Keys to the Kingdom

"Okay, so what do you need to show me?" asked John as they went back into the small settlement outside of town.

"You remember our 'date' tomorrow?"

"The club? Sure... Ooooh, right. You said you'd pick an outfit for me. Is that it?"

"Exactly! Since you're already here, I can dump it off with you and don't have to worry about it getting dirty or something. On another note, I'll kill you if you ruin it."

"Message received," John laughed at the glare he got from Brun. They were moving towards the house that Astrid had previously left from when she had greeted them. Looking towards the lake, he could see that they were still talking. Judging from their faces, the talk wasn't going too bad, but that didn't have to mean anything.

As the Valkyrie in front of John opened the door to the simple wood-colored house, John was greeted with the smell of heavy smoke. Assaulted by the sudden smell, he had to cough. The blonde girl had to laugh, "Oh, right, I guess I should've warned you that my dad smokes heavily. He's been doing it this long now that it ingrained itself into the furniture."

Speaking of her father, John was almost dreading to meet him, seeing as how he was involved with both of his daughters. Now, the meeting with Petra might've gone rather smoothly (at least according to Brun), but a Viking father was not something that John felt like having a good-natured conversation with...

Luckily, that meeting seemingly had to wait, as Brun quickly pulled John up the stairs with her, not even bothering to take off her shoes. The interior of the house was mostly wooden as well, most of it probably hand-crafted. He could see runes cut into the wood here and there, though he couldn't be sure if those runes were actually decorative or if they served a purpose.

Upstairs, he was dragged into a room that he had seen before. It was Brun's room. He had seen it when he had used the Transreceptive Eye to check on what Brun was doing. The room was simplistically furnished, aside from a massive flat screen TV hooked to various consoles in the corner of the room. John hadn't seen that from the perspective he had when he had looked in here the last time.

"Well, this sure brings back memories," he chuckled.

"Huh? Oh, when you peeked in on me, right. Hope you had as much fun with that as I did," she said with a big grin. "Anyway, here's your outfit. It should fit."

She handed him a bundle of clothes, along with a pair of shoes. In his hands were a white dress shirt, a dark tie, black leather shoes with silvery steel tips, dark pants with buckles running along the sides, and a slim-cut vest with silvery chains hanging from one of the pockets.

Deciding to try the stuff on, he equipped the outfit from his inventory, looking himself over in the nearby mirror. From the stats in his inventory screen, he could see that these clothes were not reinforced in any form, not that he had expected them to be. Looking into the mirror, he had to say that he was really happy with the outfit. It certainly didn't look like anything he would usually wear, but it had a certain elegant feel to it while still looking not overly business-like

Maybe I'll use this as my work outfit? I'll decide on that when the time comes.

"This looks great! Thank you very much for this."

"Oh, don't thank me; I want my company to look good tomorrow, so it's in my best interest. And I can definitely show myself with you when you wear that." She winked as she said that, picking up another piece of clothing from the drawer where she had stored the rest of the clothes. The last piece was a dark cloak, similar in design to the remaining outfit with silvery ornaments running along the collar. "I'll expect you to pick me up at eight tomorrow, alright? Only the two of us, I already arranged it with Astrid. Speaking of her, I think we should check on the two of them."

John acknowledged the request for tomorrow and then followed Brun outside to the other girls, not bothering to change his clothes back. He wanted to show the other two the outfit as well.

Outside, they saw that Astrid and Aloy were already looking for them. Both of them got big eyes as they saw John's new getup. It looked like both of them had to concentrate on not trying to drool from what they saw, which got John to laugh heartily before turning to Astrid with a serious face, "So, what have you two talked about? And what's your decision?"

It took a moment for Astrid to find her voice and her train of thought, "Well, um... we mostly talked about you, how you treated both of us and how you went about the whole situation... From what Aloy told me, you were acting pretty pervy around her, but never to the extent that it actually went... creepy. She told me about you two... doing it... And it made me realize something: You're insatiable. You are creative, you want to experiment with new stuff, and I'm not the girl for that. But... I don't want to lose you, I don't even mind sharing you, I would've done so anyway with Sis... I just want to ask you one thing: will you still care for me, for all of us, no matter how many girls you seduce?"

