“Alright, let’s keep this fucking ball rolling!” Salamander screamed, feeling her power surge as the levels rolled up into her summoner.

The very same had to curb her enthusiasm. “Nope, this is where we step off the gas pedal for a moment,” he told her, and everyone gathered on the stone platform, with the exception of Undine who was watching from the water, looked to him for an explanation. Although a few already got the general logic. “Look, I just jumped to level 184,” he said, as he dumped the 42 points into Wisdom, to no special effect. “There is a new Class Level available. We’re going to get that done first.”

“Why though, that went perfectly!” Salamander complained. “You got six fucking levels out of it, you just said that, we should keep pressing and get you even more, that’s going to be even more helpful!”

“Because this won’t work for the next enemy,” he gestured at the swamp trap they had built. “We already know that female Dragonkin further down the tunnel is a mage of some sorts. She won’t have any reason to follow into melee range. This is a Raid, Salamander, we need to proceed with caution and treat every mob along the way with the respect we would reserve for a boss normally. We’ll abuse the shit out of this Instant Dungeon where possible, but we have to figure out what is possible on a case by case basis. One mistake and, well, its death or cooldown usage.”

“So, we should get working on prodding for the weaknesses right the fuck now,” the endflame elemental insisted.

“No, first we should maximize the tools we have,” he held against her. “We are not in any particular hurry, Salamander. We still have over 14 days. Also, you can expect the enemies to drop the amount of levels they give pretty quickly. Every level less difference between them and me means a lot less experience. It reduces both the amount of experience I get and the bonus factor.”

That last bit was based on a lot of assumptions, since John wasn’t in the know how exactly Gaia arrived at her reward numbers. For Achievements it was obviously whatever she felt like, for monsters there was some sort of formula. Although John was going to guess that the bonus for beating something above his level had some sort of diminishing returns on it to prevent him from jumping like 40 levels if he was tangentially related to the death of a level 600 individual.

While that did prevent him from explosive growth in such cases, it also meant that the experience reward for the Dragonkin would only diminish noticeably once he properly approached their level. In other words, he was likely to get 3-4 levels for the next few kills as well, but then he would hit some sort of soft ceiling and it would suddenly diminish to ‘reasonable’ levels.

“Fine, have it your way, I guess,” Salamander snapped at him, crossing her arms under her breasts. Although she let out an annoyed click of her tongue and looked to the side, John couldn’t help but feel rewarded when she pushed her massive boobs up with her forearms.

‘Not quite time for a sex break yet,’ he warned himself, before the enticing sight of his fire spirit could properly ignite his desires. Source of Satisfaction made it a bit easier to keep his head calm in most situations, but once the switch was flipped and the Libido debuff reversed into a Libido buff of the same strength, it was quite difficult to just walk away. “Don’t be like that, Salamander,” John tried to soothe her, not wanting her to pout regardless.

He walked over and gave her a loving kiss on the left cheek, right on top of a number of black lines that ran over her red skin. “Don’t be like what?!” she hissed back, evidently annoyed with the current situation, the lines flaring up with gold and heat, just as a few flames flickered up from her buzzcut, making her hair appear a bit longer at the top of her head for a moment.

“Like that,” he kept his voice soothing and deep. “Come on, look at me.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her black eye. John wasn’t satisfied with that, so he took her by the chin and turned her head slowly. Although she wasn’t playing along, she didn’t resist either, until the golden and black irises of her left and right eye were both focused on him. “Do you trust me, Salamander?” he asked.

“Of course, I do; doesn’t mean everything you do is the smartest thing ever,” she immediately shot at him before he could make any sort of point, slapping his hand off her chin. Without taking any insult, he moved it up to her left cheek.

“I absolutely agree with that, I would be surprised if even half of what I do is the smartest thing ever,” he said, knowing full well that implied that at least some of the things he did were in that category. He did actually believe that much and he had good reason to take that much pride in his actions. “A different question then.” He still kept his voice level and deep, trying to do nothing but reach Salamander with his intent. “Do you love me?”

The slightly taller endflame elemental seemed to heat up again under his hand, but it was a different kind of warmth this time. “Yes, I do, you moron, what does this have to do with anything?!” she growled, leaning towards him until their foreheads collided. It was a somewhat competitive gesture. “Don’t make this weird.”

John simply held his ground against her, not intending to push back more than necessary to accomplish that. “I know that you want the best for me, even if you’re being aggressive about it,” he told her and suddenly pulled her into a right and proper kiss. Salamander’s eyes widened in surprise, but she let him do as he pleased, even moved yearningly after him when they separated again. “And I know you love the part of me that takes bold action the most, but we have to be smart about these things, okay? I am not harming any of you more than I have to, you are too dear to me for that.”

