The Gamer Chapter 1547 – Forcing the Melee (Patreon)

Salamander, Gnome and the Creator Puppet rushed right back towards Malot. The backwards bent spine snapped back upwards, soul and body overlapping – for the most part. Four hands were thrust out, creating a scattershot blast that drove all three combatants back.

What should have dissipated instead consolidated. Forming yet another warped grid of tetragons, the arcane energy formed several large spheres. The first enveloped Gnome, the second Salamander. Third and fourth attempted to do the same to John and his Creator Puppet, but he swiftly relocated using Magus Step with one body and simply moved too fast with the other.

Arcs of energy leashed the bubbles around the fire and earth spirit to one of Malot’s ethereal limbs each. Hanging in front of him, his possessed body suddenly reached into the air.

John reacted before he could think, but even that was too slow to prevent his main body from being stabbed at by a mana blade going straight through a dimensional gash. ‘Well, that’s an unwelcome revelation,’ the Gamer thought. ‘So dimensional rending is a subschool of arcane magic?’

Not the most absurd revelation. Teleportation was already in the arcane domain, at least in the form of Magus Step and the like. If gravity belonged to shadows and light had its own variety of lightning, then it was almost reasonable dimensional magic belonged in the realm of the arcane. They had to have torn open the way into the Elemental Plane of Air somehow.

Further implications had to be pushed aside, John was too busy getting away with one body and hurling the other at the problem. The hand snapped back through the dimensional tear, once John was out of range. The mana blade remained active, blocking the descending mace.

John called it a mana blade, but just by the virtue that it blocked Inkaryl and retained its shape, it was something else. The unsteady mana of Malot kept refreshing the blade with various different colours of mana. It had nothing of the controlled switching of Orkos or Arkan. The capacity was there, but his condition must have rendered asserting it impossible.

That only made him less dangerous than those two monstrosities, though, which was hardly good news to John. Just the fact that he could keep two of his elementals contained meant that he was somewhere around the Gamer’s current level, if not higher. That he could be kept on his proverbial toes, however, also meant that Malot could not have been that much higher.

The Creator Puppet pressed down on the obstacle. The strength of the arm behind the blade waxed and waned with the accustomed irregularity. John waited for a moment of weakness, then struck with his superior speed.

A small stomp created a pillar of stone that rushed upwards, hitting Malot in the elbow. It created an opening big enough that the Creator Puppet could draw the mace back and swing it horizontally. An energy field of tetragons flared, projected by the second of the physical body’s hands. The mana blade was readied again.

The entire chain of events had played out as John had intended.

Behind Malot, the Mandala Sphere aimed one of its Schattengarn thorns at the moving wrist. The consolidated Mithril sphere was whole in one moment, then had one of its segments rush forwards at incredible speed. The Kinetic Discharge turned the three layers of silver plates into markers of distance along a taut tendril, whose thorn-tipped end sunk into the sands between the shattered porcelain.

Other plates followed the example a moment later, either ramming into Malot’s back or simply using the initial rush of speed to aid the weapon in extending its tendrils and wrapping them around the limb. Then, the Unstable Arcana pulse the sphere was granted passively washed over the arcane elemental as well.

The damage was, as expected, barely notable. Elementals were not immune to their own element, but a high resistance was predictable. What mattered was the Mana Chain that came alongside this free pulse. Two of them, in fact. Because John was within 5 metres of the target when the arcane spell hit the target, the Punishment Chain Perk activated.

The silver chains shot out from ripples in the air, adding to Malot’s predicament. Bristling energy under the surface threatened to burst out and solve it the violent way. The Creator Puppet raised its left hand and let loose an Elemental Bolt.

Malot was catapulted backwards, flying into the water. ‘Not – yet,’ John called out to the predatory intellect scratching impatiently at the edges of his mind. Back to the lurking depths, it went.

The beat of Inkaryl’s mechanical heart announced its change between elements from the land where its wielder currently stood to the sea the Creator Puppet leapt into. The energy bubbles around Gnome burst from the sheer strength she threw against the barrier, with Salamander following a moment later in a fiery explosion. Both hasted after the Creator Puppet and into the ocean.

