The Gamer Chapter 1625 – Raid and Adventures 20 – Jade Dancing (Patreon)

Lu Zhi stood across from Siena, Sylph, Salamander, Aclysia, Nightingale, and Gnome. Six against one, two if one considered Tianlong its own entity, and yet still John held little hope for his side of the wager.

Lu Zhi was now more dragon than he had ever seen before. Thick lay the wreath of clouds over her shoulders, spiralling down her arms. Her face was enveloped in scales, leaving just enough skin showing to identify her as human first. Arms and legs equally ended in short claws, the fingers still fine enough to hold the fan that hid her predatory smile. The imperial tomboy was enjoying the violence – only more so as it got more threatening to her status as victor.

The fight began with Aclysia and Gnome charging. Delayed, hoping to catch the Heavenly Jade Empress off-guard, Sylph and Salamander rose up. They dashed away from each other on a slanted trajectory, until they had gained enough elevation to fire lightning and fire over the heads of their comrades.

Lu Zhi jumped and whirled, catching the attacks in jade fans she now held in each of her hands. What disappeared emerged again, lightning aimed at Aclysia, fire at Gnome. The two tanks charged on through.

Gnome swung her fist. Lu Zhi ducked under. Her mouth opened too wide for the human jaw. The explosive sound filled the air after the actual attack had occurred and cut through Aclysia’s ephemeral form. The invisible breath attack of the god of tradition was only noticed as a shifting of air pressure intense enough for Zone to complain about her ears popping.

Up from Aclysia’s shadow stabbed darkness and claws. Siena’s torrent of attacks was swept aside – or at least that was what Lu Zhi must have seen. In reality, the attack of the shadow spirit was delayed. The illusion Nightingale wove allowed the claws to connect and dig bloody trenches into the cover of green scales.

Lu Zhi immediately retaliated with a flying knee, sending Siena flying. Aura dancing around her, she caught Gnome’s fist and spun the earth spirit around. The raised leg extended into a straight kick that turned the brunette into a skipping stone. Aclysia returned to tangibility at the same moment. A Delayed Cut and a real one both sliced at Lu Zhi in the same second. Both impacts were swallowed by the unfolded fan still in her offhand, then turned instantly against their origin, blowing Aclysia’s hand backwards.

The dagger in her hand was replaced with her enormous claymore. Red, the weapon glowed, Bloody Tarnation activating and granting the first maid additional strength and speed. The strike descended, but Lu Zhi had bought enough time to bring her leg back down and with it the opportunity to whirl around.

Her flat hand slapped the side of the blade. A sound like a gong reverberated through the entirety of the blade, then Aclysia’s arm. The ice dragon maid screeched in pain and dropped the weapon, which continued to rattle on the ground. Yet another one of Lu Zhi’s eastern martial arts, putting connecting pieces of metal in vibration.

Trying to clear her head, Aclysia backed away. Salamander swept into the gap. Coming down in a wave of fire, the six-armed fire spirit assaulted the Heavenly Jade Empress with a spear of fire and obsidian in each hand. Heavily armoured, Salamander beset the dragon empress in her dress. Green and white danced with red and black, like figures out of a play.

Try as she might, Salamander could not get through Lu Zhi’s defences. Every stab of her six spears was stopped instantly by the, now again, two jade fans in the imperial tomboy’s hands. It was an elegant dance, the tall elemental following every step back that Lu Zhi made.

With an X-shaped double swing of the fans, the accumulated force within was unleashed, blowing Salamander into Gnome. Lu Zhi then whipped around, pointed her head’s agape maw at Sylph, and unleashed another one of the invisible breath attacks. Invisible to John, anyway. Sylph was clearly capable of sensing the shifting pressure and narrowly zapped off to the side, before launching a volley of lightning lances.

Lu Zhi dashed out of the impact zone, shattering several of the spears with her tail. Sylph was in hot pursuit; Salamander and Gnome disentangled; Siena was back in the fray. The four elementals charged at the Heavenly Jade Empress from four different directions, then collapsed on her.

It was a master craft of coordination. John could sense the busy information between the women flow within their own cloud in the network of his soul. Vastly different temperaments, abilities, and strategies hooked into each other like the gears in a Swiss watch.

Sylph initiated the attack with a dropkick, was caught by Gnome when she missed, then thrown back at Lu Zhi. Side-stepping a second time, the Heavenly Jade Empress barely managed to put her hand in front of Siena’s claws. The swing stopped, its force flowing into an ornate wall of jade that blocked Salamander’s strike.

