Lassus Animus - Part 2

There was a shift in attitude with Julianna's joining that, under normal circumstances, might have disrupted the rhythm and slowed them down. Things became more guarded, more cautious, whether in terms of banter or the pace at which they fought. It was difficult to fully be themselves and let loose while that tension had the group constantly on guard, half expecting a fight from within their own ranks, and the same could certainly be said of Julianna.

Fortunately, as it turned out, bashing her way through guards of all varieties was Julianna's specialty.

Raw strength atoned for tentative steps, and the blade that was equal in size to the mighty warrior herself moved with speed and dexterity that defied its intimidating size. Where an enemy rose, an enemy fell. Kim was the most skilled of the group, and Moira might well still be the most forceful, but if Julianna came in as a close second in each category, seeing them combined so flawlessly was something else entirely. John did have a rare occasion that reminded him of just how absurdly strong he'd actually grown, like watching the others after a Reincarnation, or falling off the cliff outside Paix

But there was a raw, gritty awesomeness to seeing Julianna swing a sword as big as she was around as easily as if it were a mere cosplay prop... especially while maintaining the destructive **** of a high-yield bomb behind every swing. Even the environment they were in now—a forest with trees as thick as a redwood—didn't seem to affect her style or necessitate any change in her stance. Any time a creature of the forest appeared from the thick undergrowth within striking distance, a cleave from Julianna or a precision slice from Kim would not only carve through their foe, but every tree in the vicinity, severing towering trees as easily as a single strand of thread.

"You know, I'd worried things were gonna get awkward," Etriyya admitted, not bothering to hide the admiration in her tone. "But it's hard to feel tense about the company when we're so busy trying to catch up!"

"She's a bit reckless, but she's definitely effective, can't deny that," John agreed. The two of them had, in fact, spent most of the last three dungeons doing their best not to fall too far behind—or get crushed by the thick trees the others were felling ahead of them.

With Kim and Julianna joined at the front, there were few enemies that remained standing long enough to slow them down, and Moira was easily able to handle the few that slipped by. Etriyya and John only had to put on a burst of speed or eat into their mana reserves on occasion to slay the few smart enough to stay out of the range of shimmering steel.

"You haven't seen anything yet," Etriyya responded between heaving breaths, composing herself long enough to throw John a cocky grin. "You didn't get to see much of her during the war, did you?"

"I saw her cut one of the Cabal mages in half with one swing at the start of it," John recalled. The memory was distant now, after so many other horrors, but he could still remember the impressive, albeit gruesome aftermath of the swing. "But we separated not long after that."

"Just let her take a few more hits. You're gonna love what happens when she gets all banged up," Etriyya promised. John's curiosity was piqued, but he could tell it wasn't worth asking for elaboration. The playful grin on her face told him he wasn't getting much more out of her.

In spite of overpowering their foes with ease, Julianna's health was dropping. The woman fought with a vigor and relentlessness that was downright frightening, but she showed little care for the blows that fell on her. Strangely, though her armor never seemed to suffer any damage from the strikes or show signs of being penetrated, some of the damage always seemed to carry through to her.

Etriyya's promise was manifested at the tail end of the dungeon, when they came across a grove with six treefolk surrounding a ritual circle. The trees around the perimeter of the sacred space were glistening, with glowing green vines stretched between them.

The attempt from Kim to cut open a path was less effective than hoped; by the time the Slayer swung herself through the gap she'd cut, the vines were already regenerating themselves, and a cluster of tendrils reached for the intruding mage.

"Kim, leap, now! The Lady binds us to our homes!"

A shout of exertion accompanied the swing of Moira's arm as she dug the bottom of her shield into the ground, then ripped it back upward. Golden light fanned out like anvil crawler lightning, great fissures of gold that covered not just the grove, but much of the land surrounding it. Kim hastily jumped skyward, easily clearing the thirty-foot mark as the ground below her burst and then crumbled back down.

The holy magic erupted just as it encompassed the whole of the sacred circle, and stable forest floor gave way to a heaping mess of tossed dirt. The **** of it was so great that most of the trees were uprooted entirely and left to topple over, tearing or snagging the vines as they went. Whatever magics had been at play in the grove, they were fully disrupted now, with the ritual circle and the guardian trees both equally rent asunder.

Even in mid-air, Kim's reflexes were unbeatable. She angled herself toward a falling tree, planted her feet on a branch thick enough to support the **** of it, and launched herself at the nearest foe below. Julianna was charging forward by then as well, with Moira not far behind.

The treefolk had turned their attention from the ritual to combat, but most were barely back on their feet by the time the first blows fell, with one of them half-buried in the rubble. Their spells were wild and frantic, a token effort to accomplish something against the superior ****. John leaned left and dodged the **** lash of a vine meant to catch the distant members of their party off guard, Etriyya raised her shield to defend him from another, and then it was over. By the time she lowered her shield, the six bark-skinned barrier monsters were little more than kindling, only a few scrapes and scratches born by the party as the mark of their passing.

