The Gamer Chapter 1459 – 27 Days of Preparation 13 – The Unbroken King of Knights (Patreon)

The giant of a humanoid towered over all of them, his size only increased by the power of the four knights now swirling inside his radiant chassis. Flaming eyes beheld all of them for a single second, before he swung his rapier at Metra, leaving an incandescent trail of light.

The First of Wrath blocked the attack with the shaft of her halberd. Astrotium screeched over the marble floor, the force pushing her back several metres. The attack rippled up her arm, decreasing her HP from half to 3/10ths. Regeneration steadily worked against the effects, but it would not be enough forever.

Electricity, claws, fists, a sword and a spear all slammed into the sturdy armour of the King. Amadeus did not ignore them all, as all knights had done before with targets that were not their challenger. In his offhand, suddenly, materialized the sleek lance of the Poison Knight and whirled around.

For all the banter John had for his girlfriend’s occasional lack of sense, her intuition could not be faulted. Reacting immediately to the turn, the feline Lightbearer activated her Aura and Shifted out of the way. The Aura immediately deactivated afterwards and Rave dropped to one knee. Sweat pooled on her forehead.

Unfortunately, she could not remain. A large ooze was spewed forth by the attack, consolidating into an enemy that set after her immediately. Fighting to get on her feet, she joined with Sylph to see it undone in a perfect duo attack.

The boss, simultaneously, switched targets again. Long lance replaced with slender sword, a burst of ice cascaded out in all directions, before he swung at Beatrice. The passive maid was prepared for it and still she wasn’t fast enough. The attack caught her, slicing open her chest and freezing the open wound. Thick ice prevented the gash from closing like it usually would have.

More attacks rained down on the king of Astria, many of them breaking on the heater shield that now covered his left arm. In a small opening, he swung for Gnome. The season elemental, tired beyond worry, managed to knock the blade off its path with a flawlessly timed slam to Amadeus’ wrist. The cascade of metal scrap pulling alongside his rapier came to an abrupt end.

A little moment of light and worth as little as a spark in a deep night. The shield turned into the sharp shovel of the fourth knight. The idea behind the weapon may have been ridiculous, but the way Amadeus wielded it was not. Essentially a halberd with one solid head, he swiped in a wide arch, forcing Siena and Beatrice to dodge, before the weapon collided with Aclysia. No Devotion to be spent on defence, she could only take the attack head on.

Like a cold knife into butter, it sank into her shoulder, advancing halfway into her torso, before coming to a still. Then, the scattershot of gemstones exploded inside her, bursting Aclysia’s chest open. Resembling an opened can, her shoulder and head were connected to the rest of her metal body only through a thin strip. Her HP was as dwindling as everyone else’s.

Four times Amadeus attacked, each striking the last challenger of his knights. ‘I wonder if all of that can be pushed onto one person and if that’s even desirable,’ the Gamer considered. His mind was already with the next attempt. The next attack of the King once more went to Metra, beginning the cycle anew.

The First of Wrath dodged the attack; the others struggled. Gnome did not pull off a second miracle and was struck in the chest. At best, Rave, Aclysia, and Beatrice managed to dodge, always losing momentum in the process. They were all too exhausted or too low on resources to deliver their best and only one of them had extensive experience in the way Amadeus fought.

“Bear witness, to the power of a sovereign, empowered by his subjects!” the Knight King of Astria roared and faced the north-western portal. By sheer happenstance, that was where Beatrice was located. The passive maid managed to move out of the way with Twist Position. Amadeus thrust his rapier forwards and unleashed a broad cone of toxic energy. It filled the entire quarter of the room, from where he stood all the way to the portal.

The energy was rapidly drawn into the swirling portal, but for the moment the area was unsafe. Amadeus turned to the north-eastern portal next. There, Beatrice stood among Siena and Rave, having ended up there after her escaping spell. Spending more of her resources, Beatrice snapped out of the area again; Rave and Siena ran, but both of them got caught by the edge of the icy blast and their HP was reduced to a mere quarter.

Both of them kept running, together with everyone else in the third quarter. A storm of metal was launched from Amadeus’ form. They had to stick close to him, just to make it around the curve fast enough to escape the cone attack. The poison was almost entirely drained away by the time Amadeus wound up for the fourth attack.

“TO THE WALL!” John shouted. Perhaps an unnecessary reminder, but everyone was strained and he wanted to keep this going for as long as possible.

