Never Again

John took a longer walk than usual to distance himself from the house and laboratory before he began his training, a walk that gave him enough time to prepare. That meant first equipping his combat gear, then combing over his menus to figure out what kind of dungeon he should be opening up. Through their rigorous training since his last Reincarnation, John had already cleared most levels of dungeons at least once, including all the ones he could reliably solo without too much time or danger, so it wasn't about the experience bonuses.

Rather, he didn't know precisely what kind of creature he should face. He certainly didn't want to Purify an undead, and he'd seen more than enough of those lately regardless. John actually didn't mind the process of picking out what types of enemies to face. The relationship between what he Purified and what the resulting creature was seemed largely tenuous, and no one he had ever created thus far had ever shown any signs they thought they should be in another body. But despite the rather low stakes in this part of the process, having so many options always slowed him down, and by the time John had started to really narrow down his selection, he was almost out of sight of the house altogether.

"I haven't chosen what to Purify something from since I made Yvara, and that was under duress and a bit of a time constraint. Really, it's been since Orria and Shishun..."

John idly tapped and scrolled through his selection menus for the different enemy categories for about five minutes before his eyes drifted and he found himself staring hard at the "Random" button.

"Fuck it, I'm going to be trying to control their appearance in some aspects, I might as well let them- oh, wait, no. That doesn't work at all," John thought, flinching away from the button as if shocked. "What if they would've been some kind of creature without hair, or eyes, or a nose, and me trying to control that part makes things into a jumbled mess? What if it would've been the first time I created a proper animal, and it comes out with human eyes and hair? Oh, hell, absolutely not. Nope, let's just pick something humanoid."

John made a few lightning-fast taps and landed on "elven cultists", something he'd seen a few times but never selected before. It always felt odd to be fighting more human-like enemies back when he first gained his powers. Even the Dark Iron Dwarves he'd battled with Kim's help so long ago were a bit uncomfortable. A part of him wished he still felt that much discomfort about it - wished that he wasn't so used to killing humans and human-like creatures by now.

"Orria might appreciate having some company in the grove. And I'm pretty sure by the way Orria talks about elves that they'll have some kind of symbiotic relationship. The cultist part makes me a bit nervous, but there's no chance I make another devotee like Yvara... probably."

Though he failed at convincing himself of the last part, John pressed the button all the same, locking himself in to a level 50 Barrier. In just a few moments, the peaceful fields and hills around his home were replaced by a rocky cliffside, broken only by an occasional flat platform as a rugged trail carved its way up the mountainside. It would have been scenic, almost serene, if it weren't for the red clouds overhead streaked with black lightning and the occult sigils carved everywhere along the trail, including massive ritual circles painted every time the rocky ground leveled out into one of those flat surfaces.

"Right, not ominous at all. Kinda figured I'd be in a dungeon, but I'm always down for a good hellscape..."

John kept his sword raised, not sure what to expect as he ascended, aside from more of the lovely decor. This wasn't exactly the environment he expected to find elves in, not even cultists, and so far he was the only creature moving on the mountainside. Though he wasn't the only thing making noise, apparently.

It was about a minute into the tense climb when John heard the sound for the first time. Initially he mistook it for a vibration, a low thrum coming from somewhere in the mountain itself, but as he climbed higher, the noise cleared into a deep, bassy hum, with a half-whispered chant embedded in it that was too quiet and too strange for John to make any sense out of.

The noise sounded distant, but the sound was bouncing around the rocky environment too much to tell just how far it really was, and John wasn't having any luck in spotting things higher up the mountain. The ascent was too steep for John to see very far ahead, with his view obscured by occasional cliff edges and false peaks just a few dozen yards farther along the awkward path he was forging.

"Ugh. If it's some kind of ritual going on up there, the whole dungeon might be in one spot. I would've gone with a slightly lower level dungeon if I knew I'd be fighting them all at once, but it should be fine. I'm over seventy now - let's call it good practice for getting outnumbered during the war."