"Right, so if I'm right and she's ready now, this is gonna be good," Etriyya said out of the side of her mouth, speaking almost conspiratorially as the ground began to shake. "Not like I could actually see her health bar in the last war, but she looks like she's a bit knackered."

"And that's a good thing?" John remarked, eyes on their statuses. Most of them were doing quite well, with only the barest of wounds, but Julianna was barely sitting over half health.

"The best. Get ready, and don't let your silly little notifications make you miss the show!"

John was about to point out that he usually didn't get anything but battle notifications until the dungeon was finished, but the complaint was petty, and only made to seem more so with what came next. The place where the ritual circle had stood shifted, and a massive creature of mossy stone began to rise from the ground, stretching out first one arm, then another, followed by a craggy head composed of at least a dozen medium-sized boulders.

Kim and Moira quickly engaged with the arms that had arisen, but Julianna did not waste her time with the creature's limbs. Her eyes were locked on the emerging head, and although he was too far away to hear the words, John caught the echo of an incantation as she started to stride forward.

The woman's sleek and form-fitting armor began to radiate a crimson aura, beginning with the enormous, dark purple gemstone at the center of her torso. Red light had been gathering in the crystal upon her chest since she joined in their training, seeming to slosh around within the finery as if blood were pooling inside of the gargantuan amethyst. That light now started to flow outward from the gemstone, pouring through channels in the armor that seemed to appear as the energy traveled. Where the light passed, Julianna's muscles bulged, visibly pushing out the latex-like metal adorning her, shifting its shape as her already impressive figure became something Herculean.

Julianna clasped both hands firmly on the grip of her oversized blade, drawing it overhead as she leapt from the ground. She went into a spin, whirling through the air at such a speed that it seemed impossible for her to control the momentum, and yet her weapon found its mark, the very center of its nearly two-meter long edge crashing into the emerging mini-boss' forehead.

Party Member: 4,987 DMG!

A crimson flash erupted at the moment of impact, nearly bright enough to make John turn away. Red magic flooded outward from Julianna, through the golem, and into the ground itself, shattering the already upturned scenery further and carrying the damage through to the rest of the creature's buried body. A shock wave of mana, sound, and displaced air exploded outward from the contact, rattling the fallen trees and causing those that had piled up to violently dislodge from one another. The section of the golem's head that Julianna had struck crumbled into pebbles and dust, with the other stones composing the creature's cranium shattering into larger fragments.

The mini-boss didn't even have time to let out a cry of agony. Moira and Kim had done a fair amount of damage to the golem's extremities in the seconds they'd had, but the creature was extinguished so quickly that John failed to even view the golem's health pool to see if their efforts had mattered in the end. The two of them were **** to abandon their **** regardless, as the already-upturned ground beneath them was eroded yet further. Kim deftly leaped into the limbs of a fallen tree, while Moira cast a golden sigil that worked to hold together the bits of dirt and rubble at her feet.

The massive mini-boss' efforts to rise from the ground came to an end as soon as the strike landed, its body rapidly beginning to crumble and fail. Just as the rock and dirt was beginning to settle, all of it vanished in a brief ripple of space and time, the barrier fading away as its completion was recognized. The distance separating John and Etriyya from the others shrank and warped as reality distorted, until it was small enough to confine them all to opposite ends of the manor's designated training room for the day.

Mini-Boss defeated, Dungeon complete [Level 34]!
+4,250 EXP [+50 EXP from Perks]
+$17,000 ($8,500 + 100% from Perks)
+23 Thistlewick Stems
+19 Root of Eldervix
+2 Enchanted Ironwood

John has Leveled Up!
John has reached Level 31!
+7 to all stats

John swiped away the notifications without paying them much mind. His eyes were locked on the status bars, where Julianna had just managed to recover almost half the health she was missing—a full quarter of her maximum restored in a single strike.

"Lifesteal? No, can't just be that," John thought as he watched Julianna lift her blade and recover her footing. The gem had ceased its glow now, and the red light was fading quickly from the arcane trenches it had flooded into. "She's not high level enough to deal that much damage with just one swing, even if her sword had enchantments as absurd as its size. Plus the ability looked like it came from her armor, and that gemstone. Must be some kind of berserker enchantment, right? Maybe it passively leeches mana off things that damage her. That's probably why she doesn't care about getting hit. Fuck, that is pretty awesome."

"Told you," Etriyya said pridefully, as if she'd just dealt the blow herself. Pure smugness plastered itself over her features as she watched John's reaction. "She certainly knows how to make an impression, doesn't she?"

"High risk, high reward," John replied, tilting his head back and forth as they headed for the center of the room to reunite.