Running and flying down the safe quarter, while the ground in the last was turned into a storm of diamond dust, the party caught the golden glow underneath them. Rapidly, light formed into runes. The four-pointed star of Astria took shape. Just barely, they managed to make it to the edge of the room, before the explosion of holy energy filled all but the outer few metres of the arena.

A charging sound was the final alert they got from the portals. Having absorbed the energies of the cone attacks, the dimensional gateways were just about ready to burst. “Away from the walls!” John gave the next redundant order. Everyone was already hasting away.

Beatrice tried to beat her wings and gain the burst of speed she needed. The ice in her chest ruined her balance and her take-off was turned into a stumble. No resources left, no Swing to expend and incapable of turning into lightning at this moment, she made a displeased expression. John caught that much, before volatile energies spilled out of the portals and turned the safe ring at the edge of the arena into the area of Beatrice’s demise.

‘Well, still good progress,’ John thought, resigning himself to another fifty attempts or so.

“FUCK THAT!” Metra screamed into the room, as she slammed full force again into Amadeus. The King knocked her aside, then attempted to stab Rave with a lance, only to immediately turn back to Metra. The First of Wrath shoved her arm through a dimensional tear and Ripped the weapon off its collision course. With the target of revenge for Ina gone, Amadeus’ main target would take the additional attacks. The challenge mechanic was still in place. “VICTORY, MY KING! COME ON! CRAVE IT!”

A flood of ideas entered his mind, half-mad thoughts from a soldier of a thousand campaigns. “FINE!” John shouted, half-mad laughter mixing into his voice. What harm would it do to follow a course of action that would lose them half a day if it failed? ‘Momo, take the aggro from Metra. Keep the boss in the middle of the battlefield.’

‘I, uh, what?! I mean… OKAY?!’ The confused exchange happened at the speed of brilliant thoughts. “Hey, you big jerk, uhm, fight me?” the fae maid declared, several of her Firefae turning into Fae Maids all around her.

“I, King of Astria, acknowledge your challenge!”

“Everyone, caution to the wind! Full burst damage! Undine, use all the mana you still have to heal Metra!” the Gamer exclaimed his remaining orders.

“A solemn reign, for the few that rise up high.” Rave immediately took his orders to heart and began chanting. The concentration on the words slowed her down, allowing the boss to ram his weapon through her abdomen. Although at the verge of death, she held on, while Amadeus moved on to the other targets. Several small oozes moved all around them.

“Eeep!” Momo shouted when Amadeus leapt at her. More by coincidence than proper planning, the ten second teleport timer was up that very moment. What the icy sword sliced apart was one of the Fae Maids, rather than Momo herself. “I regret everything! John, why are you doing this to meeeeee?” Several butterflies expanded into trees, weighing Amadeus down enough that he missed his swipe at Gnome. “I AM NOT MADE FOR THE FRONTLINE!”

The scream was accompanied by Amadeus breaking off the trees of stone covering him. Aclysia was only halfway knit back together and was in no state to dodge. She didn’t try to either. Leaping into the attack, she let her lower half be cut off and latched onto the arm of the giant. Nothing but a torso and a pair of arms, she crawled up the limb, freezing her fingertips in place with Black Ice, until she had reached Amadeus’ face.

Slashing at his eyes broke his combat rhythm for a moment. First, he ripped Aclysia off. Second, he slammed her to the ground, sending her home. Third, he shook off the Black Ice with an explosion of light.

“And we all fight,” Rave growled, blood running down her chin. The hard light claws of her left hand pulsed with concentrated power.

“Why, why of all the Raid bosses this one?!” Momo continued to panic, barely weaving around the attacks thrown her way thanks to a combination of her magic-fuelled flight, self-buffing, and teleportation. “Why the fastest, strongest guy we have met yeeet?!”

“Stop whining!” Metra screamed from the background.

“I have very good reasons to whine!” Momo sassed back. “How about you stop kneeling in a puddle of Undine?!”

Metra and the slime woman were indeed off to the side of the battlefield, only wrapped around the other to transmit as much of the healing energy as she possibly could. Most of it were fumes, barely pushed out of her reserves. Still, it was enough to slowly see Metra regenerated to full health.

Gnome’s, meanwhile, reached zero. The season elemental was inevitably struck by a slam of the shield. Already at the inch of death, the attack simply knocked her out of this dimension altogether.

Two consecutive swipes at Momo saw Amadeus deliver two solid hits to the support. Despite all her complaints, Momo took the attacks without a sound. There was defiance in those white eyes. John wouldn’t have entrusted her with this task if she couldn’t live up to it.