The uphill march continued, with the rhythmic humming growing louder and more ominous the higher John went. He could've cleared the entire mountain in a few seconds if he'd used his Elemental Infusion to fly up, but even with the gusts of wind that were caressing the mountainside, John's flight was far too noisy to risk it. He could be more subtle and give his position away less spectacularly by actively setting off a fireworks show above the mountainside.

Besides, the time spent climbing gave him more time to think on what exactly he wanted to create, the things he wanted to control about what he was about to Purify, as well as the things he very explicitly did not want to mess with. So he climbed - and climbed, and climbed, and finally, as his head peeked out from between two boulders that looked to have been split from one, John came to the source of all the noise.

A ritual, as he had suspected, to what ends he could only imagine. The elves in question were dancing around one of the largest ritual circles he'd seen yet, thrusting and undulating wildly around the perimeter of the pristine pentagram. Two-dozen cultists by John's rough count, twenty-plus elves all devoting themselves to some kind of ceremony. That normally might have been familiar and comforting, but these were certainly not any kind of peaceful, forest-dwelling elf that John had ever seen.

Their bodies were as lithe and graceful as Orria's, their pointed ears and lightly glowing eyes just as elegant, but their attire and attitudes were immediately distinctive in some ways both pleasant and very much unpleasant. Each of the elves was shirtless, men and women alike, with their athletic midriffs and their toned arms rippling as they swayed around to a beat only they could hear, plus the rhythmic chanting they all seemed to be near-perfectly in unison for. Their bodies were covered in scars, long cuts too clean and neatly arranged for most of them to be from some form of warfare. Each elf carried a wickedly curved dagger, some of which were still dully shining with freshly spilled blood - perhaps the blood used to paint all these sigils and circles around the mountainside.

"Can't say I'm a fan of whatever the hell is going on here," John thought to himself, raising up both hands, blade in one and the start of a crackling surge of mana in the other. "Let's disrupt this whole thing."

The long climb that he'd undergone and the boulders he was wedged into had brought John to an elevated position just a few feet above the site of the ritual, a decent angle for making the most of his surprise attack. The muscles and tendons in John's right arm flexed against the weight of his blade, bringing it back and then hurtling it forward with all his might toward the nearest elf. A gentle sway of the blood-crazed woman's hips brought her out of its path, but the Rune of Puppeteering had activated the moment that the weapon left John's hand - a quick twist in mid-air brought it cleaving through her all the same, along with three others behind her before the sword lost too much momentum and stuck in the fourth.

1,722 DMG!
+250 XP!
1,598 DMG!
+250 XP!
1,673 DMG!
+250 XP!
1,417 DMG!
+250 XP!
1,391 DMG!
+250 XP!

Hellish chants shifted into agonized and startled screams, the ritualistic dancing coming to a halt as the remaining elves watched as a full fifth of their number collapsed to the ground, dead in the blink of an eye. John's blade lifted from the body it had stuck in with a sharp tug, the Fang of the New World moving as gracefully now as if he were wielding it himself. As it lifted from the body and the eyes of the crowd turned toward him, finally spotting the interloper among the stones, the mana in John's left hand surged forth.

White Lightning, boosted by Forked Lightning, zapped its way into the chest of the nearest cultist still standing and then arced through him and into three of his fellow worshipers.

510 DMG!
417 DMG!
399 DMG!
424 DMG!

The damage wasn't enough to completely kill the worshipers the way that his blade had, but it did leave them convulsing on the ground for the time being, which was all the opening that John had been counting on. He cleared the rocky outcropping with a quick bound and the pommel of his sword planted itself firmly in his open palm at the same moment his feet touched the ground. A flourish cleared the blood from the blade's surface as he charged forward, preparing to coat it anew.

