The last island did not have a shrine or temple among the landscape. Rather, the temple WAS the landscape. Surrounded by a thin strip of grass, separating it from the Hudson, the Building was lowered into the ground. A large rectangular basin, stretching from one end of the Light Island to the other, fashioned from some sort of golden stone and decorated with silver bits. It was a structure without shadows. Most of the surface lay exposed to the summer sun, reflecting the golden rays as a steady glow. In the corners where the darkness should have had at least some presence, the Building itself radiated a steady, weak gold.

The way down into the flat court that lay three metres below where they stood came in the shape of an unnecessarily high number of stairs. Platforms grew from the rim of the basin partly into it, then split into two flights that ran down the walls. It looked impressive, the symmetry was beautiful, but quite impractical. The group descended into the court below.

The Light Essence gathered in a large, shallow pool in the middle of the court. Outside of that, the area was empty. Doorways without barriers lay in the middle of the protrusion of the stairs. Poking his head inside, John found a labyrinth of gold and silver mirrors. He was quite certain that it was bigger than it possibly should have been, given the size of the island, but with every surface being reflective, that was impossible to gauge accurately just by looking. More importantly, John couldn’t tell what the purpose of the whole thing was.

‘Is that just another decorative thing or is there something up with this?’ John wondered, looking at one of his many reflections. Then at the little light that tumbled nearby. A light elemental that sort of reminded him of Sylph in that she was tiny, cute and flew off at quite the speed. Turning into a beam of light, she bounced around between the mirrors until John couldn’t spy her light anymore. Not that there was a shortage of others. A bunch of glowing elementals had gathered, turning even the entrance of the labyrinth into an impressive show.

It was like he was standing in the middle of a kaleidoscope. Well, it would have been if he went somewhere where he was actually entirely surrounded. Something he didn’t want to invest the time into right now. At some other opportunity, he could easily imagine taking a date there. After he had made sure that getting back out was relatively easy.

John turned around to see the rest of his harem explore the temple by themselves. Beatrice in particular seemed to like it around here, measuring the perfect symmetry of everything and wiggling her butt in a rare display of excited happiness when she walked into the labyrinth. That made her the most joyful of John’s girls, but only the second happiest ‘person’ that had come along.

Waddling towards the shallow pool of Light Essence, Stirwin jumped in. ‘Mhm, maybe…’ the Gamer started to think, then got a pop-up.

‘…yup,’ he finished that thought, watching the crocodile hatchling grow rapidly. A tiny crocodile, special basically only in its colour, changed into a shape that no currently alive variant quite resembled. Legs stretched until they seemed more fitting on a scaled wolf than a reptile. Muscles rippled more intensely under the surface of thicker, sharper, golden scales. The head had grown longer, the scales around the maw curved into an outside row of thin, sharp teeth, while the actual ones inside the copper flesh of its mouth were dull and stable, designed to hold onto something.

At one and a half metres, about half of that being his tail, Stirwin still wasn’t enormous, but definitely something a zookeeper would advise people to keep at least five metres distance, unless one wanted to lose an arm to those massive jaws. Maybe more, considering this particular crocodile could sprint effectively.

“Hey there,” John greeted the adolescent form of his light spirit. “How are you feeling?”

“Hungry,” Stirwin responded, his usually so squeaky voice now a deeper tone, fitting for his bigger form. He raised one of his clawed hands. Another important difference to the usual crocodile was that the infinity elemental possessed four fingers and an opposable thumb. The structure was pretty human; the scales covering them, the sharp tips, and the membrane that stretched up to the first of the three finger joints were not.

Before their eyes, Stirwin morphed back down into the small hatchling form, taking the youth size in-between for a moment, and then went back up to Adolescent. “You can switch freely? That’s pretty neat.”

“Indeed, it is,” Stirwin answered, trotting out of the pool and then stretching like a dog, quite the odd display. “Ahhhh, it’s been a while since I was in this form,” he exclaimed with a satisfied yawn, his tail wagging slightly. There was no annoyance in his voice.

Still, John felt like he owed the Tier 5 elemental an apology. “Sorry for keeping you in that small shape all the time. I still don’t have the mana to reliably use you. Plus, you know, Undine is just the more secure option.”

“No worries, everything is more fun than being sealed for hundreds of years, I told you that last time,” Stirwin stated, then playfully lunged at a stray light elemental that looked like a mixture of a cotton candy cloud and a salt crystal deposit. Before actually catching it, the infinity elemental stayed his jaws and drew back.

