John spent the rest of Wednesday drowned in work. He had a lot of bureaucracy to chew through, a number of calls to make regarding the holiday developments, and the House of Exceptionals meeting to attend. Now that the test runs were through, the houses of legislature met once a week each. The Commons met on Mondays, the Exceptionals on Wednesdays and Parliament got together on Fridays. In order to give representatives a fair amount of time to return home every month, these sessions were separated into one of three categories: regular, important, and urgent.

Regular meetings were going to be the vast majority of legislature sessions. Including discussions about minor topics and laws, they allowed representatives to skip out on them without any stated reason. If they failed to vote on something that had local impacts, they only had their constituency to answer to. Important sessions, on the other hand, were when it was required that at least 75% of all members of parliament were present and those who weren’t had to give a reason to the Speaker. Those would be about business that had the potential for wide-sweeping consequences. One step up from there were urgent sessions. Those were for topics so important they trumped the regular schedule and demanded everyone attend, save for the most valid of excuses.

Right now, they were only having regular meetings. The House of Exceptionals had talked about a list of suggested locations for fantasy race reservations, sent over by the Supernatural People’s Party. John had been quite enthusiastic about letting a large colony of slime people live inside the Hudson Barrier. The water was clean and slime girls were sexy.

There were also talks about some of the unused city getting torn down in favour of expanding some of the park areas into a proper forest. That would give room to elves, dryads and other nature loving species. He suggested taking Green Wood Cemetery and Sunset Park and expanding them towards the water. That would create quite the large green area, with the option to create a coastline. He would destroy a graveyard in the process but, given that it was just a replica, John didn’t have any qualms about it. There were no real bones whose final rest he would disrupt with this action.

He had expected some pushback from the elves because that would put the newly formed forest right next to the Bae Circle, the Hudson Barrier’s rather large and prosperous red-light district. As a phone call after the meeting revealed, the elves did not mind at all. John even seemed to detect some thirst in the voice of the female representative he got in touch with. The elf denied any accusation of being horny, only to then email John a question if they could wear their traditional garb inside the Hudson Barrier. The attached reference was something fitting for a strip club. There was, evidently, a sizable segment of elves that were incredibly horny.

When it came to fantasy races getting a dwelling place in the Hudson Barrier, things shifted into Collide business. People like elves and slimes had a really easy time finding homes on land of other Federation members as well because they had the advantage of being attractive to humans. Other species were more difficult to accommodate because of ‘unpopular’ eating habits and looks. They had some ideas that were promising regardless.

After that, John did as much work in advance as he could. Since most of his tasks were problems that fluttered in on that day, that wasn’t too much, but it was still something. Then he went to bed early. Getting up before sunrise, this time as per plan and along with the harem, he and his girls moved to the I.D. Gate.

The Building looked plain as always. It was a wall of polished marble, with seven doors spaced out along its length. Around the middle door, the marble was black with white veins, the opposite of the rest of the wall. That was the sign that this door would lead to some unbound place the next time it was opened. John had first used it last week, shortly after the upgrade, and ended up at a smoke-filled poker place where people gambled for really high-level stuff. Not interested in playing that minigame that day, he had pretty much immediately left. Today, he lacked the time to do more than peek his head in, which would have been a waste of a cooldown.

‘I should put a Sentry Golem on duty to make sure nobody uses the door without my permission,’ the Gamer realized and quickly opened the Guild Hall interface to do exactly that. He didn’t have direct control of this facet of the Building. Cutting off mana supply would work, but that wasn’t exactly viable when he wanted to head inside himself.

While he finagled with the options, he said his hellos to Magoi. The High Fateweaver was alone this time around. The typical greeting small talk revealed that his wife was going to have a book club with some lady friends and would only join them in the barrier later that day. “It’s going to be nice to have a week to myself,” the mask-wearing eccentric exclaimed, correcting the position of his top hat with his cane.

“I believe that,” John responded, as they opened one of the six regular doors and headed into the endless darkness that was behind it. Without any gesture by the High Fateweaver, the empty barrier transformed into a vast green plain. Then he pointed his cane at three different locations. One created John’s house, the second Magoi’s tower and the third the gates of light that John could use to create an Instant Dungeon, within Magoi’s Illusion Barrier, which was inside the Guild Hall, which itself was nested inside the Hudson Barrier Protected Space.

