Leisurely Grinding

“And with that, you are done for the day,” Ehtra stated.

John laughed loudly. It wasn’t like the First of Hatred to deliver a joke of this variety, which made it even funnier. One of her finely swung eyebrows rose contemptuously at his outburst. That made him giggle more. Then, the mirth got stuck in his throat. “Wait… you’re serious?”

“I follow the school of Lydia when it comes to paperwork,” the grey angel responded, placing her left hand on her lusciously swung hip. “I do not joke about it.”

John looked at the empty desk in front of him, then checked his email. The ‘Unread’ part of his inbox portrayed a tiny 0. He blinked a couple of times. “Huh?” he made his confusion known.

“Do you really need it explained to you, Master creature?” Ehtra asked.

“I think I do, because I feel I am dreaming.”

“You devolved executive power,” she told him flatly. “Your proxies are answering questions before they reach you. Rejoice, my emperor, you are finally experiencing the joy of being a true sovereign. Problems will only be escalated to you if they require it.”

John wrinkled his forehead. He quite doubted that. More likely, this was Ehtra’s romanticized view of the monarchical incentive structure. Before, those in middle management had every reason to pass their problems as far up the chain as they could. Either they would have their problems solved with the most resources available or they could pin the blame of something not having been done on a higher authority. Additionally, because John had been previously, at least legally, beholden to the legislature, those who contacted him weren’t the enforcers of the laws but the writers of it. People that only had to act in the realm of theories were always chattier.

Now, with the separation of powers greatly diminished, all of those legislators had local instalments of John’s sovereign authority they could turn to. Well, not ‘all’ all, but enough of them in the most important areas of the country. Between the viceroys John had already made and the lesser nobles that his haremettes were elevating from their inner circles, there was enough extra-judicial authority out there to whack problems over the head.

Which was its own can of worms. John refused to succumb to the illusion that this was strictly better. There were no solutions to anything, only trade-offs. Previously, he was dealing with all of the problems brought to him with an even hand. Now, the country was carpeted in a mosaic of different degrees of competency.

Putting aside the question of better and worse, what was really happening was simply that John now had executive middlemen who were happiest when they DID NOT have to escalate it to him. If they managed to resolve things locally, they got the prestige for solving it and they did not have to suffer the potential shaming of bothering the emperor with trivial affairs. Again, a potential problem in the future. Eventually, there would be a noble that refused to report something bad for the sake of his reputation.

Tale as old as authority.

All the same, John now found himself without any work. It had happened here and there before, but usually there was something he could still do, some backlog of lesser issues or a second folder of matters deemed low priority. Nothing of the sort here. It was the later afternoon of a Tuesday and he was simply finished with his work.

“I feel weird,” John confessed.

“For the love of the Lady, hon’, just take the win,” Hailey complained.

John leaned back until the country gal and her squished tits came into view. Even while she rolled her eyes, his cock was made to wiggle left to right between her cupped breasts. “I can feel a little lost without work, it’s a legitimate feeling,” he told her.

“I get ya, sug’r, but ya gotta know when ya won the jackpot.”

“I know that every morning,” John remarked. “Have I gotten used to the blowjobs? Yes. Will I ever stop thanking the heavens for waking up to getting my dick wet? I better not.”

“Right attitude to have.” Hailey gave the protruding head of his cock a quick kiss before resuming the rise and fall of her breasts, this time in unison. The valley of her deep cleavage was slick with the juices of the half hour of service already rendered. “How about ya go grindin’?” she suggested. “Just a Floor Dungeon?”

John hummed deeply. It had been a bit since he had done a Dungeon just for leisure. Moira had suggested it on Hawaii just a couple days ago, but in the end, he had gotten glued to a new EU4 campaign and forgotten the time. He was of half a mind to continue that instead. Between gaming and grinding, the choice was quite difficult…

The mental image of his parents flashed before his mind, lying in the mouldy bathroom. It was only a moment, but it was enough to both make the decision for him and to rob him of any enjoyment he had for the breasts wrapped around his dick.