“Last time was a few months back, so I just wanted to make sure you still feel the same way,” John said and checked his inventory for something he could feed Stirwin. There was some soup he still had, the last slice of his birthday cake and a bit of chocolate, none of which felt fitting. Looking to Aclysia and Beatrice with the question on his mind, the former of the two maids soon pulled a large piece of raw meat out of her inventory.

“I will need to restock on steak meat later,” Aclysia stated, reaching out into the air. Then she froze when the knife she wanted to use to cut that piece into more presentable slices never appeared. Somewhat embarrassed, she lowered her arm again. “Will this thing serve in one piece?” she asked.

Aclysia could have reshaped her limbs to do the cutting instead. It was a bit awkward, according to her it was like using a fork to eat thick soup. Entirely possible, but more than a bit ineffective. “I’ll take it!” Stirwin exclaimed, wiggling his back half like a dog ready to play catch. And catch he did when the meat was thrown in his direction, snapping it straight out of the air and wolfing it down in one chunk. “Better,” Stirwin exclaimed and then began to walk away.

“Where are you going?” John wondered, not intending to stop the infinity elemental but curious regardless.

“Going to hop into the water, swim a little bit, then probably going to lay down at the beach for a while,” Stirwin answered. “You know, laze around. This appears to be the theme of the day.”

“That sounds about accurate,” John agreed and watched, with some amusement, the golden crocodile climb the stairs. Even with long limbs, his feet weren’t designed for slopes of that variety. With nothing else to do, the rest of the group followed the crocodile out of the basin. “For reference, the light metal is called Solunian.”

They watched Stirwin drop into the clear water and then swim away. Keeping his limbs close to his body, the infinity elemental moved his entire body in wave motions. It allowed him to pick up a surprising amount of speed. The water of the Hudson was wonderfully clean at this point, so they could follow the golden crocodile even after he dived a few metres down.

Afterwards, the group began the migration towards the other areas of the Guild Hall they still wanted to check out. As they walked past the gothic buildings of the Residential Area, John checked the messages on his phone. There was an excited feeling in his chest when he got a single text message, but he was immediately let down. He had ordered the people guarding Marathyu to text him as soon as the smith was done. Instead, he was now reading a message from Maximillian.

Maximillian: Yo, regarding what you suggested yesterday, I would be free Friday evening. That fit with you?

John: Today would fit me better, but I guess I can make the time. That’s still in my vacation days. You wouldn’t mind if I brought someone else, right?

Maximillian: As long as you actually stay true to your word, you can bring the entire football team of New Zealand, for all I care.

John: Right, right, all drinks on me… you’re a king, you should have this sort of money.

Maximillian: Hey, I am not a king right now. I am a self-exiled member of the royal family and thusly have no access to the treasury! My savings have to keep me alive until I go back home.

John: Fair enough.

Not the message he wanted to get, but nothing to be actually disappointed about. While he already had his phone out, he also checked his clock. It was already 15:30. Nothing about how bright the day was indicated the advanced time, didn’t help how late they had all gotten up.

“What’cha writing with your boyfriend about?” Rave asked, having glanced at his phone and seen the king’s name. “Ya planning a date?”

“I guess you could say that, what, you jealous?” the Gamer asked, putting a hand on her fantastic butt.

“Nah,” she kissed him on the cheek, “I know ya can’t quit me. Is this about your guy night out?”

“Yeah, still have to try and convince Magnus to come along,” he responded and thought back to communication attempts with the much older Fateweaver. “I want to see if I can help him with his lack of lady problems by, you know, getting him a lady to have problems with. Or at least having a fun time with the guy, I don’t know him all that well and I feel like I should, given that Magoi is… well, he is old.”

Rave hummed, a bit downtrodden thanks to the implication. “Don’t really see it most of the time, but yeah, he is.”

A bridge was crossed in a somewhat gloomy silence, the mention of death did that to most conversations, but John didn’t plan to dwell on the feeling for long. The news of earlier today was still hanging about and made everyone vulnerable to falling into somewhat nihilistic thought patterns. “I have to attend the press gathering in one and a half hours,” he informed everyone instead, bringing people back to reality.

“Can’t ya just send that guy?” Rave asked, pointing at the Mandala Sphere hovering above them.

“I could do that,” John confirmed with a nod, “and if I had already revealed that I can do that, I would. I want to keep that hidden so I can catch somebody off guard the first time around.”