Magoi had once remarked that this was the world record for barrier stacking. It had been previously accomplished that a High Fateweaver managed to create a barrier allowing barrier within another High Fateweaver’s barrier allowing barrier, but that had only brought them to the count of three. Not the most impressive rule or record John had ever broken, but he would take whatever gave him another entry in the history books of the world.

“How is Magnus doing?” the Gamer asked the High Fateweaver, as they marched into the open field. For acoustic reasons, their dwelling places were quite a bit apart, but they could share a fair bit of the path before it was necessary to separate. “Haven’t seen him since I spotted him and Nina in the opera.”

“Well, he is no longer dating a stripper, which is nice,” Magoi responded in a joking tone.

“So, she quit her job at the Little Whirl?” the Gamer asked, since the High Fateweaver would have sounded quite different if his son was single again.

“Indeed. That bit I am quite happy about. Not as content with him using his influence to land her a student spot on our Fateweaver academy,” Magoi sighed and scratched the side of his head. “That’s a bit worse than me, even. Mabirl used to be my student, but I didn’t get her in there…”

“Is Magnus teaching her?” John wondered.

“Not as an official teacher, no.”

“Does she have talent for Fateweaving?”

“Fateweaving? Very unlikely.” Magoi made a dismissive gesture. “She seems to have some basic talent in putting up barriers, but she will have to work very hard to make it in this profession. She is proficient enough to make it into the basic workforce though.”

“Then I don’t think there is a big issue.” John rolled his neck. “We need more Fateweavers that can do the basic work of putting up and maintaining Protected Spaces.”

While every Abyssal could create Illusion Barriers, those collapsed automatically when no more entities able to put them up dwelled within them. Protected Spaces had a prolonged existence that stayed even if nobody was inside. That had its limitations, but as long as a Fateweaver went in every now and again, things were fine. Those two kinds of barriers were the difference between a nomad’s tent and a proper house. The former was quickly put up and torn down, while the latter was lasting but required maintenance every now and again.

“I trust Magnus to not put her in any office she shouldn’t be in,” the Gamer continued. “As long as we avoid proper nepotism, I don’t mind some friendly dealings.” There were several seconds of silence, causing John to give the old Fateweaver a glance. “You still have some problems?”

“As someone who lived a while, I’ve gotten a tad cynical about things,” Magoi prefaced what he said next. “I just hope she didn’t get with him just for her personal gain.”

“Well, if she is a gold digger, she isn’t enough of one to have shown up on my Observe,” the Gamer told him. “If that puts you at ease.”

“A little bit… ah well, my son is old enough that I shouldn’t worry about everything he does anymore.” Magoi tried his best to sound joking, but John heard how much he had to force himself. Being a father was quite the challenge, no matter the time that had passed. That both intimidated John and made him somewhat impatient to face that particular hurdle in life himself. “I hope you have fun with whatever you’re doing today,” the Fateweaver said and then turned right.

“I probably will,” John returned, going left. Most of the harem had already gone ahead to the house.

It was no longer John’s old Springfield home. As nostalgic as that house made him every time, it wasn’t a comfortable stay for over a dozen people. Instead, Magoi had spawned him a mansion of modern design with deep purple walls. John had no idea where its original stood or whether it was made up from whole cloth. Regardless, he was met by Lydia at the entrance.

The queen beckoned him closer with the wiggle of a finger. Although the gesture was commanding, the smile on her lips compromised the stern royal’s usual look of iron discipline. That she smiled like that when she was around him was one of the pieces of evidence that the Gamer was doing well in life. Those perfect red lips weren’t supposed to rest in neutrality or be stretched into frowns all the time.

The moment he was in range, he gently took hold of her chin and waist and pulled her into a kiss. They had been so hurried to get into the barrier and make effective use of the time dilation that they hadn’t properly greeted each other yet. Likely, this was why she alone was waiting for him at the door.

Her lips tasted sweet, with a note of citrus and a hint of metal. With delightful tenderness, she answered his kiss. Their engagement was slow and loving, with only a hint of lust in the touching of their tongues. Lydia squeezed his firm back, pulling him a bit closer to her wonderful curves. In the end, they spent a whole minute there. “Not a particularly effective use of our time,” he whispered when they came to a close.

“I agree. You’re a terrible influence on my work ethics,” Lydia responded. “As it stands, I required some deep attention from you. Now that this desire has been sated, let’s make sure you properly nourish yourself, my love. I have been informed you didn’t have breakfast yet.”

