Chapter 436 – VS the Contender


    <span>In the split second in which Sigmund turned around, drew his sword and closed in on John, he himself only saw a blur. Aclysia and Metra reacted in the nick of time. The weaponized maid threw herself in front of John, Vol’Jin’Zul in front of her; simultaneously, Metra was still drawing her weapon from John’s inventory when it happened.


    The full horizontal swing sent John and Aclysia flying. They broke through the front of the house and were sent tumbling over the transformed golf course until they were brought to a somewhat gentle stop by shing with the edge of the barrier. It was like hitting a wall of rubber, stretching around them, threatening to rip for a moment and then throwing them back into the barrier.


    “Not bad!” Sigmund shouted over to them as he stepped out of the hole he had just made in the charming little two-story house. “Few people can even block my initial strike, you got a pretty good sword there?”


    As Aclysia and John got up, thetter to the feeling of his broken ribcage snapping back into an unharmed version, Metra finally jumped into action. In an instinctive move, Sigmund moved his arm upwards so the t of the de ran parallel to his back, blocking Qiada.


    “What do you suggest as a name for this de, Sammy?” Sigmund ignored Metra as she growled pushing against the unmoving giant.


    “Let’s see,” a new voice added to the mix, distracting everyone. It was calm, female and graceful. The person it belonged to was ady who was pale for a person of middle eastern descent. She had very long ck hair, all the way down to her waist, and dark brown eyes. The swing of her cheekbones was graceful, as was the rest of her face. It seemed like she had been carved out of sandalwood to represent the perfect aristocrat.


    She was wearing a dress of grey, the colour of dull steel, that appeared like metal but flowed like silk. The long skirt and sleeves ended in rims that shone with the silver of starlight. In her hands she held a ck metal staff that ended in tiny curved des of mithril, positioned like a scythe’s, pointing at opposite directions.


    “I suggest Tiatan, from Tiamat and Titan,” she quickly added.


    John felt a giant surge of wrath sting out of the needle wide maze that was his connection to Metra. Feeling like his soul was being scorched with a single word, the first word that got through there since they made their contract, he heard the ancient weapon call out. “SEMINARIS!”


    ‘What the hell is that bonus to Spellpower?’ John asked himself wide eyed. He nced at Metra as well at the asion, checking her stats to see just how angry she actually was. The bonus had jumped straight to the maximum of 300%.


    “Good to see you too, Sister,” the First of Patience smirked. The Astrotium armour pierced out of the berserker’s skin in a split second. Qiada was wildly swung around with such utter, brutal force that Sigmund’s nonchnt defence could not hope to stop it. The ck swordsman was himself catapulted to the side, then Metra stormed at Seminaris.


    A noise as if someone was pulling a stick over an abrasive surface reached John’s ears the moment Metra got within striking distance. Then a gate opened in the middle of the air, a portal to somewhere else, and threatened to devour the First of Wrath. “Always so impatient,” Seminaris berated with a smile on her face, sure that the portal would whisk Metra away to somewhere else.


    “Always so fucking SMUG!” Metra screamed at her in return, ripping away at the portal. The younger metracana raised an eyebrow and then took a step backwards as her portal spell began to tear. “You should have gone for portal strength,” the berserker babe growled with her own grin, one of triumphant anger, “rather than distance.”


    “At least this won’t be boring, then,” Seminaris said, taking to the sky the same moment as her current spell was ripped apart. Their fight began in earnest.


    John still had an eye on Seminaris’ Observe window. The Spellpower bonus had fallen to 0 and was now ticking up again. A bonus based on the time between two spells, perhaps? ‘Master!’ Aclysia pulled him back into reality with an eye on Sigmund who was shaking his head as he got up.


    “What a strike!” he eximed and then looked over to John. “Fighting you will be the best thing I had this year!”


    “Why do you want to fight?” The question came at the same time as Aclysia again got between the two of them and again just in the nick of time. At least she wasn’t thrown back this time, but her cleaver groaned under the impact.


    “Aren’t you ate bloomer yourself?!” Sigmund asked, again that grin on his face that made John’s skin crawl. With every word the swordsman continued on with, the Gamer understood better why that was. “What greater privilege is there than to use this power to fight and fight and fight?! We have been saved from the mundane, we should use this ecstasy to GO BEYOND EVERYTHING POSSIBLE! Leave behind those shackles put on by a stupid society and do everything we want – Because we are STRONG!” The sh of screaming des ended with Sigmund quickly pulling Tiatan back and then hammering onto Aclysia in an exchange where the weaponized maid could only cede ground. The thundering strikes created gusts of wind, forcing Aclysia to keep using Vol’Jin’Zul. The little moment it took to change weapons could have been fatal and the enormous de was more suited for blocking the wide-arching attacks of Sigmund’s own cleaver.


    John tried to distance himself as the elementals materialized to support Aclysia in the battle. Gnome, Smander, Sylph, Undine and Siena all jumped into the fray. Not even the healer could afford to stay away from the frontline here.


