Between two Promises

The mood in the groups were tense as they watched Layla stab Veridion over and over again. No one spoke a word. John had to keep an improper smile from appearing on his face, though that was among the easier things to suppress. He loathed Veridion and he basked in the approaching victory, but watching a man getting stabbed to **** was never a truly pleasurable experience for the Gamer. That the stabbing was fairly justified and executed by a madly laughing brunette did ease and elevate the impact of the gruesome picture in equal measure.

“You surrender?” Layla’s question came through the magical screen. Veridion was seen to nod. “That means we are done with the trial! No more promise of keeping this non-lethal!”

The dagger came down again.

“What the fu-“ Lee’s outcry was cut short by the sound of rushing water. It was no stream, no river, no waterfall, nothing so ordinary. No, it was the catastrophically loud sound of the entire ocean around Nihau coming to life. Millions of litres of water went into motion, slowly coalescing. The last thing John saw on the feed was the view of a torrent splitting up Layla and Veridion.

“Call her back!” Kamehameha declared. “You have won!”

This was the moment where the Gamer had to make a decision. Various questions once more scrolled through his head, of consequences and of justice. In the end, the conclusions he came to was the same. “I won Hawaii,” the Gamer declared. “Repaying Veridion for knocking the teeth out of one of mine is a separate matter.”

“Then you will have to forgive me for fighting you on this separate matter, my emperor!” The uniter turned to the Kupua, barking an order in the native tongue. It was too seldom used these days for John to have properly learned it, but he understood the gist of it. “**** them out!”

The energy provided to the Natural Barrier surged. John was subjected to the faintly familiar feeling of someone attempting to move him out of the Abyssal space. “Really, right in front of my Fateweaver?!” he asked.

“Dude, are you trying to break my concentration?” Lee shot back at him.

She had a point, that was a bit too memey for the gravity of the situation. A multitude of things were happening all at once. The ocean was still coalescing, the Kupua were still channelling, Lee was counteracting the dozens of them on her lonesome, and the fighting forces of both sides were getting ready to spring into action.

Nathalia was the swiftest to actually act. She did exactly what John would have wanted her to do, leaping into the air and then taking off at hypersonic speed. There was less than a kilometre between their current position and where they had last seen Layla. The dragoness would be there before greater harm came to the reforming stalker.

The problem was what she was heading into.

‘Things can’t ever be easy,’ John thought. He was every bit as intrigued by the existence of this non-god super-entity as he was by the question of how it had remained hidden and where it suddenly came from.

“Scatter them!” Kamehameha declared.

Any token attempt at negotiation was broken down now. The fight was inevitable. The other members of the harem, following a simple mental command, rushed forwards. Only John and the elementals hung back, protecting Lee from potential attacks.

The air cracked. Natural Barriers, John was starting to understand, were weird and unpredictable. The Kupua and Fateweavers on the side of his enemies were bundling their powers together, all pushing against Lee. The Lady of Shifting Dimensions grit her teeth. A sound like compacting snow filled the air, competing with the steady rush of the ocean’s movement.

In the space between the groups, combat began. Aclysia and Kael met claw to sword, only to immediately be surrounded by a webbing of dimensional fault lines. A Swirling Point spawned into existence, then swallowed them both. “What just happened?!” John asked Lee.

“I have limitations, okay?” Lee responded. He made a mental note to apologize to her later for his brash tone. “I’m giving in on the scattering for now, conserving my stamina so I can crush them in the long run.”

That made enough sense to John. “Should I…?”

“Go!”

It was rare for him to take an order, but when it came to this, she knew infinitely more than he did. If she considered scattering their best bet, then he would scatter. He only took the moment needed to Summon Sprites and a Hero, all with the simple goal to protect Lee. Elementals in tow, he then charged into the fray.

Nahoa had charged right into the lines of the Oathkeepers. The armour-clad men and women attempted to land proper strikes on her. Mithril alloys cut into the axolotl maid, causing purple fumes to be released at an accelerated rate. Just as the noxious mist began to spread at scale, its source was whisked away. John assumed it was Lee’s work that the entirety of that army dropped through the vortex with them.

‘Fianna, how is your overview of the situation?’ John managed to get a question out, just as his arm became covered in the dragon scales of Purgatory.

‘I am surrendering my position, Sir. Something has caught my attention.’

‘Even more surprises?’ John was cut short on his contemplation of that fact. He was too busy meeting the charge of an army of undead Hawaiians.

