Alchemy and Residences

Alchemy.

It had been a long-neglected field of research and development in the Abyss. Generally, it had been agreed upon that it was simply inferior to enchantment and artifice (and their fusion arcano-tech). Why engineer a new lifeform with mutagens and biomancy when you could just make a golem? Why drink a potion when you could just pick up a stick? Why interact with dangerous chemicals when you could just have a magical matrix hidden inside an object?

The answer was usually a specific and/or niche application. Cleaning slimes were an example of it being more useful to have a lifeform than a golem. They could get into more places, were more versatile, and they replenished their own numbers. In excess, they could even be sold to others. Healing potions and other concoctions to achieve an immediate effect were also popular enough to keep alchemy running.

Alchemy had been long-neglected… and it largely still was. Delicia was dragging the field kicking and screaming into the light of relevancy, but its inherent restrictions were just too manifold. It would never reach the same popularity as its equivalents.

“Loser mentality,” Delicia commented on his breakdown.

“Hey, I respect your work,” John said. “I am just keeping it real.”

“You better respect my work, considering how much you rely on it!” Delicia plucked a note from her blackboard, crumpled it up and threw it into the trash. Immediately, she moved another into its place. The alchemist’s commission queue was never empty. Being the most prominent figure of a niche industry was busywork. Demand may have been low to middling in general, but when there was something only alchemy could solve adequately, then it was worth investing in.

“It is very greatly appreciated, the most appreciated, totally appreciated, verily, verily, verily!” Sylph repeatedly rose up a couple of centimetres, then dropped back to the floor. A sign on the wall of the laboratory made it very clear that no one was allowed to fly. “But! But you should also take a break, because we came here to get you a break, if you want a break?”

Delicia turned a valve twice then stopped with what she was doing. “Eh, sure,” she declared spontaneously and stepped away from her tower-filling construct of glass and metal. “Just trying to coax me out of the tower? What’s the goal here?”

“Spending time with my beloved shortstack?” John suggested.

“Breaking me down to my body, eh? Very classy,” she drawled.

“You talk about your tits all the time.”

“It’s classy when I do it.”

“She has got you there, that she does,” Sylph chirped. “It’s cool when she does it because they are her boobs and therefore she can talk about them as much as she wants.”

“Ah, but she is my woman, therefore I can talk about my boobs too.”

“That was so poorly phrased,” Delicia mocked.

They left the Alchemy Lab and stepped out into the Industry District. It was only a couple of steps from there to the car that they had parked outside. Metra pushed herself off the hood to wave at them. “So, they did manage to drag you out of your lab, huh?”

“I thought I deserved a break, so yeah, I made it easy on them,” Delicia responded as they got into the vehicle. Metra took the driver’s seat and soon the car began to roll down the smooth stone roads of the Guild Hall. “Four people date, mhm? Does your greed know no bounds, Master?”

“Obviously not,” John responded, very aware of who and what he was. He had initially wanted to invite Aclysia as well, but his second wife had elected to get herself inspected by various experts first. Her pregnancy was the first of its kind and they all wanted to make sure it was understood what kind of complications may arise from it. Now that they were off Hawaii, the kinds of experts needed to attempt such operations were within the head maid’s reach.

“Oh, oh, oh!” Sylph bounced in her seat. “We could do maid-tenance! Let’s all gang up on Delicia and massage her and kiss her until she is all silly and giggly!”

“We have maid-tenance scheduled for tomorrow,” the Gamer answered. “Right after the press conference.”

Veridion’s death had been announced to the public earlier today, five days after the event. There were no initial reactions of the wider world. Global powers were holding back on making a stance until they had investigated further and local powers were hoping they could get away with not saying anything. John was moving as planned, having scheduled a press conference in reaction to the public confusion.

Under the previous political structure, John would have been busy explaining himself to all of the members of the legislature. While there were still some questions thrown the way of his office, they lacked the power and conviction to get past Ehtra’s well-maintained professional contempt for stupid questions.

Truly, no man was more blessed than the one with a competent sex-cretary.

“I thought we would just go to the Park, walk around a bit,” John said.

“Sure, why not,” Delicia agreed. She really must have wanted that break to take all of his suggestions so readily.

The drive was a fast one. The roads were broad and the traffic borderline non-existent. They parked off-road by the Maid Pond, then began their walk.

The Guild Hall was housing more people than ever. During the evacuation of the Hudson Barrier and much of the East Coast, many of those evacuees went into the Guild Hall. After the war, not only had a whole lot of people elected to stay in the Guild Hall but new people were steadily arriving because it offered a multitude of jobs in the wake of a massive disruption of the supply chains.

John had not yet entirely resolved how to cope with this influx of people. He had put up a number of new residential areas on the outer ring of the Guild Hall, the mountainous islands that he had placed during the Tier 5.5 upgrade. That was a temporary solution in its current design and transforming it into a permanent one would require some thought.

“How do you think I should solve the population situation?” John asked, vaguely gesturing in the direction of some passerby. Though the majority of the people were currently busy working, there were enough families that the Park was in constant usage even during the working hours. The sheer size of it meant that it never felt cramped, thankfully.

“Once we relocate to the West Coast, toss them out,” Metra stated blatantly.

“That feels so mean!” Sylph exclaimed. “Why not let them stay? We got the space!”

“Land is basically free in the Abyss,” John remarked. “We already have an IBMA ready for the area, all it needs is some bit of fine-tuning. Providing them with space really isn’t the issue. The infrastructure is going to take some work to get online… but even then, giving the people something to work on is typically good.”

