to the living?

“I count 5 with closed stomachs, so let’s assume they are the gaseous kind. Mikuru, can you toss some rocks at them and see if they’ll explode? And Miho, when they explode, send a gust of wind to blow the gases back at them. I doubt it’ll affect them, but I’d rather they breath it in than us,” John commanded. The twins gave a nod and got into position. The larger abomination seemed to also be giving orders, which surprised the group. The group began their march toward John and the twins, but their lines had no real sense of formation but rather a haphazard group mixed together.

“Mikuru, whenever you are ready….FIRE!” ordered John as Mikuru focused on forming the rock under the paved streets. She felt her essence snake its way through the ground gathering the sedimentary rock that was located just below the surface, placing them in piles throughout the ground. While not the most powerful type of rock she could use, sedimentary rock was by far the easiest for her to sculpt into shape and thus would allow Mikuru to rapidly make the small boulders she would need to detonate some of the abominations. Her and Miho’s earlier fight with one of the exploding abominations proved that these rocks could trigger the explosions, so she was not worried about them getting close. Mikuru just hoped that the ensuing explosion would take out most, if not all, of the abominations.
The first boulder burst forth from the ground, flinging the remains of the road pavement a few feet from the opening. The three watched as the boulder arced through the sky and came crashing down on one of the abominations. Mikuru’s accuracy was spot on because as soon as the boulder broke the abomination’s skin, the volatile gases in its body reacted. The boulder pushed into the abomination’s body a few inches, causing the gases to mix together. The abomination looked down at the boulder sticking into its body right before the creatue exploded. The resulting explosion took out the two abominations that flanked the first, one of which was also a gaseous one. That abomination seemed to have poisonous gas since there was no resulting explosion. Miho had sent a gust of wind that protected the group from any gases that may have come their way.

“What? Nooooooooooo! You no break Stitches’ army!” cried out the largest abomination. “You make Stitches angry! Stitches punish you!” yelled the creature, its anger showing. “Gassy blow uppers, you hide in back! Hooky smashers, you stay up front! Grab flying rocks with hooks!” ordered Stitches. John was surprised that the abomination gave out the orders it did. It set up a good counter to Mikuru’s boulder ****, but it was a whole other question of if they could actually pull off that counter. John decided there was only one way to find out.

“Miho, give them constant resistance with strong winds, Mikuru, keep launching boulders, and let’s see just how well they can pull off those orders!” The girls nodded in unison as they began their respective tasks. Miho took a deep breath, letting the air around her sync with her. She could feel the flow of the air currents, the air pressure, and the humidity. With a steady exhale, Miho used her magic to alter the air currents, air pressure, and humidity to summon a continuous wind storm.

“I can keep this….wind going…but I won’t…be able…to move….” Miho said between grunts, all her concentration being spent on summoning the powerful gale of wind.

“That’s ok, Mikuru and I will cover you. It looks like the wind is slowing them down,” a reassuring John told Miho. A smile formed on her face while she kept her eyes tightly clenched, needing all her focus to keep the winds blowing. Mikuru, on the other hand, had been working on increasing the density of her sedimentary boulders, hoping the toughened boulders would repel the meat hooks the abominations wielded. Sadly, Mikuru’s plan did not work; fore the abominations would launch multiple hooks at the boulders, effectively stopping them in mid-air and causing them to fall. She was able to crush two abominations through this roundabout way.

“My boulders are no longer able to reach them, we’ll have to fight the rest in close corridors,” Mikuru announced to the group.

“Miho, cut the wind and get ready to fight!” Miho cut the wind storm and fell back to regain her strength while John and Mikuru moved forward to cover her while she rested.

“Wind stop, now chance! All you go now!” commanded Stitches, some skin flying out of his mouth as he yelled, landing on the back of one of the gaseous abominations. His 4 remaining abominations began their version of running, their chubby little legs could only extend so far.

“Uuuuuuuwgh!” mumbled an abomination as it tripped and fell, rolling into the nearest abomination, which promptly exploded, taking out the rolling abomination.
“ENOUGH!” came a booming voice, echoing through the skies. “It seems my abominations aren’t quite ready for combat yet, save for Stitches. You three are lucky. Just wait, next time we meet, and we will meet again, my creations will crush you all!” Three beams of light shot down from the sky and encompassed Stitches and the other abominations. The three began to rise into the sky, with Stitches waving at John and company.

“Bye bye living! Me see you again and me crush you!” the abomination said with a smile on his face, with one of his small shoulder hands dropping the axe as it waved to John and the twins. The three breathed a sigh of relief as the abominations disappeared into the sky.

Ownership of the barrier has been transferred to John Newman

“Are you both ok?” a worried John asked the twins, giving them a quick look over. Miho was still breathing heavily while leaning on an abandoned car in the road. Mikuru was sitting on the sidewalk, a relieved look on her face. Her hands were resting on the sidewalk, the angle of her arms pushing out her chest out, if she was naked or had bigger breasts, John would have appreciated the view. Right now his only thought was to see if his companions were ok since it was his fault the whole abomination thing happened.

“Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaah. I’m fine,” Miho said between pants, “I just need to catch my breath. I haven’t used that much magic at once in a looooooooooooong time,” the petite girl informed John. He gave her a quick smile and nod, accepting her answer.

“I, too, am fine. But we got lucky. If it weren’t for those abominations having low intellect, we could have easily been overwhelmed.” John winced at Mikuru’s words, knowing them to be true. He had lucked out, again, with nobody being seriously hurt. John surveyed the battlefield, seeing it littered with rock, pavement, and body parts. Hands, arms, feet, large patches of skin, and guts, so much guts, just everywhere. John headed towards the disaster area, scanning the area for anything interesting. That’s when he spotted it, a glittering in the park area about 200 feet from where John was.

As John made his way to the park he looked over his pop-ups that he had gotten after the fight. The first thing he noticed was that he had 5 points to spend.
“Hmm, my lowest stats are agility, which is moderately useful but not the most important, and endurance which is one of my two most important stats. But strength is almost at 30, and that would be the most immediate gain.” John pondered over the choices laid before him, and decided on boosting his strength with 4 points to get it to 30. “Ok, with that out of the way, I think I’ll focus on endurance now,” he said as he placed his final point in endurance.

Achievement Unlocked: The Walking Dead
Congratulations, you survived a zombie onslaught! You are better than, like, 90% of TWD’s characters!
Rewards: +1 STR, +1 END

Achievement Unlocked: Using Their Power Against Them!
I am surprised you even conceived the idea of taking an enemy’s strength and use it to take out their troops. You should be rewarded for a thought other than “Hey let’s charge that group of enemies cause that always works out!”
Reward: +1 Rare Item

John could mentally picture Gaia rolling her eyes at him as he read that quote. He let out a defeated sigh, knowing he may never gain his new god’s favor, and continued reading.

Achievement Unlocked: All Your Base Belong to Us
Successfully take over an enemy’s barrier after invading it.
Rewards: +5 levels to Create Barrier

Achievement Unlocked: Peace is a lie, there is only passion
Let your passions control your actions and almost get your teammates killed, GG dumbass!
+1 Epic Item

Buccaneer’s Buckler
Rare Item
A shield used by some pirates. Its small stature allowed for quick movement that was often associated with pirate fighting
+5 END, +2 STR, +5 Block

Body Armor of the Dark Lord
2 of 8
Epic Item
The body armor of a once powerful Dark Lord of an ancient religion whose anger gave him the strength to conquer entire continents. His religion has long since died out, or so they say…
+10 END, +5 STR, Environment Immunity

2 of 8 pieces of the Dark Lord Set completed. Bonus enabled: Anger increases your strength by 50%, can happen once every 5 minutes.

The shield was useless to John and he doubted either of the twins or Idena would use a shield, so into his inventory it went until he sold it or found a companion that could use it. John’s mind first went to Moira, but she seemed to have an artifact level shield and they weren’t on the best of terms at the moment, so that idea was out. He also got 2 stacks of 50 necrotized bones and 4 abomination guts, plus 200 experience for fighting all those abominations. Unless John felt like becoming a necromancer, he decided it would be best to sell those or maybe even trade them with Mrs. Wentworth now that he thought about it. The chest piece, however, gave him mixed feelings. It was a clear upgrade to his current chest piece and the 2 piece bonus was nice since he seemed to be getting angry quite a bit while fighting, but at the same time he’s seen Star Wars and he knows where that path leads. Power sure, but power at a great cost. His mind wondered back to what he had learned about the Abyss from the Order, causing his thoughts to once again change. I mean, if power is the only thing that the Abyss recognizes, than maybe it is a good thing I just go with it; after all, that’ll let me protect the twins as well as Idena and my fledgling kingdom from anyone who would want to hurt them. With a ping of apprehensiveness and worry, John equipped the new armor, feeling a slight sense of power with it. Hah, with this new bit of power, I’m one step closer of stopping Moira from hurting the twins! I’ll make her pay for the way she treats me and…wait no! Stop thinking like that John! You are using this to protect people, not hurt them! His mind fought with itself, the darkness that John didn’t know he had slowly creeping into the forefront. Breath John, breath. In and out. Calm thoughts, happy thoughts,* he said to himself as he did the actions, making sure to keep control of his emotions. He had enough of them dictating his actions for the day, and it was barely 10AM. John finished looking at all his pop-ups right when he got to the spot of the sparkle and saw what was causing it: the meat cleaver of Stitches. John picked it up and cast Observe on it.

Stitches’ Favorite Cleaver
Rare Item
This was the first cleaver Stitches ever used to kill someone with. He was so happy that he made sure he’d always keep it with him and use it to slaughter everyone he met.
+3 STR, Increased Goriness, Easier to cut through body parts

“Uh, yeah….I’m gonna have to pass on using this thing,” John said to himself as he also placed that into his inventory. With all his pop-ups checked, items gathered, and new equipment equipped, John decided he had enough time in this hellhole of a barrier and made his way back to the twins to finally leave.