“Final point where you need to talk, promise,” John said and shifted his field of view so he would see both the empress and Lydia. “Obviously I owe you two some special time. Everyone else at least had me in some capacity. I want to acknowledge that. If you have something special in mind, let me know and I’ll do the best I can.”

“We can talk about that later!” Lulu declared and crawled back between his legs. It appeared the imperial tomboy had enough of the delays and decided to take his balls into her own hands – closely followed by weighing them with her tongue.

“I agree with Lulu’s statement that the matter of our dates can wait until a private opportunity. Regardless, your acknowledgement of the situation has my approval,” the queen said and put her head on his shoulder. “My love,” she added, in a little whisper.

It was on John to blush from thorough happiness at those two words. He didn’t even know why that made him feel embarrassed in that moment, but comments of endearment rarely created logical outcomes. Turning the rest of the way, he exchanged a deep kiss with the queen. After fifteen seconds, she gently pushed him back.

“The meeting takes priority,” she insisted. “Time is precious.”

“That’s why I want to spend it kissing you,” John answered. He would have scratched the back of his head, had one of his hands been empty. “Ehtra, what was the next point on the agenda?”

“Your safety, Master,” Aclysia was the one to answer. “Courtesy of your heroic usage of your Overclock spells, complete with the drawbacks they come with, we are faced with the possibility that any harm that comes to you may turn lethal uncomfortably quick.”

“On one hand, you are correct, on the other, you make it sound worse than it is,” John responded. “Particle Skin is off and my mana regeneration is diminished for another two days, but I am still immune to most damage by people of considerably lower level, plus all of your teleports are back.”

“And our Stats are diminished by half,” Aclysia reminded.

“That still puts you way above most people even of half your level,” John reminded. “With all the reductions in mind, we can treat ourselves as somewhere in the level 300 to 400 range, depending on who we are talking about.”

“Master, you have to stop rationalizing and simply accept that it is best for the peace of mind of everyone involved if we treat the situation as concerning,” the first maid pushed back, her tone moving towards exasperated.

John simply ceded the ground with a slow nod. It wasn’t as if he disagreed with her, paranoid as he was at the best of times, he just did not want there to be panic. “I intend to delegate the majority of my public appearances to the Ambassador Double and Creator Puppet until all my mana is back, at the very least.”

“That is a good baseline,” Aclysia agreed. “Ehtra, Metra, I demand either one of you is with his real body at all times for additional security. Nathalia, Nightingale, one of you as well.”

“You demand of me?” Nathalia sounded more surprised than offended. “You? Of me?”

“All for the sake of our John’s safety,” the maid stated unapologetically. “Anything less than protection that would require Romulus himself to attempt to break will not do.”

The statement was met with no resistance and so the talk was basically done. A simplistic, masculine part of John’s brain took mild issue with the fact that his women were discussing how to protect him. A part that was easily ignored. John was deeply ingrained in the Abyss and its differences to normality. He was also a backliner, fundamentally, so this was a common situation.

“That brings us to Fusion’s internal situation… which is interesting,” the Gamer looked at Scarlett. She looked back. “Come on… you do it better than me.”

“Fifteen facesitting minutes,” she demanded.

“I’m already like three hours in debt with Momo.”

“Good, I want to see you orally ruined.” Scarlett raised her left hand. Her nails were tinted visibly towards black, an odd manifestation of her growing powers. She snapped. Circuit lines ran momentarily over the surface of her nails and through her scleras to her red eyes. The nearby TV flickered to life.

“This is probably the last time we need to keep the colours similar,” John announced. “To put the external in front of the internal, the struggle for North America is officially over. The Upwest Corner, Gobbo Nation, and Catto Nation were all convinced by the diplomats in our absence to join Fusion. I just have to go over there and take their fealty… which probably involves us participating in the Nympholympics.”

“Nya?” Rave perked up, having half-zoned out as the politics talk began. “Elaborate? For everyone else, I mean, I remember what those were.”