“Getting in here really was the top priority, time wise,” he hummed in response and let Lydia lead him by the hand into the mansion. The furniture was pretty basic, looking as if someone had fancied up IKEA products, and the walls were barren. Given that this place would only exist for about ten days, thinking about decorating it would have been a waste of time.

The harem had already spread out through the three-story house. Scarlett let Beatrice hand her a LAN cable, having just found the socket in the living room. Aclysia was putting the utensils she had brought with her into the drawers of the semi-connected kitchen. It was its own room, but there was a gap in the wall that allowed meals to be slid over. Eliza threw herself down on the leather couch and tried to withhold Velka from Nia’s greedy hands. Both the pet-loving Magryph and the pariah complained about this. One with a lot more emotion than the other.

John had deliberated whether or not the bird-cat was supposed to tag along. Ultimately, he thought it was too early to leave her alone for a whole day. That aside, he wanted to take this opportunity and train her hunting instincts by opening some extremely low-level dungeons. As an animal, she would never completely lose her killing instincts, but John wanted her to have honed skills rather than basic ones.

Thanks to his mental connection to Metra, he knew that she and his girlfriend were upstairs. What had started as a simple exploration had apparently ended with the two of them making out on the bed. Much like her boyfriend, Rave couldn’t keep her hands to herself for too long. After some fun, hunger would bring her back to the living room. Same was true for the remaining girls that were scattered about.

Lydia stopped in the middle of the living room, dragging her socks over the carpet. “This will become nasty by the time we are gone,” she pointed out.

“I’ll bring it up with Magoi for the next barrier,” John promised. It wasn’t too big an issue to make a fuss about. Every bit of spilled love juice would add a stain to the carpet. A limitation they would just have to live with. “Hey, Scarlett, do you still need Bae’s help?”

“If she hands me my laptop, no I don’t,” the technomancer returned and the passive maid consecutively pulled the device out of her inventory. Then she turned to John, who pulled something out of his private dimensional pocket.

It was a small aquarium, without the lid. Just four walls of glass and a sturdy floor, with a small staircase attached to the outside. “Can you fill this up and put it somewhere Stirwin can reach?”

“Affirmative,” Beatrice responded and grabbed the aquarium. Although they wouldn’t greatly decorate the place, the group of lovers was quickly turning the mansion into their temporary home.

“Let’s sit down,” John said and pointed at the sole table in the living room. Unlike his own apartment, where the dining table and couch were separate entities, this room only had a large table in the middle of an even larger couch-and-armchair formation. All of it was overlooked by a large television, which currently had dozens of lines of codes flashing on its screen for every second that passed. Scarlett was apparently busy reprogramming it to properly connect to her laptop.

“Nudity is nice. Very nice,” Sylph babbled, floating in the middle of their path. “Weird to wear stuff for the few metres that we went from being naked at home to being nude here. Hey, hey, Undine! you’re nude all the time, how is that working out for you?”

“Clothes are unnatural,” the goth slime’s voice echoed from the open bathroom door. That response was all that was needed to make the thunderstorm elemental ramble on her own for another two minutes.

John sat down in one of the armchairs, and Lydia decided to sit down on him. Her soft butt resting on his left thigh, she wrapped her arms around his neck. They almost went right back to making out, but the queen managed to stop herself to address business before more pleasure. “It Is perpetually pleasing how effective your grinding sessions make the usage of my vacation days,” she stated.

“Tell me about it. Without these, I would only get you for an hour or a day here and there,” he answered, lightly brushing up and down her leg. “I probably won’t supply you with metals this time around. I don’t plan to go into Assaults, unless the Raid proves to be too difficult still.”

“I wouldn’t be so selfish to desire more than you have given me already,” the auburn-haired royal responded, unbuttoning her shirt. Underneath, she wore a piece of lingerie that barely qualified as a bra. It didn’t hide her nipples or much of her breasts at all. The white piece of silk and cloth was only emphasizing her delicious looking chest. “Albeit I will use the time you are away to continue my training.”

“Are you still meditating?” John asked.

“Only as a supplementary regimen. The majority of my training is now active usage of my Innate Ability and attempts to master more martial arts,” Lydia explained to him.

“That so…” the Gamer hummed and leaned towards her. “If you don’t mind a little mystery, I will tell you that I have an idea,” he whispered into her ear. “I will reveal it after we had breakfast.”

“What will you give me to keep me patient until the revelation?” the queen wanted to know.

“Exactly what you want,” he stated and hooked a finger under her belt. His lips pressed against her neck.