The Gamer Chapter 1342 – Rolled up Sleeves (Patreon)







“Being smart huuuuurts,” Delicia complained, lying on her back on the couch.

The day had passed, during which she had spent most waking moments just munching on metals and watching bad soap operas with Eliana. Then she had finally hit max level and John had hit her with the exact Stat distribution she had requested all at once. Now, Delicia was experiencing something that could only be described as too much of the good. A demonstrable increase along every single metric of her existence, from her brains to her sex drive, was hard to comprehend all at once.

“Why is my brain so biiiiiiiiiiig?” Delicia tried to roll onto her stomach, but instead fell off the couch altogether. Manic laughter came from Eliana. John checked on whether she was doing fine or not first. Although they were all superhuman, sometimes his mundane upbringing made him take such falls seriously. Unless the floor was made out of steel spikes, there was no way such a drop could do more than disorient Delicia. “Shut up!” she shot back from the floor, angrily pointing her finger at Eliana. “Shut up or I am never handing you the Cheetos ever again!”

“W-ahahaah-orth it!” Eliana laughed at her fellow masochistic shortie.

“Well, looks like the shock is helping you recover,” John commented drily and extended his hand. Swiftly, he pulled Delicia up from the floor. Rather than let her get back to the couch, though, he lifted her up further. Holding her hips in front of his, he fell back into an armchair. Her naked body ended up straddled on top of him.

Swiftly, he claimed her lips. Delicia’s face glowed with the intensity of her blush. It was the second time they kissed, John had given her time since this morning. She was higher up this time, sitting on top of him. At first she tried to assert herself. Even with leverage, she failed. John put a hand on the back of her head, and seconds later he was in full control. Delicia grabbed the collar of his shirt and held on loosely. Gradually, she melted under his touch.

When they separated, she let out a playfully disgusted sound, “Blech, you taste like sawdust and concrete.”

“Guess what I have been working with all day?” the Gamer asked. With the exception of another visit by Hailey, he had spent his time progressing the construction of the house. Half of the day he had been excavating for the septic tank, the other half he had been laying bricks and putting frames together. Just an exchange of different tasks so he didn’t get overly bored doing any singular one of them – and so the girls could have their fun with the excavator too.

It was always fascinating who was more or less ‘girly’. There was an above average representation of tomboys or at least tomboy-like traits in John’s harem. That was of little surprise. For one, more traditionally feminine women were unlikely to agree being part of a harem, especially one this large and tight-knit. Then there was the whole combat angle to consider. Even if Abyssal women were perfectly capable of supplanting in the physical realm, the actual wish to seek out and face danger was less likely to occur in the child-rearing half of the species. It would have been counterproductive, evolutionarily speaking. Last and not least was John loved his aggressive banter and thus he loved women capable of dishing out and taking insults. None of these were sole domains of tomboys, but a pattern did crystalize.

By extension, many of his girls having an above average interest in playing around with machinery was expected. It mostly behaved along the line of their feminine behaviour too. Lorelei, Gnome, Undine, and Nightingale were clearly the least interested in the excavator, preferring to just watch them work and chat instead. Scarlett was also disinterested, although that was more because she was working with heavy machinery every day. The most interested were Metra, Salamander, Rave, and Lee. Sylph was also mixed in there at first, but her investment waned after only a few minutes.

Hailey expressed interest while she stayed. Had she had more time, she would have probably hopped in there as well. Instead, she focused on the challenge Scarlett had given her for the day. The technomancer was simultaneously amused and infuriated at the enigma engineer for solving it within the timeframe.

Delicia had been in the middle group of girls who had at least sat down in the driver’s cabin for a bit, but wasn’t really interested in actually doing any of the excavating. Then she had gotten back to eating. Now John was using her for kisses. Physical affection was the most base of base strategies to make a partner fall in love, but it worked. Whatever equivalent Natural Spirits had for oxytocin, she would still benefit from it.

No member of the harem would be there without loving him. John would not allow anyone to view it as a mere transaction of amazing sex and shared resources. That was just not his style. Plus, he had already fallen for this smug brat. He would be damned if he admitted that before he had her say the three words though.

______________________________________________________________________

“Come on, slide that under there!” John demanded with a strained voice. He was putting all of his (mundane) strength into pushing the septic tank up. Eliana, who was by far the most regular attendant of John’s building sessions, hastily followed his order and dropped the brick underneath. Groaning, the Gamer let the heavy piece of equipment sink back down. Then he checked the spirit level lying on top. “Thank God, that did it.”

“Fuck god, thank me,” Eliana told him.

“I’ll give you a different kind of thanks later,” the Gamer decided and smiled at his lovely assistant. Illuminated by flashlights, she was so cute in her overalls. Eliana was gorgeous when she was plain, with the illusions covering up her fantastical aspect. Of course, she was adorable in all cases. “A bit more fear of God and you would make a fantastic farmer’s wife.”

“I don’t want to be a fucking farmer’s wife, I want to be bent over a desk and bred, you reluctant semen dispenser,” Eliana cussed at him. “Fuck it, buy the whole cow breeding station shit, lock me up in it, and do your thing. Your abilities are bullshit so you can behave like one too.”

“Maybe I will for our second kid,” John contemplated. “First one I want to be more romantic.”

Eliana uncomfortably shifted where she stood. A shadow of guilt crossed over her face. She was probably thinking about that first time she had gotten fertilized, the ovum that she had flushed out less than three hours after conception. As far as John was concerned, that didn’t count. Was it an awful thing for her to do without telling him about it? Absolutely. They had handled it quickly enough to not create any moral quandaries though. As far as John was concerned, they still had that line to cross.

