The harem left the bedroom a little less overtaken but no less satisfied and half an hour later than usual. Even without most of his sexual skills, he was still more than able to satisfy his women. Admittedly, the one thing he still had, being able to cum an unlimited amount of times, was rather key to making the morning of over a dozen loyal nymphomaniacs. It was good to know that he had the skill beyond his Skills to please the female physique, was all.

It served as a rather substantial ego-boost. He only had sex one time before he got Fucking and that had been the day he popped his cherry with Rave. It had been alright. He had almost blundered by coming on his first stroke, but he had managed to remain hard despite that thanks to (for the most part) the Stats he was born with. The old Masturbation Skill had allowed him to cum more times a day than the average, but it hadn’t guaranteed him the continued hard-on. That was just the Libido he already had.

Even with that boon, he had only managed to make his first time ‘pretty good’. That had been enough for him at the time, but the John Newman from back then was barely comparable to the one that he was now. Hundreds of incremental changes had formed a superior person. Superior even in sex, as this morning had proved. Pretty good sex just didn’t cut it when it came to his lovemaking. His pride wouldn’t allow it. His girls had to be so satisfied that they wouldn’t even think about other men.

‘Is that my pride or my paranoia talking now?’ John wondered to himself and chased the thoughts off by grabbing some more of Aclysia’s delicious French toast off his plate. It was a noticeable improvement of his own cooking from yesterday. “Scarlett, Metra, I want you to come with me before you go after your own things today.”

“Getting your dumbass date Challenge done?” Scarlett asked, still somewhat irked about his decision yesterday. Not enough to keep pestering about it, but enough to get the occasional quip in. “Because I have better things to do with my working hours.”

“No, I’m going to focus on Arcanist, Unfound and Fateweaver for now,” John told her. That was the trio of Classes he thought deserved being raised the most, with Unfound being potentially swapped out for something else, should he find the Perks of the Class to not deliver what he wanted them to. “Much as I like having a sex-focused Class, I’m not raising it at the moment.”

“Which just goes to show how fucking useless that Class is compared to upping your infrastructure,” the redhead grumbled into her coffee. In absence of his cum having awakening properties, Scarlett had to default back to caffeine.

“It was very much the dumb decision, I went with my passion on that one.” John gave her a disarming smile. “You know how I am.”

Downing the entire cup. Scarlett carefully placed the empty vessel back on the table and sighed, “I can’t stay mad at ya, you sex-absorbed moron.” Grabbing knife and fork, she cut her own French toast into bite-sized pieces. “If it’s not the date, what do you want?”

“I want to take both of you to the Foundry to-“

Metra slammed her hands on the table and leaned over to her king candidate with a fervent expression on her face. “IS IT FUCKING DONE?!” she screamed her excitement. Her breathing intensified in anticipation, then in anger when John demonstratively sipped on his orange juice. “Come oooon,” she complained, “I’ve had to work with that shit axe for so long, I deserve a proper weapon!”

“I agree, but you won’t learn things quicker if you interrupt me,” he reprimanded her.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Metra sat back down, fidgeting and drumming with her fingers on the edge of the table. “Please continue, my king.”

“As I was saying, I want to take both of you to the Foundry to check on the progress of things,” John told them. “First, I want to see how the coin presses are doing and then, yes, Metra, I want to see if Marathyu finished your weapon. We might have to go to the Weapon Manufactory to check on that though.”

The Foundry had the better smelting equipment, but when it came to actual forging tools, the Weapon Manufactory provided much greater variety and quality. A workshop had been manually added to the former Guild Hall Building, but Marathyu was naturally drawn to the best forges Fusion had to offer.

“I don’t fucking care where I need to go as long as you give me that ungodly powerful weapon!” Metra declared. In her excitement, she started to play with her own body, different kinds of desires mixing to create a wave of lust. “Strongest weapon in existence, that sounds so fa-ah-r up my alley,” she gasped wantonly.

“A confusing term,” Undine chimed into the conversation.

“What do you mean?” John asked.

“Strimata is strong – but strongest? What does that mean? What qualifies as a weapon?” The goth slime tilted her head quizzically. “Does a nuke qualify as a weapon? Does Luna’s weapon form? Wouldn’t either be stronger than Strimata?”

“Well, a nuke would definitely not be,” John responded after pondering the question for a second. “Destructive as atomic bombs are, they have a couple severe limitations. They are incredibly difficult to get to a position, difficult to produce and are gone after a single use. If you have a weapon that can kill one million people once or one that can kill a hundred people an endless amount of times, one may have more destructive capabilities in the moment, but I think the other is stronger.”