John walked onto the edge of the floating island, concentrated on his manoeuvring of the Creator Puppet, and simply followed the situation from afar. A position that he had tailored his build around. A position that Malot doubtlessly would have preferred. ‘Tactical versatility sure is nice to have,’ the Gamer thought. ‘I just hope the cameras are waterproof.’

Beneath the waves, the Creator Puppet accelerated its speed, utilizing the control Inkaryl offered over its slotted element. The target was beneath him, sinking into the depths.

The previously interrupted arcane blast now triggered. Retreated plates kept the core of the Mandala Sphere from sustaining worrisome damage. Still, damage was sustained and the Extension was blown away, dragging its tendrils after itself like some kind of metallic jellyfish.

John opted to remove the Mandala Sphere from the melee while he could, not willing to lose the item unless absolutely necessary. The Ego Blades were designed to be easily replaceable; the Mandala Sphere was a whole different beast. Down below, the melee began. Up above, the Gamer rubbed his chin and contemplated his mana expenditures. ‘Already back to 21’000. Not a lot of active expenditures in this fight. Best to keep a nice buffer. If he can push a hand through dimensions, chances are he can pull a Metra and move all of himself.’

He crossed his arms, kept his Magus Step routes atop his mind, and watched.

Inkaryl moved through the water. There was no resistance from the liquid – in fact, the sea pushed the weapon along as it was swung. The additional speed was of no use, however. With all four of his limbs free, Malot effortlessly blocked each strike as they tumbled in the water. Two breathless entities, formed from inorganic materials, were locked in a melee. Mana blades and mace were swung, ever aiming to get the upper hand.

Malot thrust one of his hands out, nearly gripping the head of the Creator Puppet. The burst of arcane energy that was meant to follow came out only as a fizzle of white, too weak to harm the reinforced exterior of the golem.

What one hand failed at, a second one did not. A terrifying surge of might turned the ethereal form of the overlapping soul bright red for one moment. All that power was unleashed in a burst that was as primitive in its form as it was effective in its delivery. It was the arcane equivalent of a master swordsman clubbing someone over the head with a long stick.

The Creator Puppet’s Arcane Resistance was tested to its limits. The surface broke open. A hand tore through a dimensional rift opened in front of the weak point and delivered a stab that broke through the underlying material.

One of the golem’s arms tumbled into the darkness. More would have likely followed, if Salamander and Gnome had not managed to arrive at that moment. The surrounding water heated up considerably in the presence of the apocalypse elemental.

Three versus one, the melee regained a balance. Salamander’s multitude of arms swiped through the water. Each was holding a half-molten dagger of ashen rock. Gnome had used her Unleash to create several stone trees, which she now utilized both as clubs and underwater platforms. With magic, she kept them in place. The Creator Puppet further utilized its control over water to make sure the 3-dimensional battlefield was favourable to them.

Malot did not allow them to get comfortable even with all those advantages. Surrounded by them, he continuously warded them off with magic barriers while returning plenty of fire. It took the form of scattershot bursts and mana blades stabbing through dimensional gashes. That those were the two general tricks did not prevent Malot from whipping out an assortment of others. Beams shot out from various gaps in his body, minefields of unstable arcanas, shardbound projectiles, to name only a few of the tricks he pulled. There was very little rhyme or reason to his strategy.

‘Genuinely not sure who will win this grinding match,’ John thought, pouring another couple of hundred points into Gnome to aid her in her healing efforts. Without Undine around, the season elemental had to pick up the mantle. Luckily, Salamander was sturdier than ever before with the armour in place and she was still the least durable of the three down there. ‘Damage is being accrued on our side, but the rate is acceptable. I have no idea how quick his mana is regenerating though. Might be a stalemate, might be tilted in either of our favours.’

The Gamer did not like the odds and was about to do something to tilt it in his direction. Before he could finalize which of his longer cooldowns to expend, Malot broke the stalemate himself.

A surge in his power, as sudden as all of those that had come before, allowed Malot to rip open a dimensional doorway. The Gamer did not have to guess where he went for a single moment. Back on the island where he had originated, water was ejected by the pressure of its depth. Malot was pushed out alongside it. The Creator Puppet was too slow to follow along.

