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The Gamer Chapter 1797 – The Chasm between Strong and Absurd
🕑 Added 2024-12-03 18:36:39 +0000 UTC
Nia found nothing.
Scarlett found nothing.
Lorelei found nothing.
No one had even gone missing.
This left two possibilities: either whoever they were dealing with was horrifyingly competent or so mundane that they left no traces. Anything in-between would have meant that all three of his intel gathering haremettes were failing at the task of finding someone who had dropped off a letter in person.
John tended towards the former possibility, because that was the prudent stance. It also was, for once, the more likely explanation. Tracking a crazy person or a jokester with barely any digital or magical footprint was difficult, but not impossible, especially with Lorelei around. Between the vision she had gotten and the visions she HADN’T gotten, John gave it a 90% chance that someone really powerful was messing with him.
The questions that followed were: who and why?
There was no answer to either question. A third eye surrounded by maggots and a crow’s feathers was symbolism he could not tie to any faction he knew. There were two entities that he knew that he associated with crows. One was Nightingale, who was obviously on his side. Second was Odin, who had motivation to mess with him, but Lorelei had specifically said ‘a crow’. Singular. Hugin and Munin, the crows of the All-Father, were two of their number (and they were also ravens, if he was exceptionally technical). How maggots fit into all of this he did not know either.
Whoever had been responsible for this was either an individual or a faction altogether that John was not aware of at this moment. It could also be a new Latebloomer on the field.
The ‘why’ was the somehow even more confusing question.
Why would a faction he wasn’t aware of want to give away its existence with those two sentences? What did they mean? That, at least, John could make an educated guess on. Granted, if it was written by a mentally unwell person, the letter could have meant anything.
Assuming that the sentences were meant to mean anything, given the surrounding context, John could read the following from it: there was a Latebloomer around that rivalled his own power.
Since the early days of him getting his powers, people had told him that he was the first person in 10’000 years who apparently had the potential to rival Romulus. What many people did not know was that Romulus’ twin brother had been just as powerful. In other words, Romulus had not been alone in his generation.
So why would John be?
The first thing John had done upon realizing this was have all of his medical records double-checked. He did not want to be surprised by a twin brother that had been separated at birth from him. Although the amount of records kept on his life by the state apparatus was a bit concerning in some ways, they were coming in useful here. His mother hadn’t hidden such a shocking plot point from him, so at least he was spared that cheap jump scare.
History did not repeat, but it was prudent to assume that it rhymed. A twin was out of the equation, but another incredibly powerful Latebloomer fit right in with the issue of none of his women finding the deliverer of the message.
‘Who is my Remus… or my Romulus? Which one of the twins would I actually be… probably Remus? I suppose a direct comparison falls flat.’ John’s fingers drummed on the armrest of the chair. The whole affair had soured his mood the past twelve hours. He sighed. ‘They’ll be found when they want to be found. For now, I’ll have to deal with what is before me.’
Which was, of course, Justinian.
“FACE ME YOURSELF, COWARD!” the sanctimonious blonde declared. He was the wrong kind of sanctimonious and the wrong kind of blonde for John to be patient with that any longer.
“I am facing you, you moron,” John stated, gesturing down at his golem body. It changed its shape to his, before reverting back to the basic form. This version of the Creator Puppet was gold and silver, dominantly, on the surface. Lines of red, purple, blue, brown and green were present in supportive circuitry.
John was confident he would win, but why not stack the odds in his favour with bonus Light Resistance?
“This is one of my three bodies,” the Gamer elaborated, both for him and the crowd. Abyssal elites were informed about his abilities, but members of the public likely knew as much about his abilities as they knew about George W. Bush’s alcoholism or painting hobbies. That was to say, many had a vague awareness of such things, but had never looked into it, and many more were completely unaware. “If I were to face you with all of what I am, this wouldn’t even be a contest.”
“Try me, coward!”
“Is he being for real?” Metra asked.
All of John’s harem was present, with the usual exceptions of Lydia and Lu Zhi. Independently, they had all decided that they wanted to be there for the curb stomp.
Ehtra could only agree with her older sister, “Seriously, how idiotic can he get?”
