Turning the tables

With John

As they were splitting up, Kim thankfully told John where their enemy had been beforehand. He probably wasn’t there anymore, but it was at least a place he could start to look at. Heading through the destruction Kaen had left behind, and popping in one of his mana potions, it didn’t take him long to hear some kind of grunting coming from one of the hallways intersecting the path of devastation.

Auditory Atmosphere Supplement Activated. Now Playing: The Witcher 3 - Hunt or be Hunted

Finding the source of the noise, John almost vomited any remainders he had of his last meal. Standing there was a dark skinned man with protrusions from his back. The vomit inducing thing was that his head looked like it had been smashed into a wall multiple times, not even resembling a face anymore. Pieces of fractured skull were sticking out in various places, the jaw was hanging from muscle strands, and an eye was hanging outside of its socket. This looked very much like a zombie.

Well, that certainly didn’t look too intimidating. Going by the Ability Levels, this thing was worse than James, and that guy was just tedious to fight because he had his annoying magic blood armor. From what Kim told him, this guy just resurrected himself over and over again…

Even without a head, the monk moved swiftly and tried to punch John in the face. Unfortunately for the monk, once John had seen him, he had dropped a Mana Spike and a Trapper’s Kit trap.

With his one working eye, the zombie monk locked on to John, brought his fist back, and immediately landed in a shallow pit with a mana construct sticking in his side.

33 DMG (Mana Spike)

Enemy is trapped for 2 Seconds!

That time would be enough! Charging into the opponent, John thrusted his spear forward, piercing the chest of the monk.

Charge Applied! 1.75x Damage!
Vital Area Struck! 2x Damage!
Total Physical Multiplier: x3.5
90 DMG + 15 DMG (Light) + 5 DMG (Fire)

While he was this close to his enemy, he also summoned two Mana Daggers and rammed them into the chest of the dark skinned zombie.

Vital Area Struck! 2x Damage!
Total Physical Multiplier: x2
100 DMG + 100 DMG + 5 DMG (Fire) + 5 DMG (Fire)

Mana Dagger, Lv. 7: Each Mana Dagger now deals 53 Damage. Aim penalty for multiple Daggers reduced.

Wow, he had seriously underestimated the power of his daggers in close combat! John had left himself wide open with that last attack, and the fist that was traveling towards his sternum was proof of that. Thankfully, the fist dropped quickly as the monk limply fell down on to the ground.

One kill down!

One of the two skulls floating behind his enemy quickly flew into the corpse, and once it was completely gone, the monk ‘awoke’ with a sudden spasm and continued his strike towards John’s chest. Being surprised by the sudden continuation of the attack, he didn’t have time to dodge it, getting him hit directly in the sternum and thrown back a step.

-12 HP
New status: Dazed. Your reaction time and movement speed are reduced by 25% until the status ends.

That hit had knocked the air out of John’s lungs, forcing him to wheeze heavily, trying to regain his breath. Through sheer luck he was able to dodge the next strike of the monk, immediately Countering with a swipe of his spear from the left side.

Counter Successfull! Bonus Damage added!
30 DMG + 15 DMG (Light) + 5 DMG (Fire) + 15 DMG (Counter)

Trying to create more space between himself and his opponent, John kicked the monk in the chest and simultaneously used Flash Step to push away from the guy.

8 DMG (Unarmed) + 3 DMG (Lightning) + 5 DMG (Fire)

On his way flying back, he immediately threw another pair of Mana Daggers at the enemy, who dodged one.

53 DMG

Seeing as how his attacks were more effective when he was on the offensive with his quick moves, John abruptly stopped his backwards movement and flung himself back towards the enemy with a Propelling Flash Step into a Mana Charged Charge. The monk tried to dodge the attack by side stepping it, but John redirected his momentum at the last second once again, driving his spear into the heart of the monk.

Vital Area Struck! 2x Damage!
Charge Applied! 1.75x Damage!
Critical Strike! 2x Damage!
Total Physical Multiplier: x7

231 DMG + 15 DMG (Light) + 5 DMG (Fire) + 185 DMG (Mana Charge)

Gloves of Vampire Hunter restores 3 HP.

Mana Charge, Lv.6
Charge, Lv.4: Charge now deals x2 damage.

And once again, the monk dropped down like a wet sack of potatoes. The last remaining skull was now entering into his body.

‘He’s probably not going to stand up after that one. I’ll finish this in a single blow.’

Before the undead even was up on his feet, John had already created distance between them again. While he was still rising, John repeated the same Charge move from before, this time adding a Vault to it as well to hammer down on the sucker with all his might. With his insane speed thanks to *Propelling Flash Step**, John was on his opponent before he could even take his first step. Piercing through the skull, this was surely about to be a deathblow.

