Chapter 305 – Vs John Newman [Mario de Medici POV]

Chapter 305 – Vs John Newman [Mario de Medici POV]

“I take it you can face him?” Maximillian asked, prompting the Italian to smile dismissively. He had seen the man, the boy compared to himself really, fight in the videos. His movements were imprecise and sluggish.

“He is an amateur; all I need to do is take out his summons one by one,” Mario answered with certainty as he headed for the platform. The mana under his boots was impossibly stable, a wonder that only his emperor could produce. ‘It’ll serve as a good opportunity to remind this Gamer not to oppose the Apex,’ the swordmaster thought, looking at the platform across the sand field as he descended.

“So, what biome will it be today?” Jeff asked the audience. “Let’s hope it’s not the sandy stuff again, that would be super boring!”

From an entertainment standpoint, Mario was with the screechy man, but tactically, he would lose an advantage if they landed in an arena where the Gamer could hide. Despite his boasting, Mario knew full well that this John Newman fellow had more than one trick up his sleeve.

For a start, he would have to be on lookout for that shadow elemental. It would be best if their shadows never touched so that she didn’t get a free pass. He could stab at the darkness to his feet, but that would leave him vulnerable to attacks from the two flying elementals.

Truly, his numbers were of far greater concern than the Gamer himself. From what Mario had seen, however, he should be fine.

“Aaaand, it’s the small arena!” Jeff announced. In response, the room around John, his golem called Momo and Mario began shrinking. The walls were closing in. Literally, as the transforming magic of the arena bent reality for the entertainment of the masses. Granted, this system was incredibly stationary and fragile, so a military usage was impossible in the first place. The fact that it needed Fateweavers to work was also a problem.

The Knights of Rome had long since advocated for the simplifying of the arena to concentrate their slowly diminishing resources on more needed places. The fact that he himself was willing to participate in an event that would see it strained to the limit had earned him the ire of quite a few of his colleagues.

He saw a conflict over an ancient arena’s future as less important than the empire’s second strongest area running the risk to advocate their independence, personally.

The many swords and knives on his body rattled as he stepped towards John Newman. The smaller arena was to Mario’s advantage: the Gamer would have nowhere to run. In response to the swordmaster’s advance, John Newman stepped away from him diagonally, wanting to keep a distance between them.

His elementals were likely hanging around in their incorporeal form. Once they revealed themselves, Mario was ready to take them on. His road to victory was quite simple: he had to take out all obstructing elementals and then eliminate the Gamer.

The countdown started above. “Got a new sword?” John asked mockingly, back now against the wall. “You know, the last one looked unsalvageable.”

Mario grit his teeth for a moment but forced himself to relax. He had no idea why the Gamer wanted to taunt him, but these mage types always had some sort of scheme.

‘I am going to make you pay for taking glee in the destruction of my family’s most precious heirloom,’ Mario thought, and then the fight finally began.

His charge was interrupted as he finished his second step. Several things appeared, and several more people moved at once. The light blue shimmering shell around the Gamer was encapsulated by a bubble of water. Two hand-sized girls flickered into existence, one a pale green, the other fiery red, both flying at him, the support at John’s side took to the skies, and lastly, a twin-tailed, Asian looking brunette was attacking him frontally.

Aside from the pale one, they were all abysmally slow. Only the shadow elemental was unaccounted for, but he could easily guess where she was hiding. To the Gamer’s credit, he had been cunning to dodge to the part of the arena wall that cast the biggest shadow. Still, the options of where she could be were severely limited.

John was obviously protected, so just rushing at him was unlikely to work. That aside, one of the few things Mario had to be afraid of was that unknown fusion thing the Gamer had done before. It was literally without precedent, and the resulting elemental had been strong. Not dangerously strong, but strong enough for the swordmaster to keep out an eye for it and not get overconfident.

So, if the slow earthen spirit was already heading for him, he would take the invitation.

Two precisely thrown knives left Mario’s off-hand faster than they had appeared between his fingers, forcing the two flying elementals to dodge while he made his own move. He drew one of his swords, directly transforming the motion into an upwards cut.

The elementium alloy cut right through Gnome’s summer dress and sliced her stone body open from waist to shoulder. “Hey, no, bad, bad sword guy, very bad!” an annoyingly chirpy and quick voice reached Mario’s ear, and he threw another knife at the source.

Sylph narrowly dodged this second one as well; the girl was fast, much faster than the rest of the enemy team. But not faster than the swordmaster, who dodged both a flame strike coming his way and Gnome‘s flying fist.

The wound in her chest was a simple line that allowed him to see her dirt brown insides. Underneath the human surface there was nothing but earth and stone, no blood that could have flown, no flesh that could have scarred.

Regenerative abilities were obviously not part of the earth elemental’s repertoire as the wound stayed open and hindered her already slow movements even further. It was obvious who he would take out first now.

Weaving through slicing winds and bolts of fire, Mario kept going at Gnome. Her skin, usually more than enough to defend herself, had already shown to be useless. All she could do was try to dodge backwards, back into the shadows and the relative safety.

