John was in a bit of a pickle.

Part of it was due to bad luck, but he couldn’t solely blame the dice for the fact that Nia had partly outmanoeuvred him. Chemilia’s forces had been, despite her best efforts, annihilated between the other two armies. Nia had come out of it with more of her powerful units intact, while John had retained more of his cannon fodder. More importantly than that, Nia had managed to retain her high range units in a difficult to reach position at the back, allowing them to diminish the advantage he had on the close quarter front.

Not all was yet lost, however. Although his front line may have been under heavy fire, the purpose of those cheap soldiers was to draw enemy fire and they were doing that perfectly. More importantly, due to the nature of the rules, Nia had to thin out her own frontline to avoid shooting her own units with stray bullets. This allowed John to form something like an arrowhead formation and cleave her army in two.

It wasn’t the most brilliant strategy ever devised, as a matter of fact it was rather basic, but by maximizing the attackable surface of the enemy frontline, he could leverage his superior numbers to minimize the difference in quality. At the same time, he took away any way for her to reposition anything but her back row, which was now being threatened by a number of directly charging, more powerful units.

Nia had no other choice but to concentrate her fire on those, and she did manage to eliminate them, but only on the cost of her entire frontline getting massacred in the meantime. The consequence of this was her long-range units against the swarm of simple guardsmen that John had remaining. Although they may have been inferior in basically every aspect, Nia’s remaining units simply could not fire quick enough to kill all of those before being charged.

Thus, John won, with only a few units remaining. ‘Phew,’ he thought, not letting his relief show on his face. It would have irked him something fierce had he lost. Which he did, later on in the day, as they played a number of other games and, with more people and more dice involved, some situations simply could not work out in his favour.

Rave left at some point, only to be replaced by a number of other girls that checked in to see what was happening. When they were playing the last round of the day, Scarlett was present and Eliza decided to join them with the (very loud) exclamation, “I NEED TO GET FUCKED!”

“Good evening to you too,” John responded in a dry tone, as the pretty little psycho slammed the door closed behind herself and ran over to the Gamer. Grabbing him by the arm, she started shaking him with enough strength to make his head fly around.

“You don’t fucking understand! I feel so horny, I think my pussy is going to implode. I NEED COCK!” Without any shame, she pulled the black leather thong to the side and revealed her wet pussy. Aside from it, she was only wearing the fitting top and the usual black robe. “I’ve let Aclysia fuck me, but its just not the same!”

‘Thank God that Artificial Spirit cum is a fleeting liquid,’ John thought. Since the acquisition of all the Libido Perks and Jack, he had needed to rely relatively little on the Artificial Spirits to help out in the ‘a couple of extra dicks to keep the girls he couldn’t attend occupied’ sense. This was especially true during orgies, where they never appeared anymore.

Aside from John’s own growing ability to easily pleasure a whole host of women on his own, there was also something to be said about growing intimacy between members of the harem leading to more lesbian action. ‘Futanari mode’ was still engaged sometimes, when John wasn’t around, but the Gamer had grown less comfortable with it as time progressed and it was falling out of favour because of it. The cum of the maids simply vanished after about five minutes and was completely infertile helped the matter of ignoring it. It was little more than a climax marking fluid. Still, it would inevitably just fall out of usage.

To put it short, while Eliza was wet and her pussy clearly swollen from some recent penetration, there was no cum dripping out of her. Which, as far as John was concerned, was a very inviting view. However, he didn’t have the time yet. “Soon,” he promised her.

“Joooohnnnnn,” Eliza whined as she crept closer. “Fill me uuuuuuuuup…” Her eyes darted over to the board. “Who is the poor asshole that’s about to get fucked by Bloodletters?”

“Are those the red devil looking things?” Elu asked. “In that case, that would be me.”

“Which of you cunts is bullying my favourite old person?!” Eliza glared daggers at everyone. It was a momentary distraction and John hoped she would be a bit less needy by the end of it, so he just let it happen. “Is it you, creepy ass bitch?”

