John opened his eyes. He was lying in a shallow and still ocean. Above him, the stars stretched endlessly, forming dense clusters and lanes. It wasn’t the sky of his world. ‘This feels like the scene from Infinity Wars,’ the Gamer thought as he lifted his upper body out of the calmingly cool water. Dipping his hand in it, he wondered if he could gather some sort of significantly powerful stone.

The water was of an arcane purple colour, making the movie reference somewhat weaker. Looking at his hand, John only found the liquid on it, running off him without leaving as much as a drop behind. Turning his head, he gazed back at the stars.

John opened his eyes. For a moment he was confused that he was lying again. In contrast to the scene that had just abruptly ended, he saw absolutely nothing. Nothing unusual there, he had removed his contacts before going to sleep after all. He was surrounded by a pleasant warmth, however. ‘How peculiar…’ he thought, yawning quietly as the reality of the situation settled in on him. ‘Been almost a week since I dreamt.’

Since he had disabled Desync yesterday evening, fully focusing his efforts on using his real body and double on pleasuring his harem in the orgy that had inevitably followed his return to New York City and Nia to the harem at large, he finally had the capability to dream again. He hadn’t even been aware how much he had missed it until he woke up just now. There was just something refreshing about seeing odd things, the occasional invasion of Sylph or other elementals into his dreams aside. To that end, that final bit had, as far as the dreams of the night went, been quite tame.

He closed his eyes again. There was no need to expose them to the air if he couldn’t see. Instead, he focused on the sensations on his skin and tried to guess who was directly around him. The room smelled of conditioner and shampoo, reminding him that he had finished the night with Undine in the bed, while the rest of the girls, even Salamander, had gone to rinse off.

There was no blanket on him, it was still hot despite being mid-September. Part of that was owed to the year having a major heatwave, although it appeared that temperatures had crashed in the week he was gone. Majorly, however, the reason was that his girlfriend had fiddled with the Weather Tower controls, disabling all clouds and setting temperature to the maximum the season allowed.

Taking the place of a blanket were the many women of his harem surrounding him. It was rather easy to guess where his girlfriend was, since he knew nobody else who would be fine with sleeping across his legs. A head rested on the Gamer’s lower chest. Given how light it was, it had to be either Sylph or Siena. The presence of particularly long and slender fingers besides it pointed to the latter. The silky texture of her hair only reinforced this.

Two women were in his arms. As he slept, he must have instinctively grabbed them by the waist, just as they must have instinctively placed their heads in the little depression between shoulder and torso. Sleeping together so often would naturally cause some habits like that to form.

He only had to do some curve inspecting to realize who they were. With her slightly raised body temperature and the fine balance between being relatively short and curvy, Eliza claimed his left side and giggled his name in her sleep. The giggle only rose when he gave her a kiss on the forehead. Even blind, he could do that little bit of aiming.

The right side was a tad more difficult. The size and firmness of the ass left him between two choices, Aclysia and Beatrice. It could have even been Siena, but the moonshade elemental was somewhere else, as already established. Just to make sure, John fondled the butt for a little bit. All three of them were on the pinnacle of round, fat and firm. However, where the maids had the gel-like firmness to them that made clawing at their ass so fantastic, Siena’s ass stood out due to the extreme smoothness of her skin.

Not that either party was severely lacking in that department. Those were just the small differences that John noticed after the daily inspections of those near-perfect double-spheres that were his favourite part about women’s bodies. Only Rave and Gaia had ever combined everything into a completely flawless and glorious back that gave all the optimal tactile and visual feedback.

Not that those two butts were the same either, they were just a tad better than everyone else’s.

‘Back to the question who this is,’ John thought, still not quite sure if he was dealing with Aclysia or Beatrice. A simple inspection of her hair could have brought the answer, but John instead paid some more attention to her smell. The faint and plainly sweet note brought the answer. Aclysia was in the habit of surrounding herself with very specific smells depending on the mood of the day, while Beatrice was generally happy to just keep to the smell of the shampoo she used. What perfumes she had ingested, she only used in tandem with the head maid for added effect.

‘Correct, Master,’ Beatrice entered his mind with the confirmation and leaned up to give John his reward for guessing right. Either that or she wanted to get her own morning kiss. Whatever it was, they were both pleased with that morning ritual. A bit too pleased, as things soon escalated from a simple kiss to a very deep make out session.

The sloppy sounds soon caused stirs across the bed and the slow chain reaction of everyone waking up. Rising from its resting socket at the side of the bed, the Mandala Sphere served as a way for John to observe the stretching of naked, athletic, lean, and curvy women everywhere. All of his harem was present, save for the two girls still missing, yet the round bed managed to give room to all of them.