“Let our worlds collide!”

Amadeus turned to face Rave, only to be pushed back by the superheated claw of hardened light. Launched at the breast plate, the golden-haired Lightbearer hovered in the air in front of the broad chest. The forward momentum kept her suspended, an immense force against a highly resistant object. Light reflected off the chest plate, enveloping Rave in a mist of shards of solid illumination. Technicolours faded into white.

With a roar, Amadeus pushed forwards. His lance would have skewered Rave, had Fateweaving not removed her from the situation before her ultimate fate.

“Welp, that’s it, I’m dead, this better be worth it!” Momo shouted, casting a last barrier spell on Metra before falling at a cascade of attacks aimed solely at her.

Amadeus did not set sight on any particular target next. Instead, he pulled his rapier back, aiming at the quadrant in which John currently hovered. ‘He’s aiming first where the least people are, but at least one?’ John theorized, still wondering how these mechanics worked.

He did so while getting the hell away. Deliberately, he flew away from Metra and Undine. By chance or by correct analysis, the attack followed him. Metal, then shovel, then poison, the three cone attacks caught his feet twice, but didn’t deal enough damage to the so far unharmed Ambassador Double that he could be killed. By the time he reached ice, Metra and Undine were ready to move.

Together, they moved out of the final cone. Together, they ran to the wall. Alone, Undine surged ahead. A nightmare tide unleashed, the healer turned all her given benevolence into a thousand maws, splitting her midnight blue body. A serpent and a woman and a deer – a gorgon and a wendigo – a terror beckoning in the old tongue of the elementals for revenge and the indulgence in violence. An angry tide.

Amadeus was forced back by the sheer power. All the damage he and his vassals had dealt, a fraction of it turned back onto him. He sliced through crashing waves of foaming snakes and stabbed the many jaws.

“Terrible mother chaos.”

Metra stood at the edge of all happenings, slowly walking towards where the giant was wrestling the fragment of the ocean. There was an odd sense of nostalgia radiating from her. ‘What similar sight did she see?’ John wondered. ‘A scene of Tiamat in her prime, perhaps?’

“Fallen, broken, twisted you are…”

The power of Undine’s waves began to diminish. With their ebb, the power of the Raid boss asserted itself once more. Gasping for air, Amadeus broke through the sentient knot of serpentine rivers.

“…and I still carry all your wrath.”

With a massive swipe of two swords, Amadeus sent shards of ice and glops of slime flying in both directions. Undine hissed in the ancient tongue, her amorphous body turning into one giant maw. Rows upon rows of uneven teeth crushed down on the Raid boss. Little shards of armour broke off where Rave’s attack had left a half-melted mark.

“To your nature I deliver...”

A war cry echoed through the room and Amadeus entirely ripped open the nightmare jaw clenching down on him. Slime sundered and with it the last of Undine’s strength. The bloated mass consolidated back into her usual form, only the snake-like texture of her hair and the yellow eyes in her horns betraying that the woman tumbling over the floor was the origin of that nightmare tide.

Amadeus half-splattered her under his heel, before Fateweaving took her.

“…this loathsome sinner!”

Metra screamed with all the rage. Beating her own chest, she seemed to try to force the words out of her lungs. Amadeus turned towards her and began charging.

“…I’LL DRAG HIM DOWN TO HELL!”

The fabric of the Raid shook. Chaotic energies manifested simultaneously everywhere. Entropy ground against Gaia’s design for this space. Finding its place underneath the supreme deity, the chaos failed to twist any of the dimensions of this place, only messing with the textures of the walls and the colours of the banners, constantly shifting both.

John stayed as far away as he dared, watching Amadeus turn from a giant into a human of equal size to Metra. In the first place, he had only been enormous due to the demands of Raid enemies to be a simple target.

Rex Magnar screamed, as Metra swung it with all the force of a Raid boss. Rapier and halberd clashed, creating a shockwave that pushed the flying Ambassador Double back almost a full metre. One attack turned into several dozen, as the two clashed for the 564th time.

The rapier stabbed and slashed, meeting Rex Magnar’s shaft at every turn. The lance stabbed, its long thorn caught between the point and the axe blade of the halberd. The slender sword cut and sliced through the air, always brought off-course by Metra’s armoured fist, be it through carefully measured strikes or dimensional tears. The shield attempted to block Metra’s counter strike, but she simply dropped her halberd and wove into close quarters, delivering a series of punches to Amadeus’s chest. The shovel swiped and met the halberd that reappeared in Metra’s hands. The rapier stabbed and slashed, meeting Rex Magnar’s shaft at every turn.