“Alright, fine, I’ll oblige you!” John decided on a whim. He stood up, then teleported down to the arena. The Mandala Sphere was quick to fly after him. Forming a row with himself and the untransformed Extension, he stood across from Justinian. “”I’ll be down here. That what you wanted?”” he asked with his own mouth and the voice of the Creator Puppet.
“Perfect,” Justinian growled and pointed his sword at John.
“The fight begins when my mace lands,” the Gamer stated.
Justinian looked up. “Your mace?”
Inkaryl had a mind of its own. An alien mind that John wouldn’t even pretend to properly comprehend, but a mind nonetheless. Strimata was the premiere drama queen amongst the Fusional weapons. Other creations from the elemental extreme metals varied wildly in their showmanship. Inkaryl, usually, was on the lower end. Likely because it had been forged by Arkeidos, Inkaryl tended to be more direct in its displays of glory.
Well, now it was John’s weapon and he liked his occasional showmanship.
Descending as a comet of choral tones and iridescent light, Inkaryl came. It slammed into the ground. Dust was sent up, only for the Creator Puppet to grab the heft of the supreme weapon. The six blades of the weapon stretched, their colours fluctuating, before turning a deep, deep purple as they slotted back into place. A heartbeat made from ringing bells echoed. An aura of gravity pressed the dust back to the ground.
“Do you actually think that’s an effective pose, by the way?” John asked.
“Wha-?” Justinian turned his head towards the Gamer.
Magus Step had bridged most of the distance and Skitterstep had done the rest. The brief invisibility granted by the small second teleport was all the extra time John needed to overcome Justinian’s advantage in speed and grab the wrist of his sword hand.
“You are holding your sword fully outstretched. Sure, it looks kind of impressive, but you are starting the fight at the end of your motion range. If you want to land a meaningful hit, you need to swing and build up momentum.” John gestured at the approaching Creator Puppet. “Like this.”
Justinian ripped his arm out of John’s grasp. The Gamer didn’t even try to hold on. He could have, especially if he bothered to equip Purgatory. That would have been to move from ‘overkill’ to ‘fighting a Vanilla Paladin as a Demon Hunter’.
The blonde man tried to bring his sword up to block. Too slow. The extended, awkward pose could not compete with a motion in full swing. It was good for Justinian that the Gamer had decided to hold back on the swing, otherwise he may not have been able to stop the mace. The cruel weapon stopped just short of cutting and cracking the extended arm with all of its gravitational weight.
“Let’s try that again,” John suggested and turned away from the fight. Point made, he saw no use in staying in the engagement with his true body or Mandala Sphere anymore.
Justinian disagreed. A grunt was as much as he got out to express that. The Creator Puppet resumed motion, forcing the sanctimonious man to focus on the defensive.
‘Man, he sucks,’ John thought and leaned against the arena wall. The Creator Puppet was holding back. A mercy on John’s side. With over 1000 Strength and 3000 Agility, that body could have crushed Justinian with absolute ease. ‘Terrible footwork… like, embarrassingly bad. Jesus Christ, is he about to fall over backwards?’
The Creator Puppet let off in its attacks for a brief moment to let Justinian recover his posture. “Vile fie-“ he began another monologue, only for the gleaming golem to start swinging again.
To the Latebloomer’s mild credit, he did have enough combat instinct to choose to back away. He gathered magical power in his palm. A sweeping gesture scattered shining dust in a crescent before him. Particles grew into shining lances. Each and every one broke against the metal surface of the Creator Puppet.
Justinian then switched strategies again. He empowered his sword with all the magic he could muster. Rather than turn his blade into a radiantly extended version of itself, he consolidated that power into physical matter of some description.
‘He’s not entirely stupid,’ the Gamer observed. ‘He is prodding for weaknesses.’
Creator Puppet and Latebloomer clashed in the middle of the arena. The ground trembled. Dust rose around them. John activated the gravitation aura again, to prevent the rising particles from interfering with the spectacle.
Justinian backed away from the heavy air, for understandable reasons. He charged back in as soon as it ebbed away. “Your resources must be dwindling, false ruler!” the Latebloomer declared. John was in no hurry to correct him.
