The First Harem Tournament 15 – Brackets and Banter

Momo versus Delicia.

Delicia’s chances were better here than they would have been against most haremettes, especially those that saw combat regularly. As a supporter, Momo was relatively low on offensive power. Delicia, meanwhile, had access to her Chimera Blob.

In its base form, it was a rather disgusting creature. It looked like a shaved bear crossed with Gollum – a crawling thing neither humanoid nor properly animal. John usually preferred the additions to his haremette’s toolkit to be aesthetic, but perhaps there was something to be said about people not even trying to attack Delicia if they saw that thing by her side,

“How do you weigh Delicia’s chances at victory, Master?” Aclysia asked, just to get to hear his voice.

“About 20%?” John estimated. “Momo may be a support but she does have her Mind Damage and Fireflies. It’s going to be a bit of a slap fight due to their respective regenerations, which works in Momo’s favour.” The Gamer leaned forwards. “It’s largely dependent on whether or not Delicia has some kind of mutagen available that makes her competitive.”

Delicia claimed the right to spin the wheel, which shortly landed on the text ‘pumpkin patch’. An amusing battlefield, unlikely to grant either of them any form of advantage. John was almost disappointed that none of the provided pumpkins were supernaturally enormous.

“Three! Two! One! Fight!” John declared.

Feathers and fur erupted from the chimera’s skin. Skin boiled and writhed, then stretched around rapidly forming bones. Bat-like wings covered the creature's back. The head distended further, the short snout turning into a toothed beak. Black fur covered bulging muscles, short and lustrous. It diminished the uncomfortably part-human look the chimera had initially, making it entirely a thing of animal overlap. A… gargoyle of sorts.

The creature moved with impressive speed, impressive enough that John would have considered it a minor threat in any combat situation. Like him, Momo assessed the situation rapidly and threw one of her White Barriers up. The chimera’s assault met defensive magic. The barrier shattered, the creature was halted. Momo took to the air, joining several of her copies.

Thus began the game of whack-a-mole. The chimera could fly, yes, it even was faster than Momo, but there were two tools Momo had that more than made up for it. For one, Momo’s flight was more of a hover, granting her much greater manoeuvrability. Secondly, and a lot more importantly, Momo could Swap places with her Fae Maids.

While she was leading the chimera around the arena, she used her Fae Grasp Skill to curse the chimera to suffer consistent spawns of Black Fireflies next to it.

John watched it all with a fading degree of intrigue. Delicia tried to avert the inevitable outcome by launching Arc Lances at the real Momo as she found her. It really didn’t matter, Momo had both the reactive defensive spells to block them and the HP to tank them when she was surprised. Eventually, her Mind Damage would flip the chimera over to her side and then the fight would be over.

Delicia was cycling through a couple mutagens to try and avert this outcome, but nothing seemed to stick. At least her pride had her keep going and the people in the viewing area, who had no idea about the mechanics playing out, found the spectacle engaging enough.

“What are you thinking about?” John prompted the maid by his side to speak.

He expected an answer like ‘laundry’ or ‘next week’s meal plan’. “I am wondering what sort of world I want to create.” She put a hand on her stomach, a slight smile on her pink lips. “Metra and Nightingale have found a new purpose for the near future. Should I pick up another plate to spin or am I satisfied with what is currently under my purview?”

“You do a lot of things,” John pointed out. Though she had enough help from the other maids for them to retain the title, it was true that Aclysia was and always would be the primary housekeeper – and theirs was a messy house. Every surface in their house needed a wiping every day courtesy of all the fluids that were pumping and squirting about. Nymphomania at their level was not a clean affair.

That John rarely ever saw Aclysia do her chores spoke to how good she was at moving through the undercurrent of their daily routines.

“Our household, maid coordination, your academy…” he listed the short of it. “Do you feel like you have the time to do more?”