John could have simply pelted them all with spell after spell and kept wielding his blade from afar, but doing so would have been problematic for his mana reserves. For a single dungeon, that wasn't a concern... but he was going to be going up against greater numbers than this soon, and without any idea of when a given battle might end. There were no mini-bosses or clear rewards in a war... and so John entered the fray.

The elves had somewhat gathered their senses by that time, overcoming the initial shock of the unexpected attack and quickly turning their chant into a rallying cry. They shouted things John couldn't understand, too strange and inhuman sounding to tell if it was an actual language or just noise. John didn't spend too long contemplating such things - few Barrier creatures he'd ever created could communicate in any meaningful way, and none of them had ever been anything but hostile, no matter how human-like they might have been.

That was at least one weight off John's mind as his blade began to cleave flesh asunder.

1,739 DMG!
+250 XP!
1,511 DMG!
+250 XP!
-497 HP!
-412 HP!
-516 HP!
1,803 DMG!
+250 XP!
-392 HP!
1,598 DMG!
+250 XP!

Blood and numbers, that's all that John knew for the better part of a minute, broken by the occasional glint of a blade as they angled to catch the light of a flickering torch or the muted radiance of the crimson skies above. He was faster and far stronger than even a creature of his own level was meant to be, putting him well beyond these elves, but their daggers were surprisingly sharp. The total absence of armor or any form of protective magic, as well as their complete lack of self-preservation instincts, were compensated for by sheer bloodlust, and they still outnumbered him more than a dozen to one as the battle began.

But each dagger that found a home was accompanied by another member fallen, another cultist crumpled to the ground. It wasn't long before John saw glimpses of the mountaintop between the twisting and writhing bodies, glimpses that became full gaps, that then turned into a battlefield he could properly control. He'd only lost a quarter of his health by the time a well-placed Thunder Punch connected with the shoulder of a man twisting his dagger in John's torso.

The deafening crack of thunder and the blinding lightning cleared away most of that elf's upper body, and the cone of lightning that spread out behind him connected with every other foe still in a condition to keep the fight going. By the time the few that survived were regaining their senses and stilling their twitching muscles, John was among them, carving through them one after another. It wasn't long before his blade was descending toward the last elf... only to miss as the woman's body spasmed in an incredibly unnatural way, twisting her spine so violently that it made a sound not unlike John's lightning magic.

"EY THOO AHN VAS MEERAN!"

Still gibberish... but very concerning gibberish, particularly as the red-headed elf's eyes began to glow a crimson that mirrored the skies above and the pooled blood below. John tried to take another swing at her, but she managed to avoid it through another unnatural contortion, dancing away from him in an awkward manner. As she moved, her bones were audibly shifting within her body, and that wasn't the only change; the few wounds she'd suffered were healing, and the crimson tattoos splayed across her fair skin were beginning to glow under the scrutiny of John's passive Observe. Her fingers and spine continued to contort in viscerally unpleasant ways as she glared hatefully at him, beginning a ragged gait combining a shamble and a sprint to close the short gap that her bizarre motions had put between them.

Askkktha Vish, Herald of Oblivion
Level 50 Avatar of the Damned Host
<Cult of Askkktha>
HP: 2,285 / 2,285
Relationship: -87
Alignment: -85
Status Effects: N/A

The word avatar had momentarily worried John, but despite the slight transformation giving John unpleasant feelings of similarity to Vallya, it looked like this was just another ordinary mini-boss for the Dungeon. Once John was sure of that, even its unusual and somewhat jarring movements weren't enough to match him. The cult's only hope had been in the unfortunate way they were clustered together, and the vast numerical advantage that resulted. One on one, even a cultist possessed by the mini-boss was like a plaything for John, and he didn't even have to burn out his mana to make things manageable.

The hard part was actually keeping it alive.

1,193 DMG!
367 DMG!
428 DMG!
-15 HP!

