‘The human mind can get used to anything after three days,’ was a sentence John often found himself contemplating. Obviously, its truth could be debated, there were a great many things the mind could doubtlessly not get used to after three days. In the broad strokes, the Gamer found that it applied well enough to him. In a way that bothered him. There was so much wrong with the Iron Domain that he should not feel right while inside it.

In another way, he was quite happy that he rediscovered his sexual appetite.

He sat inside the room of the deceased King. More precisely, he sat inside an incredibly comfortable armchair in what he guessed was a conference room. His hands were holding onto Siena’s deliciously large ass, as it bounced and rippled in his lap. It was a reward for her, for a job well done, and a return to a normalcy of mind for him.

“Ah! Ah! Ah! Aaaaaaahhhh!” Siena cried sweetly and smashed her fat bubble butt down on his groin one last time. Fundamentally, John would have been able to keep going. Accompanying her orgasm, however, was Siena’s hellish ability to manipulate her insides. A myriad of tendrils and bumps caressed him inside pulsing folds, bringing him all the way to his own orgasm in just three seconds. They were still, save for the involuntary twitches and spasms of release. “Always so eager.” She giggled afterwards in lustful, ladylike fashion.

“Who… wouldn’t be?” John asked and yawned. Although the insides of the shadow spirit around his dick did still feel good, tiredness did pull him towards the sweet embrace of sleep. Even if his sexual appetite had returned, he wouldn’t have started fucking at the first available opportunity without good reasons. Having a little tangle with Siena did help a lot in calming down his body after two days of travel.

Siena laughed, a little louder, a little more pleased than lustful, and rose from his dick. Doubtlessly she could have prevented him from becoming flaccid. Instead, she sat down on the armrest and hugged his head. “It is… proper to worship me,” she sighed and kissed the top of his head. The caress of her fingers that followed was deeply relaxing. John felt his body grow heavier by the second. “Rest, my John. Becoming the saviour of another world is exhausting.”

“I… told you about that… just a few hours ago.” He chuckled and yawned again.

“And it is good to hear what you already know sometimes,” she whispered back. “Like you already know that you’re a fantastic man. The greatest and only I ever truly served. Oh, my saviour, rest now. You can trust me. Us. Except Sylph.” John pinched her thigh with the remaining energy in his body. “Even Sylph,” Siena added with a chuckle.

John’s eyelids were already closed and his head slowly slumped away to the side, resting on Siena’s bosom. ‘Stay with me,’ he requested mentally.

“As you desire,” Siena whispered and wiggled her way into the seat next to him. “You earned a night with me.” Soft lips pressed on his cheek, sealing the Gamer’s physical rest.

Mentally, however, he was still active. Being split across three bodies, his consciousness could only hope to join the rest of him in sleep if all of them were in a position that allowed stillness for at least six hours. That was a condition difficult to meet for just one of him, much less three. Although his brain, courtesy of Gamer’s Body and his incredibly high Mental Stats, could sustain the difficulties of constant, multiple awareness, his mind still got exhausted.

It was not something tangible enough to incur a debuff. Well, it wasn’t yet. John had never pushed it past a few days of constant consciousness. As it incurred an unpleasant feeling, the Gamer had avoided it when he could – which was always. Even during stressful office days, he was liberated by the fact that other people had to sleep daily, while he could operate on a two- or three-day model, if he so desired.

John did chide himself for not experimenting on this particular front. Spending the nights lying with his haremettes had always been a higher priority than finding out how long he could stay awake before his concentration started to seriously dwindle. This was not something that should be found out in the field. It appeared, however, that it would be found out during this campaign.

All John could do was to try and reduce his mental presence as much as possible. Even in that state, he had a rough awareness of what was going on. The elementals were exploring the nooks and crannies of the fort, smoking out the remaining Ironborn. Afterwards they, too, would take a moment to rest. Eliana and Rave were already sleeping one room over, guarded by Beatrice. Metra was accompanying Momo, who was currently inspecting the mechanism Siena had found underneath the fortress.

As for his other selves, the Mandala Sphere was still travelling east. Moving at the speed of a car on the highway, they had made it presumably a third of the way. The Creator Puppet was in the process of returning with two cores from a Mettle plant. With them, he assured the power supply and enabled a hopeful discovery of a way to do something non-harmful with the nourishing poison.