"Gotta take risks if you wanna have any chance of succeeding at the kind of crazy shit we're shooting for," Etriyya responded without any hesitation.

John only offered a neutral grunt as a response while he mulled over the implications of the ability, wondering if spending the time to learn something like that would be worthwhile. Moira's healing was great, and his own party had a few ways of draining health from enemies, but regenerating from pure offense without spending mana would be quite the asset. He could do without encouraging anyone to intentionally take more damage, though...

"Are you going to assist us with these creatures, or are you simply going to stand there gawking and looking impressed?"

John was getting better about not fully drifting off, but the hostility of Julianna's words startled him as much as their volume. The white-haired warrior had walked over to the edge of the room, where the Order's healers were on standby, and had barely taken the time to seat herself before a glare and all the venom she could muster were focused in John's direction. He resisted the reflex to respond defensively, meeting her judgmental gaze unflinchingly for a moment while he weighed his options.

"I wasn't aware you needed assistance. It seems as though you had everything under control," John replied after a moment, giving his best skeptical look. "Were you worried? We haven't even gotten to the high-level enemies just yet. Those are for the rest of the week."

"I will not be toyed with, nor spoken down to, especially as a deflection from your own meager presence here." Julianna's words were a commandment, a proclamation that carried weight beyond threats and bravado. "You have done nothing in three dungeons save chase our shadows. You and that knight behind you."

"My dungeons can be dangerous at times, and the enemies don't always come from where you expect, as you've seen." John gave a shrug, his voice cool. "If I rushed ahead with the rest of you, she'd be on her own. It's not worth the risk when you three are clearly able to handle the enemies without my help."

"Then leave her behind. Here, in the manor," Julianna said plainly. Etriyya tensed at the callous words, so much that the rattle of her armor shifting filled the silence left by the harsh declaration. "You claim value in a group of five, but it is moot if that leaves three to handle the work. And for your claims of protection, she has guarded you as often as you her. Your speed and strength have improved since last we met, but not so much as it should have, with a year of this 'enhanced' training of yours."

"If you have something to say, just come out and say it," John growled. The healers that were attending to Julianna had finished their work, restoring what health Julianna had not regained on her own. The proud woman stood the moment their spells ceased, striding over to John and standing so close that their noses might have touched, if there wasn't almost a full foot difference in their heights.

"Your movements are staggered, and you catch yourself stumbling on every other charge. You fumble your grip, your strikes twist and waste their ****. You are the source of all this power, and the cause of a great shift in the Abyss as it was known to us. That you have yet to display a single noteworthy feat and seem content to trail in the back leaves me questioning your true strength, your skill, the claims of your allies, your own motives, and more. Explain yourself."

John had a hard time deciding whether it was the accusations and implications that bothered him more, or her attitude. The way she spoke reminded John of how Moira addressed the knights of the Order. The fact that not one person in the room was subordinate to her did not seem to dampen that tone in the slightest.

"I may be training eight hours a day with this group, but for the past few days, and the next several as well, I'm spending the other sixteen training. Sometimes on my own, sometimes with the help of others. I'm not going to burn myself out for enemies like these; I'm saving my energy for when they're strong enough to require it."

"So you'd not only use us to further your own ends, but make us handle the full effort of it?" Julianna scoffed.

"I need to prepare for this war as effectively as I can; that means maximizing my efficiency in these matters, whether it personally benefits you or not. Kim and Moira both know this," John said, not letting his gaze wander from Julianna to the others. "They also know that doing this is still faster than any training they could do without me. If you have a problem with it, you're free to go back to your legions and join them in the weight room. Otherwise, you're wasting more time complaining than I would save us by wasting my energy and going all-out."

The silence lengthened well past the point of being uncomfortable. Julianna's gaze narrowed, but just as John was starting to worry that Moira had overestimated just how much 'tact' Julianna had, she scoffed and turned away from him, stepping casually to rejoin the others.

"If you'd handle your blade with as much restraint as your tongue, I wouldn't need to complain to see some fire out of you," Julianna fired at him once they were gathered again. "Well, let's get on with it, then."

The group dwelled in a lingering silence after the brief confrontation. John could clearly see a few choice comments dancing in their eyes, but with no easy way to speak alone and no desire to spark a new fire within the group, even Kim and Moira held their tongues. Training came first; addressing the issue of Julianna could be postponed for as long as she continued to aid them in that regard. Etriyya made a few snide comments here and there, but John did not allow himself to fall so far behind the others that they could speak freely, nor did he linger long enough at Etriyya's side for her to make her real thoughts on the matter known.

No part of John's explanation had been untrue. He'd left out the matter of his Reincarnation leaving Kim and Moira fairly far ahead, but the rest wasn't just made up on the spot. With his stats lowered, every spell was a little costlier, a little less effective, and trying to match their contributions with just his blade would have put him in danger for no good reason.

