It was the following Sunday, the 26th of August 2018, and the group had another birthday to celebrate. Another two, in this case. A year ago, he had contracted Undine and Sylph. Whether this really qualified as their birth was debatable, new elementals were created as figments of their home plane’s power, but the difference there was negligible enough for John. The important thing was that they didn’t play by the rules of humans, be it physical or mental growth, so the fact that they had only turned one year old wasn’t questionable to the kind of relationship they had.

“Throw me in the air! Throw me again, John!” Sylph exclaimed with such childlike enthusiasm that it became a bit questionable. Although the thunderstorm elemental’s curves didn’t leave any doubt about her being a grown woman, her behaviour was a bit too carefree to call it adult.

Nevertheless, John obliged her, picking the elemental up underneath the arms and then throwing her up. Sylph rose up into the air and then fell back down, completely in accordance with gravity. Normally, she had a hard time falling. With her combination of (small) human size and basically no weight, air resistance was enough to ignore gravity. And that was only trying to think about things in logical, physical terms as well; magic gave everything another three layers of complications. Especially since she was technically sapient air. The bigger question was whether her density was higher or lower than that of the gasses around her.

To get to the point: right now, Sylph was wearing a bunch of clothes. They weighed her down enough that, when John tossed her, she came back down in the normal fashion and he proceeded to catch her. The air spirit was enjoying that feeling more than the clothes themselves, which had been the gift.

They were enchanted with the illusionary properties that helped Eliza, Rave and Scarlett to blend in as normal people. A choker dulled the amber colour of her eyes to a human level and hid her elf-like ears. A pair of red ribbons, one behind the head and one towards the end of the ultra-long ponytail that was created, ensured her hair had a normal, strawberry blond colour and stopped swaying in its own winds. The way it was tied together just barely prevented it from being on a height that could get easily stepped on.

As for the clothes themselves, she was wearing a cropped top, a mini skirt, stockings and sneakers. All of the clothes were enchanted to be extremely heavy, letting her emulate the weight of a normal person. Something that aided her in fitting in and not accidentally flying away out of habit. The general colour scheme was green and black. It contrasted nicely with her skin, being more on the pale side. John had also picked the clothes carefully to show off her midriff and the Lover’s Will mark.

Did that mean that Sylph looked like a short, slutty girl? It absolutely did. Did John think this was an issue? No. Mostly because he thought it was hot, but also because Sylph was a short, slutty girl. She was just also very loyal.

While John had picked the clothes, he had given her quite an arrangement. He didn’t want to have to buy yet more things come autumn and then winter, so there was an entire closet worth for her and each of the other elementals scattered around. Nothing had forced Sylph to go for this particular arrangement, she had just gone along with what John had intended without him needing to push her in that direction.

There was an argument to be made that the style would attract a lot of unwanted attention, should she take advantage of the clothes’ purpose and run around in reality with them. Despite her often-brainless demeanour, Sylph wasn’t so stupid that he wouldn’t trust her to take care of herself though. He wouldn’t go to her to ask for life advice, but the thunderstorm elemental behaved especially thoughtless around them because she trusted all of them enough to basically switch off her brain. A thing she did because she, herself, knew that she was the least intelligent of the bunch.

She may have been a bit stupid, but she wasn’t cripplingly so.

“This is fun!” Sylph exclaimed when John caught her. “But heavy clothes feel weeeiiirrrrrd.”

“You can take them off whenever you want,” the Gamer told her as he put her on the couch next to him. Today’s birthday party was simply held in the living room. A few spared slices of cake stood on the kitchen table, along with cookies and other sweets, bearing testimony to the celebrations that had preceded the gifts. “Just wanted to make sure they fit you.” For the moment, the elementals could only benefit from illusionary clothes like that if they went outside the barrier with John since they lacked the ability to by themselves.

John looked to the other elementals. Every single one of them, including Stirwin, had gotten their own clothes to hide their magical identity. John would have liked to scatter those out throughout the birthdays properly, but they had only been finished a few days ago. That aside, Siena’s and Stirwin’s birthdays weren’t even in this month, so that wouldn’t have worked smoothly.

The main gift Undine and Sylph had received had been, much like Gnome’s, that they had gotten to spend the majority of the day alone with him. ‘Alone’ in this case being ‘the two of them’ or ‘not alone’. John had offered to take tomorrow off for one of them so they each got their day, but they had been happy with the trio arrangement. They had enjoyed the usual things, with Sylph speaking enough so that Undine could just sit aside, cuddle and sometimes throw some things in.

