Like usual, they came out twenty-four hours after the initial entering of the barrier. As they didn’t enter at midnight, this was at around eight in the morning on the following Monday. Also, like usual, they had done their best to have schedules mostly aligned so they woke up at such a time that the reintegration into the normal flow of things was as easy as it could be.

Magoi and Mabirl were the first to step out and took their leave pretty quickly, only waving at the waiting girls of the harem as they passed them. Coming out shortly after them, John spotted Rave, Eliza and Metra. Scarlett was notably absent, but that hardly came at a surprise. He was then succeeded by Lydia, Aclysia and Beatrice. The elementals followed in an incorporeal fashion. It was much quicker than having all of them clogging up the entrance.

“Oh mah yussss,” Rave exclaimed when she first saw Lydia step out of the I.D. Gate. For once, John’s entire greeting by his girlfriend was only a quick hug and kiss on the cheek, before she danced around him and inspected Lydia’s new curves with a groping embrace.

“Oy,” John complained, especially once Metra and Eliza also went around him and directly to the extra attractive attraction. “I just came out of a warzone, can I have some extra cuddles?”

“Nah!” Rave declared, only to be slowly but forcefully pushed off by the queen herself. A rather difficult endeavour as the Gamer’s girl had been groping her butt intensely.

“This amount of attention is wholly unnecessary,” she decided. “I also must insist that you do not harass me so aggressively.” Blushing and sighing in a way that aimed to exorcise rising lust, Lydia crossed her arms under her chest. “I have yet to fully control this increased Libido. Such a dramatic increase of bodily sensitivity is not mastered overnight.”

Similarly, to that, Lydia had been getting more and more used to her increased physical capabilities. There she had made much quicker progress. In the first place, she hadn’t suffered from Eliza’s old problem of accidentally crushing things because of a lack of control. She had been able to move easily within her old cap and slowly expanded from there.

Her change of body had also come with a change of style. A very miniscule one, but a detail that John thoroughly enjoyed. She no longer kept every single button of her shirt closed. The uppermost one was now usually open, with a second one coming undone indoors or when it was really hot. The result was a good view of collarbone and a bit of cleavage. While the latter was more traditionally sexy, John found the former alone quite sensuous.

“But you’re so squishy now!” Rave complained and grabbed Lydia’s boobs. “They’re bigger than mine again, that’s so nice!”

“Fuck me, you got thighs now,” Eliza chimed in, getting handy with them.

Metra, only grinning aggressively, ripped Lydia’s shirt out of the confinement of her belt and looked at her midriff. “Yeah, that’ll do,” she said, while inspecting the abs.

“S-stop!” Lydia stuttered, not out of embarrassment, but because Rave’s skilled handling of her boobs was making her pleasure rise quite drastically. She tried to get some distance again, but she was still, by quite a margin, the physically weakest of the group. Once she backed up against the frame of the I.D. Gate, her fate was sealed, and the three greedy girls had no intention of letting up. “I do realize I got tangled up with a herd of sexually adventurous ladies in this harem, but this amounnnnnn-“

Her complaints were cut short as Metra slipped a hand into the queen’s pants. At the same time, Rave was moving in to kiss her. The effect of both was intense. Lydia’s newfound sensitivity in the throat area extended to her lips in some fashion. That was to say, while she couldn’t get off from kissing alone, the queen certainly got a whole lot more affected by it than before. Eliza didn’t make things better, getting caught up in the moment and biting Lydia’s hardening nipple through the single layer of her shirt.

“Alright, alright,” John shouted and clapped his hands. He wasn’t entirely motivated by jealousy. “Break it up, a child is about to be present.”

Although they obeyed him, leaving Lydia panting and with all of her orderly sitting clothes pulled out of position, they were also giving him a questioning gaze. John then gestured towards the I.D. Gate. Slowly, Velka peeked her head past the stone and looked around.

Since John had received her, the Magryph had grown, but she still would have fit in both of his hands combined. Once Velka identified the grass before her as something she already knew, she was more willing to step out of that odd darkness she had found herself in. Carefully, she ventured out.

Lydia gave everyone a pissed and horny glare while pulling her clothes back into position. “Why did I expect anything else but being assaulted by you the second I got out of there?” she asked.