What gave Lu Zhi something to cover her side also limited her options. Gnome was right there, delivering a flying knee. A sideways tap against her knee pushed the earth spirit off her trajectory. Sylph and Siena charged back in from the sides. Claws and fists moved in a flurry, forcing the Heavenly Jade Empress to focus on dodging. Sylph’s supreme speed overpowered even that of the imperial tomboy, securing a number of shallow hits, while Lu Zhi made sure none of the strikes by Siena tore her skin open.

Gnome pushed herself off the jade wall, flipped overhead, and landed with caving intensity. Lu Zhi took an involuntary step forwards when the ground under her feet slanted down. Ripping her head, then a hand, up, she blocked a plunging strike from Salamander by turning the force into a dome that covered her entirely. The same dome instantly shattered, driving all four elementals a half step backwards.

Lu Zhi’s eyes darted between her four circling opponents – missing the fifth. Her eyes only snapped to Aclysia when it was already too late. The illusion dispelled when the dragon maid reactivated her aura of glacial wings, revealing the katana already in full swing. The hit was shallow but long, slicing a patchy red line from Lu Zhi’s shoulder to her hip.

Immediately, Lu Zhi raised her left leg. The foot dangled loosely from the carefully angled limb. Everyone knew the gesture and dashed back to get away from the centre of the impact.

The Seismic Step turned the controlled crater made by the season elemental into a meteoric impact site. Chunks of stone the size of doors flew as fast as grenade shrapnel all around, breaking on a green dome that Gaia put around her dais and the other observers. Dust and shards filled the air, rising up – then suddenly pressing down.

Sylph’s magic forced the particles back on the ground, breaking the cover the Heavenly Jade Empress had created for herself. Standing at the bottom of the depression in the landscape, Lu Zhi picked a shard of Black Ice out of her new wound with her claws. The supernatural freeze kept on growing where it had first attached. Even the claws of the imperial tomboy weren’t enough of a precision tool to remove them so thoroughly as to keep the Black Ice from expanding.

“Urgh, this is what I least wanted to happen!” Lu Zhi cried in overplayed annoyance. The constant slow spread put her on a timer. “How dare you pursue the smart strategy?”

“My apologies,” Aclysia answered. “I dare say that you are not that upset, however.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” the imperial tomboy asked, her grin as wide as the human mouth allowed.

“Stop wasting your time and come at us!” Salamander shouted down the crater.

“Oh?” The exposed teeth sharpened up. Forked horns extended in length, as the previously thin scales on her arms turned into overlapping spikes of evenly sized shards that would have put any scale mail to shame. “If you want to court death so badly!”

Lu Zhi leapt – Tianlong flew. The form of the Heavenly Jade Empress was enveloped in the shape of her patron in a split second. Jaws wide open, the incarnation of the Mandate of Heaven descended on Salamander.

“SHIT!” the fire spirit shouted, locked between the upper and lower frontal teeth of the large, serpentine dragon. The maw clenched. Six arms, two legs, and a tail all pushed back.

The entire dragon turned rigid just as Salamander’s reinforcements showered it with attacks. Jade cracked dissolved into air, leaving Lu Zhi standing where the dragon had flown. A stomp caused a new one to appear under her feet, much smaller, carrying her along. She surfed on its head, manifesting a spear of the supernatural material in her hand and stabbing down at Gnome while the lesser avatar of Tianlong went along.

Gnome broke the head of the dragon, but the Heavenly Jade Empress had already leapt. Only Aclysia’s Aid kept her from skewering the season elemental. Going into a flurry of attacks, the number two of the Abyss put the weaponized maid on the backfoot.

‘Great, she has a phase 3,’ John thought as he observed the fight from afar. ‘Speed and defenses went up and she’s making moving constructs of jade now.’ Even while fighting Aclysia, Lu Zhi slammed her tail on the ground, causing another embodiment of Tianlong to appear and fly towards Nightingale. ‘Plus, she’s using her own force for it as well now. Seriously, her powers are bullshit.’

On her dais, Gaia laughed at his thoughts. “And you haven’t even seen the worst of it.”

John turned to her. “What does that mean?”

“You’ll see when you see.”

The harpy being preoccupied with the jade dragon chasing her took her out of the fight to some degree. Either Lu Zhi was doing diversion tactics or she was limited to one construct at a time, it being piloted by Tianlong itself. John managed to confirm that it was the latter with Observe. At least that was something that worked.

