From the strategy meeting, they split into two groups. Chemilia took the new, finished limbs to her husband, for them to equip in some private setting. John and Scarlett, on the other hand, went back to Liberty Island. Since they had both done all necessary work in the hours preceding the strategy meeting, they could kick back on a clear conscience. Not that Scarlett felt particularly bad about putting her own desires over that of profit maximization.

As John had planned, they were going to the beach now. It wasn’t a far run. On the west side of his island, John had made a beach when the size of the Guild Hall barrier had been increased during the Tier 2 upgrade. Like the forest north of it, there was low activity in the area.

There were no production facilities around those districts. The only Guild Building around was the Weather Tower, and that didn’t require any sort of work from anyone. As the Guild Hall was mostly a place of resource gathering right now, with some refining and entertainment happening at the side, people flocked to where they worked and thus the rest of the Guild Hall was relatively untouched.

At least, that HAD been the case when John had checked on the beach last time.

In the time he had been gone, the beach must have established itself as some sort hang-out spot since a crowd of people was occupying the stretch of sand with towels and grills and umbrellas. Granted, the latter two were by now put down or folded in, since the sun was hanging rather low and evening was approaching slowly through the long light of summer.

‘Now why would they all be here though?’ John asked himself. It wasn’t like the Hudson Barrier was missing areas perfect to take a swim in the name-giving river and bay area. The first answer that came to mind was scenery: the Guild Hall was, with all its landmarks, Lady Liberty most of all, quite the awesome place to be around. John was totally biased in that assessment, but he would argue that it objectively beat some concrete surrounded stretch of sand.

The more realistic answer, John realized, was probably the white slime creature that crawled past his feet and over the sand. Mysteriously, the semi-sentient goop was not picking up any sand as it moved along. People were looking towards it with jokes and laughter, picked up some packaging or other trash their stay at the beach had accumulated and threw it at the slime.

It wasn’t a gesture of malice in any capacity. On the contrary, this was like giving pigeons bread. The slime spilled around the waste as happily as a one-purpose creature could be and began to dissolve it, before moving on and taking care of other trash.

It wasn’t alone in this task, another slime was patrolling the border of the beach, where sand hit grass, while a third one sat in the water. Those slimes spawned from one of the Guild Buildings, the Cleaning Station, and their sole purpose was to clean up the place by eating trash. A total of twenty-five were around the island, and up to five designated areas in conquered territory, at any given time.

And in them, John saw the explanation for the crowded beach. Not only did the people have a nicer scenery, they could also litter the place without any worries. Nobody had to make a decision to make between the bad consciousness of leaving trash at the beach or having to overcome their laziness. The proper thing to do between the two was obvious, but laziness was a tremendous force.

Packaging, left ashes, even torn clothes or forgotten socks, the slimes ate it all happily and without care. They were smart enough to leave clothes recently worn alone, so nobody was coming out of the water to find out they were stuck in the swimsuit, but stuff left in the open for days? Could be considered munched.

Not only did that mean the beach itself was almost perfectly clean, but apparently the slimes had also been quite active at water filtering. At least if the one sitting in the water of the Hudson was any indication. Well, that and the tremendously less murky colour. It was approaching a clearness that John associated with photos advertising a tropical island vacation.

The Gamer had taken other steps in that direction, such as settling natures most effective filter organism, clams, in the waters of the Hudson Barrier. Not just normal clams, he had bought some magically reinforced super clams from Portugal. The size of a table each, they were advertised to be the greatest in water clearing. However, they were a million a piece, so he had only gotten ten, put them into the Guild Hall and just awaited the results.

He hadn’t expected it to grip in less than a month. He also hadn’t expected the Cleaning Station slimes to act like the channel cleaning ones in the Netherlands. The difference in water quality was extra noticeable at the border between Guild Hall and proper Hudson Barrier. A thin reminder that the two barriers were still separate that caused clouds and waves to break for a moment, only to then travel through regardless. Evidently, it did prevent mixing to some degree, as the water of the Hudson outside the barrier… Well, it still looked like the murky, likely filthy and city muck infested mess it was.

Better scenery, cleaner beach, cleaner swimming water. The question wasn’t ‘why were people bathing here?’ but ‘why would they go anywhere else?’

Having solved that mystery didn’t help the fact that John wanted privacy. Nobody had approached them yet, but people were looking in their direction with clear recognition. Not all too hard, given that he was rolling up with as much of his harem as was currently possible. In other words, aside from Momo, Nathalia, Nia and Lydia, everyone was there. Even Siena was showing her face.

“Such a mess you are in,” she purred out words as well. “How do you want to solve that people are occupying what is yours, John? A show of dominance would certainly hush them away.”

“O-or!” Gnome interrupted, making a much nicer suggestion. “We could just… you know… squeeze ourselves in there…?”

“Yeah, no,” John decided and opened his Guild Hall window. “I’m going with Siena on this one. This is my property, so I’ll at least demand that I be given the space for my own activities.” After pushing a few buttons, he put a hand on Gnome’s head and gave her a few assuring pats. “Don’t worry, I am not going to just kick them off or anything. Come with me, I’ll need you to put up a few guideposts.”

It took a couple of minutes to get everything set-up. Some stone pillars functioned as the corners for the part of the beach John demanded for himself. It wasn’t an unreasonable amount, about a fifth of the entire thing. Some people were a bit grumbly about getting thrown off their towels and having to go further down south, but it wasn’t like the rest of the beach was jam-packed like a Chinese swimming hall. They had more than enough space to settle elsewhere.