“Stronger being defined as… uhm,” Gnome held her tea with both hands, as she thought about the best formulation, “…as the overlapping of all attributes important to a weapon and coming out on top in aggregate?”

“That’s how I would read it, yeah,” John nodded.

“Who the fuck cares?!” Metra wanted to know. “Give me something that can cave islands in!”

“Well, we aren’t leaving until I’ve finished breakfast, so we might as well have the conversation.” John pointed down on his half-empty plate. Metra glared at the half-full obstacle towards her new armament. “Anyway, when it comes to Luna… I honestly don’t know. Maybe she isn’t being counted as a weapon because she is primarily an elemental or perhaps Strimata is actually stronger but Lydia being so far below Romulus’ level means it doesn’t show yet.”

“Makes sense,” Undine’s melodic voice formed her agreement.

“Did anyone ever tell ya that ya say ‘well’ a lot?” Rave asked.

Salamander snorted with amusement, “Don’t YOU of all people start about speech quirks.”

______________________________________________________________________________

John turned the coin in his hand. It was forged from a water related metal and had the expected azure blue colour. As was typical for a coin, it had a side showing the number it was supposed to be worth and one with an image imprinted into it. It was one sixth of Fusion’s symbol, the water comet that would have normally clashed with the other five elementals to fuse, symbolically representing the name of the Federation. Eliza’s design carried nicely onto the metal, albeit looking less like a comet and more like a water flame, completely on its own.

“…Add some ice to the design,” John decided, “you know, the kind of patterns you see in snowflakes.”

“As you wish, Mister President.” The administrator of the newly formed Currency Control Office nodded and wrote the order down on a notepad. From him, it would flow to the designers, woodcarvers and smiths, who would then adjust the mint. As a collector, John pocketed the test coin and looked over to Scarlett.

Bowed over the other coins on display, she inspected each with a careful eye. There were a lot of them. There were eighteen coins alone for elemental metals, six of each element in three different rarities. Additionally, there were the mundane coins, copper, iron, silver, gold and platinum, and the non-singular element coins, Baelementium of the balanced, Light and Shadow infused variety, as well as Elementium itself. There even was a Mithril coin. The rarer metals were unlikely to be minted outside of festive occasions, but the design had to be made either way.

The value of the coins was as objective as they could make it without going into the decimals. It may have been more accurate to have 1 Ohkium translate into 1,13 Sylia, but it wouldn’t have served well economically. Scarlett put the coin she was holding back down on the table. “We’ll have to keep eyes on people trying to abuse the imbalance in metal worth for quick money.”

“Yeah,” John agreed. “I was thinking that smelting coins should be illegal outside of Fusion-approved facilities.”

If there was an imbalance in real value of coins of the same worth bracket, someone who was already rich could exchange all of his coins into one variety. If balance went so out of whack that one fire coin was worth twice all other coins, then one could just go to the bank, get all of the fire coins available for equal exchange of value and then sell all of the coins as regular metal to the market at a two to one profit margin.

“Should be enough if slowing actions are put into place,” Scarlett agreed. Because the Guild Hall produced a roughly equal amount of all the metals, prices should never deviate too much and any movements out of bonds quickly recuperate. “National stockpile of metals to deploy an emergency fix would also be wise.”

“I already put a stockpile tax into motion,” John answered. “One gram per kilo mined in the Guild Hall will go to the Currency Control Office.” By keeping a substantial amount of metal stockpiled, they could flood the market in an emergency situation and drive prices towards equal levels, foiling exploitative tactics in the process. The true value of the stockpile wasn’t to actually use it, but that its existence dissuaded people from even trying.

“Only two things that are certain are death and taxes.” Scarlett was visibly unhappy that she was giving advice on expanding government influence on the marketplace. Because nothing crashed free trade quicker than a non-functional currency, she was forced to swallow it, however.

“Mint one of each of these and send them to the Abyss Auction,” John told the present administrator. “Designs aside, they will want to test the purity of the Tokens. Did we reach a decision on what we do with elemental metals between these three rarity categories?”

“We came up with two possible models, Mister President,” the administrator responded. “Either we create additional categories or we smelt down lower and higher-level metals and mix them until the internal energy levels have normalized into the currently approved categories.”

“Do the latter,” the Gamer decided. “We have the Foundry to automate much of that task. Better to not increase the administrative burden of the control instances by needlessly inflating the number of values they have to check on.”

“As you wish, Mister President.” The administrator scribbled another note.