“Morning,” Rave said as she stretched thoroughly. She smiled up at the Mandala Sphere, knowing her boyfriend couldn’t see her otherwise, while the rest of the harem echoed her greeting. The only girl in the room wearing anything, being Lydia in the lingerie she preferred over being purely naked, crawled over to John’s groin. His lips may have been claimed but his cock was, miraculously, unattended.

“I sacrificed my sleep schedule to spend this night, you best appreciate it,” she announced, one movement away from reaching his cock. Suddenly, Nia vanished from the outskirts of the bed and reappeared between his legs. “A frivolous use of that newfound power of yours,” Lydia remarked.

“It needs to be as easy as breathing. A seven second delay is deadly,” Nia answered, while both of them bowed down and, without using their hands, worshipped his cock. Of course, Lydia was as much of an enthusiastic blowjob slut as she continued to be since her ascend in looks and power, but Nia’s own approach to sucking him off was no less energetic. Her technique was a bit lacking, she hadn’t practiced as much recently as Lydia had, but the fervour spoke for itself.

It appeared a second member of John’s harem had discovered that they were a proper blowjob slut. All of the harem liked sucking him off, but those two were going at it with a mixture of reverence and wild, carnal desires that was just a cut above the rest. Inequalities like this made his harem as a whole that much better to bask in.

Especially once more of his girls, shaking off the sluggishness of the early morning, began to coalesce around him. Metra and Siena joined the worshipping of his cock, Undine and Salamander presented their boobs to his face, Rave straddled his chest and all around there was a good time. It was a very usual morning, with the only difference to a week ago being that Nia was back. A rather sizable difference.

Thirty minutes and some morning fun later, they moved to have breakfast. After another thirty minutes of that, Lydia took her leave and their group began to disperse into several factions. Everyone was happy to have some time either with John back in the picture or going after their usual hobbies.

For his part, John decided to accompany Rave and Nia to the gym in their home. Also tagging along were Metra and Eliza. “Don’t ya have paperwork to do?” Rave asked her boyfriend in a genuinely curious fashion. John quite heavily doubted she didn’t want him around while she worked out; past incidents had shown that she quite liked some post-workout relaxation that left her even sweatier. It had also shown that John very much liked to worship her body when she was in a pretty petered out stage. She smelled and tasted delicious and exhaustion made her a bit more malleable.

“Technically speaking, yes, but also no,” John answered. “Thanks to Jack, I didn’t fall back on my work in any meaningful capacity, so I can afford letting some work stack up. Currently, I’m having my double move around the Fusion Capitol.” He rolled his neck and sighed. “The first House of Commons meeting is later today. I want to keep my mind fresh for then. In the meantime, I’m meeting beforehand with some people to read the mood. I don’t expect anything too unusual, but anyone heavily opinionated could raise a fuss about me just going ahead and annexing Florida without notifying Parliament.”

“Why though? No war was declared, so ya didn’t need their approval,” Rave pointed out. “Or did ya write something into the constitution that current members need to vote on letting people join.”

“No, I wrote that guilds in North America can join on my or Parliament’s approval alone, either suffices,” John told her. “Still, they might raise something on point of principle. I doubt it. People are still on guard about my true intentions, and this being the first session of the House of Commons, they’re probably not sure what the difference between what the text says they’re allowed to do and what they’re actually allowed to do is.”

“Blargh,” Rave made a disgusted sound. “Politicking, leave me alone with that.”

Metra folded her hands behind her head and put a finishing mark on the conversation, “They should just realize that you know what’s best, my king, especially when it’s so fucking obvious.”

John was torn between agreeing and disagreeing and he felt the mental presence of Siena and Stirwin both nudging him in certain directions. By the time they arrived at their in-home gym, he had decided to just drop the issue.

They entered the room and John raised an eyebrow. It was more a hall than a room, with a corner for changing clothes and an empty door frame leading into a shower area. Almost everything else was taken up by various machines or shelves with workout utensils. The only exception was some sort of out of place bar that, John realized after a few seconds of looking, wasn’t stocked up with alcohol but different kinds of protein supplements.

“This place seems to get bigger every time I visit,” John said as he walked over and checked the work-out bar even more closely. The fact that every last label was turned perfectly towards the room and aligned in a manner that went beyond basic perfectionism told him that Beatrice was in charge of restocking.

“Ya did redraw the walls for me, tiger,” Rave reminded him, as she walked over to the changing area. There was nothing to change out of; like usual inside their household, the girls were naked. Only Nia was wearing her white dress and watched as everyone else put on some stretchy and skimpy clothes, ideal to get sweaty in.

