Cleaning up

Slowly, John watched the frail-looking man’s sudden movement, his brain trying to catch up. Velvet dove to one side, her magic-sight, or whatever it was technically called, clearly allowing her to see and react to the Janitor’s approach faster than John.

Far faster, in fact, as the Janitor’s impromptu bo staff cracked across John’s temple and then again to his jaw after mere moments, sending him crashing to the floor.

-7HP!
-4HP

The sharp bite of pain crawled across his face even as any possible injury faded, and a film of red came across his vision, magically enhanced rage spilling across him. One fist slammed into the tile below him, as he raised himself up to glare at the Janitor. The miniboss had moved on from John, having knocked him down, and was now duelling against Velvet, staff against whip-sword, or whatever it was exactly that she had.

The edges of his sight flickered in time with the veins he could see on the arm supporting him, the rage waiting for him to give in and let it tip over. He considered it for a moment, enticed by the irrational thought of sweet payback against the enemy, but then reason won over, reminding him of how this enemy wasn’t real, of how he didn’t have proper control over the rage, of how dangerous it was. No, he would try to do this without it. The rage was a last resort, for now, until Erica could help him train it.

With that, the red receded, and his veins stopped being quite so visible. Unfortunately, that also meant that he was reminded of how weak he actually was, as his arms suddenly protested having to support his weight.

The Gamer let out a quiet grunt as he shuffled, moving to his knees and standing. A thought summoned his axe to hand again, and he focused his gaze on studying the Janitor as he fought Velvet. He’d apologise to her later for not helping immediately, but it was how he worked. He needed to see how the boss moved, what attacks it had, what behaviours or patterns it followed, and the only way he could get that was watching it in action. Despite the fact that it stung the caveman part of John’s pride, he recognised that Velvet was easily a far more versatile and practised fighter. He might have more brute **** when using the berserkism, but she had the experience.

John’s eyes snagged on the moment that the Janitor’s movements repeated. And then again. Across the space of the half-minute he watched, he worked out a basic pattern that the boss seemed to follow. Three basic attacks, striking high, middle, and low. A guard or block if attacked between motions. Block and **** strike whenever Velvet tried to change from sword to whip. Then, the small pattern of splintering appeared on the mop’s wooden shaft, despite Velvet’s lack of any real striking there. A weak point, or a damage indicator, if John had to guess.

Another moment’s wait, and John nodded to himself as Velvet inadvertently led the boss into a more open position, and John shifted into action.

A cast of Crushing Leap sent him flying through the air, axe-blade first, directly at the enemy. At the same time, noticing John’s movement at the last second, Velvet cracked her whip forward, wrapping it around the Janitor’s mop to yank him off balance. Against John’s expectation, it worked. John adjusted himself as well as he could in mid-air, and rather than colliding with the boss as planned, he glided past the figure with the last of his jump’s momentum, dragging the axe’s blade through the Janitor’s back.

17 Damage!

A line of red bloomed across the dusty uniform, even though the fabric rejoined after the axe passed. The Janitor shouted wordlessly in response, falling back from Velvet defensively. She allowed the whip to uncoil as he pulled away, and darted her eyes over to where John landed, coming to a stop as he slid across the tiles.

As quickly as he could, John tried to get upright again, uncomfortably over-aware of both how close the boss was to him now and how sluggish his muscles felt. Too sluggish. Three times, in rapid succession, the mop reached out to return the favour. Head - John dropped slightly in response. Side - John cringed instinctively away from the pain. Back - he dropped to the ground on his stomach again, breath whooshing from him in a wheeze.

-5HP! -3HP! -3HP!

The red film returned as pain swamped his mind, and he fought against it desperately as he struggled upright again, whilst the Janitor retreated further from the pair of teens, guarding himself.

Just as Velvet reached his side, and John was about to speak, he looked back to the Janitor and spotted what could not be a more obvious tell, even if John didn’t know what the tell was for. The Janitor spun the mop smoothly in front of him, then swung it over his shoulder. The other hand, now unoccupied, reached to his waist, pulled something from a pocket, and threw it.

