John turned the obsidian mirror in his hands for a little while. Having had a look at its few Attributes, the Gamer knew that it would break after just one usage. While there was no sign how long the connection would last, it was safe to assume that it wouldn’t be too long. The question wasn’t whether he was using it, the question was under which circumstances he would do so.

It was burning under his nails to do it right now. A pathway to an object of his longing had opened up, even if it was just a temporary one. However, that wouldn’t have been right. He wasn’t the only one wanting to see her again. Although Nathalia had initially had an attitude towards the other girls in his harem that could charitably be described as domineering, she had become friends with a few of them, in her own, dragon goddess way.

He picked up his phone and quickly wrote a message into the group chat in Fusion’s barebones communications program. He was also reaching out mentally to everyone among his familiars who didn’t know yet what was going on. Reactions came in quickly, every last of his girls seemed interested in being present. If not for their relationships with the fire of destruction, then out of some curiosity. Three of the girls had had limited or no contact with her, Beatrice and Scarlett had only ever heard of Nathalia, while Metra’s exposure had been only that one night they spent drinking after the Five Days War concluded.

Given that was the same night that Nathalia had decided to leave, and she had been correspondingly short on words, not the best setting to get to know somebody.

With everyone on the way, John was to occupy himself in other ways. He picked up the little box with the contact lenses again and decided to go through its catalogue of unknown Attributes.

‘Alright, let’s see here,’ John thought, and started at the top of the list. ‘Blessing of Binding… well, that’s easy enough, I suppose.’

‘Pretty neat, basically a better version of the enchantment Untouchable had,’ he thought, still wondering what had happened to his old hat. That question aside, it was nice to have insurance that he couldn’t lose these lenses unless he was extremely stupid about it, given their clear value.

That was a bit more interesting. What this would allow him, in essence, was to see the illusionary appearance of his surroundings and the one that the Reveal part of Observe showed to him. Normally, whenever he saw through an illusion, it was then gone for him. Not universally useful, but it had its applications, in case he wanted to accurately play along with something. Also, if he wanted to give accurate orders to people still affected by the same illusions. Better to tell them ‘punch through that wall over there, it’s not real’ than, ‘there is an enemy three metres away at your 5 o’clock,’ or, worse, referring to things he didn’t know they couldn’t see.

It was good that a True Sight enchantment came along with this. Although John’s own Observe cut through most stuff anyway. At level 100, whenever it was cast, it was as if he had already used 50% of his max mana to reinforce the Reveal. The important difference between Observe and the True Sight enchantment was that he needed to use one and the other was passive. A passiveness that came at the cost of potency, but at level 9, he was quite sure the enchantment on the item could get things done.

‘Guess making Observe a passive would make for a good upgrade in the future,’ John thought, as the door to the room opened and the first few of his girls, Aclysia and Beatrice, stepped in. Those two had been close, of course. He acknowledged their entrance by changing seats from the chair to the couch, where they soon snuggled up to him. They were silent for the moment, letting him do his thing

That was a very interesting thing to have. Steep cost, very good effect though. ‘This is going to help A LOT whenever I face that super-invisible Metracana again,’ John thought, quite sure that True Sight 9 wouldn’t be enough for that one. That aside, fighting enemies that burrowed or in areas that had a lot of obstacles, this would be useful.

Now THAT was something he wasn’t even aware existed and would have been quite useful until two days ago. It must be quite rare, since John had tried to look into something like this and came up with nothing. As it was, this was useless to him, since he had already mastered the art. ‘I am almost touched Richard thought of that, though… maybe I can abuse it in some way regardless?’ John wondered internally. That it was easier to resync might enable some shenanigans. Time would tell.

Another VERY neat thing. Not useful in every situation, but definitely wouldn’t hurt to have.

That was, without a doubt, the most interesting enchantment on this item. It was the first time he saw Durability as a cost for something. The good news was that Durability on his contact lenses was unlikely to matter. The bad news was that he would be deprived of all the other bonuses, and potentially his eye-sight in general, while he fixed that damage. Given the Legendary status of the item and its general strength, repairing it would take quite some time.

As for the ability itself, it was unquestionably great. Seeing things from the future was always good, even if there were a number of further limitations. For a start ‘threatening’ was a very loose term. That could be anything that harmed him in some way, be it mentally or physically, to a serious degree. Secondly, it specified ‘one’ within the timespan. So, on days that he would face two threatening events, he would only see half of it. It didn’t allow him to get sloppy. Lastly, there was the general unreliableness clause of future sight. He was almost certain that the stuff he would be shown was going to be ambiguous in a way that was infuriating but just useful enough to keep using it. There was also the question about how deterministic those visions were. As the existence of fate as a set pathway seemed to be disproven, once he knew about a future event, he could theoretically prevent it.

Future sight always came with all sorts of headaches; it was a shame it was potent enough that he had to deal with all of those.

There was also the drawback of the Horned Rat getting updates on him whenever he used this. ‘Of course, he built in some advantage for himself,’ John thought, oddly happy that it was at least an up-front thing he didn’t have to pry out of the items. It was much preferable to the time Richard used Momo to spy on him and gave her Broken Wings. ‘Best to assume that gives him something like a massive blogpost of information whenever I use this, from location to current goals. Should keep that in mind.’

John still saw the Horned Rat as an uneasy ally and giving information away to the god of coming calamity seemed like a bad idea on multiple levels. Also, fundamentally, John absolutely loathed being spied on. The difference between Richard and the paparazzi was that he couldn’t threaten one of them with serious consequences – yet.

He already knew this one, his finger had just moved along and tapped on it by force of habit. It was as neat as ever.