“I perhaps could…”

“But do you really have the time?” he asked again, to which she shook her head. “Then don’t peer pressure yourself into biting off more than you can chew. Nightingale is doing what she has always done, she is just shifting her priority. Metra has been spending her days training, she has plenty of time to allocate to a different task.” He smiled up at her. “You, my weaponized maid, are preciously busy with a task that I could not be more thankful for. You make our home and I would not waste your time with any less of an occupation.”

“Master…” Aclysia whispered, then promptly and intensely hugged his side. He hugged her right back, rubbing his check against hers in a silly little display of animal affection.

The fight reached its conclusion. The chimeric beast created a confused sound, turning back and forth between Momo and Delicia. Somewhat surprisingly, it refused to strike the shortstack even when fully Charmed. ‘Must be because it’s a weird mixture of a part of Delicia and not,’ the Gamer reasoned.

The ultimate conclusion was the same. Defanged, Delicia could not win and thus gave up.

___________________________________________________________________________

“Yeah, a slut like you would love sucking cock!” Momo declared.

Delicia was blushing a deep crimson, a rare look of utter shame on her face as she kept gliding back and forth on John’s cock. Hypnotism made her reluctant, everything below that surface layer had her gasping and climaxing while she choked on his dick. Delicia didn’t even have an orgasmic throat, she was just that mindlessly turned on by the scenario he had constructed.

“You must be practicing constantly when no one is looking to deepthroat a big, juicy cock like that so easily!” Momo kept mocking, her hand on the back of Delicia’s head. “Look at you. Is he that delicious? He must be, right?” An affirming, muffled scream. “Don’t answer that, you whore!” Momo shouted, jealously. “I-I mean… just keep sucking!”

John just stood there, trying not to laugh, while serving as the instrument for Delicia’s ‘punishment’. Holding his mirth back was made rather simple by the level of bliss he experienced. The situation was getting to him as well.

Once he blew his load down the taboo hole, Delicia was left an unfocused mess. Momo dragged her off the Gamer’s cock, needing to give her a proper tug so the vacuum seal of the shortstack’s lips finally broke. A pop and a cockdrunk giggle later, the alchemist collapsed to the pillows, leaving the spit-shined manhood unattended.

Momo’s hot breath played over the wet surface. She was leaning forwards, mouth open, nostrils flared, curiosity ignited. “Who would ever put such a thick… veiny… thing in their mouth…?” she whispered, getting ever closer. Her tongue stretched past her bright pink, pillowy lips. A single lick, the taste of his precum on her lips, a moment of thoughtless awe followed by her mouth closing and her paper-white face turning the colour of beetroot. “NOT ME!”

Momo jumped to her feet and sprinted for the exit. Something told John that she was going to find one of the dildos inspired by his manhood and jam it down her throat while fingering herself furiously.

Just an educated guess.

__________________________________________________________________________

There were two more fights for the day. First was Beatrice versus Salamander. After that it was Metra versus Ehtra. Both had clear favourites. John was hoping for a bit of a tossup somewhere in the tournament, if only because it would make things a bit more interesting. Salamander and Ehtra both had chances bigger than zero, though John had very little hope for Salamander. Not only did Beatrice have no chill at all, she also had Fire Immunity, so… that would make matters difficult.

At least with Metra and Ehtra, John could conceivably believe that Metra would be sportsmanlike and give the win to Ehtra based on performance. Then again, Ehtra was the type to refuse such pittance.

‘I am just happy that no fight went to Fateweaving so far,’ the Gamer thought. It spoke to his women knowing when to quit.

John currently sat with the ankle of his left leg resting atop his right knee. It was a simple way to communicate that he was trying to have a sexless second. Courtesy of his youthful vigour, the surrounding moans were enough for him to maintain an erection, something he did not want acted on.

In front of him was a laptop, placed on top of a movable desk thingy he used so he didn’t have to place the device on his lap. Both of his hands were on the armrests, letting his mind do the typing as he laid out basic ideas for the structure of the imperial court. Nightingale was going to organize it, but he should have a suggestion for it at the minimum.

