It was almost night again when Boating Seaquence pulled into the Harbour. John only needed to align the yacht parallel to the shore and a pier of wood and cobblestone magically constructed itself around the boat and made it dock perfectly. When John got back to the sundeck, his harem had already finished cleaning everything up. The grill was clear, the ash emptied out, any stains of sexual or food-related nature removed, and loose furniture stowed away. A very annoyed Velka sat inside a cage and refused to interact with Eliza.

Scarlett looked somewhat weirded out by something, catching John’s attention. “What’s up?”

“Not musch,” she slurred slightly and cleared her throat. The entirety of the map designing and Building placing, she had been downing drinks. Even stretched over several hours, buffered out with food and fighting against her seasoned liver, the ethanol had managed to put a level of glassiness in her eyes. Even with the slight slur, she was still coherent enough to answer, “Ish just that it feelsh fucking weird when the Guild Hall interacts with sophtware I’m connected to.”

“Ah,” John made an understanding noise. She must have been talking about the Harbour letting out the stairs of the yacht. “What did that feel like?”

“Like a giant rod of glash flying by my head at the speed of a bullet train,” Scarlett answered and walked in his direction, swaying a little bit. Reddened from alcohol and, perhaps, a level of embarrassment, she slung her arms around his shoulder and put on an adorable begging voice, “Help me down the shtairs, please?”

“After you get dressed,” John promised, brushing some of her red hair behind her left ear. She was clean and naked, repeated baths in the jacuzzi had assured that much even with several instances of sex throughout the day. What cum he had filled her with was too deep to dribble out. The amount for which that wasn’t the case had either been washed or licked out. Eating his delicious cum out of another harem member’s cunt was a common thing, after all.

The rest of the harem looked about the same. As much as John was into the ‘fucked stupid and used thoroughly’ look in the moment, he was thankful that the girls in his harem had a hygienic approach to their bodies outside of sex. A face stained with phlegm, precum and saliva was awesome, but clean lips and smooth skin was more enthusiastically embraced.

“Hrrrmmmmm,” Scarlett made a throaty sound of the ‘unwilling’ kind.

“Actually,” Rave chimed in from the side-lines, “the evacuation order is still in effect, right? What do we need to get dressed for?”

His girlfriend made a good point and so they left the yacht as they were. All of them, even Gnome, who normally shied away from this. Even knowing they were the only people on the island, the autumn elemental did still blush. A state that fixed itself through exposure after they had gotten the first kilometre behind them.

If there was anything about the state of the Guild Hall that John was now annoyed about, it was that the size, on foot, was actually bothersome. Tier 0 had been miniscule, Tier 1 easily circled in a short amount of time, Tier 2 was still rather small, Tier 3 had made distances somewhat noticeable, Tier 4 was finally large enough that it actually took time to get anywhere.

John made a mental note to introduce limited driving to the island. The roads were broad enough to allow it and he didn’t see much of a reason to keep cars off them. It would be a guided effort, he didn’t want private individuals to have cars and start actual traffic, just some cabs and a few leasable vehicles. Excluding whatever cars he parked around the place. As the owner, he would have certain privileges.

The first target they all went for was the Palace. Not because they had anything there they wanted to see, it was the least changed area after all, but because there was a Magryph warbling around inside her cage. It had been difficult to even get her in there, she had to be convinced with strips of salmon and a new piece of tiny treasure. John refused to let her out until he had shown her where she would live from now on.

They reached the moat and the north-eastern bridge. Crossing over the construct of brass and greyish white stones carried them over to a balcony that was carved out of the tip of the star fort’s corner. A wide-open gate then allowed them access to the tunnels that had been in there already, and one staircase later they emerged on the grass and cobble-road covered surface. The latter were a new addition.

They followed the way south and eventually arrived at an outgrowth from the massive Palace, pointing towards the large stone formation on top of which the Clearwater Fountain rested. The waterfall was distantly audible, but nowhere near loud enough to be a bother.

