-Bram Stoker

"I'm sorry, the fuck did you just call me?"

John didn't respond with words, leveling his blade at the man and driving it forward with as much **** as he could muster in the tight quarters. John's blade hit the man's chest but was deflected as a layer of metal flowed out of the collar of his shirt to block the blow.

"You're the one going up against a metallomancer with his own element! I might not be able to deform those Order blades, but I guarantee you can't hurt me with it!"

The man lashed out with his hands and a half-dozen spikes of metal flew from his sleeves, while the flowing metal around his chest moved to continue defending him from any of John's follow-up strikes. John had no such opportunities; it was all he could do to leap backward and deflect one of the metallic spikes away; they were so solid it took all his ****, despite the man's lower level, to prevent the deadliest one from piercing right through his shoulder. One of them embedded itself in his abdomen, and another tore open his leg to release a spray of blood before Gamer's Body could repair it.

-27 HP! [28 Reduced]
-11 HP! [11 Reduced]

"I need to get more defensive techniques… something more mana-efficient than just healing myself of everything," John thought, trying to steady himself against the pain of pulling free the shard of metal that was in his abdomen. He was really grateful for Gamer's Body giving him the ability to do so without worrying about bleeding out on the floor.

"What the- they weren't kidding about your healing powers, huh? Guess I'll just have to deal with you in a way your weird abilities don't activate for."

"Healing? I-" John cut himself off before giving something away. True, to someone who didn't know exactly what his abilities did, the fact that his leg and abdomen immediately healed as soon as the spikes were gone would indeed appear as if he were simply regenerating, and John had no reason to break that illusion.

A long tendril of metal emerged from the man's sleeve, this one remaining connected to the man himself. It formed into a loop as it approached John and, like a lasso, began to raise up to come down on John.

"Not this time. I didn't want to be in a war, and I'm a long way from Moira… but I'm done being helpless."

Fighting away the flashbacks to when he'd been grabbed and pinned by the Cabal Officer, John's mind flickered as his mana bar started to rapidly trickle away. John moved forward and the lasso followed, but as it looped around his neck and closed down, John slipped effortlessly through the metal and continued forward while the liquid steel clamped down on nothing and went limp. John deactivated Shadowform as his mana bar trickled down to just over 30 points remaining.

"You fuckin'-"

The man's expletive died in the air as John started to bring his sword down again and again, but every time he thought he'd found an opening, every time he used one of the few feints and twirls Etriyya had shown him during their brief spars, another plate of magical metal formed and blocked or deflected John's blow. Only twice did he managed to land something - and even then, John suspected it was only due to the significant difference in their levels and likely their Agility scores that he got the scrapes he did before the metal seeped up to halt the blow mid-strike.

23 DMG! [Glancing Blow]
36 DMG! [Glancing Blow]

Meanwhile, the man was preparing several more tendrils of steel to grab John… except John mistook the man's intentions. As one of them lashed forward, John jumped away, but instead of grabbing at him, the metal wrapped around his blade and pinned it, quickly thrashing it into the nearby wall and seeping over until it was held firmly in place. The liquid metal flowed toward John's hand, and in a frenzy he tried to pull the blade free.

With a torturous squeal John half-broke and half-tore the blade, pinned between the crushing **** and the pull of John's boosted Strength stat. John took a half-moment to stare dumbfounded at the broken blade, then started sliding back as best as he could to avoid the follow-up flailing of the now-freed tentacle of steel.

"I can't evade him for much longer, even if I drain Seras' mana, and I can't drain Sophia's since it seems like she uses it for that feather-shooting. I need to see about more runes, something that can boost my mana pool." John filed that away under the dozen other things he had been neglecting for lack of time, along with crafting actual armor and weapons for his creations, and clothing, and… he really needed to be focusing on the fight, but with no idea how to pierce the mage's defenses, his mind was running wild. The only positive was that both Sophia and Seras were still almost full on health, though John wished he could see how they were doing. Since he was maxed out on his level, he couldn't even see EXP notifications from their kills. He needed to end this fast, but his weapon was destroyed and he had no idea what could pass through that metal…

"Fucking Gaia, I'm stupid!

John reached out with his Siphon ability, grateful for Seras and his strong relationship. He drained her mana down until his own was filled again, taking almost her entire bar - but he was going to need every bit of it. The man reached out again with his metal, but John dodged left - right into another of the tendrils the man had snaked along the ground. As John came to a grinding halt, the second one latched on as well, right at his waist.