“Well… ya know me?” Rave didn’t even try to defend herself. “Don’t ya worry, I’ll make sure that tension gets relieved when we’re in the living room.” Winking, the Lightbearer showed not the slightest sign of regret.

Lydia opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, then pinched the bridge of her nose and let out an exasperated sigh. “You best,” she simply stated and skipped the effort of tugging her shirt back into her pants. Attention instead shifted to the Magryph, now one whole human step out of the door. The I.D. Gate’s door closed magically, but the animal didn’t seem to bother too much.

After picking at the floor with the black tip of her otherwise white beak, Velka raised her head and looked around. Over a week of exposure to John and she now had figured out a very basic view of the world. Well, John was pretty sure he understood that she got a very basic view anyway. It went about as follows.

He, John, gave her food, pats and (sometimes) shinies. Those were good, so John was good. The Gamer assured her safety and the closest thing to a parental figure, so she oriented herself by him. At this point, she trusted him enough that he had been allowed to keep her little treasures for the duration of the move.

Since John = good, Velka had started to look for signifiers for other people and their relation to him. The Gamer had quickly realized, after that encounter with Salamander, that Velka was way quicker to trust any of the girls after it was established that they belonged to John in some fashion. In other words, John showing intimacy with one of his girls before Velka let the chick understand that they were trustworthy by extension.

There had been a few more days for all the girls to gain Velka’s trust on their own accord. With that, the Magryph was able to repeat the logical process with the new known elements at their centre. Since all of the girls had been so close with Lydia, Velka was somewhat willing to entertain them approaching her.

“She’s so tiny!” Rave exclaimed, kneeling down and offering her hand. “Come here, Velka, I am Rave, but friends can call me Jane.” She tapped the grass. Of course, John had given several picture updates over the days, so his girlfriend was mostly informed.

John was about to come to her aid, since he didn’t really believe Velka would approach Rave, feeling somewhat safe or not. However, as so often, his girlfriend proved to be a miracle worker when it came to being charming. Taking one careful step, then two normal, and finally three more bold ones, Velka approached Rave’s hand. At first, she looked at it, then she sniffed a little bit, only to finally gnaw on it with her beak. The regular three stages of Velka getting to know someone new.

After the initial ritual, Rave poked the Magryph in the side of her head. In a theatrical motion, Velka fell over sideways. “Man, she’s fluffy,” Rave remarked, as she engaged in a playfight with the chick. It was the fearsome, tiny Magryph versus the five fingers of doom and cuddles. “Feathers and fur are an oddly satisfying combination.”

Copernicus, appearing from somewhere, tapped around his summoner and to the Magryph. “I don’t know if I should regard her as food or kin,” the sun cat remarked and lowered his head to smell the chick.

For herself, Velka hadn’t even noticed the cat until that moment and got startled the moment the sniffing started. Getting on her feet, she darted off. First into a random direction, then, once she spotted him, towards John. At first, he thought she would hide behind his leg. He was proven somewhat right, as she climbed up his leg instead.

“Why something that has wings needs to be so good at climbing, I really don’t get,” John thought out loud, grabbing Velka by the neck. The skin at the back of it was, like a cat, specifically made to serve that end. Her claws, however, stayed connected to his pants for a fair bit longer than intended. Since they would repair on their own, John wasn’t that worried about his clothes. They were Schattengarn, though, so Velka’s claws were more likely to give in if he just pulled.

Instead, he had to shake her a bit. Something she reacted to with protesting warbling. Once he had her free, he slowly placed her down. “Easily scared, that one,” Copernicus remarked, while he slowly approached.

“Don’t blame her, she’s tiny,” John answered and patted Copernicus to show that he was fine as well. The light elemental must have been in a good mood that day since he even purred a little bit when John did so. “To her you look like a giant predator.”

“We shouldn’t let her see me Unleashed then,” the cat said and raised his paw. After Velka started gnawing on it as well, they were all set. Afterwards, Metra and Eliza also introduced themselves to Velka.

After about five minutes of playing, Eliza tried picking the Magryph up. At first the pretty little psycho just held her like a bottle. It wasn’t a very comfortable situation for the chick, her head peeking out of one end and her legs dangling out the other. To prevent any aggressive siren calls, John quickly instructed Eliza how to hold her properly. The words ‘like a baby’ made it immediately clear to the blood mage what to do.