Inkaryl let out the closest thing to a bored yawn that a weapon could produce. The sound was drowned out by the repeated clashes of metal. Head and segmented shaft of the mace were used to repeatedly knock Justinian’s blade aside. At times, the Creator Puppet countered with an attack of its own. All of it was for the people above and for John to get a better idea of the true extent of Justinian’s abilities.
‘Average sword fighting talent, pretty good light mage, and power growing the more righteous he believes himself to be. Seems to primarily boost his Spellpower. Not a bad Innate Ability by any means, but is that all there is to it?’ John stopped in his analysis when Justinian turned on his heels. ‘The predictable move.’
The sanctimonious swordfighter charged towards John – the real John. He was fast, not so fast that the Creator Puppet could not have caught him, but fast enough that John’s regular reflexes would not have been quick enough to react. Unfortunately for Justinian, the Gamer had no need to operate on reflexes when his senses and intellect had let him predict this entire scenario.
John shot a Blast Ray to his right. Justinian traced it for a moment, before grinning. Smugly, the blond man stopped in front of his enemy, sword held high. “Game O-“ he began his victorious declaration, only for the Blast Ray to slam into his side.
It had fused with a second one, shot from the Mandala Sphere. The combined force was enough to rip Justinian off his terrible footing and sent him tumbling across the arena. Above, the crowd cheered. John hadn’t even uncrossed his arms.
To add injury to insult, the Creator Puppet grabbed Justinian’s leg as he was skidding past. Using the body of the man as a flail, the golem beat the ground thrice before launching him towards the wall opposite of where the Gamer was. A spiderweb of cracks spread outwards. People moved to the very edge of the viewers’ area to look down. Some even pressed their faces against the arcane bubble.
“Do we want to continue this charade?” John asked out loud, fully knowing what the answer would be. When he did not receive it immediately, he doubled down on the goading. “You have barely even scratched my puppet and you failed to lay a finger on me. Meanwhile, I haven’t even begun to use the true extent of my arcane might.” Using Free Casting, he drew some glowing runes in the air. It would keep people that knew about how his powers functioned on their toes. For everyone else, it looked impressive. “You stand no chance.”
“You think… I don’t know that…?” Justinian put a hand against the wall, pulling himself out of the depression his body had made in the rock. “I know no one expects me to win here… and I know better than anyone that I have so much more I need to grow in… I know I’m too weak to defeat you and all of your puppets. I know that I’ll never beat you here!”
‘Is he quoting Mumen Rider?’ John thought.
“But I must fight you anyway!”
‘He absolutely is.’
“I’m the only one left to stand in your way! It’s not about winning or losing! I just have to stand here and face you! It’s about me doing what is just, right here and right now!” Justinian planted his feet firmly on the ground. Arms spread out, he roared at the sky. Winds of light enveloped him in golden fire so solid nothing around his form was visible. It burned bright. Lightning bounced between the flickers, golden arcs of electricity. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! FOR FREEEDOOOOOOOM!”
The earth cracked and turned to glass under his feet as he charged. At first he headed straight to the Creator Puppet, then he leapt. A comet of radiance, he arced above. He raised his sword above his head. The weapon extended in size several times over, until it was more of a golden beam than a sword.
“SLASH OF JUSTI-“
Justinian choked on his words when the Creator Puppet was suddenly in front of him. Fairy wings had sprouted from the back of the golem, allowing it hovering flight. Flight that, combined with its properly utilized Stats, easily put it between the sanctimonious Latebloomer and the original body.
A desperate attempt to bring the overhead strike down was met with a wide, one-handed swing of Inkaryl. The impact knocked the sword out of the blond man’s hands, dislocating the wrists in the same moment. Wheezing from the pain, Justinian’s radiant flare began to ebb away. It was extinguished in an instant when the Creator Puppet’s fist crashed into Justinian’s face.
‘Maybe using the Golem Infusion was north of overkill,’ John thought, pushing his back off the wall. The function had been unlocked by the latest/third Metracana Master Perk, allowing his Creator Puppet to mimic the non-Ascension, Monster Girl Perks of his Artificial Spirits at 25% effectiveness. Which one had to be picked beforehand. With the limitation of non-Ascension Perk, good choices for the Creator Puppet were somewhat limited. John defaulted to Momo because, even at 25% effectiveness, full three dimensional movement was really difficult to beat. There was also the Weirdness aura as an added (but fully random) bonus.
