Phobos had just finished his cup of tea when he was ready. It was not that he had to think so much as how to articulate his answer. This situation was really bizarre. No person expects someday a beautiful woman would bring a contract that is basically selling herself for free. Of course, many people hope for such a situation. It is just not realistic.

As Phobos finished his tea he reached for the teapot and tried using his improvement ability to reheat the tea inside. For some reason, he thought that his ability wouldn't work so well for temporary states like hot and cold but it didn’t have any difficulties. Phobos felt that being able to improve temporary status had deeper implications but he didn’t think that now was the time to explore that.

After Phobos reheated the tea he poured a cup for himself and Diana. Then looked at the beautiful female and while choosing his words started talking.

“I perfectly understand what the idea of the contract is. However, don’t you think that it is a bit extreme? Although the situation is such as well, that doesn’t mean that our decisions and thinking should be.”

See that she was listening properly Phobos continued. “ In the first place, I am not that aware of how the relationship between me, Hera and Eve formed. It was mostly natural with a bit of push from Eve. There was the prerequisite that they were my employees. A bit special employees at that but that doesn’t mean that this contract is the correct way.”

Phobos was looking through the contract again as he said that. It was basically what Diana had explained.

“I don’t know how much you value an agreement made by two people but for me, it is really important. If I were to sign this contract, I will take it seriously. If you were to do something that breaches this contract I will really think any actions trying to make me feel bad after would be unreasonable.”

Phobos looked seriously at Diana. At this point, he didn’t even know why he was trying to discourage her from making this decision. There were only benefits for him in it. However, he felt that impulse decisions were the worst.

If at some point she regrets the decision today and in turn starts resenting him, he would feel uncomfortable. Theoretically, this contract should help him deal with just that but no one ever knows what the future holds. Like he never thought that one day he would be experiencing "the end of the world".

“We can pretend that you never brought this contract to me and foster our relationship naturally.”

Phobos gave her the last chance for her to give up but Diana had no hesitation in her eyes and resolutely shook her head no.

“No, sir. I feel that I am intruding on the relationship of you, Miss Eve and Miss Hera. This is the least bit of sincerity I should show.”

See her so resolute Phobos had to take up the pen and sign the contract. Still, he was hesitating when he signed.

“I find no problem in your decision but there is a problem that this decision will set a precedent for the future. As well as I know Eve she most likely won’t be satisfied with just you. On the contrary, you joining in will open her floodgates. And this contract will be a norm she will most likely require as you set the standard of it being possible. On the other hand, it will be a lot harder to recruit people. It may be for the better that you set such an example.”

As Phobos finished his pondering his hesitation stopped. The fact that Diana set such a high standard for subsequent members as what could be dubbed his harem put him a bit at ease. He was sure that Eve would uphold such a standard. Which in turn will hinder her in recruiting en masse as she used to for casual one-night stands.

“Well, If there is nothing else I will be going to do my project. I am sure that Hera requires you as well.”

Phobos bid goodbye to Diana and went to the room he had uprooted the foundation from. He was about to start the real work on the basement.

Diana on the other hand took the signed contract from the table and went to Hera in the backyard. When she arrived she saw that Eve was there as well. They both beckoned her to come closer to them.

“Come, come. Give it to me to see.” Eve whispered like she was doing something naughty that she didn’t want her parents to know. Diana passed her the contract.

“Yes! Finally!” Eve screamed and held the contract high up. “The first step is always the hardest. I always thought that Hera and I were the first steps and from there it would be us versus the world but I was mistaken. I tried to bring him women with all kinds of different charms but nothing worked. I thought that maybe my approach was wrong so I tried to starve him from foreign sex so that he became proactive but that didn’t work. Phobos was already too spoiled and if something didn’t land on his plate he didn’t feel like searching for it.”

“Says, Eve.” Hera on the side was a lot more calm. For her, it didn’t matter if Phobos was some kind of cult leader as Eve wished. For her, it was enough for him to be near her. “You were the one who spoiled him the most. He didn’t even have the time to want something and it was already before him. It didn’t matter if it was a woman, food, clothes or a car. And is your so-called staving the time we entertained Phobos in every possible way with no foreign help?!”

