First, he called Rave. That was the actual, most logical person to start with in every metric. She was his ‘official’ girlfriend, the first woman to love him and the person he loved the most out of all of his girls. Her reaction to all of the news was pretty easy. “Does it look badass, at least?”

“Eeeeeh,” John looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, wanting to hop into the large shower room after he was done here. One eye closed, he inspected the scar more closely for the first time. “It doesn’t look bad at least. With how sharp her teeth are, it’s all rather clean. Could almost be mistaken for a tattoo, but, you know, white.” He turned to inspect the back side of it more cleanly. Thana had chomped down pretty precisely along the edge of his neck muscles. Upper jaw scars at the back, lower jaw scars at the front. “I guess you could say it looks kind of badass? Would probably look pretty gruesome if she had actually taken the bite though.”

“I’ll judge when I get back from here,” Rave said and yawned. It was somewhat early in the morning and she had never been a particularly good morning person. Somewhat ironic, as John found, as she was so cattish in many other aspects and those animals weren’t known for their problems waking up. “Whenever that is.”

“Soon, I think,” John told her. “Unless our war with the Lake Alliance goes hot soon. The Hidden Tradition can use all the people kept behind for the ritual for the border patrols you’re currently running. Add to that the increased reintegration of the southern Maryland and we might be able to move more people up north.”

“That sounds nice. Nothing has really happened so I am feeling kinda lonely here,” his girlfriend admitted, and John had to agree that being separated from her felt horrible. Same was true for every other girl currently not around. “Well, I’d love to chat more, butyaknowhowsitis,” she cleared her throat to get the slurring under control, “the longer I keep ya here, the later ya get done doing the things that allow me to see ya again. I’ll hear you later?”

“Evening at the latest,” he promised and hung up.

Next on the list was Aclysia. He braced himself for impact as he clicked on her name in his contact list. Tooting answered his nervousness, almost mockingly. For a pretty long time as well. It was very unusual; Aclysia would check her display quickly and hurry to answer once she saw his name. When he was about to get worried, the clicking sound of a taken call reached his ear. “My apologies for the delay, Master,” she stated, and there was the unmistakable song of Eclys vibrating under the impact of another weapon.

John was pretty sure she wouldn’t even have answered if it was something he needed to worry about. Still, he asked, “Everything under control over there?”

“Yes,” came the quick answer, followed by a scream of pain and Aclysia asking to be excused for a moment. A surrender demand echoed weakly from the background, a pained answer, then the weaponized maid returned to the speaker. “I apologize again, Master. I will now proceed to give you the rundown of my success,” she sounded rather proud of herself, which made John feel worse because he was about to ruin her mood. First, he would hear it though.

It was a pretty short but interesting tale. Apparently, the Small Lake Pact was run on brutality, which explained their openness to becoming a terrorist society at least. Their specialization in defence magic (of the trap variety) was also interesting to note. It opened up some new strategic possibilities that he would have to consider soon.

As to Aclysia’s success itself, apparently she had replaced the leader by beating him, although the man (called Umanien) had chosen to die by the end of the fight. That was something that John didn’t particularly like to hear. Umanien had been quite a good strategist, at least what Scarlett had told him had made it sound that way. What Aclysia told him however made it sound more like he was simply the right kind of ruthless to effectively operate a terrorist cell. On a small scale, that could sometimes be mistaken for genius.

After hearing what Umanien would have wanted to work with Fusion, however, ranging from unlimited funds to having sex with John’s harem members in front of him, he couldn’t honestly feel like he was all that sad about that loss of human life. Adding to that what he heard about the mana factory a moment later, he was pretty sure Umanien would have been sentenced to death by Fusion’s courts anyway.

Since removing him from power, Aclysia had spent the last two days beating back numerous challengers and establishing her rule. Further deaths had been avoided. However, it was anything but stable. The outlawing of mana factories and the other laws like that weren’t exactly popular. It was a miracle the entire Pact wasn’t imploding already. Either it would soon or they honoured strength more than they hated outside influence.

When asked about that Aclysia responded, “There is no need to worry about insurrection. Following your past example, I have allowed everyone a chance to leave. After my displays of superiority, several people took the offer. I have distributed the land to the people freed from the mana factories. Expectedly, most of those are as joyful as they should be with your designs to outlaw the practices that tortured them. I thought this to be of your design.”

“Ah, so the subversive elements are either gone or lying low,” John nodded to himself. Given the structure of that society, that almost guaranteed that the most powerful people were now out. That was pretty much guaranteed to be trouble in the future, especially if they managed to cobble together some semblance of an alliance again. Those were people skilled at harassing a much stronger power than themselves and now they had plenty of motivation to go after Fusion rather than the Lake Alliance.