The moth-like wings at the back of the Creator Puppet dissolved into individual fireflies that scattered through the air. Stopping next to Justinian, the golem body waited there for the original and the Mandala Sphere to arrive as well.
Justinian had managed to roll onto his back. One of his hands was grotesquely out of place. His face was bloody and starting to swell. “Looks like the punch broke the cheekbone, ripped your earlobe off, split your lip and broke your nose,” John analysed out loud after squatting down next to the guy. “You would be fine just leaving the barrier and staying out of them for a couple of days… but there’s a thing or two I want to talk about.”
Reaching into his inventory, the Gamer pulled out half a dozen healing potions. “…You… broke the rules…” Justinian wheezed.
“Do you seriously consider this fight to be going on still?” John asked and poured each of the six vials over Justinian’s face. They were the best healing potions Delicia could make, which doubtlessly made them around or the best on the planet. Despite that, it took all six of them to do as much as fix the face of a Latebloomer. The amount of vitality in their bodies was just that absurd.
“What do I expect you to keep to the rules for?” Justinian growled.
“Alright, I’ve had quite enough of this farce now.” John sighed and scratched the back of his head. “Let me tell you something: I fought the kind of Abyssal you consider me to be and do you know what they would have done if I stupidly challenged them to a direct confrontation like this? They would have caved my head in. They would have laughed as they did it too.”
“A pretension-“
“Alright, shut up,” John interrupted, letting his annoyance flow out from his soul. Weakened as he was, Justinian was scared into closing his mouth by that much. “I really don’t know how to get that into your thick skull, but you’re not the protagonist in some cheap shounen, okay? There is no author that will send someone to sweep in and save you if I decided to kill you now. Your last minute power up over there? It wasn’t even enough to threaten me and I’m a summoner. Do you understand that? 70% of my power is sitting up there.”
Several haremettes decided to wave when they were gestured towards. Most of them weren’t the familiars John was talking about. Sylph waved for ten of them, though, so it was fine.
“Unimportant, actually,” John weaved back to the point he was trying to make. “I want you to understand that you live in reality and in reality information is flawed, you have limitations, and the pieces don’t line up just because you wish for them to.”
“Your attempt at breaking my spirit will lead nowhere. I will free Moira from your control and-“
“Oh my God, she’s just not into you!” John was rubbing his temples now. “I don’t even have anything going on with her. She’s the friend of my girlfriend, so I just spent time in the same room as her by proxy.” He stared up at the viewing area, hoping to find Moira up there. The redhead was absent. “I swear to Gaia’s ass, I’ll drag that headache in front of you and make her tell you herself.”
“Because you’re controlling her.”
“Jesus fucking… Okay, whatever, stand up.” John rose to his feet. He offered the hand to Justinian again, who once again refused it. ‘Stupid nut,’ the Gamer thought, before raising his voice to the gathered coliseum. “I believe I can declare two things with certainty: that I have won and that Justinian has no love for me!” Both statements were met with laughter and applause. “With that in mind, I have elected to bestow an additional reward to him. Should he accept, he will return to the Hudson Barrier with me, to govern Fusion in my stead for a period of two weeks!”
The announcement was met with yet more laughter and yet more cheers. Average people did not regularly consider what kind of headache this could cause for bureaucrats and the like. John had already assured key players that letting Justinian govern came with a bunch of caveats that made it so he could shake the boat, but not tilt it.
“I will look over his shoulder, to assure that I absorb all of his gleaming wisdom!” John delivered, his voice so free of sarcasm that it became sarcasm in and of itself. “What do you say, Justinian?”
The blond man was stunned by the development. He was speechless at first, then gave the Gamer a doubtful side-eye. John just smirked and waited for the gears to turn. At this point, even Justinian would have had to acknowledge that if John HAD methods of perfect mind control, this would have been an ineffectual way to go about it. Either that or his sanctimonious nature assured him he had protagonist powers enough not to fall prey to it.
“I accept!” Justinian declared.