Without a shred of a doubt, John immediately answered, "Absolutely. If you actually let me have a harem, which is pretty much every man's dream, then I would care for each and every one of you girls. I would always ask you about future girls, and I will always find time for you when you want it. Also, since this seems like a pretty one-sided thing, I wouldn't actually mind if you slept with other guys as well, since you let me do the same. I just want you to know at the end of the day that I care deeply for you and that I want the best for you, all of you."

His response brought tears to Astrid's eyes, happy tears judging from her smile, "And that's all I want. I want to know that you care for me, and for any girl that you decide should be part of... this, whatever this is. For future reference, I want to know beforehand, though. Are both of you okay with this as well?" she asked, looking at Aloy and Brun.

Aloy's answer was pretty straightforward: she simply kissed John on the lips, taking his face into her hands, "I may have never known my mother, and I know Rost was never my real father, but maybe like this I can create my own family, my own tribe of people that actually care about me."

Does that mean that she actually doesn't want to go back? I need to ask her about it later...

Brun's answer was straightforward as well, but... differently. Instead of kissing John, she kissed Aloy, starting to heavily make out with her. The smaller redhead was shocked at first but apparently didn't mind it that much since she started to return the kiss. Watching them make out made John realize one thing:

This might be the best thing that has happened in the last couple of days, and a lot happened in the last couple of days.

Leaving the two girls to their devices, for now, he turned to Astrid and kissed her as well, "Thank you so much for being such an amazing girlfriend. With how I treated you, I don't actually deserve you."

Smiling, she just shook her head, "Nonsense, you'll have your hands full anyway, so I might as well help you with taking off at least some load."

Slowly nodding, John returned his gaze to the redhead and the blonde Valkyrie, who were done feeling each other up for now. With a big smile on his face, John then clapped his hands. "Right, so, now I have something I need to show both of you. Aloy has already seen it, but you two should see it as well."

Brun grinned wide, "Ooooh, something special. Oh! Is it that Kingdom that you got two days ago? I wanted to ask you about that already!"

He simply nodded and tried to find a proper place to set up the entryway for the door. Choosing to use a gap in between two fences that was hidden from plain sight, he pulled out his Nexus card and slipped it in, creating the usual black door. Taking a stand next to the door, he gestured inside for the girls, "Step in, you'll be surprised by what you'll find." Brun was the first one to step through with a wide grin on her face, grabbing Astrid's hand and taking her with her. Aloy already knew what was on the other side; she was astounded about the logistics, though.

"Can you open that anywhere you want?"

"Basically anywhere that I find some gap to put the card in. It seems to bend the space around it in a way that there's always enough space for a proper door. Oh, speaking of card, I got this one when we fought the Sawtooths." He then handed her her own keycard. "It says that only you could use it. I'm going to assume that it will work the same way that mine works, so you'll just need to find a gap wide enough for the card, and then you can get back to the Nexus. You'll get the card back once you leave through that exit again."

She looked at the card with awe. "Thank you. This means a lot to me." Then she joined the other two in the Nexus.

Entering the Nexus himself, he was greeted by the sight of Astrid holding Gary in her arms while Brun was on the ground, heavily petting Thorn.

"Who's a good little dragon? Who's a good little wolfie? You are! You are, you cute bundle of fluff and scales! Oh, you're so adorable!"

Thorn was looking ecstatic to get this much attention from the blonde Valkyrie. Gary was pretty happy as well with being in Astrid's arms, evident by the happy sound he was making. John looked down to the blonde on the ground who was vividly stroking the dragon-wolf's belly, "Having fun down there?" Brun immediately jumped up, enveloping him in a tight hug, "Dude, I'm so happy that it actually was a Zinogre coming out of that egg, this is amazing! And he's already this big... I wonder how quickly he'll grow up to be fully sized?"

'Hopefully that'll take some time; I don't want to think about all the logistics of doing anything with him once he's that big...'

"Come on, you have barely seen anything yet! Let me show you the upstairs." While John said that, he was already moving towards the stairway. He was really excited to show the girls the rest of the Nexus. Well, the upstairs at least, not sure if he would show them the chamber down below...

