The Gamer Chapter 1556 – Light and Blade [Rave POV] (Patreon)

“Karia of the Azure Tribe versus Rave of Fusion,” Romulus announced. “Fighting in a plagued land!”

“Ew,” Rave grumbled, before going through the usual motions of getting her good-luck kisses from the gathered harem. Before long, she was down by the teleporter. Karia arrived around the same time. “Now’s as good a time as any – thanks for what ya did yesterday.”

The arcane elemental regarded Rave with an interested glance, then smiled broadly. “Don’t expect me to aid you further. I’m in this for the tribe. It just so happened that I do not like your enemy either.”

“Doesn’t make us friends, I get it.” Rave nodded and walked through the teleporter.

The land they entered was truly vile. A carpet of slimy fungus covered the ground in rancid tendrils and tall trees of sickly red grew upwards. Here and there, lakes of noxious green interrupted the otherwise deep brown of the exposed earth. Those pools bubbled and hissed, screaming the word ‘acid’ out loud.

‘Why even bother with that, not like the kind of acid they can afford to put in there is a threat to us?’ Copernicus commented.

‘Dunno. What’s our strategy, Cappy? Straight in?’

‘Our strategy is hoping that her interference doesn’t work on us. Beyond that, this is all you.’

‘Admitting that not having a plan is the best plan?’

‘I admit that you are incapable of holding onto any plan.’

‘Rude!’

“Urgh,” Karia let out a disgusted sound. Her heel scraped over some of the dirt in an effort to get the fungal matter off. As it turned out, only the top soil was remotely dry and right beneath it was thick mud. With a disgusting squelch, it let go of the arcane elemental’s heel. Rather than walk any further, the blue-haired assassin teleported the rest of the way to the marked spot: a bit of clean sand amidst this horrid landscape.

“All good over there, bubble butt?” Rave walked over the ground with certain steps, Copernicus half-dwelling inside her already. With feline grace, she avoided all of the slimy tendrils and made it to her spot relatively clean.

“Yes. Are you coming on to me?”

“Yes.” Rave stretched and smirked. “Ya know, my tiger ain’t the only one who likes adding attractive gals to our harem. It’s a power couple effort.” She wiggled a bit, compacting the sand under her soles. “Your hips don’t lie and neither will I.”

Karia laughed, a deep and melodic sound. “Unfortunately for you, I’m not big on sharing.”

Humming, similarly amused, Rave retorted, “That’s a shame.” ‘Wonder if I can put a dent in that, though,’ she added mentally. Would be the first time a truly monogamous girl changed her mind, Lorelei was the closest to that so far, but Rave deeply believed in the charms of her fellow haremettes.

‘Not the time,’ Copernicus warned her, before fully melding with her.

‘I know,’ the feline Lightbearer thought to herself. Elemental essence rushed like a fresh wave of wakefulness through her veins. Her body accepted the foreign influence as if it wasn’t foreign, making the contracted power its own, just as the experiences and tempering expectations of Copernicus became part of her mind. Rave was still Rave, but in this moment she was so much more. She was fully human and fully elemental.

A distant explosion, two women rushing forwards. Hard light claws and arcane dagger met, sparking elemental and raw magic. It was the first of many blows. Swung fists and rising knees, that was all they had space for between them. The exchange started at a moderate pace, by their standards, and gradually accelerated. Strength rose in measure, both of them aiming to find out the other’s limits.

Rave felt her speed lag behind first, a difficulty she overcame through the activation of her Aura. The blue light enveloped her, letting her push further. In the end, their speed was evenly matched. Whatever edge one may have over the other could not have exceeded a negligible margin.

The drumming of her headphones in her ears dictated Rave’s pace. In a lull of the song, she accepted a strike, letting the dagger sink through the palm of her left hand. There was no pain beside that of her flesh being penetrated.

Karia tried to pull away immediately, but Rave’s hard light claws clenched faster than the arcane elemental could activate her teleportation. “You ain’t the only new elemental around here,” the feline Lightbearer purred.

“Really? I heard you were an unusual case of a fairly old procedure?” Karia asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Ain’t what I’m talking about – I’m a surprise elemental!”

Accelerated by martial arts that, in the days of the Azure Tribe, would not have existed, Rave delivered an attack straight to Karia’s stomach. The Impact Punch had enough force to blow a hole into her leather jacket and even distort the air behind her.

