The Gamer Chapter 1053 – Christmas Back 3 – Harem Day (Patreon)

They walked back in relative quiet. Momo was visibly pondering what the right words to express what she was feeling were and John allowed her the space. The way she’d word her, most likely, love confession would let both of them decide to move forwards. When she had left, she had been around 90 in the Relationship Score thing.

It had also said that she preferred girls at the time, which, given her dating record, was most likely true. Having a preference for girls in John’s harem was more of a benefit than a detriment though. Being a full-on lesbian would lead to unsolvable issues, but they already knew she wasn’t exclusively interested in women.

Through the teleporter, they were back in the Palace. John carried her all the way back home, where everyone awaited them eagerly. The chatter all across the room ceased when he stepped in with her across his arms. John noted that Lydia and Nathalia were demonstrably sitting next to each other, both drinking a cup of tea. Evidently, they were doing their best to establish that intra-harem bond that assured this whole, incredibly improbable, social structure remained functioning.

“She returns!” Rave shouted and waved them in.

John quickly came over to the Couch. With interest, Momo reacted to the furniture changing into a specialized arm chair that allowed John to sit comfortably and for her to remain in his lap, while getting her own backrest. It only caught her attention for a couple of seconds, though, the various naked women in the room quickly took precedence.

“Some of you changed a whole lot,” she remarked, eyes wandering over the crowd and their lewd bits. “Some of you, not so much,” she stated, her gazing ending with Sylph, who decided she’d rather lie under the ceiling.

“You know, you can’t really improve on perfection… although, although! I have been thinking since Aclysia and Bae started becoming more like dragons, maybe I should get some kind of animal trait too? I would be ADORABLE with cat ears. Totally adorable… maybe there are even cuter animal ears though? Mouses… Mice are cute! Dogs are cute! Velka is really cute! Then again, Velka has cat ears… maybe cat ears do win?” the arcvolt elemental blabbered.

“Ya know how it is,” Rave drily spoke over the continued palavering from above, “the more things change, the more they stay the same. Anyway, let me introduce ya formally to all of the girls that came in after ya left.”

“Sure.” Momo smiled softly, definitely happy to learn the names of all of these beauties and likely to have an excuse to shove back her definitive answer on the whole love question a bit longer.

“First we have Scarlett and Bae, ya met those two briefly during your last video call, I believe.” Rave gestured at the two. ´

“I remember one is a smoker and the other has decision-making issues,” Momo teased.

“I made her quit for a month and she just started up again,” Aclysia sighed.

“You two can fuck off, I can smoke and quit whenever I want to,” Scarlett said and threw her phone to the side to actually become part of the conversation. “What you need to get into your head is that I smoke because I like it. Nicotine makes me productive and I need to keep my hands occupied.”

“Maybe you should pick up a fidget spinner?” Momo suggested. “If you want to look less like a nerd, just twirl a pencil instead.”

“Brilliant suggestions,” Scarlett drily dismissed with a wave. “Geniuses like you clearly contribute to the wealth of mankind.”

“You know how the Pareto distribution works, 20% of all sentences will contain 80% of the stupidity,” Momo shot back.

“Statement: applying economical principle to conversation may not be advisable,” Beatrice chimed in. “To return to the previous topic, my decision-making difficulties have been greatly alleviated. I have filled my original lack of character.”

“Good on you, he gave me too much of one and I had to come to terms with that.” Momo gave the Gamer, who was still holding her, a glance. “Even named me after a sexual transmittable disease.”

“Can you STOP bringing that up?”

“Can you stop bullying me?”

“Did you really do that, dude?” Lee asked.

“Right, Momo, meet Lee, Lee, meet your white-haired, Artificial Spirit twin,” Rave said.

“”Twin?”” John asked, alongside several other girls in the room.

“I think ya two are pretty similar. Cute, bottom-heavy, hate authority, sassy, that kinda stuff.”

“Breaking us down to those few attributes would lump you in with us,” Lee remarked.

“I don’t even fundamentally hate authority,” Momo contested.

“One, I also have cat ears, so I’m clearly an individual,” Rave cheekily responded, raising an index finger. “B,” she raised the other one, holding both up, “my scheme to forge ya together worked, look at ya uniting against me.”

“Of course we ‘unite against you’, you’re making no sense, Jane,” Lee said, throwing her arms into the air.

“Yeah! Also, what’s up with the cat tail business?” Momo wondered.

“Riiiiight…” Rave lowered one hand and scratched her head with the other. “Ya wanna tell her everything or should I, tiger?”

