Some solutions, new problems.

John realized that he had overlooked one issue. He had not warned Tricia about June's inclusion in the kingdom's subjects. John could only see his otherworldly girls around him, ogling the strange vehicle (from their point of view).

John got down from it and pushed it against a wall; the joy of exploring his kingdom on this beast would need to wait for a bit.

"Glad to see you all, girls. Tricia will come to visit us again, and I have to call her before that," he told them before walking into the great hall. He got his phone and dialed Tricia while removing his disguise to sit naked on his throne. The wood was smooth but cold, cushions or a good layer of slime material would be a necessary upgrade if he ever had to sit on this for any prolonged period of time.

"John? Has the meeting point changed? I was almost on my way to meet Anna," asked Tricia.

"Oh, she has already called you for this? No, it was about something related though. You know how I asked you to become a resident of the kingdom to help me upgrade it? Well, I invited another person since then, someone that you might know, and I wondered how you wanted to handle the part about your various secrets. There's a good chance that this person will be with Anna when meeting you and planned to come back to the kingdom for the afternoon," he explained. Tricia laughed in response, which surprised John who had never heard her do so. He wondered if once again she had lowered her emotional inhibitors for their meeting.

"Boys... You are really lucky to have such a queen for your kingdom, it might last more than a few weeks."

"You mean?"

"Yes, Anna told me about her when setting the meeting up. She explained to me her particular situation. And of course I know who she is; I don't think anyone is able to stay at the Academy for a few years without knowing June Summers. Anna explained to her the necessity of keeping my name secret, and I trust your queen's judgment when she says she will keep it a secret. After all, she already has to keep your secret, and I don't want to **** you to have a whole schedule of who can be there based on the other people's presence. I'll be happy to meet her in a more informal manner. I guess that she follows the local custom and wears the traditional dress? Being a full subject..." John recognized some interest there at the end of the sentence. It would be surprising to see June wear anything in Arcadia after being told that clothes were optional.

"I'm glad this was already sorted, then. I should have thought about it before, but I had other matters to deal with, and it slipped my mind. I'll see you in a few minutes then." After dropping the call, John went to fetch some slime material from a storage chest. Making a simple cushion for the throne was easy, requiring little of it and no other materials.

John spent the few minutes of free time to do as much of his homework as he could that didn't need to be handwritten. Daphne had come to him bearing a tray with fruit juice, fruit salad and some leftover dessert from lunch on it. The advantages of storing food in inventories and storage chests was that they were as fresh as they were when you put them in, no matter how long after this you took them back out.

John was trying to think about what he knew of the mysterious cult surrounding June and his mother, but he quickly was interrupted by three beautiful girls appearing from thin air in the entrance room. His queen was instantly naked, wearing only her crown, and June quickly ditched her dress and shoes. Tricia looked around and saw John who waved at her; she then removed the sweater and sweatpants that she had on, revealing that she was wearing only those.

Both Tricia and June had brought what looked to be two large bags or suitcases. It made John get up to join them even quicker.

"Welcome back!" he greeted them.

"I'll leave you two to your science stuff, as I have to discuss a few things with Anna about how this place looks. The blue bag is full of art supplies and the red one is for what we talked about at lunch. I don't know if you prepared a room already," said June, who nonchalantly put her arm around Anna's shoulders and led her away to venture outside.

"She's as... lively as I imagined," said Tricia. "I had to come back quickly: I have good news but also really bad ones... Wait? Who is this?" She was pointing at Daphne who was bringing refreshments for the guests and apparently surprised to see only one.

"It's Daphne. She's new. My powers say that she is harmless. She somehow appeared out of our bed last night."

"No,no,no,no… this is not good. Quick, come with me to the lab and bring her with you!" she told him while dragging him to the stairs by his hand. She seemed only slightly fazed by his or her nakedness, more worried about the new maid apparently. They reached the lab quickly and Daphne was instructed to get on the scanner.

"What is this about?"

"I thought that it was an effect of the plants in the food... When my eye opened and I looked at the bed, a face looked back at me! I thought I was tripping because your girlfriend cooks with **** as spices. This is... She has no core! That is not the way it should work!" Once she revealed this fact it clicked for John. Daphne had something familiar that he had not been able to identify so far. Daphne's body had little in common with Tricia's, being a lot more endowed, but the calm face of the mute slime was eerily reminding him of her.