The endflame elemental’s rage had melted away now. Against John’s newly raised charm and the honesty of his words, her issue with taking a detour on their path to victory was nothing. “Mother Fire, I do love you,” Salamander gasped. Their foreheads touched again, but in a gentle manner. “I love you even more than I thought possible, despite all the things you did for me… particularly that one thing…”

She was talking about the events that accompanied her ascension to Tier 4, of course, and the intentional disaster that had been. No more words were necessary to talk about that, lessons had been learned from that foolishness already. All that John wanted to remind her of was that she was dear enough to him that he would go along with her wishes, even if he thought them to be ludicrous, as long as it was truly important to her. That he would stick by her in the darkest time.

Before John knew it, their minds were synchronized perfectly around that mutual love for each other. Then, suddenly, Undine too was inside the mix. Two elementals in perfect sync with him at the same time. A part of him remembered the Elementalist Class Quest. Just one more elemental in the mix and he would complete it, allowing him to finally gain the 5-type Combinations and…

It was that same part, be it its greed or matter-of-fact attitude, that unravelled their unison. For a moment, John was confused that there were only his thoughts in his head, then he remembered that this was the way it was supposed to be. Those thoughts felt a bit lonely on their own, but even though the end had been a bit abrupt, he also felt more fulfilled than ever. It felt a bit like separating from Rave for the night in the first days of their dating, when they still had slept at separate places sometimes. He was less alone in the world, but he also felt that loneliness more intensely now. An odd dichotomy.

“Fine, have it your way,” Salamander repeated her initial statement, but now her tone was soft in a way that it almost never was. “Also, stop calling me Salamander, its way too long. Sally is fine.”

“Yeah!” Sylph exploded onto the scene from the right side of John’s view, dropped that single word, bounced off Salamander’s breast and immediately exited again to the left of her summoner. The Gamer couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that particular display of the air spirit’s lack of common sense.

They left the barrier thereafter, and John changed to Puppeteer. He hadn’t even started working at the next Class Level yet, so he knew this was going to take a few hours at minimum. These particular Class Challenges were rather interesting though. They were all focused on the Mandala Sphere and his handling of it.

The first one opened him a special barrier that had a number of rings in the sky. His job was to fly through all of them with the Mandala Sphere in a set amount of time. At the face of it, a rather easy task, but it was well-designed to be quite difficult. He had to use the hovering enchantments capability for bursts of speed through mana injection to cut corners several times. There was no dictated order either, so he had to use spatial awareness and numerous attempts to find the best route. Which further complicated that was that, in certain intervals, some of the rings would move. There were optimal times at which to cross them, before they moved somewhere that wasn’t as easy to reach (or the opposite).

After about half an hour of failed attempts, he had the optimal route. Another fifteen minutes later, he beat the Challenge. That was a quarter of the Class Level.

The next Challenge was easier, but also less fun. He was to Possess two humanoid-shaped objects and go through an entire yoga routine with them. The kicker: one of the objects was to be one figure and the other two figures behind himself. He had to keep track of the instructions in the video and remember the last two figures he had made and accurately mimic them. One mistake and he would have to start over.

He beat that one on the second try. His memory had been good even before he dumped copious amounts of points into his Mental Stats. Although he liked to say ‘if I remember correctly’ when speaking to people, that phrase could almost be struck from his vocabulary. He didn’t have photographic memory, so things like texts he had only glanced at weren’t archived immediately, but it was harder for John to forget things than it was to remember in basically every case.

The one true exception being things related to the Nirvana that Nia was connected with. Whatever had appeared during the Little Maryland conflict, he could no longer remember any of it aside from the massive headache he had gotten the last time he managed to conjure its image.

That was another quarter of his Class Level anyway.

Lastly, a Challenge for the remaining 50%, he had to go to his Possession Slot cap (being 9, if including the Mandala Sphere as an extra one). Then, he had to make all of their visions spin continuously in circles and run one-hundred metres in under 25 seconds without falling, while keeping that up.

Now, that would have been hard enough under normal circumstances. Unsurprisingly, having one’s mind filled with the vision of a Beyblade times nine was confusing. However, if two of those spinning motion blurs were one’s eye replacements, then that just made things that much harder.

John Newman wouldn’t have been John Newman if he wasn’t a crafty fellow, though. The Challenge just said he had to spin, nowhere did it specify he had to see anything with that. What did he do, therefore? He closed his eyes, put the Mandala Sphere into a dark chamber under the earth and otherwise Possessed a number of marbles that were then put under bowls. No problem with all of that motion blue if everything was dark.

He still had to run a hundred metres blind. Thanks to a combination of Undine helping him and himself having gotten rather used to the darkness, that was basically no problem though. Definitely not Gaia’s design intention, all of that, but he got the Class Level anyway.

“Hellooooo, there,” John salivated at the choices he was given. Level 6 did seem to be the number where the system checked what he had specialized for so far and then gave him the proper juicy choices. Combination had also popped up at that level. That made the efforts in the last two hours or so completely worth it.

