Chapter 146 – They do.

The vote was one against (Gnome), two undecided (John and Aclysia) and three for (Undine, Sylph and Salamander).

Therefore, they jumped into the portal and emerged in a new environment. They found themselves in a network of black towers, built in a medieval fort style and connected through bridges that were held up by stalactite-like pillars, extending from a glimmering sea below. The bridges connected to all sorts of segments of those towers, be it near the top, bottom, or anywhere in-between.

The party stood on top of one of the ceilings. John looked up and found nothing but a black void in place of the sky. ‘Boring way to save on the animating budget,’ he thought and instead searched for either enemies, a hint at the location of the Secret Room, or whatever that thing Gaia reportedly had prepared for him would be.

In the distance, he found a suspiciously ornate tower. Lines of gold were hammered into the black surface and at the base he spied something akin to a giant door. What exactly that tower held was impossible to say, but it certainly contained something.

“Let’s go there,” he said. The moment he set a foot on the bridge that would bring him to the next tower, an arrow flew in his direction. Having deactivated Mana Protection, it hit him in the foot, dealing 74 damage.

John clicked his tongue. Pain had become so much less of a concern over the past toils. Calmly, he took a step back. Then, he pulled out the arrow to end the ticking damage it dealt. ‘Funny to think that an arrow to the foot alone could kill me, if the damage is big enough,’ John considered. ‘Or would my foot just disintegrate under that kind of damage, before it could fully kill me in one shot?’

The wound in his foot disappeared as he thought. The HP lost scarcely registered, thanks to the bump he had since reaching his Endurance goal. Speaking of that he was only mildly happy with the bonuses it got him. Sure, the massive amount of HP he now had was pretty good, but the synergistic bonus with Strength 25 was a measly 0,5% max HP per hour regeneration and with Agility 25 it was ‘Pain Tolerance 1’ which had helped him with the foot situation but generally was less useful. Whether he would raise Endurance again in the future was to be determined. For now, with how little time he had left, he was investing all points into Wisdom. Boosting the Main Stat was the most important in the short term.

“Are you alright, Master?” Aclysia asked, always worried when something happened to him, “I should have taken the lead, I apologize.”

“It was my fault, don’t worry about it,” John said, as he used the bee to spy the tower ahead. ‘Okay, so there are stairs inside’ he mentally noted and followed these stairs to find a half-goat, demon archer.

‘Name is about as imaginative as the skybox,’ he thought and sighed, measuring the distance with his eye. The Satantyr’s eye was turning, he clearly heard the bee but his concentration lay with John, which was fine by the Gamer. Mana Ray’s current range was 248 metres, 100+4 times Skill level, he guessed that the next tower was about 200 away, give or take twenty. That was within range.

John raised his hand and counted down, ‘2 – 1 – 0’. The beam rapidly travelled the whole distance and hit the monster square in the head. That part was luck, John had been aiming for centre mass.

‘The broader my toolset becomes, the less I have to respect dungeon mechanics,’ he thought and scratched behind his ear. He saw the Satanyr get up and now try to attack the bee, but he just flew out of the window. “Sylph, can you deal with that?” he requested.

“Roger, roger,” Sylph said in a fake robot voice and flew the 200 metres in about 6 seconds. There was a flash of green light and then John got some EXP. ‘Dunzo, you can come now… wow, can you be any slower? Hurry up already,’ Sylph let them all know.

“I swear to Mother Fire, that girl will break the sound barrier eventually,” Salamander said as they crossed the bridge safely.

“Not impossible,” John admitted, “Seeing, however, that I could have evolved you into a source of gamma radiation I think that’s pretty fair.”

“You could have done that? Sounds rad,” there was a pause, then Salamander snickered, “Oh, nice, me.”

John chose to ignore Salamander’s bad pun and carried on. Using the bee to spy on and then neutralize the Satantyr within each tower was a reliable, if somewhat slow way to advance. Their strategy had to change for every encounter, although the ground structure was always the same. Step 1: Get rid of whatever Archers or Spear throwers there were with Mana Ray, Sylph and Salamander, Step 2: Storm the Tower, Step 3: Kill everything.

The Satantyrs hung out in groups of one to ten, so the fights greatly varied in difficulty. Smoking out a tower was anything between a challenge of a minute, to ten.

“So, Undine,” John asked as the two flying members of the group fought four archers at the top of the next tower. Red and green, they curved through the air as bands of energy. “Any more information on that thing Gaia has prepared for us?” They were still heading for the gold decorated tower in the distance, it would take them at least another hour to get there at their current speed.

‘No, only that it is here,’ came the short musical answer.

“Okay.” John shrugged. The goal was unchanged then, as much as he would have liked additional intel.

