Chapter 270 – The Fluff Strikes Back 2 – Content Drought

“So, I have decided to not grind today, what happened this morning was enough action for a day,” John informed his gathered elementals, Aclysia still under his arm. The artificial guardian wasn’t just snuggled up to him, she was hugging him with the intense loving that only a weaponized housemaid could provide.

This was about an hour (and a threesome with Aclysia and Gnome) later. Lydia and Undine had returned, the former quickly on her way again to issue a formal apology to the owner of the city, Romulus himself. This was actually after an insisting message from Luna, so there was a high likelihood that he knew what was going on or, at least, had a rough idea.

In the short while that Lydia had been back, however, John had gotten the green light to build this arena Aclysia had suggested. Lydia rather liked the idea, since that would mean they would stop training on the lawn – and tearing holes into it. In preparation for this, Gnome had flattened the area. The formerly ploughed looking ground was now nice, even and compacted, perfect to be built upon.

“How boring,” Siena sighed. “I was hoping to relieve some tension.” Evidently, the shadow spirit was intending to just gloss over everything that happened and continue as per usual. He had other plans.

“Which reminds me about your needed punishment,” John said and reached into his inventory. He pulled out a violin case, with everything needed to learn the instrument inside, and reached it towards Siena.

She did not take it. “I am in disagreement that I deserve further punishment,” Siena nonchalantly stated, looking at her claws; “Cleaning was already degrading enough.”

 “Well, too bad for you that I don’t care what you think,” John reprimanded her, “I agree with you that Undine is the one that ultimately pulled the trigger, but talking her into it still warrants some major punishment. That aside, you keep being a thorn in my side. If you want me to stop forcing things on you, you could always stop giving me reasons to do so.”

“Fine then,” Siena hissed, knowing that she had no way out now that John had made up his mind; “So what is this punishment? Am I supposed to clean this some more?”

“Nope, you are going to learn this,” he answered; “How is that supposed to be a punishment? Well, you are not allowed to torture anything, physically or mentally, even a bit until I am pleased with what you can fiddle for me.”

He put particular weight on the ‘I am pleased’ part here for the simple reason that Siena would hate it. If there was one thing the nightmare elemental didn’t want to do, it was doing things for other people’s sake. Maybe. John wasn’t entirely sure about that read anymore. On the surface Siena was an egocentric sadist, but there was a conviction there that her way of doing things was genuinely for the best for the people she cared about.

In any case, having her learn an instrument and practice until John was happy with her while also taking away her usual source of entertainment seemed like a good idea in his mind.

What if she actually enjoyed fiddling? Then John was happy that she finally found an outlet for her boredom that didn’t involve slowly pushing a knife through someone’s leg. It was an unusual punishment. He would win either way.

“You can’t be serious,” Siena said, dumbfounded.

“I am absolutely serious, I even made it a rule. Now, go practice, I don’t need you for what is next,” John shooed her away with a wave of his hand. Disgruntled, Siena walked away, not even able to dip into the shadows as the violin wouldn’t come with her.

“I don’t think you need me for this stuff either, do you?” Salamander asked. “Because I am burning to make fun of her while she tries to produce a sound that is acceptable.” There was a short pause, then the fire spirit cackled, “Ha, burning… Ah, I love accidental puns.”

“I mean sure… I don’t need you either for that matter, Sylph,” John told them.

Sylph, who had been covering Aclysia in a constant stream of words in the background, now turned to John. “Roger, roger,” she mimed the Star Wars robot. “Will go talk to Siena, a lot, I am sure she will value all of the constructive criticism I will give her. I will listen and eat a gummy bear. And popcorn. Can I have popcorn? Please, I want popcorn! That’s just what you need when watching a movie, I think, I actually never had popcorn. I had corn and I had pop, lots and lots of pop, but no popcorn. Also…”

“Just come this way, airhead,” Salamander sighed, grabbing the continuously talking air elemental by the hand and guiding their flight after Siena.

John hadn’t even suggested Sylph to go there, but the tempest elemental was already on her way, and Siena deserved whatever punishment she could get. Therefore, he didn’t correct her and just let the two of them go, leaving him with Gnome and Undine.

