Chapter 340 – The push on three fronts

Chapter 340 – The push on three fronts

The fact that John would go on an important extraction mission, the thing in this war that he held the most personal investment in, freshly showered and in prime condition was a thing that he was equally astonished and weirded out by.

With all the modern news about the terror of the trenches, he had expected at least something like it. Fireballs ravaging over fortified positions, lightning and alchemical explosives falling from the sky as martial arts users clashed on a giant battlefield.

As John passed a battalion of normal soldiers, their faces waxen and pale from a nightshift of snuffing out remainders of enemy sleeper cells within abyssal Prague and the surrounding areas, a realization struck him. They must have been out for more than 20 hours now, dragging themselves from one theatre to the next.

The trenches, the horrible reality of extended engagements, all that existed. John was just too powerful to experience them because, every fight he was part of, he was the deciding factor in. With him, there were no extended stalemates to be had.

It was like everyone else was stuck with medieval weaponry and he swooped in there with a squad of fully modernized special ops. There was no way he could not win that engagement.

One of the soldiers tripped, fell over and then spend a good few moments trying to get up. Two of his comrades, looking like they would sooner join him on the pavement than lifting him, tried to help.

“Let me,” John offered, stopping in his way for just long enough to pull the man to his feet with a minimum of effort. Thanks to him spreading the love to his physical stats to at least some degree, he was capable of feats that average people would regard as super strength.

He deliberately helped the man up with his right hand and had healing energy flow into him during that short moment of touch. It was no substitute for sleep, but it warded off the immediate effects of exhaustion for just little while.ÚpTodated novels on no(v)el()bin(.)com

“Thanks,” the guy said, his mind too far gone into the misty realm of forceful consciousness that followed prolonged adrenaline rushes to even notice what John had done.

“No problem, good job out there,” the Gamer said and tapped the man on the shoulder before walking off.

“Nice guy,” he heard through the ears of Jack. The trio, probably a small clique inside the bigger company, went further on their way. “Wonder who that was.”

“Dude, don’t you watch any news? That was the Gamer; he is with the Princess of Steel,” another one of them answered, and the conversation devolved into a tired exchange that John shortly afterwards tapped out off.

“Nice PR move,” Momo said from his side. “Yes, I know you didn’t do it for the PR,” she answered his complaint before he could even voice it, “but it will help anyway.”

“Help with what? Once I free Lydia, I have no reason to be further involved in this war,” John explained. “Not going to stick my neck out for these people at large. At least not if I don’t get something out of it.”

“How about Score?” Momo suggested. “Also, I believe you that you won’t go to the hotbeds of the war, but come on, we both know you aren’t selfish ENOUGH to just sit around as the world burns around you.” He had to agree to that.

“Yeah, also that sounds boring,” Rave added. “How about we go where it’s the most dangerous actually.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” John insisted; she shrugged. They postponed this topic until it would actually be a thing they could decide. There was a bit of certainty that a rather important brunette princess would get them to where she needed them anyway, once they had gotten her out.

John could imagine why. During the battle against Thana, Nathalia unleashed a fire breath that filled the sky together with the dimensional gap. Whatever had been on the other side had, without a doubt, been consumed as collateral damage. They still could have teleported using magic users rather than equipment, like the former Supreme Fateweaver who whisked Lydia and her father away in the first place, but there was absolutely no way of knowing if this was the case until they got there.

All they could hope for was that the Blood actually didn’t care as much for Lydia as to invest such resources into her. They would have to go and see for themselves and take the risk of her not being there. The alternative was the cautious approach, which gave them even more time to relocate her.

“I see, well then, how will we get there?” John asked.

“I am rather interested in that myself,” Nariko added. “I haven’t seen a lot of cars inside or outside of this barrier.”

“We won’t take a car, who do you take me for?” the mechanic girl said, puffing up her cheeks. She was actually rather cute, black, long hair, weird glasses, probably about 25 years old. The eccentric type.

“They won’t know, you forgot to introduce yourself,” Maximillian said with a sigh. He walked over; if one hadn’t known about it, the stumble would have been unnoticeable. “May I introduce, Maria Theresia the third von Habsburg, Technomancer, my older sister and the weird girl that rather wanted to play with gears than govern the empire.”

“Oh, shut it, not like I got through all the fighting that qualifies the heir anyway. My actual fighting abilities are trash. Also you all can call me Ria,” the mechanic announced. Taking a playful swing with a small wrench at her brother, who just reversed the gravitational pull and made it fly up into the air.

“I won’t,” Nariko straight-up denied, crossing her arms in a stuck-up fashion. “Now answer my question. Does it have anything to do with that hall behind you?” That’s the same conclusion John had come to; actually, it was the only conclusion anyone could come to. Even Rave nodded to that.

“What hall?” Ria was clearly confused, looked over her shoulder and then made an understanding sound. “Ah, well, he looks like that in maintenance mode. One sec.” she fished out a remote from her many pockets and then turned a few things on top of it before flicking a switch. The earth rumbled.

The industrial hall started to move. Roof parting and walls splitting into smaller segments, the whole thing began to shift. Arms and legs constructed themselves in a fashion that shouldn’t have been possible and reserved for Japanese sci-fi movies. An iron giant rose, around a hundred metres tall. He was largely just raw, grey metal, but on the shoulders, he had the flags of Austria and the Roman Empire.

Now that also explained what that ‘mobile barrier’ thing meant. A heart of blue energy was set into the middle of his chest, about where the solar plexus for normal people would be. “I never get to use him because my brother is stingy, so this is great!” Ria said.

“It’s because he eats the daily GDP of Vienna per hour,” Maximillian told John. “Completely over-designed thing. It needs its own barrier generator because its too big, and it wont even work without a Fateweaver around.”

“Hi, that’s why I am here,” Magoi waved while already on his way towards the iron giant. The thing seemed to have something resembling intelligence, as it picked the Fateweaver up rather gently. Its breastplate swung upwards with the sound of hydraulic vents pumping like mad and revealed something like a room between thousands of gears, energy cells and cables inside.

“Let’s hurry and get this done, not just for Lydia but because every second here costs me a fortune,” Maximillian declared, and soon they all had boarded the iron giant. The room inside was not exactly cosy nor big. To say it was a practical big vent for extended maintenance would have been more accurate. There was no furniture aside from a screen on the inside of the metre-thick plate that allowed them to see what was going on outside.

The only person not dwelling in that room was Ria; she climbed up some shaft, and then they heard her voice coming from... somewhere, John didn’t see any speakers around. “Okay, everyone, I am ready and in my piloting seat! Let me just put on the proper sound effects and we are ready to go!”

“The hell do you mean proper sound effects?!” Maximillian, in the tone of an annoyed younger brother, another side John hadn’t actually thought would fit on that person, shouted up the shaft. “Just get us movi-“

“DEMOCRACY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE!” it thundered around them as everything around them started trembling and the giant began moving. “LIBERTY PRIME ACTIVATED!”

John had a way too giant nerd boner now to point out that this didn’t fit whatsoever. After all, he was fighting with monarchists of an ancient empire, not to mention on eastern European soil. Still, he couldn’t deny that the voice he knew from Fallout was pretty much the best war cry that there was.

“DESTROY ALL COMMUNISTS!”