Vital Area Struck! 2x Damage!
Charge + Vault Applied! 2.5x Damage! Bonus Damage Added!
Total Physical Multiplier: x5

173 DMG + 15 DMG (Light) + 5 DMG (Fire) + 207 DMG (Mana Charge) + 23 DMG (Vault)

Yes! One hit kill! Get rekt!

Hopefully this annoying bastard would stay down now…

Apparently, the monk had one last trick up his sleeve though. The charms on his belt and the markings on his body were starting to light up, changing their color from a dark red to a vile green. Dreading the worst, John tried to get as much distance between himself and the pulsing corpse as possible, but the wrappings on the monk’s arm suddenly wound themselves around John’s body, trapping him in place with an iron grip.

’What the shit?!’

Starting to panic a bit, he tried to slice at the wrappings with his spear to no effect, it was as if these wrappings were just ignoring any damage. Throwing magic attacks at them didn’t work either; the only thing it did was change the color of the markings a bit quicker…

’FUCK! He’s draining my mana!’

And indeed, he could see in his sheet that his mana was quickly going down… He should better use it before it was gone!

Instinctually he used Essence Aura twice in the span of three seconds with a specific Essence in mind, trying to both expend his mana and throw something defensive in the way of whatever was going to happen.

Essence Aura Activated! Essence of the Machine Selected! Iron Skin gained for 3 Minutes.

Weapon Aura Activated! Essence of the Machine Selected! Greater Defense gained for the next 5 strikes.

Thankfully, his intuition had not let him down this time, granting him exactly the kind of bonus that he had expected.

The body of the monk began to inflate, cracking with magical power and glowing with the green markings. John tried every trick in his repertoire, leaving the Barrier, pushing himself away, obliterating the body, everything. The only thing he didn’t try was to escape into the Nexus because he didn’t have his key card with him…

Apparently there was no escape from this, and he had to endure the strike… putting his shield between himself and the body close to bursting, he really hoped this would work, because he seemed to have no other option to escape this trap.

And then…

With Brunhilde

With her orders being to find the opponent sailing through the sky, Brun immediately ran towards the closest open area that she could find, which was a central courtyard with a big, dead tree in it.

Looking at the sky, she unleashed her black wings from the rune tattoos on her back and propelled herself into the sky. As soon as she had soared above the roof of the monastery like building, a barrage of arrows was sent her way from somewhere in the clouds.

Easily dodging the arrows with a swift corkscrew, the Valkyrie flew towards the point where the projectiles had originated from.

’If you want to play sniper, you’re gonna have to be quicker than that!’

Diving into the clouds, her vision was immediately reduced to a few meters in front of her, forcing her to rely more on her hearing than her vision. Thankfully, she could hear quite well, especially when there weren’t many sounds in the area, so she could easily identify an arrow being loaded. Using her new, fancy ability, she quickly summoned a spectral throwing axe into her right hand and flung it in the direction of the sound.

A visible shadow moved out of the way of that glowing axe, making it clear where the attacker was. Swiftly adjusting her flight path towards the shadow, she could now see that the shape was all in all probably about as large as her plus her wings. Judging from the form, it could be some kind of bird, but the problem with that was that no bird would, or should, be able to operate some kind of bow.

’Then again, this is one of John’s Barriers, I have no idea what kind of wacky shit I’ll encounter here. The Metal Gear boss was enough to prove that…’

The truth was even weirder though.

Following the assailant, she repeatedly exchanged blows with them in the form of backwards flying arrows and throwing axes soaring through the air. After a moment, they broke out of the thick cloud and were back over the monastery. By now, Brunhilde could see the enemy in front of her clearly, and the sight slightly shocked her. Standing before her was an angelic being with dark wings just like herself and clad in pitch black leather armor. The bow in the hands of that ‘angel’ was smoldering with a thick mist, giving it a dark and ominous vibe. She had a beautiful and sharp face with malice evident in her eyes. Everything about her screamed ‘evil’, and Brun felt uncomfortable just floating in her proximity.

’Fucking hell, why is there so much shit going on at a fucking school?! We should really think whether Astrid should stay here or not… this is clearly fucking dangerous!’

Not wanting to waste any more time, the Valkyrie channeled her mana into her hands, making her weapon appear and spark with electricity. As if to respond to the drawn weapon, the bow in the hands of the evil angel burst into flames with a viscous blaze, igniting the cocked arrow as well.

’Showoff...’

