The Gamer Chapter 1479 – 27 Days of Preparation 32 – Stuck Between a Cuddle Rock and a Soft Place (Patreon)

John was experiencing a lot of interesting mix-ups these days. Three different locations constantly drew the harem apart. One was the workshop, where the crafting crew, a term that Gnome had started to use and that was slowly sticking, worked and often required the aid of various haremettes to test their products. The second was the dungeon, where John, even on the 20th day, continued to grind through Instant Dungeons to stockpile more interesting items. The third was the house, where the remaining girls went about their hobbies or the joys of conversation and carnal desires.

Technically there was a fourth, in the form of Magoi’s tower, but only John, Lee and a select few of the girls had more than a passing relationship with the High Fateweaver and his wife. It wasn’t enough to realistically draw anyone in.

The semi-random nature of the workshop’s demands and the order in which the girls joined the Creator Puppet in dungeon runs meant that many of the usual cliques inside the harem were not hanging out as reliably as they would have if this was just the end of a workday. The result were those interesting mix-ups of haremettes that rarely hung out with each other specifically.

John loved it. Not only for the intra-harem stability, but also because it gave him a few entertaining sights. One of them he walked into when he, after having fucked Metra and Nathalia into a post-coital cockdrunk coma, went to the kitchen to grab a snack.

Lee sat between Salamander and Gnome, like a sausage sat between two halves of a bun. The entire rest of the couch was empty, the trio had just elected to make it so their thighs were six parallel lines in sets of two, increasing in thickness. The display started at Gnome’s nicely balanced legs, followed by Lee’s cultivated thunder thighs, and was finished by Salamander’s own, even bigger just because she had twenty centimetres on the shortest of the three.

The common courtesy of spreading out as much as possible on the available surface of any sitting area had been entirely inverted. Lee was stuck between a hugging rock on one side and Salamander’s overabundant curves on the other. Arm on the backrest, a cocky grin on her face, the fire spirit sat straight enough that the slumping gamer girl in the middle was on eye level with the F-cup breasts.

“What did I walk into?” the Gamer asked jokingly.

The answer was pretty clear in the devices they had in their laps. Salamander had one of the household e-readers, Gnome her smartphone, Lee her handheld. They were just idling the time away, cuddling all the while and, judging by the general state of nakedness and the hickeys on Lee’s skin, engaging in the occasional sapphic distraction.

“N-nothing!” Lee stammered, before Gnome could. An answer that John could do nothing but snort in response. “Dude, don’t be weird!”

“You’re the one making it fucking weird,” Salamander pointed out, her tail tapping the empty spot next to her. John took the invitation, while the fire spirit continued, “You can just say ‘we’re hugging and screwing and gaming, like usual’ – There’s literally not a single weird thing about us burning time like this.”

Her tail curved around John, the last fourth settling in his lap. Fingers and palm glided over the red surface of the additional extension. The texture was smooth, but not quite like skin. Even without the scales of volcanic rock that covered this part of her whenever she was fighting, there were tactile patterns to the surface. Patting it was like… well, it was like patting a salamander.

“I can’t just say what I feel, that’s against rule number 1 of womanhood,” Lee stated.

“Oh, but if I say something like that, I’m sexist,” John complained. Lee stuck out her tongue and that was the end of that topic. “You okay, Gnome?” the Gamer asked. The cuddle rock had not made a sound yet. He would have expected at least an ‘Eeep’, ‘Uwu’, or ‘Umu’ by now. Any one of the many blessed Gnome noises.

The earth spirit continued to hold onto Lee. “I read an article about me.”

“Which is her first fucking issue,” Salamander interrupted. “Never read articles about yourself. You get 3 articles that are so nice they blow up your ego, 6 articles that make you want to turn the headquarters of whatever news organization published it into a crater, and 1 that’s sort of interesting and may have a thing to think about.”

That sounded about accurate by John’s experience. “Which of those three was it?” the Gamer asked.

“…W-we really shouldn’t blow up any headquarters…” Gnome mumbled.

“You’re too precious for this world,” John sighed and stretched across two other women to place a quick kiss on Gnome’s cheek. He would have made it a long kiss, but the position was just too awkward.

“Ya know,” Lee started, “you always complain about the drawbacks of being famous. Is there nothing you like about it?”

“There’s plenty I love about it.” Salamander was, again, the first to respond. “The grovelling subjects, the good girls staring at my supreme tits…” Lee had to force herself to move her eyes off the massive globes and to Salamander’s tomboyish grin. “…and just generally having people treat me with respect on first contact. I remember when we had to deal with random schmucks and they’d think they could talk to us like we were on their level.”