Mario kept watching her movements precisely as he inflicted wound after wound. As she was attempting her leap out of range, Mario used her momentarily immobile state, the short moment between a body tensing and jumping, to execute a wide-arching strike aimed at the elemental’s head.

A wild blast of wind, way stronger than anything he had thought that little elemental could muster, ripped his hand aside. If he had been prepared, he could still have hit his target, but as it was he had to just force his arm down in the turbulent winds.

Instead of her head, his blade sunk into the elemental’s shoulder. Hastily readjusted as it had been, it didn’t have the force to cut right through, but it left a deep cut in her shoulder and stopped her from getting out of range.

“Too bad for you that you can’t just immaterialize,” Mario finally opened his mouth, he felt like the battle was sliding towards his favour and allowed himself a bit of cockiness. It was one of the early things a melee fighter had to be taught about when fighting mages.

There was no such thing as immediately shifting between corporeal and incorporeal. Not only was repeated shifting extremely straining on the summoned creature, but for a moment before their physical bodies vanished, their magical essence was vulnerable, even to basic physical strikes. An attack successfully landing in that state would do critical damage.

When Gnome’s hands reached for him instead of trying to leap away again, he knew something was up.The alarm bells in his head only became louder once he saw the water shield around John opening, the Gamer raising his left hand. The one with the black glove.

A red ember, no, an insect, landed on his shoulder in the meanwhile. A sting, like from an electric shock, spread from where the firefly had landed, and his whole body was hit by a wave of weakness. They were trying to pin him down for something; he could hardly let that happen.

Whatever was about to happen had to do with that pointing hand, so all he needed to do was dodge that. Pulling the sword out would have taken too long; no risks could be taken. Mario let go of the handle and went for a deep swipe at Gnome’s legs. He might as well make the best of this situation.

Above his head, a stream of pure black energy appeared. A sword made from mana, several metres long. It was less a blade than a laser beam with a definite end-point. Mario realized that it wouldn’t just vanish, not immediately. This had to be the same attack that the recording had shown, which, a fact that Alexej had repeatedly burned into his mind, had lasted exactly 1 second.

A second was both remarkably short and yet sufficiently long for the attack to be lowered onto Mario, who had nowhere else to go. It would be like a guillotine, but, unlike the poor people normally underneath such devices, he was still able to use his hands.

With lightning speed, he pulled two daggers from their holsters underneath his shoulders and moved them in to defend from the lowering arcane weapon. The blades, magically forged and pure magic, came into contact, sparks flying everywhere. In that mere half of a second, the proficiently made weaponry started melting.

Then it was over; it was Mario’s turn to pull back as his position was assaulted from all directions, fire, thunder, earth and shadow all coming towards him. He had to take some hits; there was no angle through where he could escape unscathed. Judging it to be the least dangerous of the incoming attacks, he broke through the wall of fire into safety, discarding the now dull and deformed daggers in the process.

“And I am going to beat you up now,” the Gamer said, his smile turning sour. “I know we are fighting, but I still can’t approve of you hurting my girls.”

At that Mario could only snarl, “How? Two of your elementals are out, and that ‘Sylph’ girl there seems like she will blow over at any given moment. I am able to take the rest of you on quite easily.”

Mario looked over the air elemental, now back to blabbering while flopping around in an attempt to keep her body upright, to the shadow elemental licking the mist-like blood up with a hateful expression, to the firefly swarmed, apparently useless, monochrome girl in the sky and back to the Gamer, clad only in defensive skills.

“Well, who ever said that I can only combine Gnome and Salamander?” John presented a question that immediately threw Mario into action.

‘That is impossible,’ he thought, contradicting his own beliefs with his actions and the cold sweat that was running down his back.

If he was able to combine all of his elementals, then this reality defying ability of his wasn’t just weird. How was he supposed to plan for so many different combinations? It was utter bullshit!

In a wild frenzy, he hammered on John’s shield. “Eh, only 200 mana this time. To think I used Tip for this,” John shrugged inside his barrier, then he froze and mumbled into his hand; “...Wow, I do sound like a proper dick... even though I would totally be roasted if you depleted my mana...”

How? How did he have this much mana?! There should have been no barrier on that level that was able to withstand so many attacks. The truth, Alexej’s theory that it was that golem of the Gamer, came too late to him.

“Hiiiii,” a new voice chirped and ripped Mario out of his frenzy and caused him to jump right away.

She was only the slightest bit taller than Sylph, wore a black dress with lots and lots of green frills, pale at the neckline and flowing into a dark shade at the end of her short skirt. The long sleeves and stockings covered most of her skin. Deadly pale of tone, it contrasted with the dark, greyish green of her hair.

“Can I cut you?” she asked menacingly, her voice manifested sadism. Her left darted forwards; the fingers had only two segments and were basically only long blades on joints. She was fast, worse, she was faster than him. Not by a lot, if he had still had all of his powers, he could have taken her on, but the Gamer was right.