That wasn’t exactly optimal. As a matter of fact, it was the exact opposite of what John had sent Aclysia to the Small Lake Pact for. His original intent was to get bad people on his side and conquer them later. Now he had effectively conquered them and gotten the worst people against him. Overall, however, John was happy with this outcome.

While the damage that those few people could do wasn’t to be underestimated, the extra land in the north was something John could really need, not to mention the manpower. Even if they were loyal only to his power, he could still wield those guerrilla fighters that had stayed at the Small Lake Pact as he had originally intended. It would be less effective than he had accounted for, but it would still get the job done in spirit.

There were smaller benefits as well. For a start, the swift dismantling of the Mana Factories was a good polish for Fusion’s image. Combined with the fact that he could soon announce the defeat of Sigmund, although he would be purposefully blurry on the details, it would greatly improve his guilds current reputation. Getting a bigger name on the map and tales of their victories would make other powers think twice if they wanted to support the Lake Alliance in this race. It might even demotivate them entirely and cause some internal strife. There had to be some people in that federation that shared Fusion’s ideals of human rights.

Then there was economic expansion, although that would take a while to properly take root. The unclaimed land between them could now be taken by John, rather than ending up as a token in negotiations. Surrounded on all sides, Amacat might be more easily persuaded to join him as well. That was a question he would leverage at Scarlett in a few minutes, since she was taking care of that through Beatrice.

To put it short, this was not what he had wanted but it was better in most ways. He just had to keep an eye out for a growing underground resistance, but when was that not true? With the amount of criminals he had displaced since he had started his conquests, it was just a question of time until some violent group of thugs banded together.

‘Just another reason why Scarlett keeps being so valuable to me…’ John sighed internally. He trusted her at this point, but there was no denying how reliant he was on her. Administration, economy, intelligence, counter-intelligence, aside from actual fighting she was just about the greatest single contributor he had in every field. No wonder Bearings had gone to such ends to try and get her. ‘Bad luck for him that he was a fat, weak bastard and no strapping young lad with godlike potential,’ he added to his thoughts and then laughed when Stirwin manifested.

It had probably been meant to be a warning, but the infinity elemental popped into existence a few centimetres above the porcelain of the sink. First, he fell, then he slid down the slippery smooth material, tiny claws failing to get a grasp on anything until he hit the drain and sat atop the plug for a few confused seconds. Then, in the style of a true derp infested animal, he laid down around the plug like that had been the plan from the start and just stared at John with tiny silver eyes.

He reached down and scratched the surprisingly soft golden scales between Stirwin’s eyes. The infinity elemental squeaked in a deeply pleased fashion. That this was the same thing that combined into a unnecessarily scary dinosaur or could grow into a water-ground dragon of a size beyond colossal was entirely stupid. One day, John might actually have the mana to take advantage of that.

“Master?” Aclysia spoke from the other side. “Do you hear my voice still?”

“Odd way of phrasing that,” John commented and then said the necessary. He had barely gotten the words ‘permanent scar’ out when there was an absolutely terrible noise coming from his speakers. It was like someone was dragging a rusty nail over a chalkboard, only scaled up in volume until it started crackling and with an extra serving of emulated bird screaming. It was such a bad noise that John was afraid to lose hearing in his right ear for a moment. “Is everythi-“ he started, realizing he heard his own voice quietly behind himself.

He realized what he had just heard was, the interference sound of teleportation. It had been way worse than last time, which may very well have been related to the much wider distance between locations. Aclysia didn’t particularly care for it, since neither of them had eardrums that couldn’t take such punishment. The weaponized maid had appeared behind John and was now throwing her phone into her inventory at top speeds.

“That was a pretty unnecessary use of that cooldown,” John scolded as the white-haired maid immediately inspected the scar. Although he couldn’t honestly be mad at her, it had to be said. “What do we do if they decide you being gone is the perfect opportunity to go independent again?”

“Then I’ll slaughter them,” Aclysia returned with enough coldness to instantly turn boiling water into ice cubes. After a few moments, a deeply troubled sigh exited her lungs and she wrapped her arms around his back. Whether this was a motion to soothe him or herself wasn’t quite apparent. “Ah, John, why do you do this to me? How do you expect me to ever leave your side when you come back to me hurt again?” He wasn’t really able to answer these distraught questions. “Where is Eliza?”

“In the living room, bundled together with the sturdiest BDSM gear I had on hand,” he reached behind himself when the worried servant rested her forehead on his marked neck. Although the angle was a bit awkward, he let his fingers caress her silky hair. “I will probably have to get or Create some pieces from Baelementium or even higher grade, just to make sure it doesn’t snap that easily. Please don’t treat her too harshly. You know she didn’t want this.”