"Got you now. Easy there, easy, need you alive… just go to sleep."

The metal that had wrapped around his leg started seeping higher, quickly rising toward his neck. Just as it arrived at his chest, John reached out toward the tendril, grasping at it. It resisted his grip, somewhat liquid, but it was solid enough to make contact with and that was his advantage. Still a bit sore over his last capture, John took perhaps a bit more pleasure out of his next action than he should have.

"By the way, I called you a colossal fucking moron, not that I've been much smarter," John shouted just before the mana started to flow through him. In two separate bursts John felt it leave him, separated by less than a second. The entire metal flashed red and white as bolts of lightning arced along its length. John had been worried about a backlash from it but was relieved to find - not for the first time - that magical lightning had a bit more directionality to it than he'd suspected. That, or he was immune to his own direct magical abilities. The Cabal metallomancer was not so fortunate; his entire body jolted and one of his arms - the one the metal strand John had grasped was connected to - ruptured at the skin from the intense heat and pressure.

72 DMG!
67 DMG!

The last of the metallomancer's health crumbled away and all of his creations with him; the steel spasmed and fell to the ground in shards, its consistency and fluidity crumbling away as it simultaneously hardened and shattered. Thankfully the door was included in that, finally revealing to John the way for him to return to the main fight - John took only enough time to grab the shattered remnants of his blade before he made for the doorway, idly swiping the various windows he'd gathered away.

As John stepped to the doorway, a thought occurred to him. Stepping low to the ground, John touched his hands to the fine metal shards - so small they were almost like particularly solid and jagged grains of sand. John willed them away into his inventory, and the entire pile of them vanished at once, clearing the doorway for him and adding a stack of 387 Iron Shards to his inventory.

"Seras, Sophia, I'm coming back in, I'm-"

John stood back up and stepped through the doorway to seek cover, but as he cried out for his creations, he saw something truly remarkable, something bordering on insanity. Moira had rejoined them, freed of whatever Barrier had been cast to isolate her and trap her away from John and her allies, and stood in the center of the room with her shield raised. She was back-to-back with Sophia; the two were facing off against two Cabal at melee range; a slew of **** and dead Cabal surrounded them as they fought viciously. In the back, perched on a toppled desk, Seras fired round after round at various enemies too cowardly to approach, only moving enough to dodge spells as best as she could before returning fire. There were shockingly few left.

While John didn't have quite an accurate count as to how many were standing after he slaughtered several on his path through the room, John counted just five now, all while John had been busy dealing with the metallomancer. Lacking mana and a weapon, and slightly awed at the situation, John did little but watch as the remaining four were felled under a hail of blows. The final soldier collapsed under a punishing blow from Moira's hammer, his entire body collapsing limply.

"Well fought, John Newman!" Moira panted as she lifted her freshly bloodied weapon. "Well fought, all of you! You have come a long way from being an observer, and your creations are magnificent warriors. You do the Order proud."

"I do my Father proud, and I pray that I always will."

Moira's smile faltered a bit at the title, but she noticeably **** it back up. "Well, our plan to catch them off-guard seems to have worked, although they were clever enough to attempt to trap me in a Barrier using this office space as a maze of sorts… I hadn't expected one of them to be talented enough with Barriers to rearrange this space so effectively. Navigating that infernal Barrier took far longer than I expected, but you all handled yourselves well. Let us rejoin the others - we will rally the Knights on this level and ensure it is clear before we travel to the second floor and join with those I entrusted to follow Kim."

"'Ang on," Seras interrupted, stepping forward and pointing at John with concern, "you can't see it but 'e's 'angin' on by a thread 'ere!"

"My Father charged bravely to my defense and was punished for his fearless honor. If he requires a rest or to restore his strength, I will watch over him, or if he wishes, I will take his place on the front lines to make amends for my weakness."

"Wait, nobody is taking my place, but… Moira, they're right. I'm… not in the best shape here," John grimaced, for the first time wishing that Gamer's Body didn't heal all of his wounds so that he might be able to show more of what he'd been through. "I took a lot of hits back there, but more than that, I lost my weapon. There was a metallomancer and he pinned my weapon; I broke it trying to get it free."

