The Gamer Chapter 1296 – Fusion Festival 3 – Checking Inside (Patreon)

“I’m doing fine!”

John was currently trying, and failing, to escape Nathalia’s bosom. Such a fate no sane man would have regularly tried to avoid. However, the Gamer was experiencing the peak of all uncomfortableness: to have a whole harem of women worriedly doting on him. The only issue with that was the worried part.

“The thing about depressive episodes is that they ruin an hour and make you anxious waiting for the next one; I’m doing perfectly well right now.”

“Ya doing a relaxing is what you’re doing,” Rave told him, putting a hand on his chest. It did not reduce John’s wish to squirm his way out of there. He would have teleported, had that been a viable escape strategy for the current environment.

“That doesn’t even make grammatical sen-“ John’s complaint was immediately silenced when his girlfriend gave him a deep, adoring kiss. This variety, even the Gamer wasn’t sure he had tasted before. He was used to loving kisses, ‘thank god we’re still alive’ kisses, teasing kisses, dangerous kisses, and even concerned kisses. This felt more like a guilty-worried kiss.

Long and slow, it remained with him while Rave wrapped her arms around him. When she finally broke the kiss, they were forehead to forehead. Up so close, the shifting pink lustre in her blue eyes was the most beautiful light in the entire world. “John, I want to tease you so bad right now,” she confessed. “I wanna tell ya that ya could fix this if ya just married me already and got that kid ya want.”

“Then do that,” John encouraged her. “I don’t want you to treat me like I’m fragile. I’m approaching burnout, I haven’t collapsed yet and I will respect my limitations.”

“That’s… I just… I need to say something, okay?” Rave’s hands ran through his hair, played with his ear, while she sorted her thoughts. “I fell in love with a dork with big ambitions, a big brain and a big heart and I never really stopped to consider that you might get tired one day. The time passed and you just kept showing me that you were capable of more. I thought it would always go on like that, with you just… improving until you led all of us to standing on top of the world. I should’ve been a good girlfriend and worried about you more…”

“Don’t you dare call yourself a bad girlfriend.” John pulled her against himself and held her tightly. “Don’t any of you dare think of yourselves as having failed me!” Slowly, Nathalia finally letting him go, the Gamer sat upright. His eyes fixated every last face in the room in sequence. “The moment this started manifesting into something serious, you were onto it. I didn’t even go a day of feeling off tilt before the issue was identified. There is no group in or between heaven and hell that I would trust as much with my soul as all of you.” Gaze returning to Rave, he framed her face between his hands and spoke softly. “I couldn’t tell you myself why it happened at this time. Worse, I think I could try to reason myself out of this for a thousand years and I would still be as tired at the end of it as I was at the start. All I can do now is listen to my heart. No matter where that takes me, it cannot happen without all of you. Every last one of you owns a piece of me.”

“Oh, John,” Rave sniffed, the guilt still written all over her face. “I just… I suck at explaining stuff!”

“Yeah, you do, but I understand anyway,” John assured, blinking away his own tears.

The mood in the room was at the verge of sadness and stayed there for a long while. Nothing specific made it pass. Time healed all wounds, they said, and sometimes time was enough to keep one from opening as well.

Eventually, the living room almost resembled its usual configuration. Some haremettes were gaming, others were reading, many were tending to John. Many more than usual, more intensely than usual, and the tending took an even more subservient character than normal. Groaning out loud, John eventually clapped his hands and repeated, “I do not want to be treated as fragile. I have a plan to deal with this. Everyone ready to hear it and return to normalcy?”

“If it involves you working in any capacity, I will kick your ass into the bed,” Rave threatened him.

“See, that’s what I like to hear.” John chuckled, finally feeling a spirit of the regular banter return to the harem. “Step 1, and this will be fairly easy, we go through the Fusion Festival as if nothing happened. I can do this for two more days, and if I can’t, I will let you know. I don’t want to disappoint anyone out there, but more important is that I don’t want to worry anyone in here.”

“At least he understands what’s important,” Lee joked to Gnome.

“I… I think he can hear you…”

“That’s the joke, cuddlerock.”

“O…oh… haha?”

“Step 2,” John continued on with his explanation, “we make the necessary arrangements for a one-month vacation. Fusion withstood our time in the Iron Domain, so this shouldn’t be a problem either. At least we will be available in an absolute emergency this time around.”

Momo crossed her arms. “I’m keeping all your phones.”

“I will get to that.” John squeezed the shrunk-down slime girl shortstack in his lap for additional comfort. “Step 3 will be to analyse the situation regarding the elemental Quests. Depending on what they are, we’ll take care of them immediately, during the vacation, or afterwards.”

“Hey, seizure hands, ready to kick his ass into bed yet? ‘Cause that sure as fuck sounds like he wants to do work.”

“Honestly, doing some Quests is probably going to be relaxing,” John confessed and rubbed his forehead. “The main two problems I have right now, if I evaluate my own mental state properly, is that I want to be a father, but can’t be that properly at the moment, and that I have just a giant number of memories of my office.”

He only had himself to blame for the latter. On further analysis, it may not have been the smartest move to keep one body hacking away at the bureaucracy at practically all times. Yes, there usually were blowjobs involved and yes the other body typically was enjoying the many debaucheries of his lifestyle, but neither of these negated that he was still sorting, archiving, signing, and reading documents upon documents for eight to sixteen hours a day. Notable vacations from this had been his ten-day grinding sessions with Magoi. Enjoyable as those often were, Raids and Assaults were not exactly stress-free environments either.

What John craved, currently, was himself sitting on a porch he had built with his own two hands, leisurely reading a book while watching his plants grow. He had never really lived that life and he wasn’t certain he would actually enjoy it. What he knew was that he wanted to try it.