“Yes…” Aclysia embraced him even tighter. “I’ll try to keep my wrath at a minimum… This helps.”

“Well, feel free to stay there as long as you need,” he told her and felt her head moving again. Inspecting the scar a second time.

“This might not be too bad?” she askingly proposed to herself. “Unless you get a tan, it’s barely visible. It certainly is preferable to the marks on your arm.” The red Lorylim scars were indeed less pleasing to the eye, looking like his bones cast shadows through his skin. Her fingers, smooth and gentle, trailed up to his throat. “Albeit uncomfortably close by comparison.”

“Yeah… you mind if I call the others now?” John still had four more calls to make. Technically, he had seven girls total he still wanted to reach out to over this, but he couldn’t reach Nathalia, Momo or Nia, each for different, frustrating reasons he was only partly in the know about.

“As long as I don’t have to move,” she stated, hands gliding over his naked torso. “I am unsure how a separation from your body would affect my emotions at the current time.”

“You are more than welcome to stay,” he informed her. Next up was Lydia. Unlike everyone else, he didn’t just outright call her. Rather, he dropped a text to ask if she had time right now. Unlike the loss of his eyesight, he didn’t feel like this was an update important enough to interrupt her schedule over. To his surprise, he had a message returned within a few moments, saying that she was available.

“I hope you come bearing news of good nature,” he heard her voice a few moments later. She sounded oddly distorted, a bit deeper than usual, her stern stone compromised by sniffling.

“Are you… are you sick?” John asked, honestly confused. He had been under the impression that being sick was entirely impossible in the Abyss. Rapid mutation or not, what was the common cold against healing magic? “How does that even work?”

“By having a vindictive biomancer specializing in bacterial theory in 1874 experiment on the flu and create a strain that can actually infect people with magical stamina,” the queen answered and then coughed in a disgustingly slimy way. It was doubtful that this lengthy exposition was doing good things for her throat.

So, despite wanting to hear all about this, he stopped her. “I’ll find out myself, don’t push yourself.”

“No, I am not finished with this and you shall listen,” the stubborn monarch retorted as strongly as her condition allowed. “This strain of the flu can enter barriers and is largely resistant to all but the most specific or powerful of healing attempts, forcing its victims to resort to traditional medicine and bed rest. However, it seldom succeeds in cultivating within people due to needing them in immensely weakened states.” Another series of coughs. “It is therefore… that I have worked past my schedule, because whenever I was laying in my bed, I was thinking about you and that you were hurt. I am telling you this because I am literally sick and tired and I need to somehow manipulate you into visiting me already.”

“…I do wish I had the time, but I am kind of in a war right now,” he sounded as miserable as he actually felt.

“Are you carrying yet more troublesome information to my addled mind right now?” Lydia’s voice was already hoarse from this amount of talking. That she had her eloquent way of putting everything really didn’t help her right now.

“No, actually, that war is nothing I would put in the worrisome category…” ‘…as it stands right now, anyway,’ he didn’t want to worry her, so he added that part in his mind. Despite that, he heard a grunt from the other side that was entirely mocking. Even with an ocean between them, Lydia had deciphered that in a moment’s notice. “No, what I actually call you for are recent developments. I would say they’re pretty much positive?”

And by the end of it, Lydia very much disagreed. “You absolute moron,” she scolded, and the only thing that spared him one of the queen’s famous scoldings was a coughing fit she had a moment later. “You had the opportunity to rid yourself, us all, of Thana and decided to do that instead? You realize that you used a nuke to remove a tumour, correct?”

“Yep,” John conceded in a chirpy mood regardless.

“…Hearing that single word delivers me from worry and casts me straight into my usual frustration,” Lydia let out a long, relieved breath as something metaphorical was lifted from her shoulders. Despite her chastising words, it was evident that she was quite happy about the general direction as well. “Is the scar something that will remind you of your foolishness at least?”

“If I believed in a god above Gaia, then I would guess it slapped this on me for that purpose,” John conceded. “Either that or he is a giant dick.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive… as much as I would like to continue this discussion, I have to actually rest. Please converse with me in text messages for the coming three to five days.”

“Got it, you sleep well,” John wished her and was pretty sure he heard the phone fall out of her hand and into the cushions rather than her putting it down. She must have immediately passed out. ‘Well… this next one is going to be interesting,’ he thought and scrolled down to Metra’s number.