He had exhausted his resources, ground them against what he thought to be a sure victory. ‘Nobody should have this many skills!’ he mentally complained as he felt this new elemental dig five lines through his armour, his flesh and itching their width into his rips.

Those claws were sharper than his armour could account for. He whirled around, this new enemy was a bigger threat than the Gamer himself could be. The road to victory was still there, it just got a whole lot narrower.

“Hihihihi,” the gothic looking girl opened her mouth. Between her sharp teeth, her eight canines gleaming dangerously like fangs, darted out her tongue and licked the blood off her claws.

“Sorry, I just did it without waiting for an answer, but you look so tasty, ah, delicious, delicious fear, you know you are fucked right? Oh, yes, yes you do, yes you dooooo,” this nightmarish thing just babbled on as it tasted his blood as if it was the finest wine; “Ah, that look on your face is so nice, I just want to cut it off and put it on a frame!”

Suddenly, she moved at him again, “Can you bleed some more for me?” His answer was a quickly whirled around sword. The Claymore, previously to his advantage, now became a deadweight. The enormous weapon was too slow for this contest of speed.

“You know, I reaaalllyyyy hate you?” Small cuts, aimed to inflict pain rather than cripple him, spread over his body. “You hurt Sally and Salamander and Gmean and Gnome and Smlere and similar.” The cut above his eye, which had been healed by the potion earlier, was now replaced by a new one. “And now you want to pull off a little game? Let me show you a little game!”

This entire time this impossible elemental had only been attacking him with her clawed left, her right, normal, hand had remained unsteady. She still wasn’t using it, but her high-heeled foot flew through the air as she delivered a spin-kick to his head.

The world was ringing bells and sharp pain as he flew to the side. “Hihihihihi,” the vampire-esque spirit laughed and lapped up yet more of his blood. “Do you feel it yet? Sure, yes, sure you do? Want to see the knives? Let me show you the knives!”

The schadenfreude of his opponent was staggering. However, Mario was faced with a stroke of luck: he had been catapulted right next to where his one-hander was. Recovering, he quickly went for the weapon and darted off as stilettos pierced through the air where he had just been.

“Ah, you run so well, you bleed so well, if I wasn’t in love already, I would like you, but you hurt my friends, so I will hurt you!” Like she needed any excuse to hurt him. Mario was quite able to identify a totally mental person when he saw one, just took a bit of common sense.

She waved her right, a thick trail of darkness appearing and then quickly manifesting into a new wave of stilettos flying at him. She did it two times, and then nothing happened, “Oh, oops, out of mana, my bad, totally helpless now, this sucks! Whatever will I doo-dilidy-doooo, hihihi.”

Her black lips contorted into a pouting expression. It didn’t take a genius to smell the trap, but he had no other openings, so he went for it. He had managed to gather up the slightest bit of mana again, enough to power him up for this one assault.

If he didn’t succeed in taking her out now, it was game over.

“You have seen the knives,” the elemental blabbered, “now let me show you the scythe of vice.” All shadows inside the arena suddenly started moving. Breaking physics itself, all places where, by right of the angle of the sun and other light sources, there should have been a shadow suddenly found themselves robbed of that privilege.

The world’s depth became harder to grasp as all of its darker parts were removed, as if someone had taken a picture manipulation tool and forcefully evened out the light levels. The shadows converged on a single, pitch black spot.

Then the power of darkness was unleashed. Eyes of a glowing, sulphuric yellow now were on top of a sclera of pitch black; the singularity of shadows became a scythe. “I am Unleashed,” the elemental laughed and whirled the scythe at Mario.

A scythe was a terribly impractical weapon; all he needed was to knock it away, and he was free to attack the elemental. Afterwards, he could finally deal with John.

But the curved blade simply passed through his blade and then pulled through him. There was no wound, no cut, nothing, yet he experienced pain. As a knight of Rome, he had gone through terrible training, realistic torture situation, to make sure he would keep the secrets of the eternal city until his last day.

Yet, he was screaming now. It was as if someone was ripping out his veins where the scythe had hit and replacing them with an amalgamate of neurotoxins and molten metal. Worse yet, it spread from there outwards, making each passing moment more painful than the last.

He barely noticed that he hit the ground; he was too busy hoping that the pain wouldn’t reach his head. Just the imagination of what this would feel like behind his eyes was already driving him mad in pain.

“Aww.” He barely even noticed the voice, but he concentrated on it. Even if it was sadism made sound, it was still better to think about than this pain. “You look so cute now, but I need to end this before I split, so let’s make this easy. Imagine you are a very, very mushroom looking poor little thing and I am an Italian plumber in a Japanese video game.”

The hell was she on about? Is what Mario would have thought if he still had the capability to think instead of groan and scream in agony.

“Dada-daa-dada-daaaaaa,” his tormentor sung a little tune and then jumped on his head with her heeled feet.

Mario, hearing someone in the Apothecary camp screaming for painkillers, wished he could pass out. What had just happened?

Lydia: 6, Maximillian: 7