A fluffy Monday Finale – End the relaxation, by relaxing.

“Can I not have an activity to relax, John Newman?” Lydia snapped back. Her voice had regained most of its usual iron, with only a slight tremble remaining. Her face, however, went straight back to red, and she tried her best to not look at John throughout the conversation.

“Well, us plebs call that a hobby,” John answered. “And, of course, you can have one. I am just confused why you chose dancing, especially with all of,” he gestured at her red dress and the destroyed piano in the background, “this, when you are normally so anal about being all disciplined.”

“Following…” Lydia started only to hesitate for a moment while she carefully selected her words, “…a certain event in my youth, my honoured grandfather took me in. Before he started schooling me in warfare, economy and other practical things, he taught me a lot of things about art. At the occasion, he advised me to pick up an instrument to channel my emotions into, and he was really adamant about me learning the piano, of all instruments. This one was a personal gift from him to me.”

“Uhu,” John nodded. The princess was talking surprisingly calmly despite being flustered still and having lost an important item. ‘I guess she is still a trained politician, getting her to stutter like she did earlier will take quite some work…will have to test that at a later date,’ he thought and allowed himself a bit of a smirk. He had fully embraced the teasing ways.

“That explains next to nothing, though,” John continued the conversation. “For a start, you weren’t playing the piano.” “Of course, I was,” Lydia now shot him one of her stern stares. He was getting used to those as well. One of the metal keys landed in her raised hand. “This is how I train and maintain the control over my powers.”

“Ah,” John made an understanding sound. “Thought it was more some sort of ‘mood related background music’-enchant. What about the dancing part then?” Lydia’s eyes averted their gaze at the question, and she cleared her throat. “You know that feeling when your body just wants to move? I just followed that one day while doing the piano exercise, it became a bit of a regular thing.”

At the end of her explanations, Lydia locked eyes with John again. Her flustered looks were reduced to a small blush, and while her hands worked to finally restore her braid, she said, “Promise me again that none of this will ever leave this room, only you and Maximillian know of this, and I would like to keep it that way. It is highly scandalous, and I am sure some newspaper will turn it on me.”

The last few keys flew by John as he furrowed his eyebrows. “I promise, but…Why would your rival know of this? Seems like a strategic misstep,” John said. Lydia raised an eyebrow in response. “You haven’t looked into my background, have you?” she asked. “No, should I have done that?” “I am flattered that you didn’t, but generally talking: Yes. Especially if you are working for somebody like me, where information is easy to come by.”

The princess let out a heavy sigh. “Well, you might as well learn it from me then. Maximillian and I used to be a couple of some description.” That news hit John fervently unprepared. Not that it hurt him, he barely started to like Lydia as a woman and he was far away from loving her as much as he did Rave or Aclysia. Even if that were the case, he knew that Rave had pulled some stunts before she knew him, which included there being nudes of her on reddit, so he wasn’t exactly one to get jealous over his lovers' past affairs.

This was, however, notable in another way. “So, this tournament is basically just a lovers' feud cranked up to national level?” he asked, aghast. “No!” Lydia was quick to smack that assumption down. “Our opposition on this issue is what first brought me and Maximillian together. He turned out to be surprisingly charming in private. I will spare you the details of our few months of relationship. It was a standardized story: two people fall in love over a common issue, they talk, they love, they start finding things about the other one that rub them the wrong way. In the end it turns out that they are unable to come to an agreement on the most basic things, finally that very thing that brought them together becomes their greatest difference. It turned out that our ideals were incompatible, so I decided that we should go back to being just enemies again.”

With a ‘clack’ the last of the keys laid down into its place inside the piano. The instrument was restored at least on the surface, the complicated mechanisms setting themselves back together under Lydia’s influence with an ease only deep understanding allowed. However, even as all of the metal got into its correct place, the wooden parts of the big instrument were splintered or broken. When Lydia pushed a key, the sound didn’t come.

“It wasn’t a nice ending, and Maximillian never really got over it, it seems. And I don’t mean that he didn’t get over me, we both have moved on since, but his pride didn’t take the hit very well. Wherever we met, he starts a fight. I guess I am not much better, actually answering his minor insults. Where I aim to federalize the country, he aims to centralize it around Vienna’s court. Where I am stern, he is lax. Where he is decisive, I wait for information. The current state of our country created two people that promise solutions. This burden put us together, gave us something we shared, but our solutions tore us apart,” she heavily sighed as, no matter what she did, the instrument did not produce a single tone.

“It was good for both of us and Germany that the relationship happened. However this tournament will end, neither of us now care too much about the other to be a constant thorn in the others side, despite us not getting along very well. At least, that’s what I hope of us. When all of this is over, I hope to drink tea with him again; even if he and I weren’t good lovers, I think he can be a loyal friend,” the princess gave up on the instrument with a disheartened expression.

Wordlessly, John stepped up and put a finger on a key. A moment later he pushed it down and a single light note echoed through the room. He smirked at the surprised Lydia. “It's still largely broken,” he explained when Lydia pushed another key and nothing happened. Gesturing at the ruptured frame, where the keys had been violently removed, he continued his explanation. “It’s the same skill that allowed me to destroy and repair that glass yesterday; however, something of this size and complexity costs a bit more mana. I will need 2 or 3 more full mana bars to fully repair it.”

