Chapter 1070 – Final Grind of the Year 1 – Initiate Grinding


    The amount of work John had done before Christmas barely covered for the next two days, but he would have gone on a grinding session either way. After the Death Zone, he was more aware than ever that he couldn’t afford to miss any of the monthly time dilations he and Magoi had agreed on. They were even considering if additional grinding sessions were necessary.


    On one hand, John was already plenty powerful and the harem that surrounded him surpassed him, in individual cases. As an organization, Fusion and its member guilds were ascending in power across all possible metrics. Lastly, Magoi’s reason for keeping barrier grinding to a minimum, the continued aging within Illusion Barriers, remained as true as ever. Healthy as he looked for his age, his magical power was on a steady decline. As it was so often with old people, especially in the Abyss, his worsening health would likely accelerate towards the end.


    On the other hand, one could never be careful enough, especially when dealing with something like the Lorylim. Although they were no longer threatened by anything the Lorylim could throw at them in a normal engagement, there was no telling what kind of horrors they had grown in secret lairs. In the worst case, they would have to deal with an avatar of Tiamat herself and John had his doubts he could reconstruct the set of circumstances that had allowed him victory last time.


    There were good reasons to be cautious, but there were similarly good reasons to not overdo it. The primary inhibiting factor against additional training was Magoi’s lifespan. Dealing with that issue was, indirectly, possible.


    They entered the Illusion Barrier, Magus family and harem, and watched as Magoi and his two children separated from the crowd. “Alright, Lee, I want you to create the barrier. Aim for a time dilation of 300 percent.”


    “Come on, Dad, I could do-“


    “No, you couldn’t,” Magoi interrupted her, softly but sternly. “Not for the entire span of time. Adjusting the time dilation not only makes the process harder to maintain but also longer. It’s like adding more weights and simultaneously increasing the number of repetitions in the set. Three to one is already an exceptional start for endurance training. If you do better than I anticipate, we can amp things up halfway through.”


    “...Alright.” Lee raised her hand. Unlike her highly learned father, she still needed to make the gesture to create an Illusion Barrier. Like usual, the darkness of potential around them transformed into a sprawling green. “It’s really not that hard,” she grumbled.


    “Listen to your father, he has taught several generations of Fateweavers,” Mabirl chastised her daughter.


    “Were any of them as talented as me?”


    Magoi shook his head. “No, but at the start talent only gets you to the same places faster.” Still unconvinced, Lee crossed her arms. Her father let out a long breath, reverberating in the teeth of his raptor mask with a metallic sound. “I know you want to be useful, but you won’t be if you keel over. Now, I’ll probe around the barrier and see if you set everything up correctly. Then we’ll start with temporary mana generator construction.”


    “We’ll be over there and pitch our tents,” John informed them. Interesting as it may have been to listen to a lecture on Illusion Barriers, Protected Spaces and Fateweaving, they were, all three, largely useless to him. Under the current circumstances, they had to start working.


    The current arrangement John and Magoi had agreed on to give the Gamer extra grinding time was to have him in the barrier when he gave his kids private lessons. Magnus still had to perfect Fateweaving and Intermediary Barriers and Lee needed practical experience in pretty much every field. As a result, John would not be able to run any Instant Dungeons today (or the three days that would make up today).


    There was more than enough prep-work he had to do though.


    “Are we literally pitching tents?” Scarlett’s question earned her a rapidly blinking, confused stare by the Gamer. “Don’t you fucking dare look at me as if I’m stupid, I wasn’t around when you made your plans.”


    “Sorry, just unexpected,” John admitted and explained things. “No, we aren’t actually pitching tents. Gnome will create some temporary shelter for us to do some Class Challenges and training and, in a couple hours, Lee should have manifested us a house.”


    “A biiiiiiiig one,” Sylph declared. “No more cramping into the Springfield home, nuh-uh, all the space we want!”


    While Gnome went about erecting walls, benches, roofs and whatever else they wanted from the surrounding soil, John defined his goals for the next three days.


    ‘Alright, priorities... I have five Class Levels to spend and my primary goal, wherever possible, should be Metracana Master to ensure Metra’s reconstitution goes smoothly. Secondary goal should be Starforger. I should be able to get a Perk in both right now. The level up condition for Starforger’s first level was the first level in Metracana Master, after all.’ He looked over his character sheet, checking for other things to take care of. ‘It would be useful to upgrade my combat skills. They’re all maxed out. Let’s hope I get some SEP.’


    “Yo,” Momo knocked on the side of his head, “how about you give me and Metra something to eat before we all ponder over what Perks you’re choosing?”