One punch was all Rave got in before Karia managed to pull her hand free. With nothing keeping her pinned anymore, she teleported a distance away. “That was a terrible joke!” the arcane assassin remarked and inspected her stomach. The blueish-white of her skin was cracked. Arcane energies coalesced to seal up the gaps before any of the sand inside could fall out.

“You laughed, I saw it!” Rave declared and pulled the dagger out of her hand. Remembering Karia’s teleportation trick, she lobbed the object into one of the acid pools. Illuminare closed above the wound, stopping the bleeding and accelerating the regeneration process.

Karia did not respond, instead throwing a series of three knives at Rave among spinning steps. Knocking them all aside, Rave then leapt up. Not making the mistake of underestimating Rave’s speed twice, Karia immediately teleported, avoiding the Iron Fall of the Lightbearer.

“You wouldn’t happen to run out of juice for that state anytime soon?” Karia asked as she tried to stab Rave’s back.

“This?” The feline Lightbearer twisted into a roundhouse kick, then rapidly redirected her attack when Karia dove down. The arcane elemental deflected the descending, reinforced heel with a dagger and a hand.

“Yeah,” the crouching woman said and pointed at the blue flame enveloping her opponent’s pink form, “that.”

“Nope!” Rave pointed her clawed left at Karia’s face. The scattershot blast of sunlight turned the patch of plague land before her into ash and glass. A few metres away, the arcane elemental launched a throwing projectile. Rave Drifted out of its path. “I can keep this up all day. Kinda ridiculous, not gonna lie.”

“Power is ridiculous,” Karia agreed and rolled her shoulders. “That’s why so many people go mad when having it.”

“S’pose ya have more control? Is that why you still look so taut and sexy when everyone else in your posse is all between Ultron and the Prince of Persia monsters?” Karia responded to the question with a cocked head. “Oh Gaia, I’m the nerd here, ain’t I?”

“If I understand English vocabulary correctly, quite so.” Karia chuckled. A new dagger manifested in her hand. She tossed it, but not at Rave. Instead, she leisurely juggled it in one hand. “How about I answer that question after you answer one of mine.”

“Let’s hear it.” Rave turned to face the arcane elemental fully. Despite the leisurely tone of the conversation, they both remained absolutely ready to snap forwards like a coiled serpent.

“Not even going to try to hit me with what you hit Singed with?”

“I get hellah fast when I do that, but I ain’t risking it against someone that has at least two different ways to teleport.” Rave’s response was fast. “Still haven’t quite figured out what that is though. John said it was more than his Magus Step. Can’t say I have noticed a difference.”

“Oh, it is more, but it didn’t use to be,” Karia chuckled, “but that’s not the question I’m here to answer. I suppose you can say I had the most control out of everyone, yes. Unlike the rest of the survivors, I wasn’t involved in the experiments. I think that’s the bigger factor.” Karia gripped her weapon. “Want to end the foreplay?”

“I can do fast and rough or long and gentle, however ya prefer,” Rave hummed.

“I was never one for drawn-out fights.” Karia either ignored or did not understand the innuendo. Raising her weapon, she began the chant. Rave did not move to interrupt, just prepared herself for what was next. “I am the spine of the azure sword. Where we are pointed, revelation falls. End the burdensome and ascend the worthy.”

Energy flashed. A split second of blindingly bright blue before a blade was brought to Rave’s throat. Outwardly, little about Karia had changed, a blue body suit replacing her leather outfit seemingly all there was to note. The speed at which she aimed to carve Rave open, however, demanded an answer.

Elemental energies went into overdrive. Like her opponent, the feline Lightbearer Unleashed. Hair turned from pink to gold, Aura from blue to gold, and the blindingly fast motion from before was suddenly matched again.

The moment of surprise allowed Karia to cut a thin red line where the turtle neck of Illuminare ended. Then, Rave had managed to fall back – quite literally. Landing on her upper back, she coiled up and then kicked upwards with both feet.

Karia was immediately gone, only leaving a blade where her head had been. The weapon quivered, then immediately pointed itself at Rave. A concentrated laser beam managed to dislodge the projectile from its path. It buried itself in a nearby bit of soil.

Another wave of daggers entered her periphery. Rave turned into a cascade of light, manifesting again. Barely, her eyes caught Karia’s blue hair, noting that the assassin had teleported behind her. Rave caught the arcane elemental’s wrist a split second before the stab could connect.

A second dagger manifested in her off-hand, every bit as powerful and sturdy as the first. A new development, previously she had only ever wielded one at a time, but one Rave had been prepared for. Karia landed a stab on Rave’s shoulder, just as the feline Lightbearer’s claws sliced across Karia’s torso, mimicking the devastating effect of her Babel Phrase on a more limited scale.