“Of course you do,” John mocked his less horny half. “Apparently the Catto and Gobbo Nations have a little bit of a tradition where they come together for competitive depravity. Since I refused to have a member of either or both species join the harem on purely diplomatic bases, they at least insist I do that much.”

“Kinda thought our livestreaming days were like… a wild short thing,” Rave admitted.

“I can probably negotiate the televising away, but there will be a crowd anyway so it’s a moot point. Good news is that it is set to begin on the 11th of November,” John informed everyone. “Which conveniently is the day after Particle Skin comes back online.”

“We do deserve things working out for us after all of that stuff,” Lee said.

“Which brings me to the first point regarding the Nympholympics – which of you would definitely be out?” Lydia and Lulu raised their hands quickly. Lulu was a secret in the first place and the only way to get Lydia to agree to that was to cash in his public impregnation cheque. He was keeping that one for a better occasion. Lee reluctantly raised her hand. “Is that an ‘I don’t want to’ or ‘my dad would kill me?’ hand sign?”

“Latter kinda leads into the former? I’m a bad girl but I don’t want to be the worst daughter?” Lee answered and blushed. “Plus… I don’t know, the fantasy is hot but the reality is weird? I feel like I don’t care about them but I also would get just way too self-conscious?”

John nodded. “Well, you can always think more about it. It’s almost a month out from now. Second question, who feels on the fence about it?” That had a few more hands raised. Lorelei, Momo, Nia, Scarlett, Delicia and Hailey all gave signs that they were, while not totally against a public railing, varying degrees of enthusiastic about it.

That left Rave, Aclysia, Nathalia, Eliana, Metra, Beatrice, Nightingale, Claire, Ehtra, and the elementals for John to pick from. He was very certain that all five of the elemental girls would like to tag along anyway. Gnome would pretend that she didn’t, but the cuddle rock was almost as much of an exhibitionist as she was a voyeur. The only reason why they no longer made fun of her for her lack of panties was that the joke had gotten stale.

In other words, John was spoiled for choice when it came to candidates.

“Alright, so that’s important date number 1,” he told them. “I have no idea how long we are supposed to stay there and the emails I read were deliberately vague on that front, so we will just have to fuck and see.”

“Oh, such a terrible fate!” Delicia bemoaned dramatically. “Whatever will you do, Master? Oh golly gosh Gaia, I guess you just have to cum down Nightingale’s throat again! Pft…” The alchemist cracked up when his facial features reflected a mixture of annoyance and orgasmic pleasure. Indeed, he had been pushed over the edge at exactly that moment. Nightingale was guzzling down his seed like she was an engine running on maximum output. The outcome was fluttering eyelids, vibrating throat-folds, and a puddle between her talons.

“Delicia, cum,” John ordered and the alchemist did as she had been told. The bratty laughter was replaced by her short, stacked body arching into a bridge shape. Plump thighs and huge tits quivered from the sudden spasms. “That’s what I thought,” he grunted.

“Your internal politics do not require my input,” Lydia decided, just as his cock popped free from the vacuum ring that was Nightingale’s black lips. Manoeuvring her way between imperial tomboy and cocksucking goddess, the pole-licking queen lost no time to taste the traces of his cum and Nightingale’s love juices on his cock. Eagerly, yet methodical, the learned dick sucker began her journey down his length. Every bob was like a scheduled interval on her way to the base.

John’s right side did not remain vacant for long. Aclysia moved up the chain and everyone else did an almost synchronous hop on the couch after her. It was adorable and incredibly erotic, given all the squish that was in motion. On the floor, Lulu and Nightingale made for Lydia’s supporting cast, kissing his shaft whenever the queen went to breathe and kissing the inside of his thighs and his full balls whenever she was down.

“The Upwest Corner has also agreed to join Fusion in return for some land transfers. I consider those done – and they make for a prettier border anyway. The Collectible is what I decided to call the former Outer Mandate and Small Fry that was there. They got bunched together by the… amazing pressure of the gorgeous empress down there.” Lulu let out a playful, erotic sigh-giggle. Her tongue was too busy worshipping his cock to answer. ”All we have to do there is… get a land border and then attend a ceremony. We can probably do that a week after the Nympholympics are done.”

