John pulled out of Sylph after a particularly well-timed orgasm and fell down between her and Salamander in the grass. Things had gone on for a while and he had no reason to feel bad about that. He was now at level 384, which left him one level short of unlocking a new Max Class Level. As long as the Intermediary Barriers remained inaccessible, fucking was literally the only productive thing he could do.

‘Woe is me,’ John ridiculed himself, as he pulled the two panting elementals closer to himself. ‘A breeze would improve the situation… but I guess I should just take a shower… First things first, though, Stat Points.’ He willed the window to open and pondered on his options.

Recent changes forced John to reconsider where his points went. To be more precise, he had to adjust his previous strategy. In order to cope with the scaling costs of his elementals, he had to invest four of his eight points every level. That was a hefty ask, but the return was the ability to keep all of his familiars running at full power all the time. Considering their power, it was more than reasonable to demand that John dedicated resources continuously to keep them around.

Problem was that, with Momo entering the picture, the cost of Artificial Spirit had increased dramatically. The base cost was 5% of his mana regeneration and that doubled with every active Artificial Spirit. In other words, the cost for all 3 was now 20% of his mana regeneration. Gaia had already warned him that the formula would eventually turn more elaborate and he fully expected that ‘elaborate’ also meant ‘higher’. Also to be considered were the 10% of MP regeneration he paid when the Ambassador Double was active.

All around, he currently paid 96,8 mana for his elementals, 31,6 for the Artificial Spirits and 15,8 for Jack. In total he paid 144,21 MP per second and regenerated 158,04. The difference was still about 14, which was alright but meant he could rarely ever cast freely. If he had wanted that, he would have needed to go down a caster route.

The most important thing to note was that the addition of Momo meant that he now needed 5 points of Wisdom per level to stay ahead of things. Before he had needed about 3,7 points per level, now he needed 4,25. There were no partial Stat Points, of course, so he always had to round up. It was annoying that he had one less point to freely allocate, but at least the margin between what he needed and what he did was also wider. A total of 0,75 Wisdom worth of MP regeneration would be free after each level, so he would gradually get ahead.

‘Until the Artificial Spirit Patch ruins things for me,’ John thought and sighed. ‘I either need to lower the mana usage of everyone, nerfing them so I can do things, or I need to accept that I can only do as much as my saved up mana allows. Also, I should look for some further upgrades on efficiency. I still have two Equipment Slots to fill. There could also be some cost reductions in the Metracana Master Class? Maybe I should prioritize that one after all…’ John considered it briefly, then softly shook his head to himself. ‘From what I have seen of Enki’s Stars and spells, they’re too potent to pass up on. If anything can accelerate Fusion’s growth even further, it’s a unique and highly efficient way to transport mana.’

Although mana batteries worked quite well, they were also famously large and difficult to produce, once they reached the capacity necessary for industrial processes. In that, they weren’t that different from regular batteries. The kind that powered a phone was good enough (even if a lot of people even complained about those), cars started to be more of a problem, and when it came to actually powering any form of facility, people skipped on energy saving and went straight to power generators.

The Abyss wasn’t that different, although ‘power generators’ equalled ‘slave labour and/or indentured mana factory servitude’ wherever people could get away with it. Luckily, that practice was swiftly getting stomped out.

‘Alright, so 5 in Wisdom, 3 in Intellect.’ John pressed the buttons and looked at his window.

‘I am getting pretty close to 750 Intellect. That should help me a bit,’ John pondered. ‘Although I don’t think Gaia will buff my mana gain much further. Right now, I gain about a tenth as much mana regeneration from each point of Intellect as I would from each point of Wisdom, thanks to the 3% of my Max Mana I regenerate per minute. If I was a game designer, I wouldn’t let the Stat that increases the mana pool also become an acceptable alternative for the primary resource regeneration.’

The swinging hips of an approaching woman pulled John out of his thoughts. It was rare enough to see Scarlett wearing something outside the binary of nothing or a full suit. After yesterday’s workout outfit, John was treated to the androgynous beauty in a tank top and the brown, baggy, pocket-covered pants so often seen on mechanics. Oil spots covering her clothes, hands and face.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Are you seriously hard right now?” Scarlett asked, stopping in front of him.

“Have you looked at yourself?” the Gamer asked.

“No, but I know that I’m fucking sweaty and covered in machine oil,” the technomancer told him and gestured at herself, as if he hadn’t already noticed that. “While your dick is drenched in elemental sex fluids.”

“I do sometimes wonder if that will eventually seep into me and give my dick elemental properties,” he joked.

Blowing air out of her nose, Scarlett remarked, “Either it would have already happened or it can’t happen because you get sucked clean afterwards every time.”