Nothing too unusual here as well. An improved version of general illusion stuff. This was quite important, as he needed to hide the lines at the very least and emulate his natural colour of his eyes at best. Not sure if he was going to make a lot of use of the ability to set them otherwise, but it couldn’t hurt to have them in case he needed to pass off as someone else for some reason.

John quickly set them to his natural brown colour and had the lines hidden underneath. “Does this look about right?” he asked into the room, which had been filled with the remaining girls, chattering among themselves. Only Scarlett was missing for the moment.

“A bit lighter, Master,” Aclysia told him and Rave nodded along. He trusted both of them to know the colour of his eyes better than himself. He didn’t spend a lot of time inspecting them, after all. He changed it, but apparently missed the mark, as the weaponized maid shook her head. “That is too light.”

Eliza came over and squatted down in front of John so he could easier look at her. “Give me a second and I will show you the correct fucking colour,” she promised, looking into his eyes, still wearing the accurate version of his contact lenses. Then her own left eye changed from the purple to the same brown. “There you go, can you hurry that shit along already?”

“Not like I am the reason for the delay here,” John grumbled, glancing around to make sure Scarlett was still not present. He spared himself the question since when Eliza was able to do something like that. Given that she had developed heat vision before, changing the colouration of her iris was less surprising.

Even in their brown colour, they still had that aesthetic of shattered crystal and the golden lines stood out a whole lot more in the darker colour. Once he had accurately replicated the colour. It vanished out of her eyes by shrinking into smaller patches and then going away entirely. There was a question on his mind though.

“You did say before you could change your breast size, right?”

“Yeah, what the fuck about it?”

“And how much fat you have?”

“Still yes and still what the fuck about it?!”

“And you can control your bones, right?”

“…” At this point she was just giving him an angry stare.

“Okay, okay,” he jokingly waved off and closed the Appearance Setting window, happy with the result. “My question is just why you don’t make yourself taller, you complain about it quite a bit and it should be possible.”

“Because I don’t fucking want to!” Eliza replied.

“Why?”

“BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO, YOU GOO-DRIPPING CUNTNUGGET!” she screamed back at him quite loudly, showing her teeth and growling for a few seconds. Knowing when to hold and when to fold, John waited a few seconds until her mood, inevitably, came crashing down from sudden anger. “Fucking… sorry… the question just makes me as angry as a cum-hungry whore at a modesty demonstration.”

“No, I was a bit too teasing there, it’s fine,” he assured her and gently patted her head. “I like you being on the smaller side, for a bunch of perverted reasons, was just curious.”

She gave him her lewdest, happiest smile, then remembered she still couldn’t act on any of those desires. “You have that fucking chocolate thing?” she asked, “I wanna stare at it until Thana comes out of her moping ground.”

“Contemplating mind palace,” he corrected her to give some respect to the very confused goddess of genocide currently laying low. Then he pulled the candy out of his inventory and gave it to her. It looked a little bit worn down now. Like most candy, it wasn’t designed to be held a number of times. The gold foil had been stretched out of place and the chocolate underneath had doubtlessly melted somewhat from repeated exposure to body heat. Regardless, it was a delicious, high quality thing.

Eliza took it and sat down at the table, putting it in front of herself. A few seconds later, she banged her head onto the table, creating a comedically hollow noise. “I JUST WANT TO FUCKING EAT SOMETHING ALREADYYYYYY!!!” she screamed again, suddenly rising up with extreme wallowing. Then she continued to stare at the candy angrily, although that was aimed at someone she would have needed a very special mirror to look at.

John looked at the last Attribute on the lenses, just as Scarlett arrived at the scene.

Another thing in the ‘could be useful’ category, but with a much broader application range. He would have to carefully evaluate when to use this, though. Accusations of mind control by witnesses or resisting targets wouldn’t be good for his reputation.

“Alright.” He took the contacts out and threw the box into his inventory. It was itself mostly unremarkable, it just looked good. He would have alternative uses in the future. He then unequipped his current Perma Lenses (an ironic name right about now) and put in the Vision of Calamity set by hand, while using Possession on both.

The difference was just as noticeable between them and the Perma Lenses as it had been between the Perma Lenses and bog-standard Apothecary coloured lenses. He couldn’t feel that they were there, but that had been true before. The true difference laid in the quality of viewing: it felt like he had made the switch from 30 to 60 FPS, while also pushing viewing quality from HD to 4K. Everything looked sharp, way sharper than his natural eyes had ever allowed him.

Which also made all of the girls in the room a whole lot more beautiful. If he looked closely, he noticed things about their forms that he would have needed his fingers to discern previously. More information and he may have seen too much, there wasn’t much attractiveness to be earned from seeing sweat glands, but as it was, they just looked better. Well, they looked clearer, sharper, and by virtue of them looking beautiful already, they looked better. The polished table didn’t look gorgeous because of the better vision, it just looked better rendered. Would he be looking at a dog turd, the better vision wouldn’t have polished that.

The Phase Sight and Connective Gaze already worked in tandem to give him a secondary layer on which he could see the connections between him and his familiars. It was interesting to see, the elementals’ were woven closely together, already close to an interlocked unit before reaching him, moving on as a tightly knit tapestry towards his chest (or upper spine, where he knew the magic producing part of the human physique to be). The Artificial Spirits were connected to him through strands of a normal arcane azure individually.

The secondary layer was like a watermark whose intensity he could shift at will. He could completely ignore it or intensify it until it overtook his normal vision. He dubbed the first, normal vision the Mundane Layer and the secondary, showing how the world was with illusions stripped away and connections laid bare, the Abyssal Layer. Seemed like a fitting way to name things, given the state of the world.

He switched back and forth between the two a bit more as he eagerly went back to paying attention to the mirror. “Alright, let’s not delay this any more than necessary!” he declared, unable to wait any longer.