“I am still too stupid to get why we throw them out?” Sylph babbled. “Having more people around is fun, it means more stuff is happening and more stuff happening is fun therefore more people is betterer.”

“Well, to start with, I am a filthy introvert,” John responded. “So I don’t share that opinion.”

“Boooo! Booo, I say! Just change who you are!” Sylph bumped shoulders with him and gave him a well-meaning wink. “We can all improve together!”

John laughed but shook his head. “I think this one is just too deep in my nature.”

Delicia stretched as she walked, the white frill of her maid uniform coming precariously close to the point of losing to the might of her chest. Well, it would have, had it not been glued in place by the fact that it was part of her body. “The simple reason not to give many people permanent residence in the Guild Hall is that it’s also the seat of power,” she explained to Sylph. “Permanent residents are a potential security risk. You got to vet them.”

Metra produced an amused snort. “See, there’s a logic to it. I was just thinking it’d be inappropriate to let the labourers stay with the emperor.”

“Yeah, nah, I am not an elitist like you,” Delicia returned. “I just make concessions to reality, because my brain is as big as my boobs.”

The Gamer lowered his head to inspect those mammaries in profile. “I don’t think the physicality works out on that one.”

“Bah, use your brain, it’s a metaphor! Too stupid for metaphors? All your blood must have gone elsewhere!” Delicia laughed loudly, slapping her own knee a couple of times as the exaggerated joy coursed through her bratty system. “Ehem…” she cleared her throat, “no, but seriously, this is now the heart of imperial politics. I can dislike that we arrived here as much as I want, now that we are here, the Residential District should belong to permanent or regular members of the court John is setting up. Everyone who works here will survive making a daily trip to their respective workstations.”

“Don’t forget the support staff!” Sylph added. “We are getting bonus maids from what I heard! Aclysia insists we are!”

“True enough, but we are housing them in the Palace,” John said. With two of the maids entering the next stage of their life, Aclysia had suggested that now would be a good time to skim from the top of her maid academy and get non-associated support staff. For the inner Palace the maid cadre of the harem would still suffice. For additional events and daily court procedures, however, a larger servant staff was becoming a necessity.

John only had a rudimentary idea of what his court would end up looking like. It would resemble the politics of yore more, with men and women sitting around a table, discussing matters and powers being delegated amongst them, rather than a bureaucratic meeting between established offices.

It was a slowly forming institution with no set schedule or such.

“Well, if you two agree on something, then I suppose it’s the right path forward,” John put the dot on that conversation. “I’ll announce it during the press conference. A week should be enough time for people to decide whether they want to come along or not under those circumstances.”

The move of the Guild Hall had been set to 18th. The only way that date would be moved was if the Horned Rat suddenly hit them up with an emergency need to execute on their Remus distraction plan.

Which he had not said a word about during his brief Hawaii visit, so it was fair to assume they weren’t under any time pressure there yet.

“How is your project going, Delicia?” he turned the conversation in a different direction. “I hope you’re still working on it? Not too distracted by all the commissions?”

“Oh, I actually made a pretty massive leap forward recently,” Delicia casually announced. “On a per-person basis, I can create mutagens that last up to a month and require fairly low maintenance to keep up.”

“Really?” Metra asked. “Sounds like the monster girl population is about to skyrocket.”

“And monster boys!” Sylph chattered. “I know, I know, we all ignore them but give us ladies some eye-candy with wolf ears too! The wolf abs are hot even without the tits in-between!” She gave Metra’s midriff a playful smack, then darted away before she could be grabbed in response.

“I’ll take your word for it,” John just said. As a great enthusiast of ladies with additional bits (horns, ears and tails most of all), he would not fault the ladies for their own taste in similar additions to their gentlemen. “I’m quite interested to see where this might go.”

“Speaking of going places, are you going to visit Esmeralda at all?” Delicia asked. “I wonder because she swung by the lab this morning. She does seem to try to get to know all of us.”

John groaned. That was one of the more complicated situations he had to contend with currently. It wasn’t that he did not see the appeal of the feisty Latina, he most certainly did, it was that he really did not have the time for her. “I’m sort of hoping this problem will go away if I just ignore it,” he confessed.

“Pft, that’s pathetic,” Delicia mocked him. “But have we found the boundary of your greed?”

“Something like that,” John answered. “It is becoming easier and easier to say no to advances and my own heart. I genuinely might be past the point where it is actively hard to resist.” Smiling, he looked past the trees and towards Lady Liberty, sitting on top of his home. “Becoming a father was the final nail in that coffin, I think.”

“Wow, all it took you to give up your womanizing ways was to knock up three women with an option for twenty-three more,” Delicia drawled. “Very humble.”

“I know, I am exceptionally humble,” John agreed with a haughty smirk. “So humble I will be part of a tribal impregnation ceremony in a couple days... which I still have no idea what to expect of.”

“Fire, maybe a bit of body paint, if I had to guess,” Metra stated. “Knowing the Aztecs as little as I do, probably also something involving feathers and water. A shrine made of bones, maybe?”

John’s face scrunched up as if he had just bitten into a lemon. “I suppose I could live with that,” he said slowly. Nahoa knew better than to involve blood in the ceremony, no matter how ethically sourced, but bones could very well show up. Especially after having been saved by the Grim Reaper, the Mexica had shown a great reverence for the material that John could not share.

It also meant that Fusion might have a sizable population of Aztec necromancers soon which was pretty cool in a pure edgelord sense… which John had trace amounts of in his soul.

“Well, I will see in two days,” he said.

And their little walk and talk continued.