The Night Marchers met the **** of John, Gnome, Sylph and Salamander fearlessly. Linked in a line, the ghostly warriors took the dual impact of lightning and firestorm and dispersed it among their numbers using an arcane shield spell. Only Kamehameha did not partake in this attack. The great unifier dodged Gnome’s punch with surprising nimbleness for a man his size. Not surprising enough for John, after all his time in the Abyss. When Kamehameha moved his heavy spear towards John, he had already stepped out of reach of the man.

The Swirling Point enveloped their clashing forces, whisking them away as it had the others. It carried them to a sub-layer of the Natural Barrier, a copy of the copy. It reminded John of that time he had used the Rose of Artifice to **** Liakan into a fight during the Aztec campaign.

“I feel the need to tell you that I could end this in an instant,” the Gamer informed Kamehameha. There were no more oaths that bound him to a certain number or selection of candidates. Even if he had sworn any of those, Veridion was a tad busy at the moment. “I could teleport in the forces required to make this a simple matter.”

John was about 90% certain on that statement. Whatever Fianna had found, he couldn’t ask her about it anymore, the separation of the Swirling Point muting their mental connection. Kanaloa was an incredibly powerful entity of unknown water powers. Kael was a god and, though injured, if Veridion had a moment to recover, he would weigh in on the combat. The Night Marchers were obviously powerful. The Kupua were tied up with Lee, but the Menehune and Mo’o could still have weighed in. They had been conspicuously absent today, though that could have been their growing distaste for Veridion.

That was the extent of the enemy forces. John liked his odds with the haremettes he had with him at the moment. If he dropped the message to have Beatrice and the rest of his elementals teleport in, the matter would be tilted in his favour considerably.

“Then why aren’t you?” Kamehameha asked.

“I still might,” John answered. He was keeping constant awareness for a message from Nathalia. The moment he got a message that Layla was in serious danger, he would move ahead with an abhorrent degree of **** at his disposal, all to get Undine situated next to this **** member of their expedition. For now, he trusted the dagger and the prophecy that Lorelei had delivered with it. As long as the weapon drank the blood of the observer of oaths turned breaker of such, Layla would survive.

Which filled John with the confidence to be a fair sport about the situation.

“The thing about being mighty is that I get the luxury of giving my opponents a chance,” John said, doing his utmost to take the arrogance out of those words. “If I beat you with the forces I have here, it’ll be better for my image. Crushing victories aren’t very inspirational.”

“Wise words,” Kamehameha agreed.

‘God, I love how reasonable this man is,’ the Gamer thought, then let his eyes wander over the Night Marchers and the three elemental ladies with him. “Well, that’s my rationale for not stomping you into the dirt with all I have… what’s your rationale for standing against me? Honour?”

“Indeed. For the man he once was, Veridion will have my protection.”

John sighed, a sound of begrudging respect. He was resigned to fight Kamehameha, but he wasn’t happy about it. “Alright then… let’s have the fight your honour demands.”

The paused hostilities resumed with Gnome stomping the ground. A shockwave rippled outwards, then magically turned into two walls. They shot up high, separating the two flanks of the Night Marchers from their leader in the centre. In equal measure, John was separated from his elementals. He and Kamehameha were isolated in their own corridor, three strides wide.

The unifier attacked first. John could hear the weight of the spear when his opponent struck the ground with it. The earth cracked and trembled, individual rocks flying straight upwards before flying towards John.

The Gamer caught the first, then used Magus Step to make it past the others. The first teleportation brought him behind Kamehameha, the second, Skitterstep’s follow-up, manoeuvred him slightly to the side. Invisibility covered him long enough that he could turn on his heels.

‘Earth magic?’ John thought, throwing the stone at Kamehameha. The enormous man swatted it aside, having already turned around himself. On an Agility basis, he was John’s superior. It could be safely assumed that this was also true for Strength and Endurance, though the latter ceased to matter when John was using his MP for his defence.

The rock ricocheted off the ground, Kamehameha ignoring it – to his detriment. The Possession John had quickly put on the rock made it the perfect launch platform for a Mana Chain. To distract the undead king, John charged up an Arc Lance in the same moment.

The Mana Chain launched from its dimensional anchor, aimed at Kamehameha’s back. John was prepared for anything unexpected, even the unifier turning to the side and ‘grasping’ the flying chain, hurling it further towards John. Starforger’s Grasp, the Augment on his right arm, allowed the Gamer to similarly redirect his hijacked spell. It uselessly struck the ground.