John was prepared for any offensive action. That Malot forced his soul back into his body and slammed his hands together was only somewhat unexpected. It turned to being within the expected parameters when he began to speak.

“I have learned so much.”

His hands parted. A shape like a Rubik’s Cube twisted and turned between his palms. Its colours and dimensions were unsteady, its circling never aligning any sides or even rows properly.

“I am awake. I am awake. I am awake!”

‘NOT – YET!’ John shouted in his mind against the presence hungering for promised violence.

“I have learned too much to sleep.”

Creator Puppet, Salamander and Gnome dragged themselves to land. None of them even attempted to interrupt what Malot was doing. The finishing of the Babel Phrase was an inevitability and they would rather not be in the epicentre of the release of the power. If this was anything like Liakan, which was more likely than the controlled others, proximity was potentially deadly.

‘Wish we had picked up the arm,’ Gnome thought, with a glance at the Creator Puppet’s missing limb.

‘We’ll endure,’ John returned. ‘Brace for impact.’

“TOO MUCH, THAT THIS VESSEL CANNOT CONTAIN!”

The thunderous final words of the Babel Phrase ripped the head of the vessel backwards. The porcelain mask shattered, revealing underneath a second vortex of blue and purple sand. Malot shoved the cube into the maelstrom in his chest cavity.

A sound like light breaking through the clouds of a thunderstorm. Nothing, no sound, but a concept was invoked and that was all John could consider when he heard that ethereal singing. Azure light cascaded upwards from the form of the arcane elemental. Some of it was beautiful, like a monocoloured aurora. More, much more of it shot into the heavens, to descend then as a hailstorm of destructive projectiles.

‘Incorporeal,’ John ordered the two elementals with him. In regular combat, it was risky to phase between the states. It offered a moment of supreme vulnerability, where the essence itself was exposed.

Since John could see the barrage descending on him, timing was not his concern. Minimizing the damage, that he could do. While Gnome and Salamander disappeared, he squatted down. The Mandala Sphere was moved into his inventory; the Creator Puppet stepped in front of him. That was the best shelter he could find here.

Lances and shells, explosions and penetrative blasts, all of it came down on John’s position and the ocean that surrounded them. Arcane fire and lightning boiled away the ocean surface, then destroyed the steam itself. There were no waves and no fog, there was barely even a sound. The annihilation of this ocean occurred with no more volume than rain on a lake.

The Creator Puppet was blown apart bit by bit. Chunks of it were sacrificed in favour of John’s mana reserves. Inkaryl hit the ground with a dissatisfied screech, knowing its role in this fight was done the moment the second arm of the golem was cracked to the point that no magic signal could run through any longer. Eventually, the rest of the body followed suit, collapsing into a pile of gravel and metal shreds.

The rain of spells had diminished by that point. Thinned to a point that each individual bit of arcane truly resembled a drop falling. In translucent beauty, the prismatic fragments of mana fell from the sky, turning into crystalline structures atop the now impossibly calm ocean like drying saltwater did on eroding land.

At the centre of this pitter-patter of arcane tears was Malot. His body was unchanged, the cracked mask put aside. His Unleashed form truly was too much for his vessel to hold, bursting out of the ‘mouth’ of the body and extending upwards.

Extending and extending, hundreds of metres high, the asymmetrical entity crackled and spasmed. An assortment of geometric shapes and smooth surfaces, multi-coloured energy moved under facets cut into blue and purple glass. Its segments were sometimes connected, sometimes seemed to hover next to each other, tip to tip of their pointy shapes.

There were no hands, there were no limbs at all. The entire entity was diamond shaped and somewhat flat, like a kite. There were patterns there, somewhere, buried inside the gargantuan entropy Malot embodied. John felt eyes on him and he felt the arcane elemental attempting to speak. The sounds sang through the rain and scratched John’s ears. Whatever had been said, it was just a courtesy, before dimensional gashes opened up all around the unstable entity.

‘Now,’ John ordered.

He could feel his order being followed. The island, still floating on the diminished surface of the ocean, rumbled. The still water stirred. Crystal forms were torn apart by the simple act of the creature lurking at the bottom of the ocean moving. Dendepthr surged.

Gargantuan, the mixture of pliosaurus and crocodile broke through the waves.