Now resting in the gap between her breasts and the crook of her arm, Velka looked up and cawed happily. Eliza poked the black and white chimera and was promptly poked back by her beak. “Fucking shit, she is adorable,” Eliza burst out and looked to John. “She is like the cover art of some batshit crazy deathmetal band that was drawn by an anime artist on fucking mushrooms or something!”

“If you want, you can try feeding her,” John promised. Since he had fulfilled the Quest, there was no need to make that an exclusive right to himself.

“YES!” Eliza shouted and Velka cawed after her. While there was no word, the rise and fall of the sound was extremely similar. “Is she fu- Is she imitating me?”

John felt a little tug at his heartstrings as Eliza immediately tried to suppress her cursing once she suspected she was in front of a child that could understand what she was saying. It was just one of those little things that made her such an adorable thing. “She is smarter than a parrot, and those can learn to talk in a very limited capacity,” the Gamer responded. “Well, she is going to be smarter. She is pretty young, so I think the brain still needs to develop a fair bit.”

“Just a shame she doesn’t get big enough to be ridden into battle,” Metra remarked. “I remember the original gryphons… awesome critters.”

“She may get big enough, the Tamer Class says evolving is involved,” John informed everyone.

“Radical,” the ancient weapon grinned, and the Gamer looked at her funny. “What?”

“Just… I would say the eighties called and they want you back, but I don’t even know where you would pick up saying ‘radical’,” John said.

Rave chimed into the conversation. “I say it all the time!”

At her side, Lydia shook her head. “Not only is this inaccurate, you say ‘Rad’ which is a more modern shortening, but your habits of expression are enigmatic beyond any affiliation to a time period.”

“Well, excuse me, princess,” Rave retorted. “Ya can kiss my ass, my crotch mark, tattoo, thingy and my clit, in that order.”

“Speaking of the Lover’s Will mark,” John pivoted the topic, “I can give one to all of you now. Unlocked more than enough of them while I was grinding.” Just to make it extra clear that he was being sincere, he raised his hands. They were covered with marks now, courtesy of the five elementals he had added. It was getting quite crowded and overly artistic, like modern reconstructions of tribal markings, but given their emotional significance, John didn’t feel the want to erase any single one of them.

Eliza showed a gargantuan grin and then started laughing maniacally. “Oh ye-he-he-ssssss,” she exclaimed, gleefully striding after John, as he turned to relocate this entire thing somewhere that wasn’t the roof of his Palace. “This day just keeps getting so much better, what the fu- fudge!”

“We’ll get right on the marking, after we put Velka somewhere,” John announced and told everyone his plans for Velka. For now, she would live inside the Palace. Since the modification of the Building only took some money and finagling with menus, and much of it was already cat/crocodile friendly, giving her a room of her own was no problem. For the first month, she would be locked in there. She would have plenty of visits; it wasn’t like they were short on people willing to play with the tiny chimera, but having her run around was inviting trouble. At least before she got a bit older and fast enough to outrun the average human.

Which would be stage two. After the first month, or perhaps a bit after that even, when she had gotten at least as big as a cat and could fly, they would go out with her. Once they were sure she was accustomed enough to the ‘wild’ of the Guild Hall (the only really wild part was the Midnight Forest), Velka would get herself some sort of pathway to explore on her own. From there on out, they would have to take very little active care of her. That was the theory, at least.

There would also be a need to move her outside of the Palace once she got really big. Although, if she stayed at one and a half metres, she could probably be allowed inside as long as she kept her wings to herself. They had the space in the rooms and the hallways for something that big. If she got up to two metres large, then it would be too difficult for her to move around, being quadrupedal and all that.

That was up to a year away, though. For now, John just opened one of the many empty rooms in the Palace and modified it in such a way to be Velka friendly. Scratchable, climbable walls, a corner to sleep in, a box with kitty litter, lots of surfaces and corners to explore and some cat/dog toys for her to play with should she get bored. John also put in a radio and showed Velka what each button did. She pretty quickly figured out what to peck at so the music stopped coming.

This was all put in place just so that Velka could do something against lonely silence.

Attached to that entire apparatus was a small kitchen and a bathroom, for food preparation and cleaning efforts. With all of the preparations done, they then had Eliza give Velka her breakfast (second breakfast, actually, but the Magryph was hungry from all the excitement in the morning). Once she was fed, Velka fell asleep. They left her on the bed in the corner and then parted.