“Yeah, that sounds like you,” Lee said in an almost bored tone. She raised one hand, gesturing an open and closing mouth, while mockingly exclaiming, “Grrrr, look at me, I’m the evil overlady, I have big tits and am cartoonishly evil, bow before me.”

“Hey, give me some credit, there is a method to the madness,” Salamander pushed back.

“I mean, most LARPs have rulesets…”

John winced when the tail in his lap smacked down in annoyance, dangerously close to his balls. The redhead gave him a quick glance to make sure he was fine, before answering, “Alright, sassy girl, what do the people know about me?” the apocalypse elemental asked.

“That is… huh,” Lee tried to answer that. “You… like black metal?”

“Yes, sure.” Salamander rolled her eyes. “Importantly though, 99% of people wouldn’t guess that the ‘evil overlady’ bit is half a joke. It’s not like I don’t regularly pummel other fire elementals into submission.” Her people were a violent breed, so that did indeed happen with surprising frequency, given the snowball’s chance in hell any of them had. “So what people know about me is that I live in a black fortress in the middle of a lava lake, I’m a literal apocalypse elemental, one of like three that are contracted at the moment and doubtlessly the strongest one, and I’m a fucking ‘child’ of the god of war.”

“Which,” John hooked into the conversation, “is pretty useful to me.”

“How?” Lee asked.

“Uhm, it pays to be unpredictable,” Gnome weighed in. “John listens to us and… I think people know that? We’re on the Fusion flag, so people guess that we have a good amount of sway and we actually do and… well, between the six of us, we kind of cover all manner of possible responses to issues…”

“Which means our enemies won’t be so foolish to pile on timber, thinking we won’t burn it,” Salamander stated, “and our allies won’t roast their marshmallows over our fire without asking first. There’s an understanding that Fusion is capable of violence, because I’m not afraid of coming across as evil.”

“But is playing a cartoonishly evil overlady the best way to go about that?” Lee questioned.

“Hey, I’m allowed to have some fun.” Salamander cackled, her hand wandering to the back of Lee’s head. The Fateweaver leaned into the scratches, like a cat. “Point is, my reputation is useful. Might be more effective if I play it like miss oversexed shoes, tho-“

“I – AM NOT – SHOES!” Siena screamed from somewhere in an adjacent room.

“Always gets her,” Salamander whispered.

“Y-you really should stop with it…” Gnome pleaded. “That’s… Umu! That’s not a request!”

“Alright, alright,” Salamander instantly folded. “Anything you enjoy about being famous, boss rock?”

“Uhm, uh, hmmm,” Gnome sputtered and thought. “I don’t really… feel famous?”

“Makes sense, you’re the most approachable of the bunch,” John said.

“What? N-no, there’s Sylph…”

“You mean the woman that never, ever, shuts up?” Salamander asked.

“Yeah, not to disparage our favourite blabbermouth, but she’s not as much approachable as she is a… mascot?” Lee nodded to herself. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Everyone kind of likes Sylph, because she’s cute and everywhere, but she’s not exactly someone people talk to.”

“T-then S-stirwin!”

“Stirwin is approachable in the way the village elder is approachable.” John was done with caressing Salamander’s tail. The texture was interesting, but ultimately the humongous funbags that were hanging right next to him were more enticing to his male brain – or any brain, really. Breasts were just pretty great. While kneading one, he continued, “Sure, you can and should talk to him, when you have something to say, but you won’t have a casual conversation with him. It’s all old wisdom and authority.”

“U-Undine…?”

“Gnome.” Salamander gave the earth spirit the driest stare she could muster. “Come on. Undine swings between resting bitch face and snake hair.”

Lee snorted at that description and even John couldn’t help but chuckle. For all the work Undine did and for as much as he loved her, the abysstide elemental certainly was not a people person. Gnome surrendered, not even suggesting the last remaining elemental on the list.

There was a moment of silence, before Lee brought the topic back around. “More I think about it, the more I realize how useful it is that you’re acting all menacing,” she said. “I respect you a lot more now.”

“Good, you should always respect me,” Salamander boasted. “But what about you? How are you dealing with the fame?”

“Yeah, no, I’m not famous. I’m in a famous harem and that’s not terribly different from having a famous father.” Lee began to knead Salamander’s right tit, making the tall woman in the middle softly sigh at the continued attendants to one of her most sensitive areas. “I haven’t done anything that gives me a reputation.”

“Yet,” John corrected. “Just because you’re in the housewife category now doesn’t mean you won’t make anything great.”