That didn’t quite salve the slight wound to his pride, though. Nor did it make it any less annoying to get accused of being either lazy or weak. John’s history with the bullies of his high school and Academy days made him a little overly sensitive in that regard, he was aware. He could have still ignored it, but he didn’t want to egg on a second confrontation, or for Julianna to decide she was better off leaving them and making her own war preparations.

So for the remainder of the afternoon, John pushed himself a little harder, took a few more risks than he probably needed to. He never let Julianna get too far ahead of him, or to claim too many of the kills for herself.

"I don't care what she thinks based on what little she knows," he tried to convince himself more than once. "But if she thinks she's being used like a tool, she's less likely to come back. And we're going to need that strength of hers when we're approaching the new dungeon levels I can access. Lerianna already got into trouble, even with a full group. This should be enough to keep her attitude in check, at least..."

Whether it was due to his efforts or not, he couldn't say, but Julianna did refrain from further criticism. She refrained from talking in general, actually, which was fine with John after how their first real conversation in a year had gone.

The dungeons passed by in a blur, a rhythmic cycle of combat, watching Julianna's health bar plummet faster than the rest, only to come roaring back when she saw fit to unleash herself. Despite the friction of the confrontation still lingering in the air, the group was as efficient as ever. If anything, John putting more effort in sped them up a fair bit, especially as his levels continued to rack up with each mini-boss defeated. Aside from Julianna, none of them were even losing excessive health; for once, the others reached the limits of their stamina before the limits placed on their safety.

When they announced that the day's training had come to an end, Julianna wasted no time in breaking her silence.

"You're almost worth keeping around," Julianna noted, no trace of amusement or playfulness in her tone. "Still not going to last long on the battlefield like that, but at least you're not dead weight anymore."

"So glad to hear that you approve," John drolled.

"We did not invite you to join us at our home today for you to bring insults and criticism to our allies," Moira warned through clenched teeth.

"You invited me to bring blood and steel. I trusted that would be something that all would provide; clearly, I was mistaken."

"This is a rare and unique opportunity to grow your own strength," Kim said, her voice calm, but filled with the same threat carried by the sound of a blade being unsheathed. "If you are ungrateful for that chance, you can be replaced."

"With another layabout for you to drag into mediocrity?" Julianna questioned. She paused, as if waiting for an actual answer, but seemed to think better of it after a moment. Instead, she merely shook her head as she broke for the door, her long legs carrying her to the edge of the room with haste. "Lady Brighton, contact me once you've rested. We can coordinate our strategy for the war, and you can tell me if I'm barred from the rest of these. Otherwise, I'll be back tomorrow."

There was no room for them to get in a response; Julianna already had to pause at the door to get all that she'd said out. Then she was gone, forcefully closing the door behind her.

"Big fan of hers, you said?" John asked after a moment of silence lay across the room, giving Kim a sideways glance.

"I appreciate her attitude towards training," Kim snarled back. "But I do not appreciate being spoken to in such a manner!"

"Well, we couldn't very well explain the truth of it all to her. Not without exposing the fact that I have to intentionally make myself weaker on a pretty regular basis," John said. He broke his eyes away from Kim's with a shrug, having no desire to poke the bear any further. "At least that part I could understand. I'm more annoyed at how she talked about my fighting style and swordplay. My Reincarnations don't make me more uncoordinated!"

"Were you not doing that intentionally?"

"Huh?" John turned back around to find that the heat had faded from Kim's expression, replaced by a wary curiosity. "Doing what?"

"Your work with a blade has never been the cleanest," Kim began cautiously, eyeing the Fang of the New World still clenched in John's hand, "and I doubt a barbarian such as Julianna notices the more subtle details, but your strikes were rather haphazard today."

"I don't get it, they were doing the same damage. I think?" John realized that he had mostly been ignoring the numbers displayed with each hit throughout the day, especially after Julianna had confronted him about not participating enough. "You didn't tell me I was getting sloppy yesterday. Why didn't you warn me? We could have practiced with the spare time we had."

"You weren't sloppy yesterday. That is why I assumed it was intentional." Kim didn't elaborate on what ruse she thought John might have been trying to pull by pretending. She started to circle around John, her eyes taking on a sharpness he usually saw directed at their enemies. "Perhaps we should take the time to refresh your memory, if my lessons are beginning to slip from your mind."

"No time." John was already going to be late, by the time he warped back and gathered the others. "We can practice on the way to the war, if need be. I can practice my sword strikes without tiring myself out, but I need to get these levels in now, especially if I'm going to make Julianna think today really was about preserving energy."

"Perhaps you should-"

"I'll see you both tomorrow. Get some rest!" John called out as he vanished.

Kim and Moira stared at the spot he'd been moments earlier, then gave each other matching looks of annoyance.