Time Skip!

A sickening squelch sounded across the room as John pulled free the axe blade from where it was buried in the chest of the creature beneath his foot. It came free with a spray of unpleasant red and green liquids better left unidentified, and John grimaced slightly as he turned back to his allies.

Velvet looked likewise sickened, and John wondered for a moment if she was better or worse off for being unable to see the origin of that noise. Erica, on the other hand, was glaring at the weapon, and sighed loudly with dissatisfaction as the nastiness slowly slid off and left it pristine.

John smirked a little at her, and asked, “Are you really still irritated about that?”

“Listen, it’s a part of learning discipline to have to clean your weapon whilst you first learn how to fight.” Erica complained. “This whole thing of it falling off is just some fuckery. Cool as hell fuckery, but still!”

He raised an eyebrow, still smirking. Before he could retort, again, the three of them were interrupted by the environment around them swirling away into nothingness, slowly replaced with a familiar green field with a slightly distant armchair. In unspoken agreement, they began to walk over to the armchair.

As they walked, John looked around and wondered once again if this was normal or not for a Fateweaver of such an apparently high ability. This was meant to be her personalised barrier space, as far as he was aware, but…

Well, it was a field. Literally just a field. Green grass, pleasantly bright and warm sun, brown dirt. Just what you’d expect of a field. There simply wasn’t anything of note in the space besides the woman’s armchair, footstool, and the little platform the two things were placed on. He wasn’t quite sure what he would have expected of it, but he definitely would have expected more than a basic-ass tutorial field.

John shrugged it off as he reached the redheaded Fateweaver, as he usually did. When neither Erica or Moira commented on it, he had just assumed it was either normal or some kind of socially inappropriate thing to ask about it. Either way, it wasn’t important enough to ask about, so he just moved past it. He had more important things to worry about. For example, “So! What impossible goodies have you managed to collect this time? May I see?”

He had to give her that. For all the questions she raised, Holly was a very polite woman. Even after finding out how he had broken the laws of reality to create real-life loot from made-up magical constructs, she always asked nicely if she could have a look. And, since she was doing him a big favour, as he had learnt about the prices that Fateweavers usually asked, he’d been humouring her.

He opened his inventory with a thought and clicked through the loot for a moment, then pulled out the most interesting thing for the others to look at. It was, John had decided from his MMO experience, not that interesting. A large piece of some bone-like material, shaped in what appeared to be a horn, and coloured a garish sulphur yellow. “Apparently, this is something called lesser impbone? I guess that’s what those things were called this time, ‘Imps’.”

Holly, as usual, merely raised a speculative eyebrow and nodded slightly in agreement. Erica on the other hand answered him, “Yeah, I figured as much when one of them exploded like a rotten egg.”

“Oof, sucks to be you.” John grinned at the blonde.

“Yeah, yeah, get over yourself, dick.” Erica waved a hand dismissively at his smugness. “Holly, I think we’re done for today. It’s gotta be coming up to evening now, right?”

John’s mood dropped at the reminder. The past few days of this training had followed a pattern. They woke up as early as possible, at sunrise for breakfast, then went and did weapons practise until Holly arrived, usually an hour’s worth. After that, they did as many dungeons as possible, taking different routes through the Mall each time and facing different enemies. So far, the most interesting had been giant birds made of metal in the hardware store, simply because of the sheer variety and attention to detail they had all had. Plus, the loot from those had been a really interesting bag of different types of metal ingots.

There was only one store none of them had wanted to repeat, and that was the bookstore. It was cluttered with stacks and piles of books, but the words on the spines seemed to swim when you read them, whilst the decor was distinctly lovecraftian, full of strange art and stranger artifacts on pedestals. For some reason, nothing openly attacked them in there, but there was this vague and extremely uncomfortable feeling of being watched. They ended up getting out just because a door eventually opened in the middle of one of the shadowed aisles, and nobody wanted to question why or how too deeply. When John asked, Velvet had just muttered something about things hiding in the space between light and shadow. He could admit to himself, at least, that it was plenty unnerving without more details.

John shuddered a little at the memory, forcing his mind back to the routine of the past few days. They had been doing dungeons until evening, when Holly would return them to the manor for food and rest… or, more specifically, a meal with Moira and her father. Which was really uncomfortable for John, because Moira kept staring at him whenever John wasn’t looking in her direction, and her dad seemed to not care about him for the most part. After that, they went back to combat practice with Holly until it grew late. Rinse and repeat.

As much as it was repetitive and made John’s skin itch a little from wanting to explore his powers more… he couldn’t deny the results. He’d gained another four levels, and gotten his Arms Novice skill levelled from 1 to 13, which… well, he honestly had no idea what it would go up to, so he couldn’t tell if it was good progress? But at least he had something other than Masturbation in the double digits now, so that was something.

