Conscious Combat

Turned out that following the blue tiles was quite literally a yellow brick road affair. A straight line of cyan blue tiles that stuck out amidst the immaculate white everywhere else. If nothing else, he doubted they’d lose track of the line.

It was… a little awkward now. The pair of them walked in silence as they followed the coloured tiles, and whilst it was at least a comfortable silence, it still lacked the easy conversation John felt they had had before. Try though he might, however, whenever he looked at the blind beauty, all he could see was the expression of sheer eroticism as she came from his touch alone, which naturally made him avert his eyes. Those were absolutely not the type of thoughts to be having right now. Not when they could encounter enemies at any moment.

He’d been walking down a corridor just like this one when the roomba cleaners had appeared, after all. What if- “...John?” Velvet interrupted his thoughts with a gentle questioning tone.

“Y-yes?”

“Uhm… I noticed, when we were fighting in the, uh, store that you didn’t use any magic? Was there a reason, or…?” She trailed off.

John frowned slightly as he thought about it. She was right. He’d just been looking at his skills earlier today, and yet he tried to fight without any of them. From a purely technical viewpoint, that was a frankly stupid thing to do. “...I guess… I don’t know if I can use my skills without being, y’know… berserk.” The word alone sent a shiver through him, and he didn’t know why. It was ridiculous. He needed every advantage he could get right now. Although… “I also, uh… huh. I don’t actually know how to go berserk. It’s happened on its own before, but I haven’t started it.”

A small frown had also grown on Velvet’s soft features as she thought about it, her delicate brows drawing closer together. “Hmmm… well, I don’t think this is a good time to try that, if we can help it. If you lost control, I-” she blushed, losing some of the concentration she’d had as her pearly eyes flickered to sightlessly see him, “I-I’m not sure if I could stop you, if you got too strong, a-and I don’t want to h-hurt you.”

John nodded. “Absolutely. I’ll wait until we find Erica, so she can… restrain me, if need be.” ’Not to mention that Heaven and Hell will meet before I hurt you,’ John finished in his mind. “B-but, for now… I can try to use some of the skills without the whole berserk thing? I mean, the skill descriptions didn’t mention anything about requiring it to be active to use. No conditionals that I could see, at least. Unfortunately, they also didn’t mention anything about the mana cost… As far as I can tell, my build is meant to be melee that’s accentuated with magic, rather than the other way around like I might have preferred.” John thought remorsefully to his various MMO spellcasters and glass cannons. “I only have 60 MP, and these skills look like they might drain that quite quickly-”

Defeat all enemies to proceed. Difficulty scaled to meet party size. Enemies remaining: 9

“I guess we’ll find out then?” John said, a wry note entering his voice.

The enemies that appeared, exiting from beneath the tiles similarly to how the roombas had, seemed to follow a theme with their predecessors. As far as John could tell, they were some kind of robot mall - it occurred to him as he thought that that he should throw a quick Observe at one of them.

God fucking damnit, Gaia.

Hey now, I’m your God here, and we’ll be having no fucking until I decide to!

Once again putting aside the not-so-subtle implications of that message, John focused on the combat ahead of him. 9 enemies was enough to overwhelm a two-person party, even if they were only weak mobs. Velvet knew what she was doing though, if the last fight had been any indicator. Already, she had pulled out her strange cane-sword-whip weapon, and was setting her stance to begin.

John followed her example, pulling the axe into existence from his inventory. There was a nervous energy flowing through him that was distinctly unfamiliar, yet… it almost felt welcome to him. It was like the excitement that came before entering a raid, or the final arena of the final boss, but… amplified. He focused, stilling the shaking of his hands. He thought to the only conscious magic he’d cast, creating this barrier, or dungeon. Erica had said that the gesture wasn’t what caused it to work, it was the intent, the focus. If that followed for all magic…

John locked his eyes on one of the Robo-Mallcops, roughly to the left of the group. He barely blinked, putting all his focus and intent on destroying it. His knees bent slightly. The axe would cleave through the metal shell. His grip tightened on the weapon. He wouldn’t be defeated so easily again. He breathed in… and jumped.

There was a brief moment where he felt the tile flooring crack under the **** of his magic-enhanced jump as he used Crushing Leap, before shattering totally as his feet left the ground. He flew through the air under his momentum briefly, his axe flashing as it passed through the air, slicing through the neck of a robot as he passed. He landed and stopped, just past the robot he’d aimed for, as its head toppled from its shoulders with a metallic crash onto the tiles.

Critical Hit: 68 Damage

…’Okay, that felt fucking cool’ John thought to himself. Almost immediately, though, he began moving again, realising that to stand still was to risk being hit. He lifted the axe again, and stepped forwards, swinging it to the next enemy.

What he didn’t expect, obviously, having never actually fought with an axe, or any weapon for that matter, was the robot to raise its arm and block his attack. The axe screeched along the metal arm, marring the opposing surface with long scratches before coming off and almost dropping out of John’s hand.

He exhaled sharply as the weight of the weapon unexpectedly pressed on the muscles that John suddenly remembered were, in fact, very sore from the fight with the slimes. He could feel how slowed his actions were compared to his mental processing, bringing back all kinds of terrible memories about Phys. Ed. class. He hated it just as much now as he had then.