"You broke it?" Moira didn't seem quite as shocked as John thought she would, but she did eye him a bit differently than she had before. "Curses! I should have taken the opportunity to spar with you, John Newman. I knew you were getting strong, but I didn't realize you had outgrown that blade so quickly. It normally takes members of our Order several months to outgrow their blades…"

"I didn't even realize I could outgrow it," John grumbled. "Seriously, this thing is steel, isn't it?"

"You're a mage, John, whether you've realized the full implications yet or not," Moira instructed, sounding less harsh than usual, "and that means you're not entirely mortal anymore. When we touch magic, it flows through us, and over time it builds. That is how we can move faster, strike harder, and take greater hits than any normal human. For now, you're merely exceptionally fit, with greater strength than most. After all the battles your blade has seen, it's possible it was already partially damaged, so it's not unthinkable… this was an oversight on my part, I apologize. You cannot be expected to understand the finer points of metallurgy or how your growing strength might affect it. Have you ever noticed that the Order does not utilize firearms, unlike your undead creation?"

"Seras."

"Yes, Seras," Moira said with a sigh. "It is possible to enchant a blade to be both resilient and offensive, and it is possible to enchant a firearm to bestow magic upon projectiles fired forth from the weapon, but the difference is that those are still simple projectiles. Whether they destroy mana, penetrate magical barriers, explode, freeze, or corrode whatever they hit… at the end of the day, they are simple metals and so eventually lose all value."

"Wait… are you telling me that just by using magic, I can become bulletproof?" John was taken aback. He had of course noticed a bit of increase in his speed and strength, and the sword breaking was confirmation of that… but literally bulletproof? That was something entirely different.

"Do not forget that we are against the magical equivalent of street thugs. Though they go by the name of an organization that was once feared globally, they are but a namesake that lives up to none of the original's threat or reach. I have told you many time that our Order is not what it once was… the mages you have yet to meet are of a much higher caliber. You already know of one of them."

"Himiko," John agreed, nodding direly.

"Yes… and though she may be one of the Six Deities, there are mages nearly as powerful as her, some arguably more so. Most could care less about the actions of a rogue mage or even the Order, far as it has fallen, so long as your abilities do not garner too much attention. All the same, you will find that improving your equipment is a necessity in the Abyss. Wait too long and you'll end up holding nothing more than a hilt… if that. Until then…"

Moira stepped forward, uncomfortably close to John. He tensed for a brief moment, both Sophia and Seras mirroring the motion, but all Moira did was pull his head to hers.

"The Lady watches over you, steals your pain, and blesses you for your service."

+110 HP!

With a simple kiss to his forehead, John felt his strength returning in a burst, and although his mana was still depleted, he was no longer stepping around with the feeling that a single surprise attack would send him into the Dying state. When Moira pulled back, her face was just a tad flushed, though it didn't seem to be from any signs of exhaustion. If anything, Moira seemed even more invigorated.

"Until we reunite with the others and find you a proper weapon, carry this."

Moira reached out and held aloft her massive weapon, the hammer practically weighing John down just by offered to him. He glanced uncertainly between it and its wielder until Moira confirmed the offer with a nod, at which point he hesitantly began to lift it from her palm. It was surprisingly lighter than it looked… but it would have been nearly impossible for it to be much heavier. John was just barely able to hold it at all with one hand, and even using both he was just able to swing it with some form of speed. A few test swings confirmed that there would be no finesse or sudden feints with this weapon.

"I am the Shield Warden. No harm shall come to you as long as I have your back - and this time, I shall drag you and your creations into the Barrier with me if necessary! But I doubt they have such a skilled Barrier manipulator hiding in the reserves. Let us go together, John Newman!"

"Right. As a party," John added, extending an invitation to Moira before it slipped his mind again. She nodded, reaching out to press the "Accept" button without hesitation.

"Finally…" John thought, eyes gleaming at the possibilities. The sight of Moira fighting alongside Sophia had been encouragement enough, and he had once again learned a great deal about fighting in the Abyss. For once, he didn't feel overwhelmed by it, or incapable. Together, alongside the rest of the Order, John was sure they could handle anything.

"Wait, what about us? Ain't we worth somethin' more than a quick nod?" Seras grumbled but raised up her rifle all the same.

"Father seems to be having a moment of his own here, perhaps we should simply follow along," Sophia whispered, although far too loudly for the others not to hear.

"Okay… gonna have to level up the teamwork like everything else around here, I guess."