As he slept and time passed, two developments occurred.

First was Aclysia and the Mandala Sphere catching the first glimpses of the Eternal Fortress. It started with a tower looming over the horizon, which the extended mind of the Gamer first assumed to belong to the western Cardinal Bastion. After some more travel eastward, they noticed the southern necromantic leyline flowing directly towards that tower, correcting John’s assumption about their current position.

They had drifted far north of his indicated path and drifted further north still. While in the area, the Gamer wished to see the central fortification of his enemy.

The Eternal Fortress was truly the heart of operations of a dark lord. The central tower, the one that John had seen peek above the horizon hours before the leylines, stretched so far upwards that its red, metal roof must have tickled the stratosphere. Attached to it were layers upon layers of towers, gradually sprawling outwards. Appearing both like a man made mountain and a closed flower, the Eternal Fortress projected an area around it which no clouds may touch. Its outside walls, themselves over five-hundred metres tall, came in the shape of a four-pointed star. In the depressions between the points were the endpoints of the leylines. All four still flowed, as Momo had not yet fully figured out the device they had found in the northern Cardinal Bastion.

Magic radiated from the entirety of the grey stone of the Eternal Fortress in the typical, baleful green of the Ironborn. It rose from the lower segments and fell from the highest ones. The result was a wreath of energy shifting around the outer area like a horizontal corona of an eclipse.

It certainly was the kind of fortress John would build if he had a millennium and the resources of an entire world. Although, John had to say he preferred marble and granite over whatever smooth grey stone the Ironborn liked to use. The colour of lead just screamed, ‘I’m evil!’ John preferred his marble and granite. Those only proclaimed the vanity of the people living inside the oversized fortress.

‘Let’s turn south,’ John told the weaponized maid. He didn’t want to cross through so close to the Eternal Fortress. Doubtlessly, moving so close to the centre of their activity, had given the second group away in some form. That was fine with John, this wasn’t a stealth mission. The second group’s job was to weaken the general structure of the Iron Domain by smashing in the heads of Ironborn wherever the main group was not.

While all of that was going on, something terrible happened elsewhere.

As the Creator Puppet returned from its trip to the nearest Mettle Plant, the Gamer noticed that the HP of several soldiers was dropping. The golem was already sprinting and could go no faster. There was combat action. All he could hope for was that they held out until he got there.

Once back at the base, he immediately saw that there had been a raid. The entrance of the mine had been tinkered with, bearing the destructive marks of someone searching through a place to whose maintenance they had no interest. He deposited the cores somewhere safe, an abandoned minecart, and ran inside, praying that the situation wasn’t too dire. Most of the HP dropping had slowed by now, pointing at either their capture, victory, or successful get-away.

The semi-hidden entrance, a narrow corridor disguised as a collapsed shaft, had been widened. Charging inside, the Creator Puppet rushed through the various small chambers that existed as a further layer of dissuasion, until he finally made it to the command centre.

It was utterly destroyed, the stone table and other furniture that Gnome had provided smashed apart. Blood covered several surfaces. The corpses scattered around the place, however, were universally made from metal.

“Welcome back,” Ted greeted him, sitting against a wall.

The Creator Puppet looked around. There was one Ironborn in the middle of the table, a Baron going by the markings, and another one in a distant wall. Both bore the marks of a blade. “Did you do this alone?” the Gamer asked, honest respect in his voice. To him, an Ironborn Lord was a non-issue. For his level 78 general, a Baron was about his equal. Taking one of them as well as a Lord out was a considerable achievement.

“Yes,” Ted responded and raised his mechanical left arm. A blade emerged between middle and ring-finger, extending most of the length of his lower arm. Silver light emitted from the heavily enchanted weapon. It was forged from Dragon-blessed Mithril, a drop from the first Raid the Gamer had been to. “The Ironborn do not know martial arts,” he said and the blade was sucked back in with a quick, mechanical sound. “I managed to overwhelm the weaker and then duelled the stronger one. Scarlett’s inventions are incredible. I will need a new healing potion though.” He showed a segment of his mechanical arm that had a slot of a glass vial, automatically shooting the healing liquid into his veins.