The avatar seemed to have a heightened defensive ability from whatever mana was imbued in its host, but a second blow was still likely to finish it off. John delivered the last blows with his fists, suffering a small cut on his wrist from the unholy spirit's knife when he swung a little too wildly on the second hit, but otherwise reducing the mini-bosses' health to a tiny fraction of its bar without much difficulty. Once the creature was within the parameters for his technique—however little that seemed to matter, with how often it broke its own rules—John stepped in one more time, grabbing the possessed cultist's wrist as it went in for a piercing thrust and twisting his body to throw the creature onto the ground with enough **** to stun it.

129 DMG!

Whatever being was possessing the cultist didn't seem particularly bothered by the damage to its vessel and recovered quickly, but its efforts were futile. John moved quickly to kneel on the elf's chest, planting his right leg on its thighs to keep it from kicking, the other just below her chest to hold it steady, and bent far enough to grip and hold the elf's slender arms tightly against the stony ground. "Askkktha" still tried furiously to move, but its strength wasn't enough to toss John off, and planting his left knee below the slight swell of the former cultist's exposed breasts kept his legs well out of biting range.

"Bit awkward, but I need to make sure I'm focused for this," John thought, smirking at the ridiculousness of the casual way he was restraining the furious being. He even went so far as to close his eyes, clearing away the sharp edge of battle from his mind and calling back his earlier words to Farrah, along with the wayward thoughts he'd had during his climb up the mountain.

"What did I say earlier? Right, blonde hair. Hair is fine to control, right? Eye color too. But which one?"

John met the possessed cultist's gaze, ignoring the possessed woman's gnashing teeth in favor of her glistening eyes. The sight might have bothered anyone else, but it actually reminded John of the way Sophia looked in battle, and with the tension still hanging between the two of them, he found that color almost comforting.

"Something red will do. Blonde hair, red eyes, and then, err," John paused, shifting his grip on the woman's wrists a little as she tried to slice at his arms with the dagger still clutched in her white-knuckle grip.

"Someone with a good heart. That's fine to specify, right? Not evil, no more selfish or vain or cruel than anyone else, no missing senses... and a sign. Something clear, please, I'm begging you. A sign that I can fix things with this ability. That I can undo the mistakes I've made. That I can help Lunaya, and others, the way I helped Mithra, without risking erasing them. That I'm on the right path, whatever that may mean."

It was vague, perhaps too much so, but it was good enough to prove there was more to this ability than the whims of fate he typically left it to. John felt the mana pouring through him as he used a good chunk of his remaining mana to Purify the possessed cultist. The unholy woman's glistening skin grew in brightness until it left only a shining silhouette of white, at which point the creature ceased its struggles. John released the now docile and shimmering figure right as the dungeon began to dissipate around him, accompanied by the completion notification that popped up in front of him.

Mini-Boss defeated, Dungeon complete [Level 50]!
Dungeon Bonuses reduced due to recent completions [1x]. Completion Bonuses: 50%
+3,125 EXP [+25 EXP from Perks]
+$12,500 ($6,250 + 100% from Perks)
+23 Ritual Candles [Lesser]
+9 Tainted Essence

"Well, I guess... now I just wait," John mused as the landscape shifted around him, casting away the mountainside and bringing him home once more. John took to pacing, trying to keep his mind occupied, strolling impatiently through the peaceful field. Or, rather, what would have been a peaceful field, had it not promptly exploded.

Perhaps it wasn't as violent as a true explosion, but John could think of no other explanation for what happened, nor a better description for the wave of smoke, heat, and fire that washed over him and poured across the landscape. He was so startled that he instinctively gasped, which immediately sent him into a horrendous coughing fit, for although his lungs no longer required oxygen, it seemed they still didn't appreciate inhaling a cloud of sulfurous smog so thick that he could feel it oozing over his skin. It took him a few seconds to get himself under control, until he exhaled completely and simply dealt with the unnatural and slightly uncomfortable sensation of leaving his lungs empty.

