The Gamer Chapter 337 - Short term solution (Patreon)

John felt awesome. After a month of having to wrestle with Siena, she finally seemed to be on his wavelength, and with that, all current problems in his emotional vicinity seemed to be sorted out. Rave was on track to get along with her mother, it didn’t seem like the two would be the best family ever, but given their history and differing personalities, it had become remarkably stable. Eliza was doing her best, Undine was doing her best, everyone was trying to get along and acknowledged that one had to find consensus in the argument, rather than win it.

Polygamy was working pretty well for John right now. However, he was also stuck in a relatively small cavity with three girls several metres underneath an enemy castle with the mission to take out a, for the sake of him wanting to look at the situation in a humorous light, dimension-stuff mage.

So, as great as he was feeling right now, he had no opportunity to act it out as he had a lot of rather serious stuff on his plate that didn’t deal with his emotion.

“So, what’s your plan?” Siena asked in a flirty voice; she had returned to her normal behaviour rather quickly, but the change was one of mindset and not of personality anyway. John was fine with that; he had stated often enough that breaking who she was wasn’t his goal.

Still, it would have been nice if she could not have caressed the side of his face with her claws. Gently, he pushed those away. “We are going to cause a ruckus, and you are going in there and kill that Fateweaver, easy, right?” he presented.

“Mhm, but if I were them, I would concentrate all my attention on the sensitive spot that I have just been toying with,” the shadow spirit answered. “I don’t think I can get in there alone. Shouldn’t we try guerrilla warfare instead?”

The earth around them started to move as John made mental contact with Gnome. “Whoever said you are going alone?”

“I am spent, my embers are burnt out, give me a fucking break,” Salamander lamented as she appeared in his vicinity. She had become incorporeal and then retreated, making it harder to track her. Not impossible, but John was back on the surface, so he didn’t mind anyway. Aclysia appeared from the bushes a moment later as well. In the background, Sylph was chattering it up about stuff now that she was allowed to talk out loud again.

“Better catch your breath quickly, we six are the distraction force on this one,” John told her. They were already in the open, and while the alarm bells had been deactivated by now, they would have been fools to not be on high alert anymore.

“Why don’t you just blow the whole thing up? One Arcana Strike, and BOOM, problem solved,” Salamander requested. “I had my fun, might as well end it with fireworks.”

“Three reasons. One, that thing is shielded against magic on that scale, guaranteed. Two, I want people to question afterwards. Three, if I do that, I won’t have anymore mana,” John explained. The third reason was of minor concern because he did have access to Momo’s mana, but it wouldn't stay a minor concern if he just relied on her from that point onwards.

In the time from firing that thing to having it charged, he’d be helpless, mana wise. Not a fun place to be. “Well, let’s make some noise,” John declared as he saw someone in a window, pointing at him.

‘Y-you sure we can do this?’ Gnome asked as she followed Siena. The shadow elemental was scouting for a relatively safe route for her and the stone elemental to get as close to the building as possible. A girl the weight of a boulder wasn’t exactly stealthy, especially if she felt responsibility on her shoulders as well.

Siena whirled around and grabbed the nervous earth spirit’s chin. ‘We will have to, or John needs to rethink his plans. We wouldn’t want that, now would we?’ the shadow spirit warned. Then she grinned widely, ‘Although, if we fail because of you, maybe John will let me punish you. I have always liked working with stone.’

‘N-no, John wouldn’t do that!’ Gnome shook her head. ‘No, he wouldn’t, no, no.’ She kind of believed that, but with her summoner, kinky stuff like that could not have been completely denied. Not that she minded. No, wait, she was a pure girl, she very much minded… probably. It was okay if it was John.

‘This is as close as you will get,’ Siena said as they hid between some trees close to the street that led into the castle’s court. ‘It’s time.’

‘Will five minutes be enough?’ Gnome asked as she reached out to the shadow spirit. This was only the second time they fused. She could feel her magical particles unravelling, a fact that should have normally meant death for an elemental but felt strangely warm and comfortable as they readjusted and combined with Siena’s.

When the magic had settled, there was no Gnome or Siena anymore. Their information was locked deep within their structure, safe within the new being that both presented a mixture of both and an entirely new person.

She was Darkness, toned muscles shifted underneath her shale coloured skin, covered only by worn bandages wrapped around her and loose, white pants that looked like they belonged to a man out of a middle-east drama. Eyes and hair of grey that was only slightly lighter than her skin, she dropped into the shadows and dwelled there for half a minute, gathering her magic to then dart forth into the sunlight.

Darkness had an ability that made her more valuable than Siena in this situation, despite being slower than the nightmare elemental was on her own. Her unleashed potential was that she could stay within the shadows after leaving natural shadows. This came with the limitation of needing to gather this power within normal shadows, but it still allowed her to bridge distances rather effectively.

It, however, also left a silhouette of herself on whatever surface she traversed under. It wasn’t a perfect move, but it sure beat coming out of the shadows and then jumping in the next area. The darkness elemental moved in as far as she could. She was a dedicated kind of girl, and she was on a timer.

John jumped to the side and rolled off. He felt pebbles and sticks press uncomfortably through his vest as he quickly got back to his feet and fired the eight shards he had created and locked in while rolling just as the ball of fluctuating steam and lightning hit the floor behind him and the aftershocks crackled away some of his mana.

This may have been more of a former hunting castle than a proper fort, but it was still on top of a hill, and the occupiers didn’t seem particularly keen on giving up their advantageous position. Not that John could blame them for it.

The shards, aimed through the eyes of Jack, clashed uselessly into some sort of shield that spanned over the white walls like some sort of soap bubble. That thing had only recently become operational, meaning that there was some sort of inner workings as to why they didn’t want to use it needlessly.

