Chapter 203 – Broken Frame

Chapter 203 – Broken Frame

Apparently the look in John’s eyes was enough to convince Herman that the Gamer would no longer obstruct his plans. Or maybe he was just confident that he could spare another Illusion. “Quite sorry, Jane, I won’t necessarily need that bit of your blood, but I’d much rather be safe than sorry when my life’s work is at stake,” Herman said and healed the small cut while passing her.

“Ya don’t get to use my name,” the Lightbearer hissed and retreated next to John. Neither of them trusted the man, but their escape route was as simple as dropping all the magical signs on their body and running twenty metres out of the building. They were just two walls away from mundane crowds.

The Betrayer of All positioned himself underneath the heart and stretched his hand upwards. “The incubation phase is complete. It’s just a bit of a push now,” he announced and magic flared from his hand upwards in a beam.

The consolidated heart beat once, then contracted into an oval shape two metres across. It hovered down, further flowing and diminishing in size, until it began to take a definite shape. A torso, four long limbs, gradually refining into arms and legs, hand and feet. A head pushed out of the mass of the chest. All of it was blood red and smooth. A skeleton began to form inside.

The forming body arrived in front of Herman and he rammed his hand into the forming skull. John wanted to intervene, but he had no idea what was going on exactly. Then Herman pulled out the familiar spinal object.

The object squealed in a high, angry pitch. It rang in John’s ears, a protest of violent wrath, incapable of being executed with the rib-like legs of the elongated, metal thing. It tried to return to Thana’s head, winding in Herman’s grasp.

“What a barbaric usage for you... Erlösungsgestattung.” Upon hearing that single word, the spine suddenly froze. A sound almost like a relieved sigh echoed through the room and it lay still in Herman’s hands. “Catch!” The Betrayer of All threw it at John, who disobeyed that order and side-stepped the lead-grey object instead. It bounced off the floor. “Wow, dude, that’s a Metracana, treat it with some respect. Mengele using it for lab-sedation isn’t its fault.” Herman shook his head. “The youth these days. You would make Jesus cry.”

John did not care for the words and Herman did not care to talk any further. Both of them instead looked at the body that had been finishing its generation.

She was pale, sickly so. Skin that had never seen a single sun ray, a slightly blue tinge to it. Her hair was similar, white at the top, shifting into blue at chin length. It maintained the azure colour all the way to her hips. She had a cute nose and her violet eyes were fascinating. John vividly remembered them, like shattered glass or brilliantly cut gemstones they had been – they were. Within them there had been two rings, one complete and thin at the outer layer, the other made from six golden dots around the black of her pupil. Her naked figure was still as he remembered her, quite attractive. For a girl her size she had big breasts, a C-Cup, with wide hips and smooth skin.

“Seven dots now,” Herman said, holding her chin as he inspected her like a laboratory rat. “I still do not understand what she is, what I wouldn’t give to conduct more research... apparently there was some excess in raw material, to cause her hair to grow beyond its original state. Ah, well, I gave her back to this world, so I got what I wanted.” He let her chin go and the body slumped over like a wet sack of potatoes. “Well, it seems her body is back, but her spirit might need a while longer to recover,” Herman clicked his tongue, “I wonder if she will have her memories? It is really saddening that I won’t get to see it.”Reaad the latest stories on novelbin(.)com

“What do you mean?” John asked, still keeping his distance.

“Oh come on, the answer is pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Herman giggled and coughed. For a moment the liar was aging rapidly, then he pulled the mask over his face and took a deep breath. A green cloud left the arcane systems of the contraption and once he put it aside, the aging process had stopped. Stopped, but did not revert. “Why do you think I put this meeting together? Why do you think no one is here? Where do you think I got all that blood from? What do you think Gaia is going to do with me?”

John closed his eyes. “I just hoped that there was a way you weren’t a complete piece of shit. How many veterans did you sacrifice?”

“But how much would I need? As much as I could get. I stole the reserves still in the Bloodefallen’s Headquarters. What I could take out of the guilds that Bloodfallen had vassalized, I bled dry. The lion’s share would have to come from live subjects though. Luckily Mengele had, unknowingly, left me that little present. A shiny, golden, but poisoned apple. Sacrificing normal humans, it would mean that I would be eradicated, completely removed from existence. Nothing of my soul would remain. Isn’t that right, Gaia?”

The frame of reality broke apart when he muttered that question. The three dimensions drifted away from each other, sparks of physical energies unloading between them as John’s eyes tried to conceive what was happening but were only answered with incomprehensible pain. Every sound was muffled but the tearing sound, like a thousand layers of cloth suddenly being ripped apart, that accompanied Gaia’s appearance between him and Herman from a portal that was behind the betrayer of all. Physics collapsed and restructured in the time it took a human to understand what he was seeing.

“And despite that knowledge you did it, you hurt the children,” Gaia spoke with such terrible rage that all thoughts John had about whether or not fate existed were drowned in it. There was no way a being this angry about the loss of life would have let it happen if she was in control.

‘Is she, after all, just another player with other rules?’ John asked himself as the green haired deity stretched out her hand. ‘Or has she chained herself to undo fate?’

Herman looked at her with a baffled expression. Then he laughed freely. “How does any of that make sense?!”

The supreme goddess’ finger connected to his chest and he vanished. Where he had just stood his outline left a dark spot, as if someone had cut a human shaped hole into reality. Gaia had eradicated every bit of him without a trace, even the light that had touched him. With a thunderous roar the vacuum was filled as air collapsed on the spot.

John was suddenly breathing very fast, the sight caused some deep-seated panic inside him. It wasn’t the death that scared him, he himself had killed before, it was that the death of Herman was beyond absolute. The absolute eradication of his existence, removed so cleanly not even his feelings would enter an Illusion Barrier. The word ‘gone’ could not encapsulate the depths of his true death.

“Let this be my warning to you as well, John Newman.” Gaia peeked over her shoulder. Her eyes flashing, a black light shining inside them. Despite all of the physical improbabilities of the last seconds, this one was the most terrifying in a way. “Never break my taboos. Do not interfere with the lives of normal humans.”

She didn’t wait for his response, simply vanished as abruptly as she had come. Physics snapped back into place, leaving John and his group stunned. They hadn’t fought, they hadn’t saved anyone, but they were safe and left with a chance. The elementals vanished before the unlikely happened and a random person stumbled in here. Siena alone stayed behind, but hid in his shadow. The cat ears disappeared from Rave’s head.

The two of them stood over the body of Thana. Her eyes were now closed and her chest was slowly, but steadily, rising and falling. “You wouldn’t object if we took her with us, would you?” John asked, just to be sure.

Rave strongly shook her head, “I heard what she had to go through. She’ll still have to apologize to me once she wakes up though.” There was a bit of a quiver under her voice. If she was afraid, it did not stop her.

“If she even remembers,” John mumbled and picked the pale girl up from the carpet. It occurred to him that this was the first time that she had ever slept.

“Explaining all of this to Lydia will be a whole different beast, though,” Rave tried to introduce some levity into the situation. John repressed the urge to awkwardly scratch his head. He had his hands full at the moment. Even without that, just knowing that it was a part of Herman manipulating him made him uncertain how he felt about his own habits.

For now, getting Thana back and surviving Lydia’s annoyance would be the priorities though.