John was going to be a bit illogical for a moment and immediately dismiss Polishing 3. Not necessarily because it was bad, on the contrary, it was a reliable increase in power and usability, but because it was boring. Well, he could also make the argument that storing more and more mana wasn’t worth it compared to the other two choices, because he was first and foremost a mana regeneration build. Storing things for emergencies was good, but not that good, and three spells for his Extension for free was already plenty. If he really needed more, he could spend some Possession Slots, he generally had more than he needed anyway.

‘Mana Double or Projection…?’ John wondered, immediately leaning towards the former. Projection was attractive, no doubt. Having a copy of the Mandala Sphere he could use to scout without having to fear to lose it, or just to double up the Mana Storage while he overregenerated his MP, was incredible. Sure, the 50% penalty was quite hefty, but he was sure that could be eased with future Perks and it wasn’t hefty enough to make the whole thing useless.

However, Mana Double’s future excited him even more. The 50% of current regeneration was, again, very hefty. However, the upside was also insane. 50% of his Physical Stats, even if it was just the Base ones, was quite powerful. Especially when put on top of a Baelementium forged object. It was a way to make an inorganic object scale with his levels. Boosting the survivability of the Mandala Sphere was nothing to sneeze at, since he relied on it for a number of manoeuvres.

That aside, it could be surprisingly helpful to have an Extension that could smell and grab. Right now, the Mandala Sphere, like all Possessions could only hear, see, and feel. Adding smell to that, be it only for the moments he expended the mana for it, could be quite useful and having hands was just generally good.

In the future he expected a number of improvements. Mainly for the mana cost to drop, the Stat copy to increase and, hopefully, the accuracy of the manifestation to go further. Maybe, just maybe, it would become a 100% accurate copy of him. A sane man would have first thought of the applications in public life for that, to be able to have a press conference while also sitting in a backroom and doing some proper work. However, John mostly wanted that ability so he could double-penetrate one of his girls by himself.

So, yeah, if that was where this could go, he was 100% on board. Even if it wasn’t, the scaling on his Extension alone was good enough that he decided to opt for that over Projections. After having picked Mana Double, the Skill appeared on his Character Sheet. Like Third Eye or Combination, it couldn’t be levelled by conventional means. Regardless, it was there, and John used it immediately.

The Mandala Sphere’s surface broke open into its many surface plates. The normally spherical distribution warped into the rough outline of a humanoid. The arcane heart of the contraption flared, visible between the dimensionally folded layers, for just a moment. Then, suddenly, arcane energy grew around the shape, giving it shape and details..

It was indeed a copy of John. Bright blue and purple, it hovered there, a few centimetres above the ground. The outside was slightly translucent, still showing the plates of the Mandala Sphere underneath, but when John reached out to touch this manifestation, his hands couldn’t get through the mimic of his clothes, as hard as Baelementium tended to be.

The copy was indeed dressed in John’s current clothes. Testing, he removed his vest by putting it into his inventory. The Mana Double also lost it. He put it back on, only to take it back off, but physically this time. Only when it no longer counted for the Equipment Slot did it also disappear from the double.

‘Next interesting question,’ John thought and, after making sure he held onto Stirwin’ item form in another way, lost pants and underpants. Disappointed, he clicked his tongue, the crotch was smooth like on a mannequin, with a surface that reminded of a Playstation 2 era game. Then he felt a bit awkward for wanting to have seen a dick that badly. ‘Well, it would have been my dick,’ he justified to himself, then looked at the copy’s face. It was undoubtedly him, but a low-resolution version. Everything looked a bit blurry and the blue and purple colour was just flowing on regardless of what features it painted, so that made things mildly confusing. Size and broadness were perfectly accurate though. It was just the finer details that had to be worked on.

‘Locking the dick behind progress is just mean,’ John noted, as he assumed he would be able to unlock that later on. Well, actually he had assumed it would just be there from the start. It would look pretty odd, all blue and translucent, but it should have at least been present. ‘Here goes hoping I make quick progress… which is basically a given.’

As for the senses, they were as John had expected. This Mana Double had a perfect copy of all his intact senses. Meaning it could smell like him, touch like him, hear like him but it didn’t see like him. Instead, its sight worked basically like the base item’s did, in that John could readjust his point of view to be anywhere on the surface. Not quite as smooth a proceeding on a human body as it was on a sphere, but he could get used to it.

‘That is definitely worse though,’ John thought, when he checked whether the spinning Mana Blade trick worked in this form. The answer was a resounding no. The Mana Double wielded the Mana Blade like he would have. ‘May have been a bit overenthusiastic about this… for the moment, it’s definitely worse in combat than the normal Mandala Sphere,’ he analysed, ‘but for the future, this has a lot of potential. No use crying over it now.’