“That will be all then. Is Marathyu in the Foundry?” Despite not being under the Currency Control Office’s purview, John expected the official to know the smith’s location. The smiths and the minters used the same facilities and the overseeing apparatus wasn’t large enough yet to estrange the bureaucrats and craftsmen. If someone like Marathyu moved around, everyone in proximity would know where he was.

“He left for the Weapon Manufactory two days ago, after taking the newest batch of Fusionals.”

“Sounds promising, doesn’t it?” John asked Metra.

“Yes. Please. Let’s go!” The First of Wrath was visibly agitated about the delay. “Why did we have to do this shit first?!”

“Maybe I wanted to give you a lesson in patience,” the Gamer responded.

“Patience is for traitorous bitch sisters,” Metra growled.

Searing heat radiated on the edges of John’s mind as the berserker babe’s rage boiled past the point of internal containment. John distanced his mental presence from hers, before it could bother him or the other souls attached to his own in any meaningful fashion. “Alright, let’s go then.” Teasing Metra any further would have meant that something got broken. The second she heard him, the blonde’s rage diminished. “Scarlett, you want to tag along?”

“I’m good,” the Technomancer said, still looking at the coins. “I want to talk a bit more about the planned procedures with the office.”

That worked for John. She was the unofficial head of his economy anyhow and her true identity continued to be trickled outwards. At this point, it was quite the open secret. Certainly, open enough that a foreign power revealing it wouldn’t have caused a massive scandal anymore. A scandal still, but not one that would paralyse his entire administration for several days.

John and Metra took the short walk to the Harbour, got onto one of the jet skis anchoring there and made their way over to the pier closest to the Weapon Manufactory. The dark red building with the black, metal roof had a complimentary look to the equally red and black Fusion Fortress in the distance. Much like John’s clothing, the colour scheme was chosen carefully. The military was a tool and the most dangerous one at that. Giving it any friendly appearance would have hidden that nature. At the same time, the architecture was imposing in the most positive sense of the word. There was also a sense of glory in a military career, protecting the soil on which one had been nourished. Both sides had to be recognized.

The Weapon Manufactory had a large number of chimneys, all of which were currently reaching into the sky with not a single bit of smoke rising from their width. The first delivery of standard military sets had been handed out and the second series would only go into production once feedback, change requests and materials had all been properly sorted through. Only private or unique endeavours were currently being chased within those walls.

“Either he is done or he isn’t there,” John told Metra, as they went inside.

Sniffing a couple of times, the First of Wrath said, “It has to be done. I smell fresh forging.”

Interested, John tried to smell the same. There was cold metal, without a doubt. The kind of smell that hung around a place that regularly fused or sawed iron. He couldn’t make out a difference between this and the smell of ‘fresh forging’. Perhaps it was a lack of experience or Metra’s senses as an Artificial Spirit were simply better attuned to smelling metals, like he would be for smelling food. “Lead the way, then,” John just told her, not having any idea where in the complex Marathyu could even be.

Her rage now pushed down to regular levels, Metra took confident steps through the stone halls. Not a single burnable material was used in the Building. There were hallways with individual workshops and large open spaces for industrial forging. Smelters around existed solely for the reheating of already refined ingots, not having the size or heat required to melt metal out of ore. Anvils, hammers, tonsils, tweezers, presses and all kinds of manual and automatic tools were orderly arranged, their position and supply managed by the magical machinations that had placed the Building in the first place. Only half-finished projects left behind disturbed the cleanliness.

Metra’s nose turned out to be an adequate tool for finding their target. In one of the open areas, Marathyu kneeled among tools before an elongated and malformed casket, the golden colour of Elementium. It was a block of metal itself worth hundreds of millions and able to be forged into several weapons of outstanding power. This time, it had been used as the most valuable mould.

Marathyu forged by creating a mould, adding the things to it, filling the metal in and then hammering the mould itself until he was satisfied with the shape of what was within. How exactly he made that work, the Gamer didn’t question. Lunacy came with its perks, when it came to do things intuitively that should be impossible.

“Is it done?” John asked.

“Yes,” the smith with the scarred skin said, “and I dare not lift the lid, for the beauty may blind me.”

“Then look away,” Metra announced as she stepped forwards. “I want it.”

“Yes… yes, of course you do!” Marathyu shouted and backed off, scratching at his cheeks but keeping his gaze focused. “The breaker of armies wielding my newest masterpiece. A living weapon, the first of her kind, wielding the second of its kind. No, perhaps the first. I thought of this before Strimata. Is it the thought or the forge that makes something…” The rambling ended when Metra ripped the lid off the mould.