Generally, though, people were understanding, or at least accepting, of the situation. Once John had evicted everyone, he turned towards the two Sentinel Golems that had arrived at his location, following his call via the Guild Hall menu.

They were large, blue orbs, solid and spherical, with bits of gold attached to them, partly protecting that core. John was reminded of Probes from Starcraft 2, the Protoss’ worker unit. There were a total of six of these from the Security Station. They operated much like the slimes, except for guarding purposes. At level 35, they weren’t even that weak. They could beat up about 80% of the Abyss quite easily, at least in theory.

They could also speak in a limited fashion and take orders, which John took advantage of at that moment. “Okay, I want you to stay nearby and be ready to tell anyone passing into this area,” he gestured towards the four cornerstones, “that this is my private part of the beach and they aren’t welcome. If they refuse to leave, you have authority to use minimal necessary force to take them out of this area. Repeated offenders, like 5 times, you can kick off and ban from the beach entirely, for four months. Understood?”

“Affirmative,” robotic voices echoed back, and the Sentinel Golems went about their business, hovering away in patrolling patterns. This left John and the group to finally attend to the beach. It was already past eight, so tanning was out of the question. Everything else one could do at the beach, however, very much was still an option. It all started with getting in their swimsuits.

John just unequipped everything, stood there naked for one second, then equipped some swimming trunks he already had in his inventory. With that, he was still only the second quickest person to change into their beach wear, not counting those that didn’t need to change at all, since Metra simply stripped out of what little she was wearing and called it a day. Of course, nude bathing was entirely appropriate at John’s beach. Sex would have been as well, but John couldn’t help but notice that there were families further down the beach.

Now, the Gamer may have been a bit on the degenerate side of perversion, with all the bondage and the choking and what not, but he was definitely not comfortable with doing overtly sexual things with minors around. Even if the chance they would see the act in question was pretty small. Nudity was ‘okay’, he didn’t feel like children would be all that bothered by naked people running around, and if the parents were, well, he would install a sign in the future.

Not that anyone but Metra opted for the nudity route in the first place. Sure, Aclysia and Beatrice were technically naked, but they still had the appearance of bikinis on them. Even Salamander put on some swimwear, her usual flames extinguished. The elementals had their one set of conjurable clothing, for everything else they had to change like a normal person. Something that Gnome created herself a stone booth for.

“Sex on the beach is out then,” John informed everyone, with a nod down the beach. Nobody, not even Siena or Metra, disagreed with that assessment. At least when it came to children, there seemed to be a moral consensus in his harem. Which was good, seemed like a rather important topic to be unified on.

“Gonna be honest, not a huge loss,” Rave commented, stretching out. A motion that revealed, through a proper display of underboob, that her current bikini top was a bit too small. Her breasts had now settled on a pretty decent C-cup, with no signs of growing further. “Have heard horrible things about having sand inside the ladybits. Don’t wanna try to experience that for myself.”

“…Yeah, actually, fuck that,” Eliza agreed, sitting down on a towel. Apparently she didn’t feel like swimming. Scarlett, however, tapped towards the water. Unlike everyone else, she had opted for a one-piece swimsuit. Not even a particularly interesting one, it was just black and set tight on her body, like swimsuits tended to do.

‘Not that a bikini would have revealed that much…’ John thought, glancing at the redheads rather flat chest. She wasn’t a complete washboard, but there was very little to create a cleavage with, to put it nicely. Not that it bothered the Gamer, he liked having all the sizes at hand. The objectively best boob size was the size he got to touch, after all. ‘Then again, would like to see her midriff.’ Her boobs were small, but the rest of her body was still to die for.

His sexual interests were quelled, or at the very least went under the surface, when he watched the Technomancer tap into the water. There was no wind and only a minimum of waves from other activities in the Illusion Barrier, primarily moving ships, so the proper back and forth of a beach was missing. Nevertheless, Scarlett tapped curiously around in the shallow water of the shore.

It was strangely innocent to look at. She wasn’t frolicking like a child or anything. The woman freed from her isolation, imposed for safety by her parents continued out of logic, wasn’t the type to do anything too enthusiastic. Nevertheless, the way she took her first walk through the wet sand, left her footprints and wiggled her toes around in the saltwater was just heart-warming to behold.

To John, that little moment was a better reward than the whole territory expansion had been. Ironically, if he told Scarlett that opinion, she would have called him a moron. So, he didn’t, he just walked up to her, wordlessly, took her hand as the water spilled around his ankles, and gave her a kiss. A tender, long and loving kiss, that she responded to, first surprised, then just as happily. He closed his arms around her, held her close, tasted her lips. The note of cigarettes was a bit distracting, but gum and alcohol had transformed most of her taste into a nice mix of mint and sweetness.

When they parted, she attempted to speak up first, but John interrupted her. “I love you,” he said, the two of them swaying silently to a rhythm nobody could hear. “I think it’s about time you hear that.”

“…I… wow, okay, that came out of fucking nowhere.” Scarlett was a bit startled by this, and John couldn’t help but take a bit of sadistic enjoyment out of that. It was hard to make the Technomancer blush, since she was usually so brutally honest with everyone, including herself. “But… not as a tool, or a business partner or something else, without any manipulation or anything…” she gave him a secure smile, “…I love you too.”