“Yes,” Nia responded and pulled her shoulders back to stand tall in defiance. If it came to angering the blood mage, pronouncing height differences was a good way to escalate the situation. “Why do you never say my name?”

“Because ‘Nia’ is too fucking short to throw any curses in there!”

“I’d like it if you could refer to me properly at least sometimes.” Nia’s defiant appearance was compromised when Eliza stomped over to her, the blank taking two steps back for every one the blood mage made.

“Why the fuck are you running away?!”

“You’re small and scary. Very scary,” Nia stated. This somewhat appeased Eliza, who went from stomping to walking. “You have nice hair.”

“And I want to have your fucking skin, look at that smooth and beautifully clean bullshit.” How this had suddenly changed to the two of them exchanging compliments, John wasn’t quite sure. Talks involving Nia tended to be influenced by the odd way she thought conversation topics through. “Don’t bully Elu, she is widdling down John’s defences on ‘when he is going to put a lot of fucking babies inside this worthless Eliza pig’ front.”

“Eliza, come here for a second,” John chimed in and gave her a light, playful slap across the face when she did. “What are you being right now?” he asked, while holding her jaw in a domineering claw grip that squished her cheeks together.

“Truthful?” she suggested and earned herself an impatient click of his tongue.

“A bad, self-deprecating girl,” he answered the question for her and shoved her to the floor. “On all fours, back straight, be silent.” The series of commands was heeded and John sat down on his improvised stool. A bit lower to the ground than he preferred, but stable regardless. Pulling the robes to the side, he gave her backside a few light spanks. “I will punish you properly in a bit.”

“Honestly, you would have gotten what you wanted sooner if you hadn’t barged in here,” Scarlett commented, looking at her phone. “Now you just delayed everyone’s turns.”

“Is it really necessary that I keep pointing out that having babies is a good idea?” Elu wanted to know while rolling one shoulder. “You young people are so odd, thinking you can find meaning in just living your own life and not creating some new.”

“That’s a larger discussion to have than I want to invest time into right now,” John simply stated, and they continued on with the game. Thankfully, it wasn’t John’s turn, so he could continue kneading Eliza’s backside for a little bit. “Anyone want to take a wild guess what ulterior motive I had with today’s gathering?”

“You wanted to have an excuse to play Warhammer?” Chemilia suggested.

“Part of it, but no.”

“You want to look more closely at what we would do in a large-scale conflict,” Elu asserted after a moment of thinking. “In order to make better informed decisions on what task to assign us with whenever we find ourselves in a proper war.”

“I have pretty good ideas there already, so that’s not exactly the reason for this gathering.”

“He wants to introduce you to Nia,” Scarlett told everyone, having already seen through this charade. “We need another general to be in charge of the special forces from Florida and she is the best candidate, in his opinion.” She looked up from her phone. “Personally, I think Alice would command more respect, but from what I hear she is rather difficult.”

“Can you not give away all my secrets?”

“I’d be less inclined to if you didn’t make things needlessly obtuse.”

“I am being assigned as a general?” Nia tilted her head, hearing this suggestion for the first time herself.

“That is the idea,” John nodded. “I think you have the right mindset for it and you already have connections with people in Florida, so it makes the most sense.” He got off Eliza’s back and walked over, taking Nia’s hand and kissing it. “What do you say, my lady, are you willing to defend this country that has instituted a four-day celebration for patting animals?”

“You did that?!” Nia asked, the excitement in her voice rivalling the intensity of Eliza’s earlier horniness.

“He did,” Scarlett grumbled, “to the loss of several million dollars in productivity every year.”

“Technically speaking, it’s not official yet. We’re going to have the discussion about national holidays in parliament next Monday,” John added. “Given that it is a joining condition for Florida, however, I doubt there is going to be an issue.”

“Maybe I can bribe some people to stop i- FUCKING STOP THAT!” Scarlett screamed and almost fell out of her chair. The entire room was dominated by Nia’s pariah aura. It was almost as strong as Alice’s had been when she had wiped out Gamer’s Body. To John, it felt like a bunch of praying mantises were crawling around in the back in his mouth and threatening to chew their way up to his brain. “I won’t do it, drop that shit immediately.”