“It is my duty after all.” Eve calmed down a bit from her excitement and pouted. But as she saw the contract again she regained her vigor. “Haha. It is different now. The conquest starts at this moment. This catastrophic event may be bad but for Phobos’s development it is a boon.”

Hera looked at Eve who was going wild and waving around and chose to ignore her. She called Diana to help her as she tried to operate the electric furnace. She had an idea to create a few essential things.

While Eve was celebrating Phobos had started to improve the “basement”. In reality, it was still only a dirt hole but as he improved it, the hole started to change and become the shape of a staircase.

While taking shape there was a more fundamental change. The dirt was becoming more compact and tougher. As more material was added it became more like stone than dirt. However, that change was very slow. Phobos had already calculated that the normal dirt if improved enough will have the hardness and toughness required for top-grade building material.

Taking into account the volume of dirt needed Phobos calculated that it would be just enough to create a standard floor size. Of course, he could always make the basement height more and improve the density of the walls but a normal height should be enough. He wouldn’t even start the project if he didn’t think it was feasible.

This project would take a bit of time, however. First Phobos was remaking what would be the ceiling of the basement. If he didn’t have to imagine that this could be a prototype of a basement, removing the foundation would be redundant.

However, it wasn’t all bad. After all the old foundation was reused by Hera. The problem was that he could affect only a meter of an area with his ability. So he was doing the improvement section by section.

First, he finished the “ceiling”. Then he continued to improve the staircase. He was going step by step. Although he still had only used a small amount of dirt to create the ceiling and stairs and it was quite brittle it was enough to not crumble under only his weight.

When he used all the dirt that was occupying the space where the basement would be if all his calculations were correct it would be sufficient. For now, he was a little careful and was improving the basement bit by bit.

Phobos was doing the same the whole day. He only took a break to eat a couple of times and was just improving. At some point, he was able to affect a bit more space with his ability but it wasn’t much. However, for such a project it was more than welcome.

He felt a bit tired after doing this for most of the day. It wasn’t that he was physically tired nor spiritually tired but the monotones of the task were dragging him down. He stopped in the late afternoon and went to the main hall to rest for a bit.

In there all the women had gathered. They were looking at something on the table. When he went closer he noticed that there were a few revolvers on the table. The difference was that they were a lot bigger and were a bit rough. It looked more like a prototype than a finished product.

“Hey, boss. Sorry but I have to trouble you again.” When Hera saw Phobos she greeted him. “I have done six revolvers for each of us but as I don’t have the luxury of time to make them refined we have to depend on you again. I had to make them a lot larger and I skipped the detailing. And I used a hinged reloading mechanism because it is way easier to make.”

Phobos looked at the so-called revolvers and took one. He analyzed it with his ability and found that it was barely functional. In reality, if Hera just gave him a pipe with a trigger he could improve a gun out of it but she made a revolver that even if had some cut corners, worked. It was impressive really. In such a short time being able to do this.

Phobos thought about how he wasted the whole day to try and make a basement and Hera here was making weapons for the group. He could only console himself that the basement would be useful later on.

Although these revolvers were useless without him however utilizing the fact that he had an improvement ability and giving him a prototype to improve was the most correct decision.

Phobos started to improve the revolver however he didn’t improve in the direction of a normal small revolver. Although he slimmed it up a bit and added a lot of finishing touches he kept the size mostly the same.

He only glanced at the mutant Hera had killed but he saw that there was a bullet stuck in its skull. For that reason, he felt that they needed more powerful guns to be effective for a mutant.

Bigger caliber and bigger gun mean more recoil and structural instability from the stronger explosions but with the enhanced physique handling more powerful guns would be fine and for the second his ability should cover it.

Phobos changed the hinged loading mechanism as well. He improved it to the standard swing-out cylinder. When he was finished what was left in his hand was a revolver a lot bigger than the standard with a body made of steel. It had a nice reflective surface.

He passed the revolver to Hera and started improving the other ones. It didn’t take him long as the process wasn’t all that complicated. The almost finished product made it a lot easier on him.

“Pass me the revolver which we took yesterday. I will improve it as well to match these.”