“We’ll be fine,” he told her and kissed her on the forehead. “Now help me get those pipes down here!”

Midnight was not exactly a common hour to install a septic field, but John had been plagued with insomnia. Not for any specific reason, as far as he could tell everything was going great. It felt like his body was just ready for more work, so he was doing more work. Eliana had tagged along and the maids were having a group walk with Delicia. Eager as the alchemist was to get back to work, she had agreed to John’s suggestion to stay with them for the vacation and learn about the ins and outs of her new body and the way the harem ran first. Aclysia and Claire had picked that up as an opportunity to indoctrinate the shortstack more into the maid lifestyle.

John did not deem Delicia as so weak-willed that she would succumb to any such attempts. Those meetings would hopefully help her continue the familiarization with the harem. Whether she would be a maid beyond the outfit remained to be seen. Hell, if she truly wasn’t cut-out for it, she could take it off at any time. It would mess with aesthetics, but that was secondary to her happiness. Intuition told him that the passing fascination she had with it could be turned into dedication with some schooling though. It was just part of the brat energy that he picked up from her, that she wanted a clearly demarcated position in the household that was assigned to her.

In John’s experience, brattiness was born either from a lack of boundaries or to challenge those that existed. It was so people could find out what area they could move in safely and how to get in mild trouble when they were bored. Basically, giving a brat clear outlines on what to do worked surprisingly often because they wanted a bit of discipline in their life – if only to rebel against it for their own amusement.

That balancing act was what made them so entertaining to John.

Much as his love for the sassy, the smug, and the bratty had been reignited by Delicia, he also loved the straightforward submission by Eliana. To go from lodging a pipe into place straight to fucking her in the brown dirt was liberating. Especially because the only words that left her mouth were those espousing her enjoyment and submission.

After the first time he fucked her like that, he had to continue the work on his own. Putting the septic field together was a relatively easy task. Take one segment of pipe, make sure the holes point in the right direction, secure it to the previous one, repeat. Here and there he had to get a shovel and make sure the level of the pipe was correct. Last he wanted was for the sludge to backflow. John could imagine nothing nastier than a clogged up septic tank.

He actually managed to get the entirety of the piping installed before the insomnia wore off. Yawning, he climbed out of the hole, carrying his relief hole. He slept on the couch that night, cuddling Eliana, too tired to take a shower. He woke up with a bunch of haremettes stacked on top of him anyway.

________________________________________________________________________

“That’ll take months to settle.”

John was looking at the area where the septic tank was now buried. Simply dumping dirt back into the hole it came from did nothing to return it to its previous density. By proxy, the brown patch visibly extended above the remaining floor.

“Eh, we’ll do some stomping,” Rave suggested, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. The motion left a trail of dark grey dust on her skin. While John had been using the excavator, his girlfriend and a bunch of the other haremettes had moved to the brick-laying entirely of their own volition. Everyone was in full on building mode.

Hailey was a big reason for that.

“Y’all really have a bunch of money to burn, don’t ya?” the country gal asked, expertly placing one brick down after the next one. Somehow, despite being the physically weakest of everyone involved (after the reduction to mundane levels was considered) and with her tits being a sizable obstacle to some of her movements, she was the fastest out of everyone. That included John, who had prided himself of having taken up the craft quite well after only watching tutorials.

Hailey was putting down a brick every seven seconds. None of them were crooked either. No excess mortar. Just a brick placed down, getting tapped on for the perfect level, then the tool removed the excess mass and she buttered it onto the side of the next brick. That last thing was something only she was doing.

“If I was wastin’ mortar like that, paw-paw would get the belt.” The blonde adjusted her trucker hat. “And he’d be right to.”

“We do indeed have money to burn,” John conceded willingly. Everyone besides Hailey was taking fresh mortar from one of the many piles around whenever they covered the side of each brick. It was an extra movement and wasted material, but it was also easier. With the many hands involved, the walls were coming along rapidly. Even nerfed, his women were a brilliant bunch and there was no notable crookedness to any of the bricks.

“More surprising ya have the time to burn,” Rave commented.

“You can thank Rayd for that.” Hailey pointed her trowel at Scarlett, who just flipped her the bird. Today’s challenge had been solved in only twenty minutes. John was starting to wonder if there was even any point to challenging Hailey. She was absorbing the rules of arcano-tech and artifice faster than a sponge could water.

“I’ll get you something to work on,” the redhead guaranteed.

“I’d be much obliged,” the country gal drawled and tipped her trucker hat.

‘Well, as long as they’re having fun,’ the Gamer thought. “Still, you’re sticking out here longer than usual,” he commented on the situation. “And you aren’t exactly doing something you can’t at home. Bricklaying is not exactly the kind of fantastic world I am introducing you to.”

“It’s as simple as it gets, purddy boy, y’all are the best time sink a girl got around ‘ere.” Hailey took a step back and rolled her shoulders. Swift as she was working, they all needed breaks. The moment she put her trowel down, Aclysia was next to her with a salver covered in glasses of water. “Oh, ain’t you just as sweet as corn syrup?”

John snorted, that was an outstandingly stereotypical choice of metaphor. The smile she flashed him made it clear that she knew what she had just said. After downing the water, the country gal continued.

“Got the feelin’ I shoulda spend some time with y’all before I make… further decisions – you be catchin’ my drift?”

“Absolutely,” John agreed.