Limited resources, most likely. A barrier of that size couldn’t have been easy to maintain. However, it seemed to allow physical bodies to get in and out freely.

He was needed to distract the enemy; if he couldn’t do that from the outside, well, then he would throw caution to the wind after all. At least the enemy fighting force had been thinned a bit already by Siena’s earlier actions and Salamander’s barrage the last thirty minutes.

“Undine, get ready to heal me, a lot,” he said as he put out Mana Protection, he would need all the mana once inside. Then he charged straight up the hill and finally picked an invocation for his shoes.

The air whistled around his ears as he ran with a speed that would have had him easefully break all world records. Agility risen to its max thanks to Purgatory and slowly gaining even more speed as he ran in a perfectly straight line, he was bombarded with spells. They chipped away at his health, little by little. 40, 31, 87, 4, 105 damage, it came in erratic fashion while Undine, a glove on his hand, healed against it.

The abuse he received only got worse when John rammed Purgatory into the wall and pulled himself up, climbing as fast as he could. He grabbed onto the window frame and felt the person desperately trying to shut it with his fingers in between.

The idea that he could have been forced to fall back down by that action, with the things that were protecting his hands, was rather laughable. “Too bad for you, I am bullshit from abilities to equipment,” John declared, now inside the building and surrounded by at least ten people on each side of the corridor, with more ready to join them on this floor.

Sylph and Salamander joined him and hovered over his shoulders as the corridor fell into silence, people grabbing their weapons tight and preparing spell work as they watched the Gamer stand there with a confident smile. “I am rather fond of asymmetrical multiplayer.”

Shards flew outwards, and soldiers as well as clan members let out valiant warcries, ready to die for what they believed in.

Darkness had made it far into the building when she finally split. The end of her existence didn’t bother her a lot; after all, she was just going to live on in two memories. One day she would be reborn out of these two.

Gnome and Siena, now individuals again but with a shared understanding of how to continue, nodded at each other, and the stone elemental ran back down the corridor they came from. After about twenty seconds, the sound of a floor getting crushed could be heard as Gnome began to tear down the building from the inside.

What was better than one distraction? Two distractions. Gnome was going to search for what or whoever was fuelling that barrier. That thing should be at least semi-important for them.

Siena waited for a few more moments, then she went into motion herself. Slowly, she made her way down the path of destruction she had laid herself earlier. There were still very little shadows to hide in, but now these parts of the building were largely empty.

She was about to turn the final corner when she heard a matron’s voice. “We need to relocate you, move faster!” she told whoever she was with; the next words Siena heard confirmed that she was talking to the obvious target.

“I can’t… Magoi… Magoi is out there… he is keeping the pressure up, you try…”

“Your life is in danger, you will have to manage,” the blonde woman announced. Siena had no doubt that this was the same woman that had stopped her earlier.

“That shadow elemental won’t be back; she was killed. Whoever her summoner was will need to reass-“

“That was one of the Gamer’s elementals,” that shut the Fateweaver up instantly. “And she didn’t die, she teleported away, somehow. He has a healing elemental as well, for all we know…” the voice got closer, “…she could be right…” Siena couldn’t help herself but grin, teeth-revealing wide, at what was about to happen, “…around this corner.”

The old woman with her oversized sword must have been thinking she was making a joke, but when she came face to with Siena’s sulfuric eyes in their sea of pitch black she was staring into the face of a harsh reality. In almost routine movement, the shadow spirit ripped the suicide capsule out of the woman’s mouth, then she turned on the Fateweaver who was trying to get away on all fours after falling over backwards in shock.

“I surrender! I surrender!” he screamed on the top of his lungs after Siena had descended on him, using an array of thin tentacles to trap him underneath her like a spider. Having already started tearing his elaborate suit apart with her fingers, the thing being stronger than most armour, she forced herself to stop.

“You are lucky I have interests beyond just tearing your traitorous hide to pieces,” she hissed as the air changed and the forceful separation of their barriers came to an end, the air at the edge of this one cracking and shattering into itself.

John was exhausted, his health pool was down to two fifths, and that was after Undine had used her unleashed power to heal him. Sylph had been taken out in the battle, and there were still 15 of them. Gnome’s eventual arrival had been the thing that had saved them from their demise.

Still, this was looking everything but rosy. His mana was empty, tapped, as well as Momo’s. He was fighting only with what he could scratch together, mostly spent on a Mana Protection that saved him at least some health points. It wasn’t to be underestimated how quick his mana was regenerating.

And it wasn’t like he was the only one getting tired; sooner or later, he would hit the bottom of the finite amount of enemy reinforcement. 

Then there was a change in the air, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, as if everything shifted a bit and then stopped immediately but without any actual draft. A pair of soldiers came at him. Aclysia and Gnome were busy at the other side of the hallway, and so the enemy reached him without any interception. 

The first one’s attack clashed against the Mana Protection, and while that didn’t completely block it, it slowed it down tremendously. Breaking the man’s stance wide open, John threw a fireball from Purgatory against his chest, but he was about to get stabbed in the neck by the next guy. 

“Need some help, tiger?” a certain half-asian announced her arrival. Rave’s magic never had been all that strong on the kinetic side of of things, but it still sufficed in this situation. A beam of light hit the man against the side of the head and caused his skin to burn as he was forced to stumble to the side.

Soon thereafter, other reinforcements poured into the mansion through all entrances. The enemy had better things to do than mindlessly fall into John’s figurative blade at that point. “Well, that wasn’t even close,” he grinned and crossed his arms; they felt like pudding now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off.

“Ja, ja,” Rave rolled her eyes but giggled, confirming that he had arrived at victory. “Don’tyawanna say some stupid one-liner so we can get out of here?” John very much wanted to do that.

“Player 1 wins!”