Chapter 2175 – The First Harem Tournament 13 – Field Tests and Talks

There was a blinding flash of energy. Most averted their gaze, John took advantage of his lack of biological oculars to keep watching.

The beam, a mixture of arcane and electrical currents, poured from the nozzles of a contraption that Hailey carried like a minigun. As the barrel spun, the circuits lined up over and over again, continuing to feed into a laser that was, at least to John’s perception, uninterrupted. If there were gaps between the lance of energy existing and not, they were so minute, so utterly insignificant, that not even someone of his level could make them out.

Alas, the lance of energy did meet its end.

The shield of annulling non-matter that Nia had created absorbed the overabundant magic. The surface rippled like a disturbed pond. Nia strained. She wasn’t moved physically, but her being gradually turned more and more translucent.

A loud hiss of blue-purple steam echoed through the arena. The sudden release of pressure from within the chassis catapulted Hailey to the side. The ice-armoured woman skipped several times over the floor of compacted sand. Her contraption was dropped in the process. The mechanisms that kept it together, already taxed, failed. A second line was drawn in the sand, many pieces of metal and crystal along its length, a bent and half-melted minigun at its end.

“Alrighty,” Hailey chirped and got up as if nothing had happened. “Thank ye for bein’ such a sweetie about it, Nia. Victory is yours.”

Nia slowly bowed her head, expression frozen in neutrality. “An impressive weapon.”

“Well, it was,” Hailey joked, to the amusement of the crowd. Their conversation continued, but they detached from the voice-carrying enchantments, keeping the words private.

The fight had only lasted about forty seconds. They hadn’t even bothered to spin the wheel. Hailey had decided to make the challenge a binary one: could Nia resist the full output of the presented weapon? The pariah had accepted. This was the outcome.

They all knew that Hailey couldn’t have won otherwise. Her ice armour was innately dependent on magic and that was the only thing she had on her that could have helped against Nia. Though she could have built various guns that relied on simply delivering a bullet of the hardest metal at maximum velocity, any of those would have faced the issue that Hailey did not have the speed necessary to aim it at Nia. Adding to that Nia’s new ability to call on a Wyrdwyrm, which made looking in her direction exceptionally painful, and guns were a dead end as well.

So, they skipped all the struggles and made it a short-lived spectacle. John approved, in large part because he, like every other onlooker, had no idea what Hailey had built there. He had seen a similar weapon in the hands of the rat men present at the Order’s headquarters during the Lorylim War, but that had been a machine gun with considerably less firepower.

“Could we mount that on the ship?” John asked the enigma engineer.

Hailey didn’t answer immediately. She was currently being used as the reality anchor for Nia, which, of course, meant that the platinum blonde’s tongue had put that of the dirty blonde into the oral equivalent of a submission hold. Nia kept going, a side-eye at John letting him know that she was being deliberately mischievous. Nia Fae may have been a vanilla woman, but that certainly did not deprive her of the occasional teasing.

John was far from minding. It was cute, really, and the sight provided ample inspiration for his cock to keep twitching inside Nightingale’s throat. The harpy’s ‘punishment’ had concluded over twenty minutes ago. She had not stopped sucking. He was reminded of their first time together. They had struck an accord that he would make her climax so he could receive her Blessing according to a Disciple Perk. It had been before the final battle of the Iron Domain. The condition had been fulfilled with him ‘merely’ eating her out, but they had both craved for more and it ended up that she taught him about the throat of a civilized harpy – intimately taught him.

That had been almost a year ago. Nightingale had been quite mysterious back then. Now she was entirely his, every one of her holes trained to respond to his cock, her Libido increased from 10 to 69, and her roost found in his harem.

John did not miss the chase. It had its tantalizing moments, but he much preferred the depth of love from a long-term relationship.

Nightingale moaned, her harmonious voice turned to a depraved, slutty note, muffled by the cock she so eagerly sheathed in her throat-pussy. Cum spurted down her gullet, each spurt inspired by her current actions, past flirtations and the view of two gorgeous blondes making out in front of them.

 The overlapping orgasms the harpy experienced as she so shamelessly received every last drop of the load seemed to finally satisfy her appetite. She glided upwards, leaving his cock behind with a satisfying ‘pop’. “I am sincerely grateful for the meal, my patriarch,” she cooed.

“It was my pleasure, really,” John responded in an equally warm voice, though he lacked her natural pleasantness. “If my beautiful songbird wants anything, she will receive it.”

“My only current request is that you do not let me reach 33 unbred.” Nightingale let out a sigh between longing and weariness. “Though my body changed and age is a fleeting concern, my mother will not rest.”

“She does want to see her demigod grandkids,” the Gamer said. His mind was already leaping to how odd it must be to be a regular harpy whose daughter became a goddess. He forced it to return to the question he had initially asked. “So, could you mount that on the ship, Hailey?”

“Hmmmmm?” The enigma engineer was a bit brain-melted after the kiss. “Oh, right, ‘the ship’!” she drawled the two words with extra importance. “That could’ve a generator big enough on it to power somethin’ like that lil’ gun, sure.”