‘And it didn’t even give me a new level in the skill, I know why I stopped concentrating on that,’ John thought.

Suddenly, Lydia’s arms were around his neck as she embraced him. “Thank you,” she whispered, “this instrument means a lot to me.” The moment was over in a flash; John had no time to answer, with words or gesture, before Lydia already stepped away from him and turned around.

“Would you help me out of this dress?” Lydia asked and pointed at a near invisible fold in the dress. “I can’t quite reach the zipper, and I need to get into something fitting for the speech I have to hold in about thirty minutes.” They both knew that was a lie, the zipper wasn’t regular metal, but it was still just metal. She wasn’t even close to be out of mana, so she could have opened that zipper, even without bending her arms, with the ease of a thought. Also, she was a member of the Abyss still, which happened to entail being a human at over-the-peak performance, she could have reached the zipper if she wanted to. He would have been an idiot to comment on that out loud, however.

“Of course, princess,” he stated in a servant’sf voice and helped the princess, who was wearing nothing underneath that dress, out of her clothes.

Ten minutes later he was shushed out of the room with an extremely wanting erection. The princess hadn’t exactly teased him, but she had acted like she didn’t know what to wear, until the very end, pushing out her curves and private parts throughout the whole conversation of ‘what she should wear’. As he left, Lydia, in a slightly more decorated version of her usual uniform, stepped past and to the front door. Apparently her driver was already waiting.

“I wonder how that fit into her holy timetable,” John mumbled as the door closed behind the princess. His goal was to get to the couch as fast as possible. Walking with an erection his size was seriously uncomfortable. He fell on to a cushion with a relieved sigh. A moment later, he heard something wet flowing over the wooden boards of the floor. He turned around and saw nothing, but, when looked back in front of him, he saw the blue goo that was Undine take her womanly shape between his legs.

They didn’t exchange a single word as the water spirit undid the zipper of his trousers and pulled them down. John was more than happy to be taken care of by whoever of his harem was around and Undine seemed to be the quickest this time. He probably radiated such **** horniness that every single one of his familiars had felt it. Aclysia walked out of the kitchen, saw that she was too late, and turned around to get back to whatever she was actually doing with a frown.

Undine was about to wrap her trembling lips around John’s dick when his pants became the cause of the annoying noise of vibrations on a wooden surface. For a moment, he was tempted to completely ignore the phone call, but he didn’t want to miss anything important. What if it was Lydia, who had forgotten her keys and speech notes, and now stood outside the door? Unlikely, granted, with her being able to open whatever metal lock she wanted with the flick of a finger, but something like that could have been happening right now. With a sigh he decided to make it quick, and Undine, sending displeased waves, handed him his phone.

“Hello, John here,” the Gamer greeted. “Oh, h-hi, it’s me, Herman,” the apothecary said from the other side. John sighed heavily once more; if it was a girl calling him, he would have gestured Undine to just roll with it and enjoyed the blowjob while he was talking, but getting pleasured while a dude was next to his ear felt weird.

“What’s up?” John asked, trying to hurry this along. “I call because of that thing you wanted me to bring to you,” Herman said. ‘Right, the spine,’ John scratched his head. He hadn’t forgotten about it, but he had tried to not think about it too much. After all, he had finally reached happier times again. “What about it?” John asked, knowing he sounded a bit brash. He just really had other urgent matters to put his hands too. Well, Undine’s hands. Mostly her mouth.

“I don’t really have time to bring it to you. There is a lot to do with that veteran meeting coming up, and I will be pretty busy afterwards too. So, if you and or Rave could come to the meeting and pick it up, that would be nice. Would like the company while I am getting squashed by the stories of old war heroes,” said Herman. John nodded, then realized how stupid that was, excused himself with most of his blood being somewhere else, then finally answered, “Sure thing, just write me the address and time, and we will swing by.” “Will, do. Thanks, friend.”

He put down the phone a moment later. Undine massaged his, only slightly, limped dick to get it into full hardness again. She slowly lowered her lips, John was watching intently, ready for the moment his sensitive cock would finally get some pleasure. Undine’s outer layer, the shape of a dress, melded back into her body when she felt his desiring gaze.

A quest window blocked the view when it finally got indecent.

John really had no mind to think about this right now. But he had to take this seriously, seeing as just WHO decided to give him that quest. Therefore, to the **** displeasure of the slime girl between his legs, he ordered her to stop once more.

Why would the Horned Rat give him a quest to take a spa day? What did he know about that god? Pretty much nothing, but he seemed to be somewhat invested in John’s survival, otherwise giving him Mana Blade didn’t make a lot of sense. Why would the Rat want him go get a massage? Probably to get some sort of message from somebody there. Why he would make it so complicated, John didn’t know nor care. He still hadn’t cracked that prophecy, and he wasn’t even trying to understand the Rats reasoning without having understood that first. A free class level was absurdly good though, and he did think he was safe, at the very least. He smashed that accept button and concentrated on getting a blowjob.