‘Well, it’s basically a worse version of Nathalia’s scales,’ John caught himself thinking when he had finished reading the Attributes. Immediately, his mind turned to longing for the dragon goddess. How long had it been now? Six months? He and Nathalia had been separated for longer now than they had practically known each other. Yet, still, the clenching in his chest about her not being around was as strong as ever. ‘I definitely fall in love too easily… fell, I should say…’

In recent months, contact with new women had seldom struck that same cord that still resonated in his feelings for his already present harem. Only Scarlett and Beatrice had really scratched that particular itch, with the latter being arguable whether she counted or not, considering her origin. John guessed that he now had compensated for all the non-parental love he had never gotten enough that his spirit was getting somewhat in balance.

Didn’t change that he still felt so strongly for Nathalia, and he wasn’t even quite sure why. Handling the goddess of volcanoes had always been a massive pain, given her tendency to lord over everything and everyone around, demand attention, affection and all kinds of treats. Was it just her curves he was attracted to? Certainly, her body and wild Libido were a big bonus point for a pervert of John’s level, but that couldn’t be it alone.

That wasn’t it alone.

Because, beyond all of her threats and demands, she had been adorable and just as flawed as the rest of them. Powerful, beautiful, wild, a true goddess of a pre-civilizational age, following her desires, desires that happened to culminate in him. She chose him and he, well, he chose her as well on some level. It would be more accurate to say that, for both of them, their subconscious made the decision that they had found someone that was special.

John had to admit that the feelings he had for Nathalia were a bit more whimsical on where they started. It wasn’t the bright love he felt for Rave from where they had started and where they had gone together. Not the well-founded feelings he shared with Aclysia, who he had grown together with. Not the mental connection he, quite literally, shared with his elementals. Not even the adoration he felt for Eliza, itself founded in the desire to help her, no matter what it took.

The feelings for Nathalia had just sprung up when he looked into her eyes. Those spheres of orange and gold. He had seen her, not for the first time, but for the first time deeper than just a horny force of nature. What he found, what he barely understood, it had captivated him. Before he knew it, that feeling called love had been hammering in his chest.

‘I really fell in love easily…’ John chuckled to himself, holding onto these feelings. Even if her not being there made that a bittersweet experience, he still wanted to see her again. He wanted to know more about her than the little he did. Wanted to feel more of her, hear more of her, be a part of her life she could rely on. ‘Which is entirely why she left to let me get stronger…’ he thought, still not agreeing with that decision, but also still understanding it.

He forced his mind to move on from this. The scale in his hand weighed heavy. As long as he continued to get stronger, he would one day see her again, that was the promise. When the Horned Rat came in a few days, maybe he could tickle some information about Nathalia out of him. That remained to be seen.

‘Most of the Attributes aren’t all that useful but… Fire Immunity does have its advantages,’ he thought and ultimately presented the scale to Beatrice to eat. He had held off giving her Fire Immunity when he had the choice before. He had thought Elemental Resistance 7 to be good enough across the board and given her Acid Resistance 4 instead. Whether he had been right or wrong about that was debatable, it had been an experiment in part, but it was doubtless that Fire Immunity was better in their current circumstances.

Wordlessly, Beatrice devoured the inanimate object. It took some time, but with Baelementium teeth, most things could be chomped down, given enough enthusiasm. Once she had swallowed the last of it, that prompted a window.

He picked yes and then the Windgester Rose. It had been a placeholder until he found something useful anyway and 5% all Physical Stats, while a bit dull, was definitely useful. “Alright, next item on the list, getting items,” John announced, and they soon went into an Arena I.D. to grind out some loot.

It wasn’t an optimized effort, since John hadn’t run through any Instant Dungeons of this batch, aside from the Capture one, yet. As such, he didn’t know which one was the best dungeon to grind through for Loot purposes.

However, the Catch-Up Buff made that decision a bit easier. Since loot was increased for bosses specifically by 300%, it was easy to reason that he would get the most loot in the smallest amount of time from the place where they fought numerous bosses consecutively.

They made a total of four runs, two in the Troll and two in the Steampunk Arena respectively. Three on the same day as they had killed the first Dragonkin and one the next morning. When John had reached another level, he decided that they should check out the Loot Basin.

‘Legendary drop chance is doubled, but it still must be rather small…’ he thought, finding the corresponding area of the dimensional warehouse to be empty. Although that was disappointing, he did get something out of the whole thing outside of a bunch of items for the Artificial Spirits to wolf down and powerlevel with.

It was a pair of shoes from the Steampunk dungeon. They had the kind of leathery brown colour that John associated with his grandfather, for some reason. Aside from that, they were top notch, polished meticulously, with a sole that was apparently nailed in place. The smooth, copper-coloured heads along the rim weren’t the only thing unusual about the sole though, as there were a number of small holes all across.

As the Artificial Spirits ate, John modified the shoes a little bit. There had been an unused Attribute space on it, so he just put an All Stats +1% on there for that little bit extra usage. That took all the effort of pressing a button, but he then also had to wait for 20 minutes before Create spat the shoes back out of whatever pocket dimension it stored items in while it was working on them.

The shoes had been the last on his priority list of things getting replaced, but they were on the list regardless. They had just all-around good Attributes. Acid Resistance was something John always wanted, the Stats already on it were pretty good, if flat bonuses. Personally, John preferred percentage increases to his Stats, because that made it easier to justify them sticking around. The really interesting thing on them was Steam Step though, which was an activatable Attribute that would unleash a burst of steam from the soles, allowing him to fly a little distance. It had a 24 hour cooldown between uses, but John always liked things that increased his air manoeuvrability.