“I’ll go ahead,” John said. He was getting progressively better at explaining things that had happened in the past, because he had to do it so often. Several things he glossed over because they would be there for hours if he didn’t. After he had concluded catching her up, and after she had asked a couple of follow-up questions, she reported the gist of her own findings.

Her main project the past few months had been where the border of Gaia’s punishment on the builders of the tower of Babel had been. Interestingly, that had been tangentially related to Enki, as the existence of that border had, at least from his perspective, led to the rot of his body. It may very well have been that he had been outside the danger zone from the start and that it was purely Tiamat’s attempt to manifest through him that made him fall apart. Definitive information on this was impossible to produce.

Even trying to keep both of their stories as brief as possible, they sat there for almost three hours. John and Momo remained clothed for all of it. Every time John thought they were almost done, the conversation resurged and he lost the window to undress without making a scene. He could have told the sassy support to move elsewhere, but she would have taken that squishy bubble butt on his groin with her. Unsurprisingly, he got an erection at several points. The first time, she blushed and looked at him for a prolonged time. Every time after, she just ‘ignored’ it. Insofar ‘wordlessly grinding against it with her soft butt’ could be classified as ignoring.

When quiet finally settled over the room, Rave cut into the most important topic of all. “Alright, been really nice catching up with ya, Momo.”

“Same, Jane,” she answered earnestly.

“Gotta put ya on the spot now though: we kinda reserved Christmas Eve for just us. Ya know, the harem. Tomorrow is for friends, day after that for family. So… serious question,” Rave cleared her throat and faced Momo, “do you want to stay today or do you want to come back tomorrow? What, exactly, do you want your relationship with John, with all of us, to be?”

The room got dead silent. It wasn’t every day that Rave spoke slow and deliberate enough to get her accent under control and curiosity did the rest.

“I… want to stay…” Momo hesitated in her words, because of what she would have to say next. “I… urgh… god, I hate words…”

“It’s okay,” Gnome assured, smiling at her long vacant good friend. “You always found the right words when it came to it, right?”

“Debatable,” Momo mumbled and gathered her breath. “I… am pretty certain that… yeah, I love you, John. I had a lot of alone time to think about that. When I first thought that, a while after I broke up with Ria, I told myself that I was just going back to what was convenient. I tried dating a few others, but it just… never clicked the same way it did with all of you… I don’t really know what it is. After comfort, I was afraid that it might just be my ‘programming’, but I definitely noticed that fading with time. I felt less and less of a forced pull towards you, Gnome, and Aclysia. I still really like both of you, don’t get me wrong, but I do it because of the memories we share and because of who you are, not because I was made to care about you.”

“That’s good,” Gnome smiled, “genuine things are always better than things built on orders.”

“Yeah,” John nodded, “I would never do something like that again. I don’t want to blatantly control anyone with sapience like that.”

“I believe that and… I admire it, I would say.” Momo nodded, more to herself than anyone else. “Eventually I came to the conclusion that just ‘comfort’ wasn’t enough of an explanation why I wanted to come back to you. It was – is – part of it, but it just doesn’t cover all of the draw I felt towards the life I had left behind. It was all of it, the discussions, the fights, the danger, and the multitude of brilliant women you have beside you. I really like all of it. Not because you made me like it – because I discovered I like it. And, although you were on the other side of the globe, I came to cherish those memories enough that my feelings for you became deeper, and then… well, we got into contact again and you had bettered yourself even more and… yeah, that basically did it. I wanted you. Not because you were there. Not because you had created me and I was stuck to you. I wanted you because of who you are and because of who I am. With this freedom that is my right, I decided to come back to you. I love you.”

John pulled softly on her side, so that she rested with her back against his chest. Viewing the harem, and being held close by him, she was so vulnerable. “It’s alright,” he whispered into her ear.

“Wh-why are you telling me it’s alright, huh?” she asked, trembling and mocking at the same time. “It’s not like-“ she sniffed.

“There must have been a lot of doubt and second guessing in all of that,” he kept calmly talking to her. “Coming to a decision with all of those things pulling at you, to come back after being so committed to going away…”

“No, it… okay, maybe, but… fucking hell why is everything so blurry.” Momo first wiped her eyes with her wrists then blinked several times at the ceiling. It was to no avail, the dam had broken and the tears started falling over her face. “Why am I crying?” she demanded to know from whoever would know. “This is a good thing, right? I got things sorted, right?”

There was no definitive answer to that, so John limited himself to holding her until she found the peace in herself to conclude it for herself. He wasn’t alone in this. All of the harem smiled or gave encouraging nods. Gnome and Nia came over and joined the cuddle. Everyone else likely would have as well, had there been room.