That outgrowth was to be Velka’s new home. There were entrances on the ground level and on the roof. Tunnels that were big enough for her to get through even when she was fully grown allowed her to also get inside the Palace. That was, unless John pushed a button that sealed all of the exits and locked her in.

Even if he did that, there was ample room for her to play, though. Her old toys were carried over, she got a sleeping place that would translate better to her growing size, an interactive food and water supply, a self-cleaning litter box and a number of hidden places where she could store away her hoard.

Once done setting things up, John let Velka out of her cage, scratched her behind the ears and then did actually lock her in there for the moment. Advice from the Magryph breeders in Australia was that it was best to keep a Magryph in a new environment for three days before letting them roam around. Otherwise they wouldn’t sufficiently scent-mark their new home and may decide to set up their things somewhere else entirely. That could still happen after three days had passed and then demanded some more convincing, but the chance drastically dropped.

The harem then separated into three groups. There was Scarlett and Beatrice, who didn’t care for exploring the new Guild Hall in any big capacity and instead decided to go to bed/go after their usual household duties. Nia and Eliza were more interested in playing with Velka than spending the rest of the night walking around. The elementals, Rave, Aclysia and Metra decided to keep accompanying John on his way around.

Which opened the question of the order in which to look at things. Some of them were fairly simple. The Industry Buildings, for example, would only require a short look. Inspecting their looks and putting something onto the production queue was about all that was needed in their case. Things like the Mine would require some medium attention. The Midnight Forest and the Elemental Islands would, likely, require a bit more time spent on each.

In the end, they decided to plan their route according to expected difficulties. This meant they would start over at the Military district, move over to Commercial, then south to Industry, Production, finish up the regular Buildings by looking at the Silicate Fields and then curve up the west coast until they arrived at the Midnight Forest.

The eastern portion of that trip was expectedly quick. The Fusion Fortress was an impressive creation of dark red and black colours, with a few elements of blue here and there. That made it look somewhat like the home of a dark lord and John was completely fine with that. The military was a brutal but necessary tool and the base of operation should reflect it. At the same time, its luxurious look and extensive corridors were there to give it a glorious feel. The work of the military was brutal and necessary and, if used in defence of certain values, there was a justified pride in it.

Of course, everyone who ever glorified their military would say that their values were worth that glorification. John was well aware that he simply thought that he was right and that future generations may disagree. Time would tell. For the moment, the empirical results of his actions seemed rather promising.

Perhaps the feature that added the ‘evillest’ flare to the Fusion Fortress were the massive spires. Unlike the average fantasy setting, John actually had a purpose for them. The spires would act as channelling beacons through which the laser cannon could be shot. The main energy would be summoned on the southwest end, between two spires that were connected by a curved roof, and then bounce around the sides. At the end, all of the energy would bundle up in the final spire in the north-east, from where the shot would then be launched at the target.

Metra asked for a demonstration shot, John had to deny the request. It would take weeks until the necessary mana was saved up, days if the manual contribution to the Mana Factories outstripped regular demands. “You can’t just dangle a giant fucking arcane laser in front of me and then tell me we can’t blow something up with it,” the First of Wrath growled, but accepted the reality of the situation.

They moved onto the Weapon Manufactory, a smaller building of similar style. John couldn’t activate that one at that moment, he had neither blueprints, an example weapon, nor materials to produce anything with. Regardless, it was interesting to have a look inside. The Training Hall they barely even looked at. None of them needed it.

From there, they moved to the Mine. The eastern gate of the Harbour served doubly as a bridge, allowing them to cross over directly. All there was to the ore-producing Building had increased in size. The mountain was still shy of really deserving that title in size but it was getting there, and the houses were a lot more impressive and supplied more equipment for the miners. The cave entrance was simple as always and led to a larger mine elevator, which they took down directly to the lowest level.