He might not be able to accurately tell the difference between skill levels yet, but he had absolutely noticed the difference from the stat points he had spent. It was like everything just worked smoother. He hit a little harder and kept going a little longer. It was easier to talk even when he wasn’t confident - Velvet still made him stutter sometimes, for some reason - and his decision making seemed to just feel smoother. His theory about Wisdom helping with the Berserker rage was… halfway right? He’d only really used that a couple of times whilst training, about halfway to the next level for the skill, but he could tell the difference as soon as he had turned it on the first time.

—

“Is that a fucking gnome with a shotgun?”

It was, in fact, a gnome, John could see, and-

“A gnome with a shotgun riding a fucking lawnmower?!”

That was also true, but John couldn’t stop the snarky response to Erica that slipped his lips, “Anything else obvious and dangerous you want to point out?”

She turned and gave him a look which had him wincing. “This is a good time for you to try the rage, John. Absolutely random enemy, but eh, it’s a boss.” The blonde nodded at Velvet on his other side and the pair took a half-step back. “We’ll hang back and support you where we can see would be best, in case your upgrade thingy doesn’t work.”

This time, John was able to **** down the hesitation after only a moment and a swift glance at Velvet, then said, “I haven’t done it without already being in the fight, so… I’ll try.”

He took a step forward, twisted his grip on the axe, and tried to focus on how it felt last time. The vast wall, holding back the ocean of rage which splashed and bounced in defiance. The feeling of drops reaching past the wall, a mere spattering in comparison to what lay beyond, yet so overwhelming. The cracks that seemed to grow every time he let the anger in. The sensation of liquid flame that grabs and tugs and pulls on his mind. The sinking and burning as his mind fights it. The falling as he allows it in. The burning that races down every line of his being until-

His eyes flick open. He is there yet not. He knows, yet does not feel. He is berserk, yet conscious. Barely. “Attack.” His words grate in his ears, in his mind, in his chest. Words do not have a place in battle, in rage.

A leap crosses the space without thought, and he can fight.

Magic bursts from the barrel of the weapon, small balls of pain crashing into his skin. Fuel to the rage. His muscles burn delightfully as the axe swings and cleanly slices the rubber of a wheel. Cripple the prey, prevent it from fleeing.

He is slow, too eager. A rake buries into flimsy chest muscle. Spikes of fury grant more motion, faster motion. Flesh tears as metal pulls away. The axe swings again, empowered with more than normal anger. Metal shears and another wheel is crippled, the axel collapsed.

Motion blurs the edge of his vision. Threat. Another leap, short now, vicious. Into the machine, crushing, damaging. The shot goes wide, instead of shredding the bone of his skull. Reflexes are dull. The creature atop the machine jerks back, shadow cleaving its shoulder, shotgun pulled away by a metal cord. Allies, helping. Velvet. Muscles bunch, a leap forcing his slowing body up, on top of the machine. The axe smoothly swings. The creature falls back, the metal cleaved cleanly into and through the front of its neck. Its head lolls backwards, still connected. His vision tilts. Falling.

The rage recedes moments before darkness cloaks John’s sight. He realised then that he was about to hit the ground. Fucking berserker bullshit.

—

That encounter had gotten him some cool stuff, like a decorative gnome hat which Velvet looked adorable in when John convinced her to try it. Funny, but adorable. Even so, the new form of his berserker rage was strange. It wasn’t quite like being consciously there. Things didn’t filter through his mind quite right, and his body just felt wrong without the usual physical feedback he’d expect. He also didn’t really have control over it, even then. Just awareness.

Still, it was better than nothing.

John refocused on what was happening as the barrier dissolved around them, returning them to the familiar courtyard. The gnome fight had reminded him of what he wanted to ask, so when Holly took Erica’s thanks and strode away, whilst Moira entered and gave her a nod, he cleared his throat.

“Uh, actually? If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to, uh, go visit Asta?” Both Moira and Erica raised an eyebrow at that, inquisitive and suggestive respectively, and John blushed slightly. He chose to pretend he didn’t hear Velvet’s soft mutters of discontent, before he could overthink them. “I wanted to give her something as thanks, or repayment, for the weapon, and the discount.”

It seemed as though Moira would object, then Erica cut in, “I don’t see why not. We’re gonna miss dinner, Red.”

Erica grabbed Velvet and him by the shoulder and steered them past the blinking redhead quickly. The trio of them managed to leave the manor by the time Moira caught up, a reprimanding look on her face to meet Erica’s cheeky grin.

Surprisingly, instead of lecturing them, the paladin merely said, “I will accompany you. Relations with… Eion would hardly remain positive should any harm come to Velvet, after all.”