“Everythin’ ok?” Hailey asked, immediately noticing the change in his body language.

“Just got an intrusive reminder of what I lost.” The short explanation was all Hailey needed to stop what she was doing. John hated to give Izha yet another win, letting the tragedy the nihilist had inflicted onto the Gamer ruin such a good thing, but when the mood was gone, that was that. He was already deflating. Forcing the issue would not have felt good. “Sorry.”

“Ain’t your fault.” Hailey’s empathetic drawl did lift his spirits considerably.

“A bit of leisurely grinding is a good idea.” John took the towel from Ehtra before the grey angel could clean his dick for him. “I haven’t reached the soft cap yet, so I should take the opportunity to make some progress.”

Ehtra and Hailey both nodded, the latter busy cleaning herself up with her own towel. They trusted him not to spiral into a pathological need for power. He had been down that route before, when he had grinded in preparation to face Thana. Though humans tended to repeat the same errors, John was fairly inoculated against that one.

[Author’s Note: Tiny immersion break here: I did done goofed and, apparently, forgot to remove a -10% Mana Regeneration Efficiency debuff from some Overclock drawback from John. No idea when, nor when it should have timed out. I fixed it now. John would have realized in-universe, so this is a small plot hole. My apologies]

‘Now is as good a time as ever to invest another level in the Lover, I suppose,’ John thought. He had three Class Levels available and it was ready. He was about to call them all anyway. He dropped them a warning message first.

John: Going to open a video call about doing a little grinding session. Also getting Level 9 on Lover.

That done, he pressed the button to start an open session. The Harem Comms were really nifty, allowing people to just hang out in rooms or make direct calls.

Most of the harem dropped in within ten seconds. There was a positive cascade of greetings, proverbially falling over each other and then laughing at the chaos. Lydia, Metra, Lyndell and Beatrice all announced that they would not join courtesy of being busy. Momo elected to just walk from her office into John’s instead.

“I’ll just do the Perk first,” John announced. “Get that out of the way.”

“Go for it,” Jane encouraged.

“A 9th Perk.” Scarlett pressed the whiskey glass in her hand against Delicia’s boob, making everyone watch while the alchemist milked a fresh serving from her huge mammaries. “It better be good.”

Ehtra leaned into the ‘camera’ aimed at John. “…Red, don’t you dare talk normally while you are guzzling tit-whiskey.”

“But there is nothing weird about that! Absolute nothing! Not even the slightest bit!” Sylph defended the technomancer immediately. “I suck on Sally’s boobs and Undine’s boobs and even Scarlett’s boobs all the time!”

“But you’re not drinking tit-whiskey,” Ehtra responded sourly.

“I would though! So would you! Don’t you lie to me, you are a pervy angel with sinful thoughts! You must have had some sip from the Delicia bar!”

“I—you---”

“Confess!”

“She got you there,” Salamander weighed in when Ehtra just stammered. “Come on, who here honestly hasn’t used Delicia as their personal tap when the opportunity arose?”

“And if you lie, I am outing you,” the shortstack alchemist added with a smug smirk.

The silence was as loud as the hammering of a mating press.

John pressed the Class Level Up button.

“Well… no need to have called you all for this one,” John commented. The choice was so blindingly obvious that he didn’t even wait for the others to weigh in. ‘Towards Infinity, together’ was head and shoulders above the rest. Sure, it offered no immediate benefit, but it offered endless benefits beyond that. Nemesis was both a Perk for a scenario where he had already lost and, in a world where he had the actual Nemesis in his harem, entirely unnecessary. Lady Vengeance could just set a target. As for Supreme Great Harem Palace, the last thing John needed in his life was more luxury.

“Alrighty, so what was this about doing a little grinding?” Jane asked.

“If we are conversing about combat, I will take my leave,” Aclysia intervened.

“Yeah, same,” Eliana added. “Not that I could join in the grinding session, even if I wasn’t preggers.”