“I did,” John confirmed, ignoring his erection in favour of inspecting the machines. The weights on them were mundane, nothing outrageous like one would expect from the Abyss. “Still surprises me that this place expands every time I go in here.”

“If ya want me to maintain this body, ya gotta give me some space,” Rave said and winked. She was overstating it, of course. The magic in her system would keep her muscles from diminishing in any sensible timeframe and that very same magic would make it incredibly easy to gain muscles to a certain and wanted extent.

Because John’s physique was unchanging unless his Base Stats in- or decreased, going to the gym, for him, was quite useless. The only reason he had ever spent time in the, much less expansive, gym was to train martial arts for a Quest. That was one of three kinds of workouts he knew were around in the Abyss. The second was also related to martial arts, being meditating. By filling one’s muscles with mana, their capacity to utilize it could be increased. The supernatural power and ki channelling capacity was trained that way.

The third kind of training didn’t deal with martial arts whatsoever. It wasn’t about practicing technique or deepening one’s potential to use more powerful skills.

“Get out of that dress, Nia,” Rave declared while grabbing some of the many provided workout outfits and throwing them at the pariah. “I need to see your figure while ya train.”

Curious, Nia played with the sports bra in her hand for a little bit. She seemed so taken in by its stretchiness for a few seconds that John wasn’t sure if she would answer. Then the dress faded into nothing and left her naked. “I understand,” she answered and put on the layers of clothing. Sports bra, cropped top, panties and yoga pants.

Already, this trip was worth it. Nia had only ever worn her dress or nothing around him. Now that the alienating piece of beautiful non-cloth was gone, he got to see her lanky figure in one of the greatest fabrics known to mankind. Mankind strictly referring to the males of the species, in this instance, but John was willing to let the lesbians join into the ogling as well.

She may not have been the sexiest of his girls as far as her curves were concerned, but John loved to see her in a new outfit all the same. Even without the unnatural dress, her hair kept being played with by the Nevr’est though. John realized that he was, most likely, standing where that creature was layered on top of, or burrowed under, reality. He shoved that thought away as the useless fear that it was. They couldn’t interact with each other, so there was no need to get afraid or otherwise agitated.

“Alright, first question, can ya actually sap the magic from your muscles?” Rave asked. “Should have asked that before ya changed… can’t really do traditional workouts unless you can depower yourself.”

That was the third kind of training available: mundane workout. By doing the opposite of meditating, stopping the flow of all mana into the muscles, Abyssals could functionally depower themselves to mundane levels. Once depowered, they could also use normal workout routines to get the usual results of straining their muscles. Because it took just about a split second to open the magical channels again, it wasn’t as much of a danger to the person as it sounded in the first moment.

Regardless, most Abyssals chose not to practice in this manner. In general, muscles were viewed as nothing but containers for Ki. Most Abyssals, who didn’t dabble in martial arts, were simply healthy, neither fat nor thin, because of the natural effects of magic. Even martial artists seldom trained to go from ‘fit’ to ‘musclebound’ since they could use all but extremely specialized techniques at that level and time was better spent on practicing the supernatural side of things.

Increasing muscle mass was, therefore, limited to three categories of people. One, those that wanted to scrape together every last advantage they could get. Travolta had fit into this category. With a low power ceiling and hitting roadblocks on all other paths to greater power, the large man had needed to train his body to the maximum. Two, people that had an ability, Innate or Acquired, related to muscles. That one was pretty self-explanatory. Three, those that just wanted to look better.

Rave fell into that last category. When it came to becoming more powerful, going for technique or meditation training was way more efficient. As for the shape of her body, she had a workout routine she went through every now and again. If she slacked off for a long while, she would still be athletic, but her muscles would be differently distributed. Since she had put a lot of work into her body, she wanted to maintain it.

As for Eliza and Metra, the blood mage was around to do technique training while the First of Wrath just wanted to move her body in some aggressive ways. Neither of them could gain anything from regular body training.

“I can reduce the power of my blessings, yes,” Nia answered after a while. “Had to test it first,” she explained the delay.

“Great!” Rave exclaimed and circled around the blank, grabbing the blonde by the naked shoulders and moving her towards a gym mat. “Do that then, can’t really exhaust ya with a normal workout otherwise. Need to get your muscles to hurt and all that. We’re going to start with squats, kickbacks and lunges.”

“Muscles hurting sounds unpleasant,” Nia remarked, with slight doubt on her face.

“It totally is,” Rave laughed and slapped her on the butt. “Don’t ya worry. If ya keep at it and drink plenty of juice, your butt and thighs should look better in a week to a month. Hard to say exactly, all bodies are different and magic and stuff.”