He would have given Sylph mana so that she could just blow the Satantyr off the roof but he currently was a bit short on mana thanks to the Vessel fight and the following engagements. Sure, he would have recharged it all in the time they would have gotten to that gold tower but as the old adage went ‘Better safe, than sorry.’

The last of the Satantyr eventually toppled over the railing and the burning body crashed into the bridge below, exploding into dust on impact. Sylph quickly returned, Salamander needed a few seconds more. “Why do I have to do missions with you?” Salamander lamented.

“Huh? What is wrong with me Sally, what? I thought you think of me as sexy, what is wrong with doing stuff with me? HUH! I JUST REALIZED, I STILL DIDN’T GET MY GUMMY BEAR! Johnnie this is an impossible thing, you promised so you are supposed to remember for me! Don’t mind that we will talk about it later, so what is wrong with me, Sally?”

“That,” was Salamander’s complete answer to the waterfall of words.

John crossed the bridge to the constant sound of everyone ignoring Sylph, who did not mind and blabbered on. It was strange, to like to listen to someone so much, and yet rarely ever noticing what they actually said. ‘Here goes praying that she forgets about the gummy bear for the fifth time,’ John thought, he was still afraid of what would happen if he gave Sylph sugar.

It took a lot more encounters, until they finally arrived at their destination. Unlike the other towers the bridge for this one actually brought them to some form of natural plateau, a lot like the ones in the ninth floor. On top of that stood the building that, as John now realized, was actually a single piece of stone instead of stacked bricks like the other towers.

The golden lines that were worked into the cyclopean rock only added the illusion of a brick building. Interrupting the perfect cylindrical base of this tower was a flat door that extended outwards from the main building. The gate was made from some kind of dark wood, steel nails hammered into its thick planks (or some magic alloy that looked like steel). Aside from being about five times taller than he was, it wasn’t that impressive.

“I guess this is it then,” John said and clicked the Yes button. “Do they have a giant mirror in here or what is this reflection about?” He joked as the door slowly swung open towards the inside. Any further mirth turned into ice. His smile dropped, a surprised stare taking its place.

The room behind, he very much doubted belonged in that tower. It was about as big as the ground floor of his house. A red carpet laid on everything. It would have been a dark red, unblemished and clean like the first day, except for the darker spots of dried blood. The carpet went over into a golden skirting, most of it demonically decorated by scattered and ruptured innards. The hazel brown walls had a disgusting second layer of ichor. From the high ceiling hung a chandelier, dozens of light bulbs sitting in an arrangement of brilliantly cut glass, the only still clean part of the room.

Amidst a circle of corpses, most of which were in black robes, others in Soviet uniforms and a small minority of people that had their unique style each, stood two figures. One was a half-japanese woman with stunning blue eyes, in which a pink hue was about to fade. Despite the blemishes on her body and face and even though she was clearly in pain, with her unruly pink hair she was the most beautiful woman John had ever laid eyes upon. Rave was kneeling there and above her, hand on her throat, stood Thana.

She was small. Not as small as Sylph but definitely on the smaller side of things. Her white hair grew to her chin, a slight blue tinge to it that turned azure at the tips. Her wide open, big eyes were like shattered gemstones of violet. Two golden rings lay within, an outer one that was complete and thin, and an inner one, made of six golden dots around the pitch-black pupil at the centre. Her figure was quite attractive, with decently sized breasts, around C-cup, and wide hips. She would have been quite stunning if not for the black dots that stuck out of her blueish-white skin like ugly piercings.

She smiled insanely, inhuman teeth, grotesque and sharp, revealed. “You came too late,” she spoke and broke Rave’s neck with nothing more than an off-handed squeeze. The crack echoed in the bunker and John’s heart. “Now she is dead. You are next. Bloodburn,” she spoke the word, like any other, and inhuman fire ignited behind her like perverted angel wings.

John was frozen down to the core. Something in the back of his mind screamed, but he couldn’t move. The scene was every doubt in his heart reflected, every fear realized. Thana’s clawed hand rushed for his head. Bone claws clad her thick, demonic fingers.

It was Aclysia who pulled him back, the claw missed him by a hair’s width. “Master, calm yourself,”

“C-calm myself?!” John stuttered and looked at Rave’s blemished and broken body, the physical example that he had failed, that he would fail, that he was failing.

“I am dying anyway, I might as well eradicate your whole hometown while I am still alive,” Thana said and cackled, “Yes, yes, yes and then I’ll go to DC and track down your parents, that bit of time I should still have.” During her monologue she let John walk right by her and to Rave’s corpse.

He picked her up, he heard distant voices, Salamander, Sylph, Aclysia, Gnome, none of them mattered anymore. He had lost. He had lost her. For the second time, he had lost her and now all he could do was cry and wait for the end, wait and hope that he wouldn’t end in hell for this failure. He felt shockwaves of a battle behind him but he did not care.