The feeling creeped backwards. “Animals deserve loving, denying it is mean,” Nia stated.

“I understand, but that was still a bit much,” John pointed out.

Looking around the room, Nia noticed the perturbed faces of everyone in the room. “Oh,” she bowed her head. “I apologize. It is difficult to measure the effects.”

“Just don’t do it again,” Scarlett stated, magical circuitry dancing around in her red eyes. “I think you just deleted twenty minutes of coding…. Nope, I didn’t accidentally shut down the machine, all is good.”

“To the point, would you take the position?” John went back to the topic at hand. While Nia mulled over her answer, he turned to the already appointed generals. “Would you accept her as an addition to the team?”

They gave approval, either out of respect for her abilities or because she did manage to compete (and dominate in some instances) in the wargaming. Finally, Nia herself nodded and said, “Yes, I will be a general,” and the matter was sealed.

With what had just happened and the discussion ending, the majority of the energy had left the room. Eliza wiggling her butt in a needy fashion didn’t help. It was decided that they would just end the evening there. The guests took their leave and John started to clean up the battlefield.

Nia lent him a hand, while Scarlett watched and Eliza remained on the floor. The only change for her was that she went from being on all fours to kneeling normally. “Can’t you just leave that shit to Aclysia?” Eliza chimed in.

“Yes and no,” John responded. “For one, this is part of my ongoing effort to not get completely pampered by her. More importantly, this is a thing I like doing myself.” He turned the figurine of the guardsman he had just put into the proper vitrine so the gun aligned properly with his neighbours’. “Warhammer is one of these things that I liked before all of this went down and sorting these miniatures gives me some reflection. On that note, how goes the painting?”

“I continue to produce awful fucking things I wouldn’t even feed to a trash compactor,” Eliza responded.

“Guess you will just have to keep them and show them to me, then,” asserted the Gamer, smiling and closing the current vitrine to start working on the next one.

“You might as well ask me to bash my own head in with a shovel, after I got done digging my grave to let my sexy body fall into.”

‘And there is the mood swing,’ John thought and walked over to capitalize on the more self-confident phase she was exhibiting. Without much in the way of words, he gestured for her to get up and then got her into a deep hug. “Don’t even think about leaving me, my life wouldn’t be the same without you,” he whispered into her ear and felt her tense. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“And your art is pretty fantastic.”

“…It’s okay…”

“Hmm, you know what, I hereby officially commission that you paint something for the Fusion Capitol,” he told her. “Something to decorate the halls, something decent and beautiful. Think you can do that?” After several seconds without an answer, he added, “For me?”

“…For you, okay, fucking fine, I will try.” The concession was all John wanted to hear, and he gave the back of her head a few rewarding strokes, before resuming the sorting task.

That was when Nia chimed back in. “Did you acquire power from a third god?”

“No. Why are you asking now?” John asked mostly to get a better grasp on her mind.

“I was reminded that I am not up to the current state of affairs due to your mention of the holidays,” Nia told him. “Since Wendy is a goddess that is friendly with you, I wondered if you took her blessing and, if not, why not.”

This was a thing John had thought about before. Because she was a minor goddess, Wendy may have refused to give him aid, whatever power she could offer him was likely to be a noticeable sap on her own might. However, he had decided to not even bother asking her for a simple reason. “She is the goddess of fast food, that’s why,” he explained. “I don’t have any intention to get levels in the Disciple Class, so I will be stuck with three possible blessings for quite a while. Nathalia and the Horned Rat are both powerful and I got considerable passive bonuses out of both of them. I don’t think what Wendy could give me would be worth it.”

Perhaps the Cosmic Chicken could have given him something good, but John still wasn’t sure what he should make of that short encounter and whether raising a fuss about it was worth it. When he next got to Florida, he would try to get a few minutes alone with that edible bird.

Nia silently evaluated his answer for a few seconds, then nodded. “That makes sense.”