Rave created a light in her palm, Salamander ignited a fire and John waved around an excitedly squealing crocodile as a makeshift flashlight. It didn’t take them too long to find a kobold. It was a small creature with rat and lizard-like features and big, black eyes. Equipped with a sack and a pickaxe, it had been hacking away at a vein until the group startled it. Its first instinct had been to run away. Interested in where it would lead, John had told everyone to just follow it. Eventually, they arrived at a corridor with a tiny hole, into which the kobold dived and subsequently despawned, along with all of the chunks it had harvested.

The second experiment was then to take the sack away from the kobold, to which it reacted with a fight. It was level 20, so quite dangerous to the average person but barely even worth a spell when it came to the harem. Metra kicked it, literally causing its head to fly down a hall. The body then disintegrated, leaving behind only the sack of ores. Once brought to the surface, the sack disappeared, but the metal chunks were still around.

Now knowing how powerful (or weak, from his perspective) these things were, John decided to take the Building upgrade that caused Tunnel Dragons to spawn. Level 20 was something that could be beaten by anyone who was part of Fusion and decided to spend the necessary time in the Training Hall, something he wanted to incentivize anyway. A strong population was more resistant to foreign invasion, and in the Abyss, where police response was slowed by the circumstances of Illusion Barriers and such things, people being able to stand their ground was quite important.

He went back down and checked how powerful those were. The answer was level 40, which was still weak for him but considerably more threatening to even those that had maxed out in the Training Hall. They, however, only seemed to spawn on the 30th floor, which was the newest deepest floor. Kobolds spawned on floors 26 to 30. He would have some guards stationed on those floors in the future to measure people up that tried to mine there. Maybe even create a system to allow people to easily find mining partners. There was safety in numbers.

Logging was inspected in passing. There were many different trees and that was about all there was to it. John didn’t have any incentive to fiddle with the settings of that Building, so they just commented on the odd looks of this or that tree as they went to the Tannery.

While the place did stink, as the harem agreed on when approaching, the smell was thankfully contained to an area around it. When entering it, it was almost like getting slapped, but leaving it was almost as quick. Here, too, John lacked the raw materials to put in and start the processes. Thankfully, he didn’t have to carry things there himself whenever they did. It was enough for anyone else to place animal skin in the designated areas. All John had to do was to set what they should be converted into. There were limitations, as was to be expected, on what the outcome could be depending on the materials put in.

The same was true, on basically all accounts, for the Foundry, the Weavery and the Brewery. John put in the basic settings, which usually was just to refine the things into stackable shapes that could be worked manually into a final product, but did nothing else. Except for the Brewery. There he had a bit more playing room and no idea what to do with it. Since he had only ever drank store-bought alcohol and the expert opinion of Scarlett was currently snoozing, presumably, on the couch, he just went for some basic beer and ale settings. He would refine the details after taste testing.

The Fishery, the Farm and the Herb House were also just inspected in passing. Since he had decided what those would produce extra in the Building menu, he didn’t even need to head inside. The Oil Tower was a bit of a different story. He had new options there, and now that he had some additional space in the synthesizing process, he set it to create a medium quality oil used in weapon production. He could have gone for a higher grade, but he first wanted to get everyone armed and then he could think about getting them even better equipment. Everyone having a helmet was better than some people having awesome helmets, was the logic.

In the Perfumery, he decided to start producing some scents for his girls, since his own needs were already covered. Sure, they all smelled fantastic, except Nia who smelled like nothing, but there was barely anything else to do with it. The capitalist inside him said to make their own perfume brand and start advertising with those first few bottles. If nothing else, Aclysia appreciated additions to her palette of sweet fumes.

They were on their way to the Silicate Fields, something that would likely just consist of them looking at crystals, nodding and saying, “Those sure are more valuable crystals!” when Rave suddenly grabbed him by the arm.

“Uh, tiger, is that coming from the volcano ya placed?” she asked and pointed westwards.