    “Sounds like a plan,” John agreed and pulled out the Astrotium chunk as well as a large bag of rare metals from his inventory. The latter was mostly derived from the Mines, with some additional material having been withdrawn from Aclysia and Beatrice.


    Momo got to start on the bag immediately. It was highly unlikely that it would be enough to get her up to John’s current level, but he had prepared more than one such bag just in case. The Astrotium, he first put on a pedestal and took a number of pictures of. A second round of pictures were taken after Undine had washed it clean of any remaining rock pieces. Only after that did Metra start eating from the chunk.


    Even though her own body was made primarily from the legendary metal, she only managed to make slow progress. It was like watching a normal person try to eat the surface of a coconut, except Astrotium wasn’t nice enough to be made out of strippable fibres.


    Humming, John let subconscious aspects of his erudite mind hash the question out. “Well, I’ll make the call when Magoi takes over the barrier. Better question right now is what to do with this.” He pointed at the Astrotium.


    “Give it to Ehtra?” Gnome suggested.


    “Astrotium may be the one and only thing she has not lost a notable amount of.” Grabbing the shard Metra had spat out, he thought further on the matter, but came to the same conclusion. “We can try, but it most likely won’t make a difference.”


    Salamander circled around the large chunk. “How about we forge a weapon?”


    “I just skipped the Perk that would make that possible,” John pointed out. “And it took Jane’s incantation to melt thinned out Astrotium skin. I don’t think the traditional way is an option.”


    “...can I at least try it?” the apocalypse elemental asked, her tail waving dangerously.


    That was a difficult question. Did he think she would succeed? No, he didn’t, so her having her fun probably wouldn’t hurt. They did know too little about the metal to be completely certain though. For all he knew, Salamander’s specific flame could turn it into a gas. Weirder things had happened in the Abyss. “We’d better do that in a controlled environment,” he decided.


    Letting out a disappointed grunt, Salamander put her hand on John’s chest and pushed him backwards into the stone couch. It wasn’t a soft landing, but he accepted the short discomfort in exchange for the red skinned babe kneeling in front of him. The fire that covered her enormous tits like a bra flickered and died, while she freed his cock.


    “One level a day from sex, right?” the fire spirit asked, while wrapping her giant funbags around his sizable cock.


    John nodded with a groan on his lips. Doubling Experience of Love did indeed mean he would get a guaranteed level, as long as he had eight hours of sex a day. He wasn’t sure how viable that was if they took the grinding seriously. For the first three days, it was easily focused on.


    “Hey, Momo?”


    “What?” The sassy support was already puffing up her cheeks in anticipation of a flat tits joke. Instead, she raised her eyebrows when John put the shard of Astrotium between his teeth. “You serious?”


    “Would definitely quicken the process,” he said past the finger-sized piece.


    Sighing, getting even redder than earlier, Momo stood up and hovered over. Over the past few days, she had figured out that she could use her fairy wings to magically move in any direction, sort of like Sylph did, and had since gotten more and more used to that way of travel. Soon her bright pink lips pressed against his. Skilfully, she swallowed the piece of metal while keeping up the kiss.


    Their tongues soon fenced playfully for dominance. Momo contested it, but when he took her by the back of the head, she immediately relented. Landing with her knees next to him on the stone couch, the fairy support moaned into the kiss. The poncho of her maid outfit fluttered. She had, unasked, put it on this morning and John had seen no reason to mention it in any capacity beyond how beautiful she looked in it.


    “Okay, that’s enough!” Momo decided when his other hand crept down her side and towards her butt. “Am I maxed out yet?”


    “No,” John sighed, knowing that answer would make her pull away.


    “Then I have to keep consuming,” the fairy maid asserted and hovered back to the sack full of metals. John was left with Salamander’s monstrous tongue wrapping around his cock, drenching his shaft and her cleavage in oily saliva. There were worse fates.


    About an hour later, Momo was finally all the way there, and after another ten minutes they had agreed on an optimal Stat distribution for her.


    It was mostly standard, except for the focus they had put on Charisma. Personally, John thought it would have been fine if she went ‘only’ to 100 and distributed the other 150 points among the Physical Stats. Momo insisted, with merit, that she only needed enough Physical Stats to wield her equipment and that 50 was more than enough for that. Endurance had more importance because of the survival factor, so she invested notably there, but otherwise the category went neglected. The rest went into the Mental Stats.


    Funnily enough, she was now about a hundred points above John, all buffs included. How much that meant with the diminishing returns being in place, he could not guess. His Wisdom outclassed hers by about double though.


    Momo, likely out of reasons of horniness, had considered being the first AS to invest into the 50 Libido mark. That was something John was curious about, but it was not worth actually diverting points into. One day they doubtlessly would, but today was not that day.


    It was a day filled with sex though.