“Eliana makes complete sense, but ya gonna be that careful about it, Aclysia?” Jane asked. “Actually, scratch that, I just imagined myself three days pregnant getting caught in the stomach by some… sunflower rhino or something.”

Aclysia, Eliana and Nathalia all visibly winced at the implication, each putting a hand on their stomach. John was similarly cringing in his seat. Any implication that his children were harmed in any state of their development was cutting deeper than he had imagined. ‘Truly, parenthood is an entirely different stage of life,’ he thought.

“Not gonna comment on that again,” Jane added, noting everyone’s discomfort. “See ya three later?”

“You will not be able to keep me from my nightly orgy,” Nathalia declared, before closing the window. Eliana and Aclysia followed in short measure. After that, the non-combatants of the harem bowed out as well. Scarlett included herself in that category, to mild ridicule.

That left in the call, either directly or by being near someone who was: Jane, Gnome, Salamander, Undine, Sylph, Momo, Nia, Siena, Claire, Hailey, Ehtra, Nahoa and Fianna.

“Uhm, short question to my fellow elementals,” Gnome spoke up. “Do any of you need to partake in this or are we still good for tea?”

“Tea is more important,” Undine stated.

“Yup, yup, we must discuss the deep intricacies of our personal lives and such things!” Sylph declared. “All elementals must be there! I have decreed it!”

“You don’t give me fucking orders,” Salamander growled, then tilted back on her black throne. As per usual, she was in her ‘evil’ fortress. “But yeah, let’s stick with tea.”

“I will be drinking a different type of liquid entirely,” Siena moaned.

“…Alright, we get it, you pseudo-succubus, you are horny!” Salamander groaned. “Anyway, we’ll drop out as well then?”

“Y-yeah,” the leader of the elementals stammered, then bravely closed the window first. The other four followed up shortly.

Already the group was getting a lot more compact. “So,” John got to the actual matter, “I was thinking of doing a leisurely grinding session. Just one or two hours spent clearing as many Floors as we get done… so probably just one, two maximum. Anyone interested?”

“If y’all don’t mind draggin’ me around,” Hailey was the first to answer, “I could stand a lil’ thrill tonight.”

“I think that shouldn’t be a problem,” John said. Though Hailey didn’t have any combat abilities, she did have that ice armour to keep herself protected enough that he could pull the Escape Rope if it came to it – which was unlikely in the first place. Floor Dungeons were still challenging enough to demand proper attention, but it was a ‘base game’ mechanic. As it was so often with those, it had scaled poorly in both difficulty and reward, making it something only really engaged in for leisure or if John did not have the time, resources or confidence to run either Assaults or Raids.

“We haven’t done one of these in forever, there’s no way I’m gonna miss it!” Jane declared her intention to join – which was hardly surprising.

“I maintain the interest I voiced a couple of days ago,” Moira said.

Ehtra cleared her throat. “After dealing with idiots all day, I wouldn’t mind slicing something either.”

That already put them at five people total. It was the standard party size in John’s mind, but there was no rule that confined them to it. The Instant Dungeon would scale all the same. “Momo, what about you?”

“I was going to join if few or no one else did, but you got that covered,” she said. “I’ll go do some more research.”

“Nia, Claire, Nahoa, Fianna?” he called on the remaining four women one after another. Nia just shook her head, the other three gave their rationale verbally.

“I will spend this time checking on the Oklahoma property instead.”

“I got some more planning to do for tomorrow.”

“I am going through Nightfall applicants.”

Hailey perked up when she heard Claire mention her home state. “Can ya swing by my parents, just checkin’ on how they’re doin’? I gave paw-paw a call yesterday, but he can be more stubborn than a hog on a public street.”

“Will do,” Claire promised.

She and her fellow non-participants dropped from the call. Momo stretched and left the room at her own pace. To those that remained, John said, “Alright, meeting in fifteen minutes at the I.D. Gate.”

It was time to have fun with basic gameplay.