The talk with her was pretty straightforward. Of course, she was incredibly amused when John mentioned how he had outsmarted and slapped around Seminaris for a bit. Then she got a bit more serious, hearing about that invisible assailant. “Serestra? No, if it had been her, you wouldn’t have noticed…” Metra mumbled on the other end of the line. “Absalm or Thresta, more likely. I would put my money on the former, but don’t quote me on this. Given that you got Astrotium poisoning, I can only say that one of my kin being involved is incredibly likely.”

“Basically guaranteed, unless I somehow got on the bad side of Prometheus,” John agreed. Aside from the Metracana, the only Astrotium wielding people had to have some connection to either Enki, who was dead as far as he knew, or Hephaestus, who was working with the Greece centred guild. “Any idea who that master could be?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Us Metracanas don’t share some special connection outside of origin. We are basically one loose family. No idea who takes what contract if they don’t tell me.” That was as much as John had figured, but the question still could have given him something. “Anything else noteworthy?”

The Gamer finished the telling of the events. Metra’s reaction to the scar was a bit different.

“Fucking finally, a king’s body should be a canvas for his story. That you can’t get scars is really fucking boring.”

“Your beauty ideals are all kinds of screwed up,” John pointed out, decisively ignoring the king part.

“Mine? Fuck you, Master. Your culture elevates the flawless and it’s absolutely disgusting. Not only is it unattainable, the more different someone gets from your little template, the worse it somehow is. Scars are a mark of deeds, hair separates men and boys.”

“Yes, I am sure the scar of accidentally having your thumb too close to a grindstone is absolutely beautiful,” John drily responded.

“A mark of a mistake that reveals that a person can or can’t do something,” Metra responded. “Are you fucking telling me there is something shameful in that?”

Feeling actually unable to satisfyingly answer that question, John gave ground. “I guess I can see your point… would you extend the hair logic to women though?”

“There is nothing wrong with pubic hair.”

John felt ready to continue this for another hour to test where exactly her borders lay, but he really should move on. Aclysia was still attached to his backside like a brick to mortar. By the two hard dots against his back, he could guess pretty accurately that she was both naked and ready to get this somewhere else.

Therefore, the talk with Metra ended on the note of ‘Let’s continue this another time’ and John moved onto Scarlett. He hadn’t even picked out her number yet when her voice just echoed out of the speaker. “I am already in the picture.”

“Could you not listen in on my conversations?” John complained, initiating an old routine of theirs.

“Somebody has to, with your mediocre safety precautions,” she responded. “Anyway, I get the feeling that I would agree with Lydia if I had more than video material of Thana. As it is, Sigmund being out of the picture pleases me. Your scar is basically a non-factor, on the other hand. Can’t even market that thing properly.”

“Didn’t you work with Sigmund before?” John asked.

“I bought his services before,” the Technomancer corrected. “And had I known how exactly his powers worked, I wouldn’t have pointed him at the free level up. Scratch that, had I known that he would cause more property damage doing the job than the guy he murdered did in damage to my company, I wouldn’t have touched the fucker with a ten-foot pole.”

“Huh… maybe you should tell me that story in full some time?”

“Maybe. Not now anyway, I am getting some good things finished up. Let’s just say we may not have to ask ourselves about Amacat anymore soon,” Scarlett stated and the calling symbol disappeared from his display.

‘Alright, one… no, two more calls to make,’ John reminded himself that there was someone outside of his harem he should call over this. Before that, it was Beatrice’s turn. Albeit that phone call went as expected.

“Emotional state: worried. Request: may I use teleportation to return to your location immediately?” the neutral of her tone had been somewhat compromised.

“Denied,” John answered firmly, but tried to convey his understanding with his tone. “Aclysia already did that without asking and I can’t have both of you suddenly disappear from your diplomatic missions.”

“Hypothesis: Aclysia is currently much happier for having done the unwise thing and will actually get to enjoy your physical closeness, more blatantly called sniffing you like a creepy dog. I want to point out that this makes her a worse servant and that I am envious. I will follow your order, however,” Beatrice sounded like she had more sass to distribute. “I recommend my recall from this current position soon.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” John said and that was the last of the calls with his girls done with. Now he searched for a number he only recently had saved. The person didn’t pick up, so John waited until the inbox came on. “Hey buddy, wanted to thank you again for the call you gave me recently. Don’t want to put you through the experience of finding my newest life developments through television again, so here I go… good news, Sigmund is basically dead…”

He put a heavily abbreviated, non-detailed version of the story out. Didn’t want any important information to leak through a voice message of all things. That was the last call he wanted to make. Anyone else he wanted to know, like Magoi, he had already physically visited. Only Ted and Chemilia would have to learn via Metra, as he really wanted to just hop into the bath already.