“A tactic I support wholeheartedly,” Lydia let everyone know.

“It’s kind of like, in professional Dota, you often only buy a core item when you can finish it in one go to surprise your opponent with the reveal that you have it,” John drew a gaming metaphor that immediately caused the queen to look at him with a rather deadpan expression.

“I will assume that this metaphor is accurate to our situation,” the queen declared. Taking a little, sarcastic bow, John showed his gratitude for her believing in him.

They arrived in the Production Area and had a bunch of things to look at, none of which were all that interesting or outside of expected display. Silicate Island, the place where the crystals grew, was covered in rock formations and crystals, with a set of Buildings west of the bridge that crossed the Freedom Channel. Like with the Mine, those Buildings supplied the equipment used to harvest those materials, as well as a convenient place to set-up an office related to these things.

The extensions to the Farm were similarly boring, the Logging Camp was a bit more interesting, because of the divide between the old and the new trees that grew there. As the Logging Camp had gone from Tier 1 straight to Tier 3, there were a bunch of mundane or basically mundane trees currently fully grown around. Between them were all of the clearly magical saplings, many infused with different powers thanks to the Elemental Islands.

There were trees whose leaves actively acted against gravity, one kind that had all of its leaves close to the grass and its roots at the top of the trunk, a particularly beautiful tree looked like it was growing glass, but touching it gave the impression of birch. Something that worried John a little bit was a clearly fire infused tree that was radiating heat and whose leaves were dropping a liquid that set fire to the grass around it.

“I guess the people doing woodwork around here will have more interesting jobs in the future,” John stated, scratching the back of his head, having absolutely no idea if that thing should just be uprooted right now or if it would be worth it to encourage it to grow and work around the fire hazard it presented. “Bae?”

“Yes, Master?” Beatrice asked.

“Please write an email towards the Logging Camp office later that they will be given extra funding to hire a team of specialists that can identify all of these trees and how to tend to them,” John brushed one of the leaves with his naked fingers, the tree hadn’t grown beyond his head yet. Given that it had only appeared last night, that was still impressive growth, even for the Logging Camp. In response to his touch, a strong squirt of that liquid was released, covering John’s hand. After a few seconds of being exposed to the air, it lit on fire. John just watched it burn away, the blue glowing of Particle Skin underneath. It dealt so little damage, he didn’t even see his mana drop. “Also tell them to make sure they get a summary on everything and to send me a copy of the file. I want to know what exactly we’re producing. Thinking of it, do the same for the Mine, the Fishery and Silicate Island.”

“Affirmative,” Beatrice stated, making the notes mentally. She had more than enough Mental Stats at this point to keep these things in mind without a need for a notebook or something similar.

There was the option for John to just Observe everything that his Buildings produced. However, not only was the information from Observe limited to the interesting snippets, it would also take him an eternity and a half to actually do that. Not to mention that he would have to come double-check whenever someone thought they had found something new and wanted to impress the President with it.

Better to delegate those things, a few hours to spend on the work he HAD to do and fucking his harem. A much better use of his time. Much, much better. The Oil Tower and Herb House, new as they were, were both doing what they said on the envelope and the visual presentation of either wasn’t too interesting.

The Oil Tower was a tall building with the colour of tar. Inside, numerous glass containers were slowly filling like giant syringes, drawing liquids from nowhere, plungers rising into the ceiling. Each container could be set to create a different oil, at vastly different speeds depending on rarity.

The Herb House was a building with a bunch of roofs, some normal, some glass, some flat, some slanted, one some sort of funnel. The rooms inside were just as mixed, specialized towards growing the different things John had built the extensions on the building for.

In the Mine, they descended to the lowest level, to find what that whole ‘creatures lurking in the darkness’ business was about. Originally, John wanted to send a team, but since they were already taking a look, they might as well. What they found was quite interesting.

The monster was entirely harmless, basically an ore vein that ran around but yielded extra results if successfully caught. It did still have a level though, so future mentions of this kind may have to be looked at again. Also, there definitely would be that one idiot stupid enough to get himself killed by that thing, weak as it was. Therefore, he would issue an official warning about the floors 21 and downwards (currently, the Mine went 25 floors deep).

After they had checked all of that out, John needed to get to that press meeting. Aclysia and Beatrice would come with him, while the other girls scattered about. They agreed to meet at the Perfumery once he was done. If everything went according to schedule, the first flask of John’s cologne should be finished by then.