John raised an eyebrow and tilted over the edge of the railing, watching as two members of Fusion’s military engineers grabbed everything they could salvage. “That doesn’t look like it’d need a lot of space.”

“Ya don’t wanna have the source I used for that on the ship,” Hailey assured him. “Way too expensive, way too unstable, and the heat exchange you’d have to install… whew!” The country gal did a tap on her blue spine, where the augmentation that let her summon her ice armour was anchored. “Lotta trouble, hon’.”

“I’ll just take your word for it,” John said.

Once the expensive debris had been safely removed, the next parttime event began. This one was a presentation on Fusion’s economic recovery and development plan made – the part of it that could be discussed out loud anyway. None of it was news, John was just using the tournament as a way to make sure more people heard about it.

They returned to the inside of their private area. Nia dragged Hailey aside to the little place of honour where everyone could see what was about to happen. Ever the power-bottom, it took the country gal all but ten seconds to turn Nia’s attempts at domination into the dirty blonde doing whatever she wanted while cooing the words, “If that’d please ya, sug’r.”

It was not quite as effective on Nia as it was on John (who just melted whenever Hailey employed her southern drawl). It was effective enough.

John found himself back on that armchair where he usually scrolled the live reactions between fights. Tempted as he was to do so again, Nightingale continued to hold his attention. Not by the allure of her body but by the way she raised her wing before her mouth. Her eyes expressed her intentions anyhow. She had something to discuss.

“My Emperor,” she rolled the word with graceful respect. Once, she must have addressed Romulus that way. Now she was far away from the political life of Austria. “There are topics I wish to discuss. One a concept to converse about, the other an adjustment to your operations.”

“Does it start with you apologizing for what you did out there?” Momo asked and executed an overplayed wretch. “Sucking his cock publicly? For that long?”

“Mhm…” Nightingale glimpsed Momo, then at John’s cock. “Were I not full of seed already…”

“I got this!” Lulu shimmied her way into the conversation. Anyone who had heard Momo knew what to do, for such an obvious invitation by the hypnotized brat demanded a response.

John groaned twice, once when Lulu’s perfect ass hovered above his cock and the second time when her sphincter began to stretch to accommodate his girth. For reasons of fighting and potentially being caught with it in the heat of combat, the Heavenly Jade Empress did not wear a butt plug today.

“I am learning to enjoy this…” she groaned.

It was a relative statement. Lulu enjoyed anal enough to engage in it, but compared to the rest of the harem, she clearly wasn’t all too into it. 80% of the reason why she did it was clearly to put a mortified and deeply aroused expression on Momo’s face. A couple steps removed, Claire mumbled, “That my Master would…” The unfinished sentence hung on the room, overpowered by Lulu’s exaggerated moans.

“I looooove feeling you inside me, hubby.” The short-ish woman wiggled her hips. Fingers flicking her swollen mons, she supplemented the pleasure with her own efforts.

John leaned back and just enjoyed the view of the world’s foremost empress bouncing on his lap. The special thrill he got out of it could not be denied. Obscene, that was the word that described the way her sphincter stretched around his cock. Obscenely great, of course.

[Lu Zhi Anal: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/e3ce399d0a01.png ]

“Hngh… I can’t believe you.. mhm…!” Momo’s attempt at being outraged ended with her stomping her foot and swiftly walking away. John could literally smell her arousal. Fae magics emphasized her pheromonal sweetness to a point that she left a faint pink trail behind her as she walked.

With the scandalized maid made to flee and his ceaseless lust being taken care of, John returned his attention to Nightingale. Despite the interruptions and her own nudity, the lady of the night waited with grace and patience. ‘God, do I love her,’ the Gamer thought. “Let’s start with the more imminent topic. You want me to adjust my schedule?”

“I have given matters extensive thought,” Nightingale reported. “Thus far, I have operated outside the boundaries of official politics. The task I set for myself has been to ensure that the social clubs of the elite are interconnected to ensure the differences created by party politics do not become wedges that pry the nation apart.”

“And you were exceedingly effective at it.” John’s thumb trailed up the gorgeous groove of Lu Zhi’s spine. “You want to change your unofficial work into an official manner? Now that I am the nexus of all three branches of government, parties are more interest groups that petition me for changes they want to see. Consequently, it becomes less about them competing with each other and more about them trying to gain my attention. In short…” he locked eyes with her, “…you want me to hold court.”

“Brilliant as always.” Nightingale lowered the bend of her wing just enough to reveal her smile for a moment. “You have already been doing so, but it has been spontaneous, the expected decorum has not been set and the purpose of individual sessions have been largely unclear.”

John just hummed in agreement. Basically all ‘court’ sessions he had had so far had been nearly exclusively with the elite that he had entrenched by decree – so those that had supported him during the Lorylim War. This had been going fine so far. John had chosen several voices that were not shy about their opposition and everyone understood that the aftermath of a catastrophic war wasn’t the time to make a fuss about being represented or not.

John liked to get ahead of the public sentiment though.