    “NOW WE ARE TALKING!” Sigmund screamed in satisfaction and went right ahead to engage all of them head on. He dodged under a strike of Gnome, ramming the pummel of his de into her stomach and then circled right around to execute a whirling strike that would have cut her in half were it not for Undine pulling her oldest sister back with tentacles of water. Attacks from Sylph were either useless against the thick armour or neutralized by Sigmund’s strikes.


    The reason why John was afraid of that smile was because it showed him one of the deep pits someone normal could fall in when discovering the Abyss. It was the wide, self-discarding smile of a suppressed man who had yearned for all the powers in the world – and gotten them, only to use them like he was still in a dream of his own design. It was a route John could have easily followed himself if he had been more bitter about years of shunning and bullying by his peers.


    The time to think was over though, as a thinyer of energy filled the gap between the two des of Tiatan. Before John knew it, the position of the de had shifted in such a way that the tip was pointing at him while Sigmund was blocking an overhead strike by Aclysia. Panickily, John sent mana to Gnome, dropping into a suddenly opening cavity in the grass. The energy de flew straight over John’s head where he stood.


    With all of his instinct-guided fighting, Sigmund was still very much aware that the only win condition there was was John himself. Scrambling to get out of the pit, John moved as quickly as he could. Not nearly quick enough. Sigmund jumped in, boot crashing into John’s chest and nailing him to the ground; his sword came down. In a desperate move, John tried to catch it in his left. A screaming sound as the dragon-blood hardened mithril ground over the dragonscale-esque surface of Purgatory.


    John didn’t seed in stopping the attack, but he deflected it enough so that only the insides of the des cut the rim of his arms. With every beat of his heart, John could feel his mana and health being drained into the de. ‘I should have put Mana Protection up after all,’ he thought; he hadn’t done that to prevent one single strike from robbing all of his mana and leaving him without any defensive or offensive tools.


    “You are pretty sturdy,” Sigmundplimented, energy flowing out of the gaps in the armour on his hands and into the ss grip of the sword through little holes that John hadn’t seen until then. The magic power flowed through the hollow core and into the guard, where it gathered. A momentter the thin energyyer appeared again – with John’s arm at the very end of it. The energy was stopped by Mana Protection, activated at thest second. Watching his MP drop quicker than a piece of metal around an activated electroma, John knew that his arm would soon be a goner.


    A metald foot saved him from that fate. Coming at Sigmund from his blind side, he reacted just that little bit slower that allowed the amazon that dropped in to score a hit. “Sorry, it took a second!” the firm voice of Smlere said and then tossed him out of the cave with little to no grace. There was no time for it anyway, the only important thing was that he got out of Sigmund’s melee range.


    Smlere went right back into the offensive after that; in the small pit she had the advantage. It was hard to swing that gigantic sword around, furthermore she turned the floor intova. Which was a popr kids game that was way less funny when one stood actually to one’s ankles inva.


    Then again, if there was any doubt left remaining that Sigmund was a Primarch ss Abyssal, it was smashed when he continued fending off Smlere down there, moving as if he was fighting on solid ground. It was like he was neither wearing heavy te nor shin-deep inva.


    John was caught by a mass of dark waters. After stopping his fall gently and cing him on the ground, the waters pulled together into the shape of a featureless female humanoid. She nodded at John once, then became a torrent of water again, chasing after Sigmund who jumped out of the pit.


    His elementals hadbined into two 3-types in response to the ck swordsman’s enormous fighting supremacy. The only drawback to this was that John was left without a healer. On half HP and with basically no mana, his best bet was to stay far away from the two fights that now went on inside the barrier.


    One was the still ongoing fight between Metra and Seminaris. John saw very little of that fight, as it happened in the sky for the most part. In a confusing disy of portals and tears, the rivalling sisters fought a battle of time versus opportunity. Seminaris seemed tock any effective offensive tools, while Metra would eventually run out of mana to keep the attacks up. It was very simr to the fight Metra had versus the supreme Fateweaver, with the important difference that Seminaris had ample space to dodge even if one attack cut through the weave of portals.


    The other, much more immediate, fight was Sigmund vs Smlere, Sinflut and Aclysia. The trio’s well coordinated attacks kept the powerful Abyssal preupied and even managed to get a few good hits in. It seemed they finally had a fighting chance, rather than getting pped around.


    Of course, the moment John thought that, Sigmund executed a wide arching attack that crashed into Vol’Jin’Zul, the de raised in Aclysia’s defence. The de broke, having finally been taxed enough by the much superior work that was Tiatan. The remaining force turned Aclysia into a super heavy piece of ammunition shot straight at the water. She broke through the winded channel that connected furnace and forge, sending the scarce remains of liquid mithril flying everywhere. By the time she exploded into a fountain of water, Sigmund was already back at fighting the other two.


    John made a run for the water. He wasn’t going to be of much help regardless of where he went, so he could at least check on Aclysia. The Combinations were able to hold their ground just as two, for the moment at least.