“You are struggling?” Lee asked.

“How do you figure?”

“Bro, you keep writing five words then deleting ten.”

“…Can you stick to ‘dude’?”

“Why, dude? Is that your whole incestophobia flaring up?”

“Yes – and it's not a phobia. It’s a perfectly reasonable dislike to have. It quite literally poisons the genepool.”

“Would you still be against it if you had a Perk that assured you it wouldn’t happen?” Lee poked his cheek. “I know what you do when we play Crusader Kings.”

John rolled his eyes. “I don’t wish for it, so it won’t happen,” he responded plainly. “Hard rule: no relationships between first cousins or closer relations.”

The idea that this could happen gave John the heebie-jeebies, but when one started 30-ish imperial houses, one had to take certain precautions. Even he wasn’t so possessed by the idea of preventing intermarriages that he would cry out whenever two people descended from him ended up together. There would be many children and even more grandchildren. It was inevitably going to happen.

Thankfully he had a minimum of 38 years before he had to contend with it.

“Or are you going to stand there and defend cousin marriages?” John turned the conversation back on Lee.

“Nope,” the Lady of Shifting Dimensions immediately gave in. “So, what’s messing with your brain?”

“I am contemplating where exactly to put the imperial court into my little government chart,” he explained. “Technically, the ‘Emperor’s Court’ is already there under the Judiciary, but that was honestly pretty underdefined before. Judges are a difficult thing to solve. You need them, but you also need them to be good…” He shook his head. “Not the problem at hand. If the imperial court is to be a proper institution, it needs a place in the hierarchy.”

Lee hummed and looked over his shoulder, scanning the current version of their governmental flowchart.

“Yeah, I don’t think you can solve that,” Lee said. “This whole chart is built around the idea that you have separation of power, which we do not anymore. No separation, no neat columns.” The gamer girl stopped just short of touching the screen as she gestured. “Your court would be sort of above the cabinet but also part of the judiciary and assumedly you will announce new laws there that you push into being by decree, so it's also the legislature.”

“I suppose the most accurate way to do this would be to just rename the field with my name in it to ‘Emperor John Newman and his court’,” John mumbled, “but that then also sends the message that the power is invested in the court and not just me, so let’s not do that. I suppose this chart is accurate enough.”

He closed that window fully, maximizing the Word program that had been open next to it. “And now you are back to failing to come up with ideas on what proper court procedure should be?”

“Basically…” John groaned. “Part of me is still struggling with the idea that I aggrandize myself to the point that I have all the power. It feels conceited. Simultaneously, wouldn’t it be moral cowardice from me to shy away from absolute power for my own comfort?” He sighed, haunted by echoes of philosophical questions that would be forever heard in the halls of history. “Anyway, so I am thinking that there should be levels of importance, right?”

“Right?” Lee responded in a way that only indicated that she was listening, not that she understood.

“Most court sessions, let’s say I hold them once a week, will not be very important. Basically, there’ll be some regulars and then whoever needs an arbitration that day – say two governors are in a dispute. In those cases, the court would need very little procedure, since it’s just business as usual.”

“Right.” Lee nodded, now getting what he was talking about. “And then you’d have big events, let’s call it an imperial diet… wow, you copied that idea fast.”

John bolded and underlined the words ‘imperial diet’. “It’s a good name – continue.”

“So, you have that when you summon people to the court to make a big announcement or whatever.”

“And those should have some splendour and ritual and all of that,” John further elaborated on the idea. “Those should be held… probably at least once a year, just to remind people that the capital exists. And then I would like to have a level above that for really great events… an… imperial conclave, perhaps?”

“That sounds important.”

“Then it's sounding correctly.” John put a period at the end of the sentence. “Thanks for the help.”

“I don’t study history for nothing.”

“Is that what we call ‘playing Paradox games for six hours straight while watching podcasts’ now?”

“You’re just jealous because you don’t get to do that.”

“Careful, you’re teasing the reason why you get to do that.”

And on and on the banter went.