While the gods played dragon and bird, the four elementals tried to weigh into the fight with Aclysia and Lu Zhi. The Heavenly Jade Empress did not let them. Whenever they threw attacks into the mix, whether physical or magical in nature, they were immediately neutralized by Lu Zhi putting up a wall of jade between them, then exploding that same wall into directed force when it pleased her.

The grace period was over. The previous days of trials had just been Lu Zhi letting them get accustomed to her abilities. Now, she was using them to their full potential.

Still, the elementals were a crafty bunch. Lightning and flying fireballs made walls of erected stone cast shadows. Siena jumped out of the shade, dodging the swing of Lu Zhi’s tail and was about to fall into the Heavenly Jade Empress’ back.

Then she collapsed into the very same shadow that Siena had come out of.

“””HUH?!”””

The unified cry of every combatant and every observer, save for Gaia and Ferikrona, filled the air. The two ancient goddesses giggled. Lu Zhi popped up again within a blink ramming her spear through Siena’s back – and Black Ice sprouted where the weapon sunk into and emerged from the shadow spirit.

The wound was deep, the creeping ice equally intense. It would take minutes for Siena to fully freeze, but this was already crippling enough to effectively take her out of the fight.

A lightning strike aimed to take advantage of Lu Zhi’s position. Simply letting go of the spear, Lu Zhi turned the electricity into a throwing knife and launched it at Aclysia. The tank took the impact head on, just trying to get to Lu Zhi. Sylph attacked from behind, Gnome and Salamander from the other two sides.

Lu Zhi grinned wide. Lightning, ice and fire enveloped her in a swirling storm. All of the power swirled together in a singular spot under her palm. The four combatants were about to impact on her, just as she rammed the sphere of energy into the ground.

The shockwave was just barely enough to win Lu Zhi the time she needed to pull out a sword of ornate jade. Its curve would have been impossibly fragile as a genuine weapon, its length nearly exceeded the woman’s height, and its artisanry was that of a weapon of generation. The pure green of the jade was inlaid with other colours the stone could be found in. Lightning, fire, ice and earthly energies constantly jittered around it in a menacing aura.

Lu Zhi swung the weapon, drawn from the very earth, in a wide arc. In just one swing, it was undone, slamming into Aclysia, Gnome, and Salamander. None of the three were eliminated outright, but the multi-elemental slice was a devastating impact. All three were flung back like ragdolls, their abdomens halfway cut through.

Sylph was about to try to go for another swing anyway, when John raised his voice, “Okay, okay, STOP!” He said it as much with his mouth as he did with his thoughts and walked forwards. The Black Ice fell off Lu Zhi immediately. It followed on Siena a few moments later. “Let me see that.”

“Awww, hubby, you don’t have to be so worried about a little cut,” Lu Zhi assured him, but opened her dress anyway. The clasps of the traditional Chinese dress snapped open and the cloth fell to the ground moments thereafter. Had he been in a less flabbergasted mood, he would have chuckled at the mental image of a witness of the scene first getting floored by the sight of the number two of the Abyss casually stripping in front of him and then passing out when they found out she was going commando.

“I have to be worried about what Rave will do to you if she hears you call me that though.” John put a hand into his inventory and pulled out one of Delicia’s concoctions. It was a healing salve, much better at healing certain areas. The benefit of having an absurdly powerful alchemist was that they had access to potions that were, theoretically, actually strong enough to matter at their level. They were so absurdly expensive, however, that John did not like to use them.

The salve he applied was not an exception. Salves were cheaper to make, especially in bulk, and this one was best for someone around level 50. It wouldn’t help much with Lu Zhi’s healing, but it would stop the bleeding. He would have attended the more seriously hurt combatants first, had they not been elementals and Aclysia. Their bodies were much better at knitting themselves back together.

“He’s so worried he actually forgot I am here.” Gaia snapped her fingers and all injuries were gone – just like that.

“…Right.” John put the salve away again. “Thank you.”

“Totally wasn’t a ploy just to get me naked.” Now fully out of the combat mindset, the de-dragonified Lulu gave her chosen man a tap. He plopped down into the grass, she plopped down in his lap, Siena and Sylph cuddled up to both of them. “You really are the best,” the imperial tomboy cooed, kissing first Sylph, then Siena.

“I have better things to do than hold grudges with a playmate,” Siena hummed.

“Yeah, yeah! We’ll make you scream later anyway!” Sylph declared, all too chirpily.

“So, now that we’re all comfortable and everything… what was that? How did you do that?”

“I’m Empress of Heaven and Earth and all that is in-between, you think I can’t bind other people’s magic into myself?” Lu Zhi asked, all innocently.

“That’s bullshit!” John declared.