Phobos told that to Hera and she gladly gave it to him. She could see that the model Phobos had made was way more pleasing to the eye. She didn’t know about the functionality but it shouldn’t be that far apart.

“Boss, if you could do it here as well.” When Phobos was finished Hera called out to him again. His gaze followed what she was pointing at and saw a few tables covered with a lot of small things. Phobos went closer and saw what was on top.

“Are these bullets?” Even if he was so close to them he couldn’t categorize what he was seeing to bullets. There were hundreds of them covering the tables but it looked nothing like bullets.

“Yeah. Mmm. Kind of. I was lucky to find a lot of brass sheets. This was what prompted me to make the guns. Knowing your ability, I felt that if I made the sheets into cylinders then put the right materials needed for gunpowder, and putting a bit of lead on top would do just fine. However, the primer was a bit hard to find. While I was making the guns with Diana the other girls were out searching for shock-sensitive chemicals.”

Phobos looked at a large number of bullets and felt a bit dull. He can’t say that he was tired of monotonous work after working on the basement the whole day because he could only imagine how much effort it had taken to gather the material and then make all of the bullets.

More so there was an inherent risk going out looking for materials especially now that the mutants were a lot more active. So he didn’t say anything and started to improve the bullets. Of course, he made them fit the bigger revolvers. Phobos didn’t know what caliber they would be categorized as but when comparing the new bullets with the ones from the old revolver they were a lot bigger.

This time when improving Phobos felt a little weird. All the materials he needed were there and they were placed in the approximate form they are supposed to be for the finished product but it felt like everything was disjointed which it was. The weird part was that he had worked with way worse.

The basement being a prime example. It was nothing more than a hole Phobos made and he still didn’t feel the weirdness when improving it into a basement. He couldn’t find the reason why but this feeling quickly went away.

As he was improving bullet by bullet it became easier the more bullets he made. If at the beginning it took him more than five minutes to improve one as he was nearing the end it took him less than a minute.

It took Phobos a bit more than three hours to finish the two hundred bullets they made. He didn’t know what was crazier. Him having the ability to improve stuff or Hera and the girls being able to find materials and make what they did in a day. Although Hera did have boosted everything and it helped her in making things it was still impressive.

People with sophisticated machines would need more than a day to finish the work they did in a day. Of course, if they made the items as rough as Hera, they wouldn’t need that much time as well.

After he finished improving all the bullets Phobos was again not exhausted because there was a constant stream of energy coming from Hera and Eve but he was bored out of his mind. This was the first time in his life that he had to do a repetitive task. He never had to work in his life and everything productive he did was only things he wanted to do at the moment.

Everything mundane Hera and Eve were doing for him without Phobos even asking. The last time he felt so bored was when he had to go to school. With his intelligence being in a normal curriculum was more of a torture than an education. In his first four years of school, he didn’t find that boring because it was more play than learning so he could tolerate it but after that, it became worse.

Thankfully his father saw that and took him out of school. His father then hired private teachers to give him assignments that could stimulate him. However, Phobos finished the school curriculum and even started college knowledge but he went to his father and pleaded that he was bored of studying.

He was only twelve at the time. Phobos’s father saw that he had finished the school's curriculum and that learning was really unpleasant to him so he let Phobos do whatever he wanted.

Phobos now once again feeling this kind of boredom didn’t know what to do. He knew that the bullets are important to the group. The basement as well he had plans for. So he could only target his ability.

Right now if he is in full concentration mode he enters a meditative state that is utilizing his brain as a processing unit for his ability but he still feels the drag of a repetitive task. There were about two more hours until it was the normal time when he went to bed so felt that it should be enough to find an alternative.

Using his improvement ability to improve his ability sounded like it shouldn’t be possible but Phobos felt that this was the core of his ability. He even had an idea of how to improve it.

When he was fully utilizing his ability, he was almost unconscious and didn’t have an active thought in his head. But if he could make use of his subconsciousness it would be way better. He would have an active thought and could do something different when he left his subconsciousness to utilize his brainpower to assist in improving items.

Maybe Phobos would have to give up a bit of processing power in his mind when doing that but he was always underutilizing his brain anyway. If it could non-stop be used for something productive it would be the best.