A soothing cool enveloped John, it spread over his back, his shoulders, his arms and legs, his chest. Slowly it even enveloped all of him, only leaving space to breathe. For a moment he thought that he was dying, then he heard Undine’s voice, clear as glass, ringing in his thoughts. ‘John, calm yourself,’ she instructed.

‘How can I, she is dead!’ John answered, too deep in grief to question.

‘Calm yourself,’ she repeated. ‘Calm, to focus your turmoil where it belongs.’

He was pulled far away, remembering the vision of his and Undine’s contract. He remembered being but a drop in the ocean, an individual, little particle with an endless amount of himself. The sea was moving, all of him and everyone else was moving.

‘There is purpose to each wave,’ Undine whispered, ‘each of them has a cause, each of them a destination.’ The water in its entirety gradually drained. It was pulled and pulled, drawn towards a force irresistible. ‘Calm yourself. Become the inevitable.’

John clenched his eyes shut, ignored the cold body in his hands, and forced the calm on himself. It was terrible at first, like raging against a storm destined to roll over him. ‘Become the inevitable,’ he thought and, rather than force the storm to pass, stood under its descending drops. Was the sound of rain not as serene as a calm pond?

‘Resist the causeless and aimless feelings inside you, be serene and realize the truth.’ Undine guided his consciousness to the eyes of their other party members. Aclysia saw Thana up close, her inhuman teeth, shouldn’t these be perfect human ones? Sylph was the focus of Thana’s eyes, shouldn’t the golden dots be circling? Salamander attacked Thana, her burning wings, shouldn’t they be made from the fire of humanity, of blood? Gnome blocked a strike by Thana’s claws, shouldn’t they too have been made of blood, instead of bone? Undine’s sight was black, her mind filled with a combination of the inconsistencies.

The mistakes revealed themselves to John and he became the eye of the storm. ‘I have reached serenity,’ he told Undine.

‘And you have realized the lie, now realize your feelings, what are they?’

‘I am afraid of Thana, because of her power, but I will need to face her because I love Jane.’

‘But this is not Thana, what do you feel towards this monster?’

‘Anger, for showing me what I fear to lose the most.’ The storm, around the edges of his thoughts, swelled in intensity, until it matched the rushing of blood in his ears.

Undine’s voice, mind-shatteringly loud, overcame even this roar. Gone was the serene melody, replaced with the choir of a wrathful tide. ‘And what will you do with this anger?’

‘Aim it with purpose at the one that caused it.’ His answer tore down the barriers between him and the storm. The water that had been dragged back came rushing back in. A tsunami of righteous anger rolled over John’s mind and he swam in its crest.

His eyes flew open, as mana flowed to Undine. Mind became matter, water energies flowing into the Mana Blade he created. The cold mannequin dropped from his arms, a doll of wood and broken illusion, to be ignored in favour of his goal: victory.

The creature was unprepared and the weapon pierced through its back.

As it was impaled with the cleaning purity of water, the imitator of Thana cried and hissed. The thing’s illusion fell apart, revealing a formless body of colour-shifting tar. It had grown fat off John’s, even so short-lived, misery.

“You will die,” John said with cold certainty. He normally felt no remorse for killing the beings in these dungeons. They may have appeared sapient, but in the end they were just parts of his ability and only lived because he used a Skill.

At times, John had felt great glee at overcoming a hurdle or meeting a goal. The passion of battle itself, that he partook in. To have such a single-minded focus, such an intense desire to see something die, that was new, scary, and necessary.

He was serenity and he was wrath. The duality of the emotions beat in his chest, allowing him to wield his anger, instead of following it as an impulse. This was the final clarity he had needed to realize. This was the lesson of water: be clear of mind and to wield his emotions with purpose.

“Sylph!” he shouted, as he conjured another Mana Blade. The Illusion was broken, he didn’t need the cleansing property of water, he needed the sharpness of Wind.

“You got it, boss!” Sylph obeyed and one hundred mana was sacrificed in order to create a blade long and strong enough to cut through the now defenceless being.

The two halves wanted to reunite, “Salamander, burn it to cinders, take as much as you need” he instructed and opened his mana to her.

“You are speaking my language,” the blaze elemental said and drank deep from him. Last time it had hurt. She had tried to take what wasn’t hers. This time John allowed it and so he only felt a slight tug at his soul. His mana was carried away, first only by Salamander, then by all the elementals, as they all joined in the effort of destroying the creature.

One half of it survived the inferno and was met by a cage of water.

‘You impure being,’ Undine sang.

“We will not absolve,” Sylph chirped and lightly touched the sphere of water, electrical currents pulsed through.

“For you have angered the sum and the parts,” Gnome spoke, slamming two walls of stone together around the Fear Eater. The walls crumbled and left only a miserable shadow of the former mass the being had before.

“So, die, motherfucker,” Salamander ended the being in another short burst of flame.