    When he reached the shore, she was dragging herself out of the water. The attack had sliced through her stomach, leaving the upper and lower half of her body connected by a slim piece around her spine. Control of her legs was temporarily lost due to this, but she was healing quickly. That was a relief, for the most part. “This is going to be very hard to survive,” John stated.


    “If it bes necessary, please escape on your own,” Aclysia stated.


    The sound of a manughing maniacally echoed over to John and drowned out even the beginning of his retort. “WHAT AN ASS, WRECKING MY SHOP!” Marathyu screamed, throwing his giant hammer at the end at what John identified to be another mould. Afterwards he grabbed a chisel and a smaller hammer and created fine lines in perfectly measured gaps. He was forging whatever was inside by changing the shape of the mould around it, talking to himself, screaming andughing in the process. “Such a genius, now I can renovate my house, yes, yes, GLORIOUS IS MY SWORD!” Marathyu threw his hands in the air, throwing away the chisel and hammer in the process. He then looked around, as if he was confused where he was. “What am I…?” a moment of rity seemed to reflect in his eyes, as if years of madness were suddenly snuffed out. “Oh no…oh no, what am I?! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!” Then heughed out loud. “I FORGOT THE LAST INGREDIENT FOR THIS SWORD!”


    John was preupied with trying to get Aclysia on her feet. It was an ultimately futile gesture, she would heal the same speed either way, but it made him feel less useless. “Watch out!” Aclysia cried when he was halfway through lifting her.


    Marathyu charged at him with a spear that was really just a sharpened iron rod. The cksmith’s Agility was abysmal, but he caught John by surprise and the Gamer’s mana was low enough that Mana Protection got prated with rtive ease. Hot pain seared through his body as his lower abdomen was prated. “THE FINAL INGREDIEEEENT!” the insane man screamed more, twisting and turning the weapon some more before retracting it without any announcement and running back to his anvil. The attack and pain ended as suddenly as it had begun.


    A new wave of hateful anger hit John’s spirit as Aclysia waited for control of her legs to return so she could break the neck of the scar-covered madman. For the moment, she couldn’t, and even if she could, John wanted to see what Marathyu was going to do with his blood.


    “ckened by sin, ckened by sin, from the master giving blood unwilling!” the man chanted as he scraped John’s blood off the improvised weapon and into tiny hole in the mould. “Oh, I can smell it, fire of destruction, prophecies of rodents, they pulsate in this blood! You have good blood, young man, very good blood, blessed by powerful, evil entities, yes, YES! A taint of corruption, Lorylims echo twice, chaos sings and screams and falls from the tower they ruined!”


    As he spoke he poured more and more liquids into the mould. Then a final drop of something John didn’t know caused a chain reaction. A new cloud of steam announced the birth of a new sword.


    John felt less and less of Aclysia’s weight on his shoulder as her regeneration restored her body, even if her HP was still two fifths down. She stood on her own by the time a scream echoed out of the clearing air. “NO!” the disbelieving voice was apanied by the stomping of naked feet on the wooden nks. John was reminded of an eerie drum he never truly heard. “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! IT’S WHITE, WHY IS IT NOT TAINTED BY SIN!”


    The air became clear and revealed Marathyu crying in happiness at the de he so loathed with his words. It had an enormous grip, more than enough space for four hands to hold it. The guard was paradoxically slimmer than the de itself, a knotted ck thing designed to hold in ce the enormous de attached to it. Knowing the madness of that cksmith, John doubted there were no secrets hidden in that design though.


    Same held true for the de itself. John wanted to refuse calling it a sword. In shape and design, it reminded John more of a utility cutter, just scaled up to a massive size. From the keen edge to the dull backside, it must have been twenty centimetres wide and at least ten thick. To call it an absurdly sharp b of metal with a handle wouldn’t have been inurate. Thin lines separated the mithril silver-white de into segments along the sides.


    “It must be destroyed, it’s too perfect, I don’t want this, it’s bad, I don’t want this! WHY IS IT NOT TAINTED?!” Marathyu shouted out mming the de onto the anvil over and over again, despite his clear problems lifting it. The only thing that got dented in the process was the anvil.


    “Because,” Aclysia stepped towards Marathyu and took the sword from him. For a moment he wrestled with her, then she shoved him back and he just cowered together on the floor, rocking back and forth. “My John is wed, imperfect and maybe not the greatest person out there – but he wouldn’t be my John if he were a sinner bad enough to stain this metal.” She looked at the cksmith for a moment, then she raised the weapon to kill the man in revenge for earlier.


    The weapon stayed raised for several moments. “I want to see the forest again, there was so much wisdom in that forest,” Marathyu whimpered, rocking back and forth. John and Aclysia both froze in surprise. “Where did the crow go? Where did my tool go? The beautiful, beautiful de…”


    That sounded strangely simr to the story John had told Aclysia on the cruise. Was it just a coincidence rambled on by an insane mind? Had John identally spoken a prophecy back then? Did he even have that kind of power? Either way, it made Aclysia lower her de and leave the cksmith alone with his continued madness. “We better help Smlere and Sinflut,” she told John.


    “You are right,” John answered just in time for the former of those two to crash nearby.