, we’ll just sit around and feel things out?” Momo asked the question that they already knew the answer to, just for the potential onlookers.

“That’s the -mhm- plan,” Rave answered in John’s stead. “Little bit higher, tiger… little bit… oh yeah, that’s the spot, keep circling…” Head falling back, the lusty cat girl moaned. “No need for us to get violent here, girls, so we might as well… enjoy.”

John pulled his head back just a bit, so he could talk. “Aclysia, Momo, Ehtra, Metra, you stay around for now. I’ll probably get some Skill Points later. The rest of you can head out if you want to.”

With that said, it was back to eating his first haremette out.