For all the explosions of holy light, the oozes he spawned, the gusts of icy winds chilling the battlefield, the shards of metal tracing his attacks, and the blasts of gemstones, the Raid boss was driven back. Metra took attacks, yes, she did, but for every one she took, she retaliated threefold. They were evenly matched, as was the rule of this place. Her green eyes did not burn with the power of her gift of wrath, they shone only with passion for the fight.

Anticipating the swipe in every last detail, Metra grabbed the boss mid-attack. An overhead throw saw the blond king slammed into the ground. Letting out only a wheeze, he pried his hand free and jumped to his feet immediately. Then he drew his rapier back, filling it with noxious energies.

‘Shit, shit, shit!’ John thought. Not for Metra’s sake, she was fine. Their fight had pushed the fight away from the centre, and that made all the dodging awkward for him. If he was out, this was over.

Burning as much mana as the design of the Mandala Sphere allowed on speed, he was too slow to dodge the first burst of attack. He was enveloped by diamond dust, feeling it tear open the magical skin of the double. When he emerged, he had a mere second to breathe before poison followed. He breathed the tiniest sigh of relief when he made it out of there alive as well. Two massive ‘quarters’ of the room had been filled and the other two were easily circumvented. He only had to hasten again to reach the safe edge of the room when the circular attack began.

‘What is she doing?’ John thought. Metra did not even attempt to run away, instead slamming her halberd into the enemy over and over again. Each attack was accompanied by a scream of ever growing exhaustion. To equalize her power with that of a Raid boss was taxing, too taxing to be done for long and certainly too taxing to be done frequently. ‘Ah, I see… well, if anyone can pull this off, it’s her.’

The channelling of the golden light concluded, just as Metra missed an attack on a stationary target. John, at the edge of the room, saw the air next to him flicker and tear, an extra-dimensional gash appearing in the world. Her weapon screaming and thumping like a one man concert, Metra emerged from it. The back spike of Rex Magnar sputtered plasma and lightning. Keeping the Extreme Plasma Burst steady, she accelerated herself towards the wall, somehow managing to land on the vertical wall, and then half-leaping, half-rocketing back through the still open portal in the same split second it took her to dodge the brunt of the attack.

It was the narrowest of timings, a feat so ridiculous, even John’s paranoia was almost stunned into silence. Almost, luckily, keeping him moving before the unloading portals could end this attempt.

With the force of the enchantment, Metra slammed into Amadeus’ chest. The blade of the halberd sliced into the damaged centre of the chest plate. Thundercharge unloaded, seizing Amadeus’ muscles for a moment long enough for Metra to draw back her weapon and slam the hook into the narrow gash the axe had made. With one powerful yank, she tore it open wide.

Amadeus made a sudden recovery. Holding rapier and longsword in reverse grips, he was about to descend on Metra like a praying mantis. She was as strong as him, but that also meant he was as strong as her. For all her good timings, she had still taken enough damage in that manoeuvre just now that the attack could be fatal or, at the very least, break the Entropy Arena.

Not allowing that to happen, John bundled all of the mana he still had, all the mana he had regenerated since the start of this phase, into two Blast Rays. Ten Arcana Rays flew out most of his fingers, two from the Companion Cube. They joined with one another mid-flight, changing trajectory each time, until ten became two and two slammed into Amadeus’ wrists, staying his hands where they were for the little moment Metra needed.

All muscles pulling together, the Breaker of Armies clutched her halberd with both hands. Explosively unloading all force inside her body, she rammed the spear tip of the weapon into the gash in the armour. Amadeus’ face turned from stoic into surprised as the weapon sunk deep into his body.

Amadeus shivered all over. A spasm that made him drop both his weapons. The chaotic aura over the room ebbed away as the blonde king slouched forwards. “A King… is only ever worth as much as his subjects,” Amadeus gasped as his face began to crumble into dust. Within seconds, he was nothing.

John held in the victory scream, wanting to give Metra that honour. The windows ignored, only eyes for her, he watched the helmet of the grey-plated warrior retreat into her collar. With a groggy expression, she stumbled towards him. He wanted to catch her, but instead she put her hand to his chest and pushed him backwards. Intensely, he landed in the now empty throne of Astria. It was beyond comfortable. Even when a fully armoured, tall woman put herself in his lap.

“All hail the king,” she muttered, before passing out.