Kamehameha began his counter charge. John teleported back and into the air. Rather than fall back down, he adhered to the side of the wall with first one, then both of the soles of his heavily enchanted shoes. Aimed at Kamehameha’s head, the Gamer launched his Arc Lance at an unorthodox angle.

The arcane projectile came to a stop between Kamehameha’s fingers. The dark-skinned man clenched his teeth, trying to turn it around. He resigned himself to just shattering it in his palm before the Gamer could launch a second. In a flash, the king had crossed the remaining distance.

John backed away, step by step, dodging the rapid strikes of the heavy spear. Kamehameha was ferocious, attacking with the unbridled ambition of a conqueror. The interplay of diplomatic acumen and warrior spirit was rare. It truly had been unfortunate for the king that someone of his quality had been born into such a confined geographic area.

The Gamer continued to focus on dodging, offering only token resistance to prevent Kamehameha from going all out. The unusual angle worked in John’s favour. He continued to walk along the wall until he saw his chance to strike.

A Blast Ray went past Kamehama’s head, tilted to the side at the last second. Behind the unifier, the still possessed rock launched two Blast Rays of its own. The first hit the original project practically head-on, the fusion of the two causing the new Blast Ray to shoot straight up into the air. The second of the rays shot from the rock then adjusted the angle again.

It would have gone overhead by the limitations of ingoing and outgoing angles. Overhead was a perfectly fine position for John. A Magus Step delivered him up into the air at the exact right moment. With erudite precision, he hit the Blast Ray with one more from his palm. It flew towards Kamehameha.

Annoyingly, the unifier did exactly the right thing in regards to this flashy manoeuvre.

He ignored it.

Kamehameha let the Blast Ray strike him in the shoulder. Kinetic **** pressed him against the wall for a split second, then he remained there of his own volition. Two Arc Lances, launched from the rock in anticipation of where he would dodge, whistled by uselessly.

John landed on top of the wall. He glanced back for a moment, watching Sylph effortlessly bounce between the multitude of strikes from the other Night Marchers. Above, Salamander was dodging and incinerating the seemingly endless number of ghost spears thrown at her. Gnome was somewhere in the thick of it, he could hear her exchange rumbling blows with the Hawaiian ancestors. His own senses were secondary to the combat data he got from the mental connections. They were winning. It wasn’t a quick, absolute win, but they were winning all the same.

“Great Mana,” John spoke those two words with significance, eyes on the injury the ghostly form of the unifier had sustained. “It’s not just a phrase, is it? That is your Innate Ability. An area around you in which the passive pressure of your aura lets you exert control over the laws of magic.”

“Your astute observations are impressive,” Kamehameha declared.

“I came across a similar Innate Ability recently,” John responded simply. It reminded him of Esmeralda, though the scope and application method were obviously different. In his undead form, Kamehameha was stronger than he had been in life, but he was no Latebloomer. John would have placed him somewhere in the level 300 to 400 range in terms of his Stats, yet his magic was less threatening to him than that of the Dancer had been.

A known flaw in the way his system calculated Levels, Stats being the defining metric with the scope and potential of the skills being excluded in favour of blunt ‘Spellpower’.

John glanced at his mana bar. Rapid as it was in its refilling, it was also rapid in its drainage. His elementals benefitted from the outflow and every strike that connected to him diminished the bar. He could have brute **** this encounter by just swamping Kamehameha in summons. There was little honour in that. It was also risky in its own way. If the unifier proved able to crush the summons easily, they were a mana sink John did not want to afford.

Plus, the ‘cast animation’ took a second. There were always drawbacks to these things…

‘No need to hurry,’ he told himself. ‘I can trust the others and this isn’t a life or **** situation… well, except for Layla and maybe Nahoa.’ The only people here that would dare kill a haremette, causing the rest of the Imperial Choir to mobilize in full ****, were Veridion and his Oathkeepers. Nathalia was assuring Layla’s survival and Nahoa was Nahoa.

John jumped back down into the corridor, readying himself for the next round of his duel with Kamehameha. The long game was in his favour. The gap in their Physical Stats would gradually be closed by Rising Annihilation.

“You are committed to giving me this duel, aren’t you?” Kamehameha asked.

“You deserve it,” the Gamer responded. “Who you are fighting for I find, frankly, stupid, but the way you are doing it deserves to be met with equal honour.”

The unifier nodded, a slight smile on his lips. “However this ends, we will get along well.”

Then, he charged again.