Moving up the stairs, he was greeted by one of the flying drones, carrying a piece of Scrap Metal down the stairs. It was good to know that the drones were actively taking out that kind of stuff so that the Replicator could keep on working.

As they reached the top of the stairs, John gestured towards the open room, "Well, welcome to the Nexus. It's still a work in progress; I need some actual time to work on it and to get things going, but I think it's already pretty awesome. The guardian of this place said it's a world between Kingdoms, so I'd assume that it should be pretty safe."

"So is the only way to enter this through that keycard that you have? It looks a bit barren… no furniture or anything..."

"Basically, yes. Aloy has one as well, because a quest of mine created it. Let me check if I can make some for you as well." And she was right, he would have to invest some time to build some proper furniture in here… maybe a bed, some couches...

While he was thinking about where he could find information about acquiring additional keycards, Sarai chimed in, speaking through his mind. 'Master, if you need more cards to gain access to the Nexus, maybe try to build them?'

'Not a bad idea, but how would I do that? I have no idea where to start with that...'

Actually, he had one idea where to start...

Opening his Crafting Menu, he pulled up all the stuff he would be able to create with the Reality Shard that he had gotten from the quest about the Fateweavers. This was probably a long shot, but seeing as how the keycard was basically a kind of a rip in reality, it wasn't too crazy to think that he could do something with that...

Crafting Level not high enough to work with this Material!

'Not really surprising... too bad I can't even see what I could do with that thing...'

Going down the list of things he could check, he actually checked the Construction menu next:

Current Mana: 1637 MP

Available Constructs (filtered by search)
Keycard Press, 128 MP, create keycards to hand out to other people, giving them access to the Nexus, Requirement: Mana Well LV.2

Perfect! Quickly selecting that construct and putting it in the corner of the big room, John was kinda surprised to see what came out once the machine had materialized itself out of the ground. The machine wasn't actually standing anywhere, it was integrated into the wall. It was a foot-by-foot big, black surface with a display, a slot and some kind of sensor integrated into it. The display simply showed the prompt, 'To begin, please put hand on scanner'.

"Uuuh, that thing is supposed to be able to give me some extra cards, let's see if this works."

Putting his hand on the scanner, the display said, 'Card already detected'. Quickly understanding the actual process, he asked for Brun to put her hand on the scanner. "I think it wants to 'read' the person the card is for, so I guess you should do that then."

Shrugging, she put her hand on the scanner.

'Identifying...'

'Mana Signature identified, please remove hand.'

With a slight Ding, a keycard pretty much identical to the ones John and Aloy had was now sticking out of the machine.

Quickly checking it with Observe revealed:

Brunhilde's Card
Nexus Keycard only usable by Brunhilde Gjoskenholm. Any unauthorized usage will be punished.

'Good to know.'

Repeating the process with Astrid yielded the same result, only with Astrid as the owner.

Smiling, John said, "Well, now that you both have these cards, feel free to come here whenever you want."

While he was still speaking, a pop-up appeared for him.

Activate Mana Tax on Second-Party Cards? (25% of excess mana will be siphoned into the Mana Well) (Y/N)

’Oh hell yes!’

John was tempted to immediately hammer the Yes button but thought against it. He would at least ask them first.

“Hey, I’ve got a pop-up asking if I could get some of your overflowing mana, 25%. Would that be okay with you? I can use that mana to expand this Kingdom and make more stuff, so it would be in your interest as well.”

Both of the girls quickly nodded, not seeing a point to let that mana go to waste.

“As long as it’s just mana that’s ‘overflowing’ anyway, sure. I won’t let any ounce of regen go to waste if I have the chance,” was Brun’s response to which Astrid agreed.

This would be a great addition to his mana! Speaking of mana, he should probably do something with all of the mana he had right now in the Well... Gesturing to the door leading outside, he said, "You can explore outside for a bit; I'd like to do some stuff while I'm here for now. I'll join you in a minute." The girls simply nodded, and Aloy led the other two outside to show them the garden, or at least the part that she had seen.