The heavy beat of the song pounded in her head alongside the adrenaline. Rave’s lips curled into a voracious smile. Karia mimicked the expression. Ripping her dagger out, just as Rave pulled Karia by her wrist, they both missed their next attack by dodging that of their opponent.

Karia’s wrist got free. With that little, she was gone again. A dagger was once again left where she was. The arcane weapon took aim at Rave, then shot itself at her, joining its brethren in the progressively more ashen ground.

A storm of attacks followed. Karia charged in, swung, and teleported instantly, whether her swing connected or not. Each time she did, a new blade spawned, and soon she was using these blades in the same way she had in her fight against John. Teleporting to them, she launched yet more attacks.

Rave’s entire body was constantly in motion, keeping up with the multi-directional attacks. At times she felt like there was more than one of the assassin, so swift were her teleportations and repositioning. Had the arcane elemental been any faster, she would have believed that feeling too, but Rave knew better.

The feline Lightbearer kept up. Even if Karia’s double teleportation and flying blades gave her more opportunities to exploit, their speed was still matched. Whenever the ring of blades around Rave got too thick or whenever the song made her intuit it was time to move, she turned into a streak of light and repositioned herself.

The two of them were not in a match of speed or superior positioning, but of pure battle instinct. They read, learned, countered, and re-learned each other’s behaviours. Where Karia had at first always gone for Rave’s back, she eventually went for the left, then the right side, then for neither, all in an effort to throw off the feline Lightbearer’s counters.

They both dealt and took damage. Karia delivered shallow cuts, her rapid storm of attacks allowing for nothing else, and Rave only managed to catch her with the outskirts of cones of exploding light.

There was no word spoken, only laughter exchanged. Little cackles and giggles, between successful feints and counters. They strained themselves to the edge of their abilities, until finally Rave got a straight hit in.

It wasn’t elegant, it wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t luck either. Rave followed the crescendo in the song and used Shift to move forwards, then turned into light to change her position entirely. Karia had committed to the teleportation already and found herself manifesting in front of the feline Lightbearer with her fist already in motion.

The chain of teleportations up to that point, exhaustion, or sheer surprise, the list of reasons why she couldn’t get away was either long or short, but it did not matter either. Rave’s clenched fist slammed right into Karia’s face.

The arcane elemental was thrown on her back. Rave nailed her down with a quick stomp to the stomach. Pain made the woman curl, but that did not stop her from ramming a dagger through the techno lover’s calf. Neither did that pain stop Rave from concentrating her mana into a flashbang.

Blinded, Karia teleported away when Rave raised her foot for her next attack. An act that Rave had anticipated. She felt the shadow the arcane assassin cast under the sun, her elemental sense primed, and moved immediately.

Still on her backfoot, the arcane assassin barely saw Rave coming. Punch for punch, Rave laid into the arcane elemental, grabbing her by her shoulders and wrist to keep her from getting away. When the fight had been mobile, Karia had been on her home turf, but in this brawl, the feline Lightbearer excelled. She had spent too much time sparring with gods and ancient weapons to be outclassed by one recently revived elemental.

The heavy beats of the song continued on, matching every impact of her knuckles. Her skin felt flexible like flesh but cracked like porcelain. Hit for hit, Rave kept driving Karia back. The repeated concussions and the bright lights danced around her while the techno lover’s fists kept her disoriented. Her poise was broken. Her concentration not allowed to return.

Rave grabbed the arcane assassin by her head and pulled her face down into a rising knee. Keeling over backwards, the woman landed in front of the feline Lightbearer, who kept her foot raised. Might gathered in her right leg. Her foot was dangling, relaxed, from the angled knee. Then, just as she stomped down, all of the might rushed through the limb.

The Seismic Step was aptly named. The grandmaster-level technique was most effective against inorganic matter and Karia was just that. The burned and glassed plague lands depressed under Rave’s heel like a trampoline. At the edge of the resulting crater, water gushed out into the air, the hyper-consolidated ground simply incapable of holding it any longer. Bordering pools of acid began to trickle in.

Rave looked at her boot print in the ground. The Fateweaving had activated moments before her heel connected. ‘Whew,’ she thought and rolled her shoulders. “Ow,” she hissed. There were a couple of visible cuts on her face and over two dozen more that the bodysuit currently covered. ‘I’m gonna be so horny in a sec…’ She chuckled to herself.

Then she ran from the acid.