A heavy weight settled itself on his shoulder, sharp metal fingers grasping indelicately into his skin. He didn’t have many skills, so he could easily remember them at this point, and focused on wanting to cast Set In Stone. With a small snarl, he **** his muscles back into action to match pace with his mind. Just in time, as the robot yanked sharply, tearing through the fabric of John’s jacket. John rammed the axe into the robot’s chest with a backhand swing, ripping apart the outer metal sheeting with an ear-wrenching screech, and simply wrecking the wiring inside. He stumbled back a step or two, his muscles crying against the unexpected **** as the metal figure fell to the ground.

Two down.

He looked over at Velvet quickly, making sure she was safe. An unnecessary act, as she’d managed to somehow take two down in the time he’d been fighting. As he watched, she daintily danced around the third, striking it once, twice, thrice. Again and again, the weapon adapting to her wishes with each strike, lacerating the surface of the metal sheeting with deep gouges as she whipped it or lancing deep into circuitry with fizzling pops as she targeted the joints with the blade. John still had no idea what the weapon was, or where she got it, but Gaiadamnit if it wasn’t cool.

The robot was collapsing entirely as he shook his head slightly, and faced back towards the other Robo-Mallcops. So far, his little experiment had worked. He could use his skills without being blind with rage. He still had another one as well, Power Strike. He wasn’t going to try Berserkism until Erica was around, or Moira or someone else who could stop him.

Power Strike wasn’t nearly as fun as the other two, John concluded as he chopped down the last of the enemies. It didn’t do anything particularly interesting, just made the hit harder. Useful, but not cool like the other two were. Hopefully it would develop further.

He swiped away the message telling him he’d completed the encounter as Velvet came up beside him. “Does it say where to go next, John?”

“Uh,” John replied, “Not really? So I guess we carry on following the blue tiles.” He glanced down, finding the trail, and following it with his eyes. “...Not that they’re leading particularly far away.”

From where the pair stood, the end of the trail of tiles was visible. Or, more accurately, the choice of ending. “It’s a fork. The tiles point to two different stores.” John frowned to himself. He hated level design that locked the player out of a path of content.

“Oh. W-what are the choices?” Velvet asked him as they walked to where the path forked.

John stopped at the fork and tilted his head slightly to look at the left hand storefront. “On the left side is some kind of candy store. It says it’s called Timmy’s Sweet Tooth. Got a cute little mascot too.” He turned to look at the one on the right. “The other side is a bookstore? With an… ominous name, to be honest. Calamitous Books.” He glanced at Velvet to see her still facing the candy store.

It prompted a memory, from when they’d both been kidnapped. Hadn’t she said that she lost her jelly beans then? Well, that made the decision easy enough. “I vote the candy store. The other one seems creepy. Who knows what kind of stuff we’d find in there?”

He was absolutely making all of that up. The bookstore actually looked quite inviting. Cosy, even. But, as much as he would have loved to go into it at any other time… The jelly beans were more important right now. And considering the eagerness with which Velvet trotted to the door of the candy store, it was a worthwhile decision.

The store was, in a word, nostalgic. It was the quintessential traditional candy store, complete with hand-written labels on all the glass jars, little metal scoops, paper bags for candy - the whole deal. It felt like the embodiment of every candy store that a child had ever visited, all rolled into one. The only thing that stood out as unusual for that traditional feeling and design was what John assumed was the mascot-

“Oh Gaia, it’s adorable!” Velvet squeed, “I want one of my own!”

It took him a minute to remember that she could see most things in this barrier, though not very well. John had to admit that the little thing was cute. It was green, with a brown dome-shaped shell of some kind on its back. In fact… John was pretty sure that the shell was the top of an acorn, actually. The creature looked like some kind of sea creature, or maybe a turtle? But the words next to the imagery throughout the store referred to the adorable little thing as ‘Timmy the Tinysaurus’, so… apparently some kind of dinosaur? “I’m pretty sure that a ‘Tinysaurus’ isn’t a real type of dinosaur.” John’s thoughts escaped his lips.

Immediately, Velvet let out some kind of adorable noise which managed to simultaneously sound like a sigh of exasperation and a squeak of displeasure as she spun on her heel to face him. Try though he might, there was absolutely no way that he could take her seriously in that moment. How cute she was, the noises she was making, how excited she was about the tiny little dinosaur mascot - it all combined together with the provocative yet tasteful outfit she was wearing and the fact that not twenty minutes had passed since he’d groped her tits to an orgasm. All in all, when it was all added together, it simply left John with **** but to start chuckling at the absurdity of it all.

It wasn’t a big laugh, but it was enough of a chuckle to rumble in his chest slightly and echo in the store. Naturally, this only aggravated Velvet’s displeasure, an angry pout filling her face, and her delicate hands forming fists at her waist. Then, she lifted one foot and stomped it down angrily, and John broke. The image was too adorably entertaining, like an angry puppy. He absolutely felt he couldn’t be blamed for laughing at that point. It was something out of a slice-of-life anime, or something.

She looked like she was about to get actually angry with him for a moment, and then joined him and started giggling at her own absurdity.

After a few moments, the laughter abated enough for Velvet to speak, “Okay, that might have been a little silly.”

John spoke without thinking, still chuckling to himself, “It was ridiculous and adorable.”

It took him a moment to realise Velvet wasn’t talking. Then he realised he’d just openly called her adorable. John had shown many good qualities these past days, being brave and confident and capable, but never at any point had he claimed to be charismatic. His CHA ability score made that extremely clear, but it was something he wanted to change, if he could. So, with this in mind, he took a deep breath and said,