“Not every time… unless you’re offering?” John winked at his redheaded haremette.

“You’ve gotten enough spontaneous sex the past three days.”

“We both know there is never enough spontaneous sex.”

“Hmm… fair point,” Scarlett rolled her head and continued, “still no, I’m doing actual work right now and I need you to look at something.”

“But can I fuck you before you shower?” the Gamer asked.

Scarlett looked at him and shook her head. “Never have I thought you were more of a hopeless pervert than right now.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, it’s incredibly hot to see a woman working on machines.”

“It’s because I’m hot,” Scarlett drily pointed out.

“That’s certainly at the base of it, but there is a certain flair to it. Don’t you think I would have a special appeal after a day in the garage?”

Scarlett considered that for a few seconds. “Eh, maybe. I prefer sex to be clean, to be honest.”

“Well, guess we just differ there.” John finally got on his feet. Asking Salamander or Sylph if they wanted to come along would have been useless. The two were totally passed out. John felt a little bit bad about leaving them lying there, but it was a safe environment and they could reach out to him mentally whenever they woke up. “Let’s see what you’ve been working on then.”

He followed Scarlett to a workshop that Lee had put together using the materialization abilities of a Fateweaver. It hadn’t been part of the initial plans, but Magoi had insisted that his daughter needed to stretch that particular mental muscle in addition to whatever kept the time dilation going. Rather than have her create things at random, Magoi had asked around what anyone wanted and Scarlett had put into commission what they were now entering.

It was a large stone box, about the size of a garage, with a door that fit the style. The walls inside were blank, with a number of tools hanging from metal hooks. A long workbench covered the far wall, a height adjustable table stood to the right, and the rest was space taken up by various building materials Scarlett had requested, primarily metals.

To this day, John was not quite sure about the rules concerning materialization from a Fateweaving position. There were three obvious ones: one, whatever they created could not be removed from the barrier, just like all materials that were native to an Illusion Barrier, two, the materials spawned would eventually start to disappear if the Fateweaver that had created them did not maintain them, and three, they could only do these things if they were in control of the barrier. In all of these aspects they differed strongly both from John’s Loot and the things elementals or mana engines created. Although they were made with magic within a barrier, they were technically real.

Oddly enough, food could not be materialized, but the water within Illusion Barriers, Fateweaver made or not, was drinkable and would leave no ill effects.

When it came to complexity, speed, magical potency, and longevity of spawned constructs, John had no idea. He was able to create his own dwelling in one of his own Illusion Barriers, but that was just a shell of a house. Magoi managed to hook up dwellings he materialized to the electricity grid and internet connection. John knew that that particular wonder required some real materials to be brought in with him to create a box that facilitated such transfers. That essentially looped back to the complexity question.

The only thing of true importance in this regard was, to John, that Fateweavers did not make for reliable building material suppliers. If they had been, the Abyss would have looked a lot different in terms of structures. Generally, materialization was also reserved for the powerful elite of Fateweavers.

As a prodigy, Lee was able to manifest somewhat intricate tools even at this point, but electrical circuits and the like were beyond her, which was why Scarlett only had hand tools and mundane materials lying around.

John realized that a large drawback of the mechanics outfit was that the pants of that uniform hid even a butt as round as Scarlett’s. Sure, the thing was properly sitting around her hips, but the pockets and general bagginess prevented that tight display he so loved. He quickly walked up to her next to the workbench, to see her face and what she was tinkering on.

“You might want to put on pants,” she told him. “Lots of sharp objects around.”

“I’m not even sure regular metal can properly cut me at this point,” John hummed. “Unless my mundane protection kicks in.” Gamer’s Body had a minor function that made it so he did sustain and maintain non-lethal wounds while being watched by mundane people. If he did heal those wounds between encounters, that would be his problem to explain though.

“You may find it hot when I’m covered in smears, but I’m not letting you put a dick with that kind of lube on it inside me,” Scarlett told him. “I’m not getting an infection down there.”

“That is fair enough,” the Gamer conceded. He could have raised the point of Undine and that the oil was likely to just disintegrate, courtesy of being materialized by Lee, but if Scarlett was uncomfortable at the thought alone, it wouldn’t have been an enjoyable sexual encounter anyway. His pants appeared over his legs, while Scarlett grabbed a couple of metal plates lying around. John recognized the particular L shape of many of the plates. “You are working on the Mandala Sphere design?”

“Yeah… and we may skip mark 3,” she told him.

“But isn’t that mostly done already?” John asked. The Mandala Sphere was a steady focus of research, since it provided a fair amount of John’s power projection at range. “We had a proof of concept and a prototype.”