Without a second thought for his already halved HP, John pushed Velvet behind himself, recognising some kind of punishment attack. Apparently, the boss wanted them close, and constantly on the attack. Very fitting for a dungeon designed around a first-time berserker. Just a shame that he was trying not to use said berserker abilities.

The thrown ball approached John, and exploded a short distance away, some kind of liquid coating John’s face and arms. Likely his shirt-covered chest too, but he couldn’t notice that through the overwhelming, scorching agony that burnt through every centimetre of his exposed skin where the obviously caustic cleaning fluid touched, a scream ripping from his throat in an almost-familiar way, with recent events.

-12HP!
-1HP!
-1HP!
-1HP!

John gritted his teeth together as the pain lingered, and tried to scrub the liquid off, only for it to transfer to his hands. Realising through the red haze that refused to leave that the stuff hadn’t gone through his shirt, he reached down and simply tore a chunk of the fabric away, then used it to wipe the remaining acidic substance from his skin.

Down to less than half his HP, at only 28 remaining, John made the conscious decision, this time, to give in to the rage. He couldn’t afford not to. Another punishment like that, or a critical hit, and he might not get back up. But…

He glanced over his shoulder to Velvet, and quickly told her, uncharacteristically concise, “I can’t get hurt like that again. I don’t have the HP. This fight is designed for my build, I think, so I’m going to try and control the berserker power stuff.” A spark of worry shone in her eyes, and John **** away the fluttering feelings that spread in his stomach. Now was so not the time. “If- If I lose control, you should go find Erica so she can do that freezing thing. I-I don’t want to hurt yo-anyone.”

He waited the second longer it took her to reluctantly nod in response and give a quiet, “Okay,” and then he focused inwards, at that rushing, insistent rage that battered at the edges of his mind. He realised it helped when he pictured it as something. At first, he tried an animal, but the idea of caging any creature, even something as angry and bloodthirsty as this feeling, upset him, which obviously fed into that anger. So instead, he pictured it as an angry red ocean, held back by a tall wall. This time though, he let it in. Instead of focusing on keeping it out entirely, he tried to simply lower that wall, letting the very top of the strongest waves pass over it.

It… didn’t really work. Not anywhere near as well as he had hoped. He kept control, and he remained conscious and lucid, which was a small victory. But, in spite of that, there was such an overwhelming intensity of sheer mad fury that he almost growled like a literal animal. He felt his lips pull back to bare his teeth despite himself. The feeling overpowered most of his resistance, and he realised almost immediately that he might not have much time in control before something gave in under the pressure.

So, he pushed all of his attention, and all of that feeling, towards the boss. The Janitor was still staring cautiously at the two of them, not having reacted to John’s newly glowing vein structure or eyes. His reaction time felt infinitely faster, catching the instant that the Janitor’s hand started moving to another ball of acid.

Almost the same moment that he thought to do it, an overpowered Crushing Leap slammed John forward, colliding directly with the Janitor this time and bowling them both over. John spun as he fell, facing the boss immediately after and swinging the axe straight into a Power Strike without pause. The boss barely managed to block the attack on the shaft of the mop, but a loud sound of splintering came from the impact, and John grinned internally as his weak spot guess was proven correct.

The end of the mop shot out to strike hard into John’s stomach. A notification appeared, but John realised that he couldn’t muster the focus to pay attention to it. He was losing control. He needed to end this quickly. The axe was being directly blocked by the mop’s shaft though, how could-

A memory of Frank flashed through John’s mind. It fuelled the rage even further, but it gave him the reminder that, oh yeah, he had fists too. Sharply, a visibly red-veined fist thrust out and slammed into the Janitor’s wiry frame, knocking him off balance again. He could stumble, and if John had learnt anything from Dark Souls, stumble mechanics were a godsend for the type of build the Gamer seemed to have.

He waited until he thought the boss was about to recover, and swung his axe at the mop shaft again, targeting the weak spot in the centre with the blade of the axe to the increasingly fragile wood. It landed, and again the sound of splintering filled the space. The boss stumbled once more, and before John could land another hit, a bladed whip darted into the space and scored an angry red line of blood across the Janitor’s chest, much like John had done to his back. A strike darted towards her in retaliation, only to be caught and stopped as the whip wrapped around the wooden shaft. John’s axe burrowed into the exposed side of the Janitor, a cry escaping the boss’ lips to match the shout from John.