“Actually, there is a number three: I have been meeting too many people recently… Huh, all of the negotiations regarding the favours I owe may have been the breaking point.” The Gamer’s thoughts were pulled back to the matter at hand by Siena scratching him behind the ear.

“Continue with the plan, my saviour,” she whispered, her voice satin smooth and heavenly. Then she licked his left cheek with her devilish tongue, making him shiver all over. With that one gesture, she suddenly reminded him that he was in the middle of his harem. The part of him that had been limp since the depressive episode earlier suddenly and intensely reawakened. “It will be hard… to listen if you don’t get through quickly.”

“Ehem.” John cleared his throat and ignored his pulsing libido. Siena’s hand, already stroking his semi-erect manhood, did not make this easy. It was his experience with pleasure that let him stay in the present, despite the raven-haired woman cupping his balls and weighing them, as if she was handling two spheres of pure gold. “Step 4 will be to actually acquire a property in southern Oklahoma.”

“You said that fucking earlier, is there anything about that area why we’re going there?”

“Well, it was just an arbitrary state I picked out, but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea,” John told them. “Quite southern and inland, so the climate should be a lot different, yet not quite in the desert area of the Midwest. Abyssal population density out there is pretty scarce too, so I’m sure we can avoid any unwanted attention. We’ll probably be the only Abyssals out there.”

Nia stared at him, her head slightly tilted. The other haremettes noticed, just like John did, and waited patiently for the pariah to sort her words. “What once we’re there?” she asked. “A month is not enough time to raise any farm animals or raise a harvest.”

“Yeah, but that’s fine.” John kissed Siena on the cheek, which transformed the expression of the sadistic woman into one so soft and joyful that it was difficult to believe it was the same woman. “That farm will be a long-term vacation project. It’s where I will build things for us – mostly for me. It’s okay if I don’t raise anything this time around. There is plenty of building and landscaping to do.”

“So, Step 5 is to actually be on vacation?” Momo asked.

“Yep,” John responded, feeling cheerful at the thought of it. That, on his right side, Claire was holding onto him with the eagerness of a concerned maid certainly helped as well.

The air in the room changed once again, as the end of the explanation allowed the various haremettes to pull away from concentrating only on John. Individual conversations about the farm and what they would do there started. Before that could truly take off, Undine’s crystal-clear voice cut through the rising volume, “Will you be developing the mundane or the Abyssal property?”

“Both,” he gave the simple answer. “There’ll be problems with the mundane side of the farms as the years progress, so I want to keep activity there pretty secluded… I’ll also need a retainer for when I’m not around…”

“I can do that,” Claire immediately volunteered.

John turned his head and looked at the vampire girl. ‘Not the worst idea,’ he considered. After her previous life, being the retainer of a farm would be a good way to let her appreciate the beauty of nature.

The East Coast was quite urbanized, and the Guild Hall, while interesting, was a creation of his hands. Out there would be proper forests, hills, mountains, and the various animals that made Earth a vast and interesting planet to live on. The remoteness would also make it a nice place for her to retreat too. Claire was remarkably sociable, but everyone needed time to themselves every now and again.

“I’ll consider it. We don’t need to make a call until the vacation is over. There might not even be anything worth retaining after one month.”

“If we build on the Abyssal side as well, we can be certain of that,” Undine told him. There certainly was a point to that. Whatever they imagined in terms of landscaping and floral development, they could make a reality in an afternoon. With his elementals, the current shape and even kind of any environment was a mere suggestion.

Which made the work on the mundane side all the more enticing to John. Already he was thinking about how they could make tests on the Abyssal sides with magic and how he would then have to use creative thinking and hard labour to make them reality in normally attainable ways. With his body, he had an obvious advantage over most other farmers, but he vowed to himself to only use what he couldn’t disable. It would be a good lesson to remind him what mundane people and most Abyssals had to deal with – magic may have been a constant in the lives of Abyssals, but most only had access to limited conveniences. Also, John imagined it would be more satisfying.

John turned his head when he heard a small commotion a couple of metres from where he was sitting. It turned out to just be Velka trying to steal some of the porkchops that Stirwin was munching on. A pretty typical event within the living room, although it had grown a bit rarer with time. As the animals grew larger, they spent less and less time within the living room, for space and personal reasons. Copernicus and Stirwin just found it too loud, Velka was more often occupied with finding shinies, and none of the three were really reliant on the harem for food. Strolling through the Commercial District got them enough sustenance – to the point that the Gamer had to consider making a public service announcement to stop doing so. Even Magryph’s could grow fat. Good for Velka that she was constantly burning calories.

“Another question, tiger.” Rave pulled his attention back to the group. “Ya gotta promise me that, if ya don’t feel fully recovered at the end of that month, you’ll extend the vacation.”

John bit back the ‘that’s not a question’ comment. “I promise,” he told her. “And I promise I’ll be more careful about my work balance in the future – or at least acquire a Perk that makes it impossible to get burned out again.” Since he already had Mind of Work, the meditative state in which paperwork was a greatly rewarding proposition, it stood to reason that he could pre-empt burnout and stress in their entirety if he just got the right Class Levels.

The primary drawback to Mind of Work was that he needed to really concentrate on his work to get into it – which meant that blowjobs were out of the question. John would sacrifice a lot to not feel that awful emptiness ever again, but getting his cock sucked during work hours was too much a realized fantasy to forego it. What he needed was to remove this problem with Mind of Work or to get a different Perk that accomplished something similar.

If his cum could prevent sub-drop, then this was definitely within the bounds of his power.

With that promise made, the tension in the room finally resolved completely. It was swiftly replaced with the regular kind of heat, the one where several haremettes all over the room stared at his erection. Within half a minute, they stared at Siena and Claire giving him a blowjob. Sylph swiftly joined.

It was nice to be cared for.