“Well, for one, my dude, I’m working on something great liter- figuratively right now. Secondly, Mom has been selling me the whole ‘raising children is doing something greater than you can imagine’ thing hard and it’s kinda working…” She gave him an accusing stare. “Damn you and your good genes poking my breeding instincts! How dare you be the product of evolution!”

“Said the woman with a body shaped by millennia of successfully enticing providers,” John pushed back.

“You’re just describing women broadly,” Lee stated. “Although we do just a tiny bit more than that. Just a tiny bit. The tiniest bit. Really tiny.”

“You done being sarcastic?” John asked drily.

“Never!”

“B-but, you definitely will be famous,” Gnome stammered in. “You’re smart and capable and all that. People will acknowledge that.”

“H-hopefully they don’t acknowledge it too hard…” Lee squirmed in the embrace of the cuddle rock. “Our future is looking pretty bright all around, though… right?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” John asked.

“Come on… you know why.” Lee poked his foot with her big toe. “Go, do an overthink. Curb my enthusiasm.”

“Well, by and large we are situated tremendously well. Putting it in gaming terms, we have stacked all manners of growth modifiers and are now sailing through the midgame on a winning streak. Short of someone pulling a suppression manoeuvre, Fusion will develop into a superpower as soon as we get the supply chains sorted out and we’ll guarantee Fusion has the punching power to do so in peace.” John scowled a moment later. “Of course there’s an exceptional likelihood that we’ll suffer a surprise attack in the near future.”

“Dangun Clan, Purest Front, or the Lorylim?” Lee asked.

“Lorylim,” John answered definitively. “We have enemies in the Divided Gates, but we also have an alliance with the Illuminati and a friendly relationship with Prometheus and Rex Germaniae – it’s not worth messing with us for most of them, especially since we don’t share land ambitions with anyone else. We have the blessing of expanding on a previously ignored continent.”

“All measures still in place?” Salamander asked.

“All the ones that have been put together so far,” John agreed with a nod. Fusion had a reliable anti-Lorylim messenger network, or at least one as reliable as that could be erected. The whole Death Zone affair had shown the people that measures against the eldritch horrors had to be taken seriously and it had been easy to convince the Order of tying themselves into that particular effort. One could hardly find a target more deserving of the ‘purge the unclean’ sentiment than sapient, corruptive mould.

Essentially, every major population centre had two early warning systems in the form of local officials and the Order, who were also checking each other irregularly for corruption. The Order were the more reliable of the two, fanaticism did have its perks, but it was important to have both so one couldn’t be silently taken over.

It wasn’t a perfect system. Many Abyssal settlements consisted of only one or two dozen people and all of them were located in Illusion Barriers. Because John had decided that he wanted a state with a high value on freedom, he couldn’t force those settlers to report in regular intervals, so the nation was essentially blind to one of them going rogue or vanishing. Best that could be done was to keep scanning the Great Archive for any guild that suddenly disappeared.

It really wasn’t perfect, but short of tyranny, perfection in this aspect could not be achieved and that was not a solution, only a trade-off.

The more important measure against the Lorylim had been the coalition John had cobbled together. He had loose pledges from several European powers that they would intervene in case of a wide-scale Lorylim invasion. Even the Purest Front and Great Sultanate had promised to send aid in a limited variety, should the first foe ever threaten the entirety of the fledgeling super power. Even to those that Fusion regarded as its enemies, the new player on the board was preferable to a continent being turned into a breeding ground for those creatures.

“We have an early warning system and we’ll have the capacity to push back after the attack. Still, whatever is going to happen will likely cost us,” the Gamer said.

“And you’re absolutely certain the attack will happen?” Lee asked.

The Gamer shook his head. “About 70% certain. The Lorylim are too internally splintered to say anything is guaranteed. I find it unlikely that they would wait for us to discover them, but it could happen. Then there’s the possibility that they’re relocating. They could be avoiding confrontation with us to go after softer targets… but I don’t think they have that kind of tactical mindset.” John remembered the pure nihilism of Izha and the endless pit of chaos of Tiamat. Unguided desire to be one with the emptiness of the universe was perhaps the most terrifying combination anything powerful could possess. “They have an interest in torturing us – or me and Metra specifically. We will see how this plays out.”

“Peachy,” Lee sighed. “But by and large we’re doing good?”

“Oh, by and large we are doing fantastic,” John agreed.

“Once we solve the fucking Lorylim issue, we’re going to kick the world’s ass!” Salamander declared.

She wasn’t entirely wrong.