It had been a remarkably carefree day. John almost wanted to say innocent, but that wouldn’t have meshed very well with the fact that they had been naked the entire time and John was either inside Sylph or one of many Undine clones surrounding him. There had been lots of eventless talking, cuddling and fucking.

Undine was looking quite nice in her new clothes. A black choker transformed her hair from translucent blue into black. With the it remaining unequally parted, her right eye mostly hidden by the silky-appearance of the illusionary hair, it gave her heart-shaped face a gothic feel. That her skin was white didn’t help, neither the black clothes that she had picked out of the arrangement that John had presented her with. A corset beset with frilly and decorative, semi-translucent bits covered her chest, confining her white skin into an impressive cleavage. For her legs, black jeans stretched around them, completely filled out by Undine’s volume.

The golden colour of her eyes was dulled in the same way Sylph’s was; the droop-covered texture of her skin and the Lorylim scars were both hidden by the illusion. Getting a proper disguise for her had definitely been the hardest part – and John wasn’t sure it had succeeded. While the drops that ran down her form were hidden, they could still be felt. Same went for the dark blue horns, invisibly part of her head. The disguise fooled the eyes, but nothing more. Very risky conditions to use in a real-world setting. Too risky, if John was entirely honest.

Which was a shame, because she had that wonderful ‘big tiddy goth gf’ aesthetic. In a darker sense than Cumslut, it had to be said. While the sex-crazed Combination elemental was definitely a goth-girl in appearance, she still had a bunch of lighter colours mixed in, not to mention a very pornstar-esque attitude. Undine looked properly melancholic, which went very nicely with the thoroughly black clothes.

In summary, Cumslut was a sexy goth, while Undine looked like a proper goth that was sexy.

Next to her, Siena was wearing a teacher-like combination of white blouse and miniskirt. Per illusion, her feet had changed into regular looking high heels. A pendant and a pair of black glasses decorated her neck and face, each fulfilling the job of recolouring her hair and making her silver-white eyes a simple blue. Because they were both much looser items than a choker, John had given her two so the illusion had an emergency back-up.

Silver-blue skin had changed into milk-chocolate colour, a bit lighter than Metra’s skin tone. Her silky, purple hair had assumed a dark red colour. Regardless of all changes, Siena continued to exude her dangerous aura.

Next to her, Salamander had put on a plain black t-shirt and jeans. Simple clothes but, because she was so large in all aspects of her hourglass figure, they left her looking pretty impressive. From the large rise of her tits to the way her waistband stretched, leisurely worn and showing the string of her panties rising to the sides, she seemed like she would fit in as the tomboy friend of the local gang of bikers. Her red buzzcut, only a shade darker than before, and tanned skin only reinforced this. Like with Undine, the Lorylim scars were completely gone. Her eyes had assumed a dark brown colour, as close to the pitch black of her normal eyes as was possible in the human range.

Gnome went through no actual visual changes. The brunette already looked like a human in all regards. That hadn’t stopped John from throwing a bunch of new summer dresses at her. Especially since her new, magically provided outfit now looked impossible in the eyes of normal people. There was no way to staple autumn leaves together into a durable dress.

Having feasted his eyes on his girls, John looked down to Stirwin. The infinity elemental was currently in his big form and looked at the collar that John bought for him. It would make him look like a regular crocodile. Well, as regular as he could look with the longer limbs.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Stirwin asked, raising the gift.

“Put it on and have a disguise for the regular world?” John asked, while his eyes darted back over to everyone else. He preferred their usual forms. Not only was it hotter fucking them in their true appearances, it didn’t get any more naked than that, but John had developed more than a bit of a taste for ‘monster girls’. He had enough humans in his harem as it was and the ability to fuck some women with marginally different features was just nice. All of that being said, the novelty of their new appearances warranted an orgy in a bit.

“Why would I need that item for that?” Stirwin’s genuinely confused tone caused John’s gaze to dart back to the crocodile. It was just in time to see the adolescent shape of the water-dragon change. Legs were reduced in length, the scales along the back, tail and around the mouth grew dull and less pronounced, and the main body became a bit fatter. All the while, the gold, silver and copper went to greenish-black, brown and fleshy pink. At the end, all that was left was a regular-looking crocodile. “I am Tier 5, to put it in your Gaming terms,” the light spirit responded to the confused looks all around. “Elementals of this level have a secondary form they can assume to exist in the real world.”