With speed exceeding the capabilities of normal humans, the angel fired a volley of burning arrows towards her target. Brun had been expecting as much though, so she was ready to drop a few feet while pushing herself towards her enemy, bringing her sword up with her in her momentum. The vile angel was able to twist her body out of the way at the last second, grazing the angel’s left wing with the sword. Still being able to fly though, she created space between her and the valkyrie before flying off into the clouds again.

Pissed off by that, Brun just screamed behind her, “Get back here, you cowardly bitch!” before following her opponent. It was obvious that Brun was above her opponent and that she just tried to escape her fate. The angel didn’t even fight back or shoot any more arrows towards Brun. This was, quite literally, a flight instinct for survival. But that didn’t help when your opponent, in this case a Valkyrie, was both faster and stronger than you, so it took no time for Brunhilde to catch up with the enemy again and pelter her with throwing axes and sword attacks.

After a vicious cleave cutting off parts of her wing, the dark angel started to slowly fall down. Breaking through the clouds, they were flying towards the monastery again, much to Brun’s confusion.

’Is this some kind of arcade bullshit where you enter a map again when you leave it from the other side? Seriously, how does he do that?’

Ending it, Brun summoned another throwing axe and swung it towards the head of the angel. She didn’t dodge, or rather she couldn’t, and was immediately killed by the axe in the back of her head. Plummeting into the clouds surrounding the mountain top, the angel was never seen again.

’What an annoying piece of trash. Why was she even here?’

As the Valkyrie made her way back to the monastery, her heart slightly dropped when she saw a green explosion take out part of the outer wall. Seeing as how she was done with her opponent and had dropped her in a ditch (and with her sadly any loot that she might’ve gotten), she flew straight to that hole, trying to see what was going on there.

Inside she saw John, bruises and burn marks all over his body slowly closing, restoring him to pretty pristine form. The look on his face told her that he wasn’t quite as healthy though. “That hurt a lot more than I expected.” And then he collapsed onto his butt, still keeping his eyes open.

“By Odin’s crusty eye socket, what the fuck happened to you? What bomb did you survive there? And how did you survive that?!?” Brun was astounded by the resilience of the Gamer, as he was obviously pretty close to the center of that explosion.

Sighing, John pulled something from his pocketspace, a clear, yellow drink in a round flask. She remembered that he had drank one of those when they were watching Astrid’s training: it was a Mana Potion. After he downed the whole thing in a single gulp, he answered her questions, well, most of them, “Do you know how many fucking potions I ran through today alone? I made six of these when we were in the Nexus, and now I’m already down to two... I need to fucking mass produce these… Anyway, yeah, I had to deal with some kind of shitty angry monk necromancer that kept rezzing himself, that was infuriating enough, but to top it all off, when he finally died for good he had some kind of ‘failsafe’ to take his opponent down with him... And it would’ve worked if I didn’t buff all the defensive stuff that I could… I’m at 20 HP, I could’ve died there…” While he was talking, he seemed to also be busy doing something with the interface Brun by now knew that he had. Once he was done talking, he pulled out another potion, this time red, the stereotypical red of a health potion.

The look on his face as he violently spat out the potion was hilarious, and Brun could barely dodge the rain of spittle and mixture. “What the shit man? You’re supposed to drink potions, not ‘Green Mist’ me with it.”

John looked at her with an annoyed look on his face. “A) The fuck is green mist? B) My body pretty much went autopilot there… seems like my body was still busy with the mind potion, so it rejected the health one… great, so I have a cooldown on my consumables… what a lovely thing.”

Shrugging, Brun looked at him, “Hey, could be worse. I’m pretty sure most people would die trying to slosh down the amount of potions you drink there. These things are pure magic, and your body can only deal with so much. So be grateful that your body keeps you from more harm, Newbman!”

Growing a bit paler, John obviously tried not to think about that too long. “Anyway, we’re not done here. There’s still the berserker that Kim, Kaen and Aloy have to deal with, so we should back them up.”

Nodding, John shakily rose from the ground, still feeling under the effects of his low health. “You’re right, no time to rest now!”

Supporting him by putting one arm under his, the two of them made their way as quickly as they could towards the spot where they had last seen the group.

[Helloo~ Razorswift here with another quick note for all the people not on the Discord (or who didn't see my message): I have set up a sort-of tip jar for if you want to financially support the tosh I'm writing here. I don't expect anyone to donate, but it'll be greatly appreciated, especially because it's a single payment, except when you maybe donate more than once xD Anyway, here's the Link and I hope to see you in the next chapter (which should hopefully not take as long as this one)]