“Master, we have finished our meals,” Aclysia reported, and John checked out their Consumption levels. Maxed out and ready, just as he liked it.

“Alright then, Aclysia, Beatrice, I am going to raise your Mental Stats with these points,” John told them. As he had 75 of them at hand for each of them, that would make quite the difference. “For Beatrice specifically, because I think her decision-making process is good, but a bit too slow and could stand to be expanded to take in a bit more information. While that is going to help generally with you too, Aclysia, the main reason why I do this is to avoid future mind control incidents.”

The mirror shield that had been used to control Aclysia at the Little Maryland fight had made John aware that they were, still, objects animated by magic. Increasing their mental fortifications should help against things like that and it wasn’t like Intellect and Wisdom were dead Stats on them. They could stand some boosting in their resource department, particularly Beatrice, who relied so heavily on getting a lot of Swing to spend and built up Reverse.

He explained this to them due to the habit of letting his Artificial Spirits suggest what they wanted changed themselves, but that was an offer Beatrice never and Aclysia seldom took. Momo had been the one to get in on her own Stat distribution, more often than not. This was not an exception to the rule, both maids accepting his suggestion with a solidary nod. Moments later, he had spent points on both of them.

For Aclysia, an extra 25 in Intellect and an extra 50 in Wisdom.

It more than doubled her Devotion maximum. Which was good, but not the world. Devotion was always spent in its entirety when she used one of her spells. Those were generally quite powerful, so it made sense to limit the weaving of different skills together into some sort of combo. The most important thing was, likely, that the maximal duration for Master’s Shield was up from about 10 seconds to roughly 20.

‘She could stand to gain some offensive spenders,’ John found as he thought about Aclysia’s combat abilities. Her natural resource regeneration was absolute crap, but it allowed her to enter each fight on a full resource bar. Right now her only spenders were Fortification, a defensive spell that increased her body hardness by 1% for each Devotion spent, and Master’s Shield, a five-metre radius taunt that lasted for Devotion spent divided by 10 seconds. Opening every fight with Master’s Shield wasn’t the greatest thing. ‘Then again, if she has an offensive spender, that just saps all Devotion from her at the start of the fight, then Master’s Shield won’t be as effective when we need it… yeah, this is difficult.’

She also had the Servant’s Vigour passive that reduced all cooldowns for Devotion generation skills, being currently Cutting Flurry (60 seconds, up to 15% DV generation) and Servant Strike (30 seconds, 5% DV), by 0,25% for each 1% Devotion spent. That wasn’t affected by any Stat gains though, since it was based on percentage. Only spenders truly profited from higher Devotion. There was also no drawback to raising it though, since all generation was also percentage based.

‘I am probably going to avoid doing it further in the future though,’ John decided. If Aclysia needed more Wisdom to defend against mind control effects, he would obviously invest it, but otherwise, it seemed better to further increase her Physical Stats. “How do you feel?” he asked, curious.

“More… grounded?” Aclysia responded, a little bit confused. “More in control of myself and better able to discern information. I feel no less lust for you, my master, but I also seem to control it completely now.”

Aclysia’s Libido had always been quite high thanks to all of the bonuses she had on it. This must have been the first time in forever that her Wisdom was considerably higher than her Libido. Not that it was a problem, it had been a good equilibrium recently.

“Perhaps I will be able to stop taking masturbating breaks while cleaning the showers now…” the weaponized maid mumbled, and John’s mind immediately jumped to seeing the weaponized maid, lathered with soap and water, with her finger in her crotch as she moaned his name. Aclysia noticed that train of thought and suggested, “I can film it for you, Master, or better, you are welcome to watch, I always hope you do.”

“We might have to do that later,” John said, turning to Beatrice for the moment.

For her, after some consideration, he put all 75 points into Wisdom. While he had said he wanted to increase her information gathering capability, and that would have been Intellect as well, Wisdom was the more useful Stat for her.

Intellect increased the Reverse maximum, one extra for each 25 Intellect. Since a Reverse was gained whenever she had spent 100 Swing, it wasn’t that great to get extra points there before she had the Swing regeneration to take advantage of her current cap. Right now, she only had two spells anyway. Unsteady Limb, which moved a limb along its current path at a speed several times of what her Agility normally allowed, 1 centimetre for each Swing spent, and Twist Position, which caused her to teleport/dash in an unblocked direction for the same number of metres that she spent Reverse on it. Unlike Devotion, she could spend however much Swing or Reverse she wanted on her spells.

As Swing was hard-capped at 100, she was encouraged to keep spending her resources as she got them. Increasing the speed at which she got them, then, was quite vital. ‘Mhm,’ John pondered over the increase he had seen and made a few quick calculations. ‘It went up from 0,1 per Wisdom to 0,125 per Wisdom. Not too surprising, actually, that’s incredibly low for getting through the 50, 75 and 100 points each. If I assume it gets boosted to 0,14 at 250, she will need 467 base Wisdom, or 712 with all current bonuses calculated dependently, to get a regeneration of just over 100 Swing per second.’

That was a bit of a tall order to keep dumping into the Stat, especially given her current, low array of spell choices. Better to keep going for Agility, after he had gotten her Intellect up to 50 to up her situational awareness a little. Future spells and passives may change that perception.

‘I do wonder what will happen when she gets to over 100 Swing regeneration though… I do assume some Perk to increase the cap is going to appear at least shortly before then. Maybe it switches to Swing per millisecond? Maybe Gaia will adjust the Stat scaling so that getting through some threshold with both Mental Stats increases the Swing cap to 200? Would be like her to patch something like that in when the need arises. Ah, well, future questions.’

He closed the Stat Screen and stretched. “Alright, everyone, time to continue the Raid,” he announced.