The former was still as red as a tomato from the earlier incident, while the water spirit looked straightforward. Her eyes might not have rested on Siena, but John knew, without even looking into the ocean elemental’s mind, that her attention lay with the shadow spirit. The question of what punishment awaited her was boiling hot in her mind.

John was about to put her at ease. “Undine, I have decided to let you off the hook,” he announced.

“What?” the water spirit was shocked, to say the least; “But… all of this was my fault.”

“Oh yes, the fact that you just refused to come to me with your problems, decided to instead nose-dive into the improbable solution of not getting corrupted, and then instead rampaged across this island as you were slowly getting eaten away at by Lorylim matter was absolutely your fault,” John agreed, rubbing everything into Undine’s face for one more time.

Undine cast down her gaze as a wave of guilt radiated from her, along with slight annoyance. It seemed the water spirit was about to reach the state of ‘I get it already’, in hearing about her own failures. She was also getting annoyed with herself because she was getting annoyed with him because she felt like she deserved a bit more punishment. Which then only bothered her more. Complicated feelings were bothering her.

“But!” he continued. “I see that you are beating yourself up over it. As long as you keep trying to communicate with us better than you did before, I see no reason to torment you with it anymore. It was a horrid affair, and we should do our best to live, learn and move on.”

John didn’t even realize that he was quoting his girlfriend’s motto until he had already said it.

‘How dare that beautiful piece of butt have that profound an impact on me! What did she ever do to me, aside from saving my life, turning me into a way more confident person, staying by my side, be sexy as hell and provide me with a good life motto… note to self: treat Jane like a princess when you next see her.’

The surface of Undine rippled, her whole-body swirling like water around a turbine. Her golden eyes cast down, she looked up; John, now knowing that she was blind, actually noticed that her gaze was slightly off. Feelings wrestled inside her. Guilt, love, anger, embarrassment, self-consciousness and, finally, happiness. None of them won. Then she launched herself at John. Ripped back by the sudden assault, John found himself on the ground covered in a lukewarm, slimy hug.

“You are… the best summoner… I could ask for,” Undine whispered, forcing herself to use words instead of feelings. She ultimately failed, and her lips refused to form any more sounds, instead letting her open spirit allow John to directly touch her inner self, which did the talking for her. John just kept lying there, not only because he wanted to let the water spirit to cuddle him, if that is what she wanted to do, but also because it was warm and cosy underneath her embrace.

Undine’s increased powers had several nice side effects. For a start, she could regulate her body temperature to a much finer degree. She couldn’t turn herself into a boiling steam cloud or anything, but she could be nice and lukewarm, as she was right now. That made being underneath her much more preferable to standing in the cold winter air.

Another thing was that, as an ocean elemental, she primarily used saltwater. She could turn that off though, so that was a good thing. John wouldn’t have wanted to find salt crusts everywhere.

“Actually, I have one idea what you could do to repay me!” John uttered with joking intent. “You could get back into your old habit of being my pillow.”

“…Was I comfortable?” Undine asked, only her upper body clearly visible within the blue mass currently spread all over John.

Her face was pretty close to his, within kissing distance to be exact. Which he relentlessly abused, meeting her lips in a short peck before he answered. A flare went through Undine’s spirit as the sudden warmth on her lips spread a prickling through her body. John pulled back his lips.

“Comfortable? That’s not even close! You are the most wonderful pillow ever, the exact right mixture of softness and firmness, squishy enough to comfortably rest on but also solid enough to not sink in until your head hits the mattress,” John informed her.

“I will be most happy to be your pillow again, then,” Undine answered and graced him with a small smile on her translucent lips.

“Why did you even stop?” John wondered, “You always seemed to like doing that, then you just stayed in the bathroom all the time.”

The water spirit turned her golden eyes away from him, “That is of no importance.”

She said that but a feeling of slight anger with him radiated from her. Previously, she would have shielded that thought. “Don’t be like that,” John groaned. “Just tell me what is bothering you, don’t let me guess around as you pout. We just went over this.”

“…The list…” Undine mumbled.

For a moment, John was confused, then he got what she meant. “The list about who I like the most? That stupid thing?” he asked in a disbelieving manner.