“Sure, but the mark 3 is mostly a material upgrade,” Scarlett told him. “Structurally, it’s the same, which is a disgrace given the materials involved. So I did some brainstorming. The current three iterations of the Mandala Sphere are structured like this,” she grabbed several of the plates, shaped like a bold and cursive L, and stacked them on top of each other. Curved, the neat stack wobbled slightly as its smooth sides grew taller until the final plate, about as wide as John’s finger, was put on top. “Layers of this pattern around a core, lodged into each other, shrunk down by enchantments to fit into the size of a basketball. An absolute marvel of precision engineering.”

“Are you talking about the Mandala Sphere or the fact that you handcrafted all of these curving metal plates into a stack that presents a smooth side?”

“Smooth?” Scarlett looked at him with some disdain and ran a finger down the side of the stack. “I can feel all of these bumps. This,” she brushed over her own arm, “is smooth. That,” she pointed back at the metal plates, “is a prime reason why I usually mentally direct precision tools like water cutters.”

“I suppose the human hand can only get so steady,” John said and looked over the rest of the workbench. “So, is that over there the concept for the mark 4?”

“Yessssss,” Scarlett gave an enthused, hissing answer and grabbed what looked like a metal ball linked to a stack of three L-shaped plates via a wire that was secured to the inside of a thorn, whose base was too broad to be pulled back out through the hole the wire came through. The showcase had less layers than the genuine Mandala Sphere, likely to show off that wire. Scarlett tapped on it a couple of times. “This is the prime improvement we need to look at.”

“Well, explain to me how that would work,” John said, his scepticism fighting, and ultimately losing, against his faith in Scarlett’s engineering prowess. “We spend a lot of time trying to get around the Possession limitation that it must be one connected object. The Immaterial Connection Attribute was how we got around that previously.”

“Which has the drawback that the Mandala Sphere has a maximum extension radius and all plates must move in accordance with each other,” Scarlett responded and waved off. “Kind of worked out for us, since you wanted something that could spin rapidly to abuse Mana Blade.”

“It would still be useful for Arcana Ray,” John reported.

“That’s honestly not my primary concern, Arcana Ray is best as Burst Ray or, if you channel it, as Melded Rays anyway,” Scarlett waved off. She wasn’t wrong about that. Unstable Arcana had also replaced any such spinning tricks as his best area damage tool. “What I have to achieve with my design is to make it a viable or better alternative to Ambassador Double.”

John just nodded. If she succeeded in that, it would certainly ease his mind a little bit. That was 10% of his mana regeneration he did not have to spend on creating his double during fights. He could still do it, but if the Mandala Sphere was baseline more versatile than Jack, that would be nice. Beating a pair of human hands was difficult, however.

“Let’s start from there,” Scarlett went to explain her showpiece, grabbing the outermost plate and lifting it up. Only now did John realize that there were windings on the other two, preventing them from sliding down. “Having each plate on a flexible wire means you can use each segment of the layers like an independent arm.”

“Provided the entire thing is connected,” John brought it back to the original point of contention. “For which the entire thing would have to be welded together, which the wire did not find aggregable last time we tried this.”

“Correct, but this time we have metals available that form strings on their own,” Scarlett responded, and it clicked with John.

“Right, both Schattengarn and Fusionals-“

“Not a good name.”

“Shut it.”

“If you change the fucking name, I might.”

Sighing, John continued, “Schattengarn and its alloys naturally take the form of string, in the right conditions. The alloy with Poseidury behaves like the liquid shadow Undine can conjur.”

“Very stable and sharp strings, essentially near indestructible rubber,” Scarlett nodded along, “and, as Strimata proved, strings that will grow back together, making repairs a lot easier. If each plate of a segment is connected via a rod of Schattengarn alloy, it should be possible to create a singular connected unit of plates and wires, eligible for Possession. Immaterial Connection would be unnecessary and so each bit could be moved independently.”

John scratched his chin and considered the practical applications of this. He could shift his field of view to every single one of those arms – or perhaps tendrils were more accurate. With the way Possession worked, he couldn’t see with all of them, but the potential was good enough. “Would it still be able to spin though?”

“Only as a whole unit, so that’s not all that different than before,” Scarlett said and tapped on the core. “We would have to reinforce the centre because it would be revealed more often.”

“Is there something you could do so the plates can shoot out at high speed?” the Gamer asked. “The thorns might be useful as a physical offensive option.”

“…The thorn is honestly just a design compromise to the regular wire,” Scarlett told him, then pondered over the question. “But it could be kept in one shape or another… I’ll have to see what the enchantment experts say. That’s something I can’t solve with physical engineering alone.”

“It would be annoying in daily life if I had to watch out for the thorns,” the Gamer agreed. “The base idea is good regardless. As long as the Mandala Sphere remains a mobile spell platform, I have everything I need.”