Then, as both John and Velvet drew back to continue their ****, the wiry frame of the Janitor went ramrod-straight, and shuddered unnaturally. From the boss’ stomach, a slightly curved shadow protruded, swiftly followed by a similar shadowy protrusion erupting from his chest which was more easily identified as a blade of some kind.

When Erica’s head popped up from behind the boss, it made sense. The shadow-axes holding the boss upright disappeared, and his figure dropped, slumped to one side, and then slowly dissipated from sight like all the other enemies had. She merrily grinned at them, and looked as if she was about to say something when she caught sight of John.

Almost instantly, the easy-going grin dropped, and she swiftly made her way to hold him by the shoulders firmly, meeting his eyes seriously. “You with me, dude?”

John grit his teeth, the mental image of waves of red wavering through the intense, almost overwhelming haze of unnaturally perpetuating anger. In lieu of a spoken response, finding that he couldn’t put together the words, he **** out an affirmative grunt, focusing all of his attention on trying to retain control.

“Okay, listen to me, okay? Pay attention to me. Vel and me are here. You’re gonna breathe with us, ‘kay? C’mon, follow my lead, John.” Slowly, steadily, Erica started a steady breathing routine, announcing the count with each breath.

John noticed it, and tried to follow it whenever there were lulls in the roaring emotional turbulence, stuttering heavily more often than not. Distantly, he was aware of how Velvet was softly joining the breathing routine, as Erica had said, and how her sightless eyes watched him with that gentle concern she had so often since they had met.

“You still with me, John?” Erica’s voice came, and he realised he had shut his eyes at some point, clenching them tightly in some mix of concentration and mental pain. Then, without any further warning, the berserker rage totally vanished, a system window floating in its place on the inside of his eyelids.

He let out the deep breath he’d been holding, opening his eyes to look at Velvet and Erica as he did so. Seeing their concerned expressions, he gave a smile, internally wincing at how weak and unconvincing it felt on his face. “I’m, uh, I’m fine.”

“Uh… Not to be blunt, but what the fuck just happened?” Erica asked, confusion evident in her tone. “You were seconds from a full blown ‘zerker trance, and you’ve got zero training. There’s no way you should have been able to just stop it like that.”

“I… I think that it’s because the fight is over?” John tenuously suggested, hurrying to explain at the sight of Erica’s incredulous expression, “Like, you know how, in some games, your buffs and such will just stop at the end of combat? Maybe it’s like that?”

Erica narrowed her eyes, and muttered something under her breath that sounded like a complaint about late bloomers, then refocused, fixing him with a serious look. “Alright. Sure, whatever. Listen, this whole barrier wasn’t meant to happen yet. I wanted to go over some berserker control first, but I’m guessing your powers messed with it in some way, right? The whole place felt weirdly level-based.”

John nodded. “Yeah, it’s obviously designed like a progressive difficulty, multi-path dungeon. You see the same in a fair few MMOs.”

“Yeah, I thought so.” She nodded, and sighed with a little bit of relief. “At least they’re still your normal fake barrier fodder.”

“Uh… what do you mean?” John asked with confusion.

She gestured to the now-vanished body of the Janitor. “These guys, they’re not real. They’re, like, copies of real creatures, in normal barriers. The barrier closes, everything that came with it stops existing. Seems like that’s the same here.”

John nodded, accepting and filing that knowledge away for later, when his brain felt a little less like it was going to explode. His eyes drifted from the girls to the window floating in front of him.

Dungeon Stage Complete! Exit, or continue?

Without even offering the choice of carrying on to the girls, who were also reading the window, John said, “I can get us out of here now,” and he reached to press the red ‘Exit’ button floating underneath.

It made a satisfying click sound as he pressed it, and then the world did that awful disconcerting swirling warp thing again, his vision going white. As it returned, the courtyard they had left from fading into sight, John noticed the other window insistently floating in front of him.

Dungeon Loot has been deposited into your inventory.

Barely noticing the girls around him, John opened his interface and navigated to the inventory, looking over what was in there. He pulled out the first item floating with a little exclamation mark icon next to it, clearly indicating it was new.

Erica deadpanned before he could consider it further,