“So we’re just scooping up the last few border guilds,” Scarlett stated. “What about the Empty North?”

“Exactly what it says on the tin. The Fleshcleansers got eliminated but the land is basically devoid of Abyssal presence now. Chemilia pushed until Ottawa, then ran into people that said they were followers of the Wanderer. She didn’t know what to do with that, so she held the line until I got back. Of course, we now know that means they follow the Grim Reaper. On the south side, the Snowdancers also decided to join the Wanderer – the Necropolis. In other words, Canada is out of our hands.”

“No loss, snow sucks,” Rave gave her opinion. “Wasn’t there another guild though?”

“Mae Ea,” John answered. “At this point I have to assume someone pulled some kind of practical prank, since we never ever heard back from them. The alternative, however, is that they got devoured in the interim.”

“Lorylim,” Nia caught onto what he was saying immediately.

The blowjob stopped for a moment, the topic too serious to be underlined by moans and slurping. “We effectively had the Lorylim narrowed down to Alaska, northern Canada, and the Caribbeans before. I can assume that the Grim Reaper would not allow Lorylim infestations to take root, so that leaves us with the Carribeans and Alaska. I think it somewhat likely they have outposts in both.”

“So, what’s the plan with that intel?” Rave wanted to know.

“Nothing,” John said plainly. “Yucatan terrain was difficult, but we could do that in the plane. We do not have the plane anymore, maps of Alaska are considerably less reliable, the landscape is rougher in every sense, it is larger, and we’d have to hop islands. The latter also applies for the Carribbeans. There’s a reason we don’t know where the Lorylim are. They are hiding well.” A little gesture by John’s hand let Lydia know she could continue. “Plus, even if we did narrow down the area, I can’t go at the moment.”

“Is this where we talk about your thankless subjects?” Nathalia growled.

“You could put it like that. The political class has grown unruly, and if I leave for a long trip again, I’ll just give them ammunition to agitate the wider population. I can’t do anything that I’m not totally certain will pay off.” He groaned and let Nathalia pull his head into the softness of her ample bosom. “In Victoria 2 terms, I have stacked too much Infamy. Got to wait for it to decrease naturally. I’ll be tied down. The rest of you will probably be held under some additional scrutiny.”

“Not like my unbred ass leaves the country anyway,” Eliana joked.

There was nothing more to be said about either the situation or the map. In the silence, Momo cleared her throat. “Class Level time?”

“Let’s do the Small Lake tournament first.” John tried to lift his head off the hot dragon breasts, but the way Nathalia played with his hair was just too damn comfortable. Staying, face-half covered, on her cleavage, he explained. “Many of you weren’t around for this, so let me explain: the Small Lake Pact was a guild north of us and east of the Lake Alliance. They had a particular social system where the strongest locals would govern over little islands in the lake, with their own little harems and unsavoury money-making activities. After Aclysia took it over, I then decided to turn that tradition into something healthier. The islands there are ranked by size and location. I originally intended to have a tournament every 5 years, but there’s been some issues.”

“Like?” Ehtra asked.

“Rebellions,” John put it bluntly. There had only ever been the one ‘major’ rebellion and Metra had crushed that one without John ever putting a foot down in the area. It had been somewhat predictable that many of those that had sworn fealty to his power before were among those that tried to backstab him in a moment of weakness.

Also, the third biggest island had originally gone to Jeremiah. The Art Eater was dead. Very dead.

“Truth be told, it’s just an excuse to pull it ahead. It’s an excuse to show the world that I’m still present and powerful.”

“So you are going to compete in the tournament?” Ehtra kept asking.

“Not quite. The way it’s structured is that the 24 top contenders in the tournament get one of the 24 large islands in the area each. The 25th island is mine… well, it’s Aclysia’s… to the point, I can only get challenged by the person that lands first. I intend to be there, look good, and then defeat whoever gets the top spot – if they even dare challenge me.”

“And when will this be?”

“21st, so 10 days from now,” John reported.

There was a lull in the conversation when he came for the third time.