"What the fuck? Did something go wrong? Oh Gaia, did I fuck it up this badly somehow?!"

John tried to use Elemental Infusion to drive away the thick smoke that was completely obscuring his vision, but even with the winds nearly strong enough to carry him into the air, the smoke seemed heavy enough to linger, and what he did manage to clear away was rapidly being replaced and multiplied upon.

"The field is on fire," John thought, feeling the icy chill of terror-fueled adrenaline coursing along his spine like a direct injection to his entire nervous system. He could hear the blaze now that the initial burst had passed and he had stopped gusting wind across the plains. The fire wasn't large, given that he could only see small flickers of orange light in a handful of spots through the smoke, but the little clusters were blazing strongly, and they were starting to spread. He was suddenly grateful that he'd walked so far from the house - memories of blazing wood and creaking timbers flashed through his mind, heightening his sense of dread even further.

"Need to put this out fast!"

A second attempt at using Elemental Infusion - this time, John focused on fire, trying to control and extinguish any flames around him. Something tickled at his mind as he did so, an unfamiliar sensation that took him a moment to understand. He could feel the flames, in the vague way that he could feel any spell he cast, but he couldn't extinguish them.

"Magical fire," John noted with annoyance. He'd noticed the flames were an unusually blood-red shade, but hadn't realized the cause. "That explains why the smoke bothered me more than it should have, too. I don't even know if I can put that out by hand, but I'm low on mana after dealing with that crowd and using Purify. Shit, must be a result of whatever I created. Or Gaia is giving me visions of hell to punish me for meddling with the process…"

John bit back the sarcastic thoughts and focused on the matter at hand, taking a more forceful approach to the flames and fueling his Elemental Infusion with mana this time. He was missing too much mana to waste any by focusing on the entire area around him, so he was **** to target each cluster of flames directly. The first few weren't hard - he could spot the glimmer of some of the fires around him even through the dense smoke pouring into the air, and as soon as he started focusing on them, he could "feel" the fires well enough to focus on them and quickly extinguish them.

That strategy was only viable for the closest fires, though; after that, the smoke was thick enough that it even smothered the light from those blazes. Thankfully, their magical nature gave him an option other than blindly stumbling into open flames. With Observe's passive, John could see the mana within the fires themselves. He even got a little "Hellfire" tag to confirm his target when he focused on the flickering menaces directly—and to his immense relief, the mana within those flames glimmered and glistened brightly enough to Observe for them to be seen through the smoke at a much greater distance than the light alone.

John worked his way through the grass one step at a time, seeking out each patch of blazing grass and extinguishing it as soon as he was close enough to do so with precision. His mana bar grew slimmer and slimmer with each fire while his brow only grew more creased. By the time the smoke was starting to thin out even somewhat noticeably, John had to drain the entire mana reserve from The Fang of the New World, and even then he was growing worried it wouldn't be enough.

His eyes were anxiously locked on his own mana bar when he noticed a flash of movement in the smoke. Not something visible to the naked eye, but a large blur of mana dashing around the field. John's heart pounded wildly in his chest for an instant, fearing that some part of the magical flames had been activated, that they were beginning to spread beyond control, but the shape and the motions of the mana were too humanoid. Even if they hadn't been, keeping his eyes on the new magical source for only a moment gave him a readout that revealed the truth of the matter.

Arryaces bat Melkian
Level 50 Incubus Inferno
<John's Creation>
HP: 1,120 / 1,120
Relationship: 151
Alignment: 0
Status Effects: Unbound [4m27s remaining]

"...No."

John's grip tightened on the hilt of his blade, the words before his eyes bringing back just as many memories as the flames and smoke surrounding him, and only slightly more bearable. John took a rigid step forward, his eyes locked on the blurry outline of the figure as it dashed between the flames, hardly noticing as the remaining clusters of hellfire were extinguished one by one. The Shard of Bishamonten throbbed in his chest, practically begging for release, filling John's body with a heat that seemed to mock the hellfire around him.