After about two minutes, Momo had herself back under control. She had a pretty quick recovery, all things considered. All that was required were some encouraging whispers and a package of tissues. Aclysia diligently tossed them in the trash, after Momo blew her nose out one last time.

“Why do I even get a runny nose? I only use it to smell things,” she complained. “What use do I have for snot?”

“Like it or not, Artificial Spirits mimic humans because we try to create things in our image,” John told her.

“The species that birthed you would try to play god,” Momo grumbled and let out a quick, heavy breath. “Okay… okay, I got it. Emotional crisis over.”

“You sure?” John teased.

“Do you want to get slapped? Because that’s how you get slapped, asshole,” Momo told him. “Why, why did I decide to come back to you?”

“Because you secretly like this.”

“Yeah, ya tsundere,” Rave teased. “Anyway, time ya get the official harem seal, right?”

Momo shook her head. “I would be surprised if that was an option. I… urgh, now I need to say it again… I do love this guy,” she casually pointed over her shoulder and John waved at the harem, as if none of them knew him. Some of them chuckled. Some of them chuckled out of pity. “But I do very much love him the basic amount. I’m stupid enough to fall for someone I barely had contact with in a year, not to suddenly be heads over heels for him.”

“Well, we can just put a number on things,” John declared and finally used Observe.


“Yeah, that’s a fair bit short of the required 190 RP,” he confirmed. Everyone else could check the window out using the Harem Party menu. Momo was a manually added member to the Lover’s Mark group, but that mattered fairly little for this particular mechanic. Because she currently wasn’t his AS, she got a regular character sheet. “Guess I’ll have to show you all my good sides,” he whispered in her ear, grabbing her thighs.

“Then why are you showing all your worst sides?” she asked, while her RP ticked up by one.

There was no way John could get her all the way to 190 by having sex with her, but there were some points to be gained there. Momo was an above average girl when it came to being horny and the satisfaction would leave more than no impression.

“Oy, Momo, mind coming here for a sec?” Rave asked, waving with her finger.

The sassy support realized where this was going almost as quickly as John. While she headed over, he demonstrably stuck his fingers into his ears and averted his gaze to not accidentally read their lips. Eventually, Aclysia tapped on John’s shoulder and he returned to paying attention to the room. Momo now sat in Rave’s lap.

“Hey,” he complained.

“Sorry, tiger, imma usurp this little crowd ya got going.” His girlfriend stuck out her tongue. Then she winked. “Don’t ya worry, ya can stay as my sole harem-dude. I’ll even allow ya to be the biggest dom and ya get to pick up more girls – permanently even. Nothing changes.”

“Everything changes when I’m not in charge,” John disagreed. “You can’t even keep yourself organized.”

“He has a point there,” Salamander said.

“Are we having a civil war?” Siena giggled, all too ready to escalate things.

“Pillow fight?” Sylph blabbered.

“I will not allow any of our pillows to be destroyed,” Aclysia insisted. “The replacements of the recent orgy have not arrived. I must remind everyone that claws on the mattress are strictly prohibited.”

“More tea,” the main culprit demanded in her raspy, sexy voice. The glow of her orange eyes betrayed nothing but deep apathy towards the state of the bed.

Aclysia and Nathalia consequently started their own side-fight of this whole thing. While the room grew noisier with individual discussions, John put forward one more important question. “So, Momo, do you want to stay fully independent or do you want to enter a contract with me again?”

In terms of effectiveness, the answer was obvious. If she entered a contract with him she would be part of the system again. This meant easy access to levelling, especially the next roughly 200 of them, on which she could catch up with a few materials, Perks, Skills, and assignable Stat Points. Even without the system, it meant she would be connected to the mental network again, which would make communication that much easier.

In terms of principle, she may object, however.

“Yeah, sure,” Momo agreed freely.

John blinked a couple of times. “You are that certain?”

“Believe it or not, that’s the easier decision to make after coming back to you,” Momo told him. “Specifically, because I know you will let me go if I ask for it again.”

“You leave me again, I won’t take you back though,” John warned her. He had told her this previously and he meant it. Letting something you love go was one thing, letting someone you love use you as a convenient return point another. “This is a one time deal.”

“But you would let me go and that’s what’s important – that I believe you to be good enough of a guy, against all odds, to not bind me to you against my will,” Momo said. “Anyway, how do we do this? Do you need to unlock some kind of slot or…?”

“No, because you are a regular AS, I think this should just work regularly… ehem,” John cleared his throat. “Would you enter a contract with me, Momo?”

“Yes,” she answered with an overemphasized nod.


John, did a double check with Momo, then clicked yes, and that was that.

Expectedly, windows opened a moment later.