Chapter 746 – Changing Looks

Chapter 746 – Changing Looks

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.

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.





“Huh... guess we should go outside,” John announced, suddenly having an evolution to make.