"Not again. Not another one like him."

Another step, another fire extinguished by the figure before it dashed to the next. John strode through the smoke with purpose now, picking up speed. The smoke continued to thin, swirling around John as he twirled the blade once, relishing the weight in his hand as he closed the gap on his target.

"I'm not dealing with this again. The others don't need to know. We're too far away for them to notice, or they'd already be here to help with the fire. I'll make it quick... and I'll tell Farrah I changed my mind about Purifying anything. It obviously failed anyway..."

"Oh my Satan, oh my Satan... I can't believe I messed up like that! Ugh, get it together, girl! Seriously... I hope I didn't hurt whoever summoned me…"

John's foot halted on the scorched grass, his mind matching the abrupt halt at the same instant. Anger was blunting his ability to think, and his heart was pounding furiously in his ears now, but even in this state, John couldn't miss the lilting tones and the pleasant way his ears were caressed by that strange new voice.

That strange, and very unexpectedly feminine voice.

"Ohmigosh, what if I did? What if I accidentally burned them alive?! I'm gonna get sent back, and they'll probably be there, and that's gonna be soooo awkward. I'm gonna get scolded, I'm gonna get sent back to Mistress Veria for re-training, and I'm gonna spend the rest of eternity apologizing to some human soul! Probably burned up whatever book they found my summoning ritual in, too. Gonna take me centuries to weave my sigils back somewhere that someone can find them... stupid, Aria! Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

John's legs hesitantly resumed their strides, carrying him through the dwindling remnants of smoke. No fires remained now, save for one - the one the figure was kneeling over, furiously slapping away at the blaze. A wavering flick of his finger conjured up enough of a breeze to dispel most of the remaining smoke, finally clearing away enough for John to look down upon his creation with mundane eyes, rather than magical.

"Wait, she's- …she's?"

The startled question filled the void left by the pain and grief that had suddenly vanished from him. It echoed around in the emptiness in John's mind, playing on repeat as his eyes greedily drank in the sight of the woman before him.

She wasn't a particularly striking figure to a casual glance. She had few unusual features, and nothing so otherworldly as a dragoness or a lamia. No, she was far closer in terms of humanity to the elf she had been formed from. Her skin was a few shades lighter than was strictly natural, to be sure - a white that ventured beyond pale and wound up closer to that of a Geisha's ivory makeup, accented in an almost exaggerated fashion by the thick black coloration around her eyes and the bright red upon her cheeks.

But that skin was flawless and smooth, unmarred by scales, sigils, or fur. The only features that screamed out her supernatural heritage were the four-inch horns protruding at the forefront of her hairline, and her tail. The spaded tip of that tail swished dangerously back and forth in a manner he'd call anxious if it were one of the Nekos, and judging by the way she was biting her lip, might be accurate for her as well.

She wore a strapless princess dress that transitioned from purple to red, all in shades so dark they were bordering on black, and the garment must have been tailor made for her, for the dress seemed long enough to hang just below her knees when standing, yet her tail did not lift up the skirt. Rather, it appeared to be protruding from some inconspicuous hole sewn into the fabric around the waistline. But those rather demonic traits aside, she could’ve been any ordinary human, albeit a particularly beautiful one. Her figure was curvaceous and slender, her face sharp in an almost noble fashion, and her hair, that fell to the lower part of her back…

"She's got blonde hair."

Blonde hair indeed, and quite long at that, so much so that with her kneeling on the ground as she was, the ends of her hair were actually pooling on the seared ground behind her. The realization of that feature made John snort with strained disbelief, which immediately alerted the woman to the fact that she was not as alone as she seemed to fear. Her body stiffened up, then turned slowly, a nervous look spreading over her features as she shifted herself around to face John. As her gaze met his, a rather overwhelmed sounding chuckle burst its way free of him. He didn't know what had happened, or what strange joke was being made of him, but it had worked.