“If you want to be the one to organize court, I would be much obliged,” John told her. Putting that extra work on Ehtra would have been rude, she already had plenty to do. Aclysia had come to mind to do it instead, just on the organizing side. While she was perfectly capable, John feared it may coax out the worst in her again if he pushed her back into politics. The only reason he hadn’t asked Nightingale already was that she had been quite comfortable in her social role.

“I wish to do more than that.” Nightingale lowered her wings, laying herself bare for his eyes. “By your decree, I request a position be made for me. A court position in which I have the right of arbitration over conflicts among the aristocracy. Only your authority would supersede mine.”

That was a big ask. It also wasn’t an unreasonable one. John’s mind went through the implications. Giving any one person the power of being the highest judge of the elite was usually unwise. John could dispense with that thought. Not only did he have every reason to trust Nightingale as a person, he also knew the harpy to be reflective of the concept of justice. Charisma, philosophical knowledge, trust, she had it all.

“You don’t need to be so serious about so reasonable an ask,” John ultimately responded. “So, my Lavender Duchess, you wish to be the organizer of court sessions and the one with the power to arbitrate? In other words, you would make yourself the centre of court politics?”

“With your permission and only in your absence, my patriarch.” Nightingale curtsied, flaring her wings out in absence of a skirt. “It strikes me as the natural position one of my talents should occupy.”

“You’re not leaving a lot of work for me,” John falsely complained. “Momo is taking all my paperwork and now you want to preside over the court?”

“Along others.” Nightingale turned her head in the direction of Eliana and Layla, who were currently watching a video on ‘How to handle the Terrible Twos’ together. “Talent is in no short supply. The Imperial Choir will ensure the aristocracy remains sharp and uncorruptible.” Purple eyes returned to him. “Though I do implore we have our talk on the imperial houses before we make this official.”

“I concur,” Lulu weighed in, her voice only slightly tinted by pleasure. “It would be proper to establish clans before announcing who has power over them.”

“Does the Mandate’s history have anything like what Nightingale is proposing?” John asked. With its long history of emperors having harems to produce a worthy heir naturally came periods of times in which wives and concubines had more and less political influence.

“Of course.” Lu Zhi stopped bouncing for a moment, reclining until her slender back rested on his broad chest. A conjured fan of jade segments tapped her chin as she spoke. “Spouses were always an integral part of court life. They are expected to speak for the sovereign at times of sickness or travel. Investing them with power even when the emperor was present wasn’t traditionally done in an official capacity, but it happened often anyhow and was always informally the case for the sovereign’s favourites.”

As with so many other things, John was unique only in scope and stability of his harem, not in the thoughts behind them. ‘I didn’t revolutionize the human genome,’ he reminded himself with a dry thought as his hand trailed down Lu Zhi’s midriff. He replaced her hand with his, curling two fingers into the tightness of her virgin pussy. How he yearned for the day he got to introduce the last of her holes to how much better he could do than toys or tongue. “The other topic you wanted to discuss?” he prompted Nightingale.

“A matter of-“ She stopped when the imperial tomboy suddenly and loudly cried out in pleasure. John placed a constricting palm on her windpipe to keep her quiet while he massaged her most sensitive spots. “-divinity,” the harpy continued. “What do you think the future of religion is in Fusion?”

“I believe we will inevitably come to be worshipped in a similar way as Romulus,” the Gamer responded. “Obviously, the Imperial Choir is a much larger ‘pantheon’ than Romulus, Sol and Luna are, so that might add or detract from the matter.” The Gamer paused for a moment, focused on moving his fingers in the final spurt that the Heavenly Jade Empress needed to squirt all over his digits and the floor in front of the armchair. “What do you think, Lulu?”

“I… think… that…” The answer was slow, each word drawn out to let her gather her wits. “…it is proper that the public venerates their sovereign. As ruler of China, I am the Child of Heaven and All is Under Heaven.” She put special emphasis on those words, then shook her head. “Tianxia – English fails to properly translate the weight of the foundational concept.”

“Well, my tongue wasn’t designed to communicate the concept of living in the Middle Empire by several thousand years of doing so,” John drawled. “In any case – I give it 30 to 90 years until a movement that portrays us as divine pops up and then it will grow over time. There is no stopping it. If I was part of a family that had entire generations live and die under a seemingly immortal emperor, I would start worshipping him and his women too.” He placed a kiss behind Lulu’s ear, making her giggle most adorably. “The upcoming meeting of the Order will further set the tone. I am already a ‘saint’ to the dominant faith in the nation, so…”

“Indeed,” Nightingale agreed. “Reason for my question is, I admit, a manner of personal reflection. Conceptually, I believe that it is just to treat others with the assumption that they are your equal. Pragmatically…”

“You are a literal goddess,” John spoke to her thoughts. “It’s the same matter I have been stewing on while I was president. How much can one cling onto the principle of equality when the differences are so stark?” He shook his head. “The way I square that circle now is that I do not make the assumption that everyone is equal but that the next exceptional individual could come from anywhere. Assume someone could become your equal until proven otherwise. Act in accordance to matters having been proven otherwise. If that includes being a god to them… well, so be it.”

“I will reflect on that advice,” Nightingale said.