"A core?"

"Slimes have this whole semi liquid body that can move and morph, but they also have a small ball like nucleus inside them, a core! It is what holds their life-****, thoughts and they die if it is destroyed. Your slime doesn't have one, so she shouldn't be able to store enough energy to live, let alone take human form and walk on legs!"

"Sylvia... breastfed her, and then she bathed in the fountain, in the glade... You made her! Your eye tried to heal the slime material, there was no core, and the enchantments on the bed interfered, but the magic overruled it. It tried to repair the creature it wasn't."

"This is insane; theoretically, it could work... I don't know how long the effect will last, but you should make sure that she gets back to it at least every few days. Without a core, I don't know how long she will remain stable. I need to think about it, do more tests. I... I imagine that you want the other bad news first, right?" John was a bit shocked by this already, but it was logical that Daphne would need things to survive, and thankfully, they had what she needed and she could access it easily. As much as he would like to rejoice himself with some good news right now, getting rid of the bad ones first seemed like a better idea.

"Let's get over the unpleasantness and keep the good things for after."

"It's about Algernon and the rat folks... I did a few more tests on the samples... The way that they grow so fast and the weird nature of the time in this place is not without effects. The simple rats shouldn't live a lot longer than a week, and the enhanced ones, like their leader, won't see the end of a month. The way their DNA adjusted itself to work after being mixed and enhanced would help them last longer, but their lifespan is really short. I wondered how you didn't have a population explosion on your hands, most of the normal rats did not die from their war with the scarabs, they just only lived two or three days. The ones with the most foreign DNA will last longer, but..." It was a cruel twist for John; he had really taken a liking for the humorous leader of the ratfolk and his progeny.

"Is there anything that we can do? To stabilize them? Maybe make it so that they don't grow up so fast, that should help, right?"

"It could. If I'm right, the enhanced ones should already have less kids on each litter. I'd like to take a few more samples on multiple specimens of these ratfolk before leaving."

"I needed to visit them anyway, as most of them have moved out of the castle to create a new lair. Can we talk a bit about the good news before we go see them?"

"Of course." Tricia seemed happy to change the topic of the conversation. She did not want to jeopardize her new relationship by being seen as the bearer of bad news. "First and the easiest of the bunch, I got you a dwarven translation software. I used one while studying arcanotech when I was designing my drones. It should cover 4 runic alphabets and 17 dwarven dialects, and of course it is handling the text to speech function that you required. I guess that you found some dwarven text and wanted to use your translation perk to get what it means?"

"On my last raid, yes. Thank you a lot. What about the other good news that you talked about?"

"I got very good leads for improving your elixir and hike the price. Making it an alcoholic tonic will fetch a higher price than a healing salve. A few of the herbs included in it are really potent, so if we collect more and extract oils and resins from them, we can include a higher quality of extracts in the final product and ask for even more. This thing, sold in slightly larger bottles could fetch six or eight grand a bottle and would be in high demand. I have the list of the things needed, which plants to collect... You will have to buy an alembic, or make one... at least one... You could create a whole brewery if you have enough people to run it, and it would make for a nice income. For the last thing, we will need to get Vesta to a place with water."

John checked his interface and noticed that the rest of the girls had followed Anna and June to the glade, which would be the perfect place for it. John led Tricia downstairs to the entrance, but rather than taking the door, he walked towards the new quad.

"This is new! Are we going to use it?" she asked.

"Yes, I got it as settlement for an old debt; it will be faster than walking. Hop on!" he invited her, patting on the seat behind him. The petite girl put a box in one of the storage bins of the quad, climbed on the big machine and hugged John from behind. Their two naked bodies were brushing against one another, and her hands closing in front of him were really close to his hard cock.

"Daphne, come with us, you could need another dip in the fountain." The slime girl climbed behind Tricia and suddenly lost her humanoid shape, extending to cover and protect the two human bodies. She had left John free enough for movement, but Tricia's hands were now pressed to the tip of his dick. Tricia was blushing and grinning awkwardly as she looked at the eerily mirrored face that had moved around to stand next to her own.

"Let's go! Hold tight!" shouted John as he revved the engine and stormed out of the castle by the front door.