“…I did not know that,” John said and looked over to Copernicus and Lydia, who had always been his main advisors when it came to elemental things.

“Neither did I,” the suncat announced and raised a hindleg to scratch himself behind the ear. “I haven’t encountered too many Tier 5 elementals in my time. Can’t know everything.”

Lydia shook her head in a more apologetic fashion. “While I, too, was ignorant about this, I feel like I should have possessed this knowledge previously.”

John scratched the back of his head. “It is how it is, then.” He didn’t take the news too badly. That was simply what he got for hiding the operation with mental barriers for the entire time. Even with that added information, the clothes could be useful. It would still be a while, for most of them, before they reached Tier 5. Only Undine was about to get there. A single Skill Level and a SEP were all that was missing to that end. “Can you also leave barriers on your own?”

“No, although I should be able to once you become a master Elementalist.” Stirwin changed back, clearly bothered by the lack of opposable thumbs he normally had, and put the collar somewhere else. “Although we might never achieve it. People that dedicate all the power you currently have to that craft would have enabled that ability by now.”

“Well, not like I don’t want to invest more into Elementalist,” John sighed. The Class Challenge remained unbeatable for him and clearing it didn’t seem to be anywhere in the future. “Whatever, now we know.” He looked around and cracked a joke, “Guess that means future clothes for you ladies will cost me a lot less.”

Only a few chuckles were had, it hadn’t been that good a joke anyway.

“Right, I wanted to announce another ‘gift’,” he continued on afterwards. “Since things are going pretty smoothly right now, I wanted to offer to send all of you back to your elemental planes next Monday. I would summon you back at the end of the month, so you can speak to Momo on her creation day.”

That would cover a period of only four days, but that was already way longer than the 0 they had been back previously. Ever since John had contracted them, every single one of the elementals had been permanently summoned. They had often talked about John dismissing them for a period of time and now was better than any.

“Count me out.” Siena crossed her legs in a slow and sensuously sexy motion. “You would need a considerable bribe to give me the motivation to see my mother again.” She looked at John with hungry eyes. “I have considerably more fun activities here. I would rather not be berated by her nails-on-chalkboard voice.”

John had a feeling that this would get him the disapproval of the Mother of Shadows down the line. As he cared much more for Siena’s opinion than the one of the primal elemental, which could be seen as pretty stupid but he wasn’t in love to make smart decisions, he simply nodded. If it came to a conflict because of this, he would deal with that in the future. Best case scenario, Siena could talk it out the way Rave had with Nariko.

‘I’d better start drafting up some worst-case scenario plans,’ he thought while waiting for the answers from the remaining girls. Salamander, Gnome and Sylph agreed pretty quickly. None of them had any reason to fear going back. Stirwin seemed a bit torn on the matter, but ultimately said he would like to go back as well.

Which only left Undine, sitting quietly, hiding her thoughts behind a dampening wall. John put an arm around her shoulder and waited for her to calm her mind. Ever since the incident in Rome, the ocean elemental had made her best efforts to keep communicating about her issues and being more open in general. If he just gave her a moment, she would certainly tell him what was on her mind.

“…I would like to go back as well…” Undine finally spoke up after about a minute of silence, her blind eyes staring straight ahead. “However, I have… concerns about my safety…”

Not entirely unfounded. Water elementals, despite making for the best healers and being of the element most commonly associated with life, were stunningly brutal. They acted against impurity in their ranks with purging intent and were of a generally inquisitive mindset. Undine herself mirrored this, being capable of tremendous rage and aggressive berating. She just hadn’t had a reason to aim either at John or members of the harem in a while.

“They shouldn’t be able to do anything permanent to you while you are still under my contract,” John said. It wasn’t meant to calm her, not primarily. It was a simple truth that he reminded her of to help her make her decision.

“Yes,” the single word came out as a single sung note. Even thoughtful, the water spirit’s voice was a beautiful melody. “I propose that… you summon me back after just one day,” she then said. “If my concern is unfounded, you can just let me go again. If it is, I will stay.”

John nodded, that sounded good from his point of view. “You sure you want to make it a whole day?” he asked, just to be sure. “Not an hour or something else smaller?”

“If they see me as a taint, I want to try and smooth the surface,” Undine answered firmly.

If that was her will, then John would oblige. There was nothing further to be said and John was ready to let the rest of the birthday be just a normal day when a window suddenly popped up and opened a new opportunity.