‘It wasn’t stupid to me,’ Undine spoke in his mind, too uncomfortable to speak about this loudly anymore; ‘I thought you didn’t like me anymore…’

‘It was a list I wrote in the heat of the moment, and I explicitly stated that I still loved all of you!’ John answered mentally as well. A breeze went through his mind as he sighed, ‘But if being placed low on that stupid list hurt you, I am sorry. I want all of you in my life. A list was a bad way of showing… anything.’

He tried to hug her back, but as she was currently covering all of him, he wasn’t exactly sure what to wrap his arms around. After stopping that awkward endeavour, he just let Undine sniff around in his memories and test the earnesty of these claims.

She was rougher about it than the other elementals ever were, flooding into his mind like water through a broken dam. Filling and inspecting every nook and cranny of that memory, until there was nothing left. The tumultuous waves of her spirit slowly became still, then she ebbed out of his memories.

While not satisfied, which annoyed her more than anyone else, Undine was content with what she found. She pulled herself together, quite literally, until John was able to stand up with her as a sort of body suit wrapped around him.

With his superhuman strength, the extra weight she presented was easily handled. He wasn’t at a point where he could lift people without even feeling it, like Thana who could probably lift a car with one hand, but he was strong enough to not be particularly bothered. Now on his feet, Undine keeping him insulated like a full body glove, he was actually reminded of something.

“Now that you are Tier 4… shouldn’t you be able to turn into an item, like Copernicus? Also do that Unleashing thing?” John asked. Undine’s head, situated right next to his, wrapped around him as she was, nodded.

“I should; I am aware of how to do this… kind of instinctively,” she admitted, feelings of understanding and slight confusion reaching John.

He knew that combination all too well, having been subjected to numerous occasions where he just learned how to do things. Basically, every time he got a new Skill, he felt like that. Skills levelling up were more of a gradual increasing of that knowledge and less noticeable.

“Okay, let’s try this then, Gnome!”

“Y-yes?” the stone elemental jumped into action. “Let’s build that arena!”

“A-as you wish,” she answered, and they went to work. John wanted to create a small version of the colosseum, but he was soon faced with the reality of the situation that neither time, space, nor materials allowed anything that grand.

If he wanted to build something here, he needed to create the earth himself, which was way more mana intensive. Using the earth from the surrounding area would have ended with a quickly erected, grand structure, but would also lead to a very awkward depression in the ground.

Therefore, as was often the case in building games, John had to go for something more realistic. With the arena scratched, John decided to make it a simple square on the ground. For decorative purposes, they made it marble white and out of smaller squares. They had no illusions about it surviving as much as an earnest kick from anyone who was going to fight on it, but still. They finished it up by adding decorative pillars to the edges.

‘This kind of looks like the ring from that green bug thing from Dragonball… Cell, that’s the name,’ John acted like he had to ponder for a minute.

It was hard to forget stuff with 100 Intellect and over 200 Wisdom. It wasn’t impossible, and he hadn’t reached picture perfect memory, but most of the things he learned stuck around.

‘I wonder if perfect memory is a Skill, actually,’ John thought as he inspected the ring; ‘My memory didn’t get that much better from 50 upwards, puzzle solving and logic got way better by comparison.’ “This looks good,” he finally announced and tapped whatever of Undine was on his shoulder. She giggled. It was still the purest little sound. “You need to get off me now,” John said. Undine puffed up her cheeks, and his suggestion was met with violent disapproval. “Don’t you be like that, young lady,” John said in a playfully stern tone. “I need you to work with Gnome to fix up the grass.” The combination of earth and water extended beyond the simple control of mud.

Plant control was also pretty mana intensive, and it had little offensive applications to boot. Controlling the local flora to be something useful as a weapon required an amount of coordination two different minds could not have. With enough training, Undine and Gnome could get there, but why would John waste his mana on getting a tree to smash something, when he could use that very same mana to just create a lava pool? Or blazing winds? Or a giant fortress?

If he searched for it, he probably could find a situation where plant control was the best thing ever, but right now he was only looking to grow some new grass. Which was still expensive, but it was his water spirit that ruined the lawn.

It took a bit, as he actually needed to regenerate mana in between, but eventually they had done it. A nice fighting square. Less awesome than what he had in mind, but it did what it was supposed to. Rave would love to use it later.

For now, he wanted to test what Undine could do.