“Incredible,” the Gamer said and he meant it and inspected his general. “You’re hurt,” he noted, spotting a red-rimmed gash in the man’s uniform.

“Not badly,” the general responded. His HP bar was still around a third and barely declining from the bleeding, so John believed that. “I waited here for you. I need you to cover our relocation.”

“Absolutely,” the Creator Puppet agreed and helped the general up. He gnashed his teeth, but stayed stoically quiet. Leading the way, he delivered his president deeper inside.

“I found him,” the general said as they walked.

“The one in Lorelei’s prophecy?” the Gamer asked, since that was the only thing he could think of that may fit. A simple nod answered his question. He had no further ones, trusting he would be shown the full picture soon enough.

They made their way to the segment of the damaged base that had been designated as the infirmary. Ten of the eighteen volunteers were sitting around the room, covered in minor injuries. Three were entirely without wounds. Of those thirteen, most coalesced around one of the barely padded beds that the remaining five, heavily injured people were lying on. Medelnick was in the process of stabilizing the last of them. The front of his labcoat was open, revealing the mechanical gut he usually kept hidden. Out of it reached various mechanical tendrils, spraying alchemical fluids on wounds he had cleaned and otherwise treated. The blood encrusted the wound swiftly, preventing further blood loss. It wasn’t healing magic, but it was a start.

‘Took three days for the base of operation to be found,’ the Gamer thought. ‘Not good, maybe we should relocate entirely?’ “Any idea how they found us so quickly?”

“They bragged openly that they were ordered to stay in the area by their Emperor,” Ted responded.

“So Arkeidos guessed we would set up a base in the mountains… maybe we should forgo these bases entirely.”

“Maybe,” the general said, not yet of a definitive mind. Before they discussed this further, there was the matter of the prophecy to talk about. “Step aside,” Ted ordered the soldiers, who formed a line on the right side of the bed to allow John to see which one of the volunteers had everyone’s attention.

He was a man in his mid-thirties with dark brown skin and hair that had been shaven short in the typical military fashion. He was almost naked at the moment, due to the many cuts and bruises all over his well-trained form that had required fixing. He breathed normally, although his movements were somewhat sluggish when he turned his dark green eyes to the Creator Puppet. “Mister President,” he greeted.

“Officer James,” John greeted the man, one of the coordinating members of the campaign. The Gamer had memorized the files of everyone who had attended the initial deployment, so he knew who was part of this as well. James was a soldier with exemplary behaviour and an Innate Ability that increased his power and defence the more damage he took. “Tell me what happened. You were attacked by Ironborn?”

“Five of them,” James responded. “General took out two of them, while we distracted the other three.”

“Five?” The Creator Puppet’s voice reverberated with surprise. James was level 35, everyone else level 25 to 30. Certainly it was conceivable that eighteen of that power scale won against three around level 50 Ironborn. To do so without losses, however, bore the mark of great coordination and disciplined fighting. “How did you do it?” He looked to the other soldiers to signal they were allowed to speak.

“James threw himself between attacks, sir,” one of them took the invitation. “He saved several of us from mortal wounds.”

“Only made sense, I’m sturdier than you lot,” James said in the humorous tone of the surviving combatant. “Couldn’t have done it without all of you.”

“I found him with a sword buried in his stomach. A torn apart Ironborn to his feet,” Ted reported.

“Elervain increased my power.”

John grabbed the older man by the shoulder. “Let’s not downplay the guts it took to act like you did,” he stated. “I can’t know the true extent of your bravery, I wasn’t there, but the other soldiers clearly acknowledge what you did. You should trust the evaluation of your fellows.” James quietly nodded and John let go. “We’ll talk about promoting you after we make it out of here alive. Fusion needs more capable and brave souls filling the upper ranks.”

“I- thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” the Gamer responded and looked at everyone around. “My personal suggestion would be for all of you to head back to the Guild Hall and heal fully. However, in doing so, you will abandon this current position. You will re-emerge around the northern Bastion. You’d have to start all over elsewhere and in an active warzone. Alternatively, you remain here and continue what you have started. The choice,” he looked to Ted, “is yours, general.”

“We stay and relocate to another hideout,” Ted responded quickly. “Risk is inherent to every mission. Let’s finish this one.”