Chapter 347 – Kneel down

Chapter 347 – Kneel down

...one of the golems was swung around like a baseball bat.

If John’s mouth hadn’t already been hanging open from the invaders appearing, seeing one of the golems getting whirled around and slammed into the other one would have caused his jaw to drop so hard it would have threatened to unhinge.

The two golems were smashed against the border of the barrier. Cracks spread through the visible world in the shape of an oversized spiderweb, and moments later, the whole thing gave in, and the barrier collapsed into the one around it.

‘What kind of stupid strategy is this?’ John thought as a drop of cold sweat ran down the side of his face. The Grey Golems, one of them completely destroyed, the other slowly losing mass in the form of boulders falling out of its broken back, fell backwards and caused a giant dust cloud, robbing John’s view of that area for a moment.

He checked the other surrounding areas through Momo and Jack. His thoughts about how stupid that strategy was were now unimportant. Fact was that they were surrounded on all sides. The enemy had another 9 of these gargantuan constructs; like ants, several thousand people had ordered themselves in standing battalions between them, the green uniforms omnipresent and robbing them off all individuality. That must have been the main fighting force of the Blood. Why was it here? Last John knew, they were on the onslaught; their main force should have been somewhere in Germany right now.

The question was left unanswered; instead, John had to worry at the thing hovering above the heads of the Grey Golems.



Aside from sheer size, this thing looked impressive by design alone. It had a slick, aerodynamically curved shape made from bent pieces of metal. It was equipped with three ‘guns’, areas where the metal stuck out of the frame in spiked rods. Two small ones on its massive wings and a third below the middle segment. The last one was not only dangerously looking large but also rotated freely.

The three spikes that made up the big cannon started rotating so fast that it seemed there was one translucent barrel. Arcs of multi-coloured electricity danced around and focused in a ball of plasmatic lightning, shifting throughout all colours of the spectrum. It aimed at that dust cloud.

It flew at a speed that made the ball-shaped projectile look like a beam, burning itself into John’s retina, bright enough to actually deal twenty damage to his health pool. ‘Why would they shoot at their own...’ John began to wonder but instantly realized that they wouldn’t shoot at their own people. ‘We are saved.’

The cloud of dust was scattered in an instant, revealing a much smaller force in a triangular formation, 500 at most. At the back, there were people in all kinds of knightly plate, decorated with individual heraldry. They stood proud, sitting atop fantastical animals ranging from proud to almost comically looking.

Then there was a group of leather clad sword wielders. John imagined to see Mario in there, the swordmaster that had helped Maximillian in the tournament. To their side was an order brandishing robes and staffs. They were gathered around their individual banner, a golden eagle on red ground surrounded by the depiction of an olive branch crown. For the first group that eagle was sitting atop a sword, for the second on a staff.

And then at the head of it all stood two people. One was an old man in a brown robe, hunched over with the left half of his face replaced with crystalline structures out of which transparent tubes stuck and connected with a stone collar around his neck.

Then there was the one at the very helm. The emperor himself, Romulus. With Sol in her sword and Luna in her shield form, he was standing his ground against the energy ball that had been fired at them. It ground against the shield, vibrating in a way that John could only describe as glitchy, like a videogame asset that couldn’t find the path it was supposed to follow anymore and was lost in recalculation loops.

Romulus shouted, digging his heels into the dirt and finally deflecting the attack by moving his shield to the side. The energy ball flew parallel to their formation and was aimed perfectly to disintegrate the head of the second, barely alive golem that Romulus’ initial use of one of it as a bat hadn’t destroyed. The attack wasn’t stopped by the ground and flew even further, melting its way through the soil, leaving a glassed tunnel.

Pointing his blade at the Construct of Order, Romulus said two simple words that echoed over the silent battlefield, “To battle.” Following that simple announcement, he was the first who charged forwards, and everyone else followed in a desperate attempt to keep up with him, one that was doomed to fail.

That was the reason why the enemy main force was here, they had been forced back this far already. Romulus had healed and was now pushing them back with his own two hands. No amount of force they could muster would be able stand against the emperor, who was beaming with lights and crackling mana in his armour made from hundreds of powers.

On one hand, John was pretty relieved that their reinforcements were there, especially seeing who was leading them; on the other, a new problem presented itself to him. As the Blood had positioned themselves in a siege ring around the old barrier, they were encircled on 3 sides by them; only the western side had been broken by the imperial force. To put it easily, the ruins of Warsaw where about to become a historical battleground.

‘Poland is so utterly screwed with its location between Germany and Russia,’ John thought as he moved towards the allied forces as quickly as possible. If he was going to be at the heart of things, he at least wanted to be where friendly troops were. Rave and everyone else were at the west already, so they were able unite with them in no time, but he had fled even further east after firing the Arcana Strike.

The distance between him and the enemy siege ring was much smaller than the one towards his allies. It was almost guaranteed that he would get intercepted. The sky was filled with contraptions, magical eyes and other forms of scrying magic as the battle preparations finished. The Construct of Order used the two smaller magical cannons on its wings to burn an arcane symbol into the ceiling of the sky. It looked like twin serpents winding around a tree in a walled garden.



Oh, that was just great, why not give the communist bloc means to actually link-up their minds? Not that it was news that they had that power; they had performed as one in the invasion of the colosseum already. Now that they had both surveillance and unity, they moved, and they moved quickly. The whole northern half of the army seemed to collapse in John’s direction.

He was 109 by now, and Purgatory boosted his Strength and Agility by a total of 54,5 each. Unless they were fully specialized, they had no chance against him even in a pure brutal close-up confrontation.

‘I will see Jane smile again,’ he felt a ribcage crunch; ‘I will hear Aclysia hum again,’ he conjured a Mana Blade, penetrating a uniform’s chest; ‘I will see Gnome blush, hear Salamander boast,’ he cut three people down with the Mana Blade before it vanished again, ‘Sylph’s blabbering and Undine’s laugh.’ He realized that people had finally begun to climb the broken golem. A quick Shardbound took care of one of them, but many more followed. ‘Even Siena’s sadistic, self-loving attitude will I witness again.’

Jack descended on someone who tried to jump on John from above. The green uniform flailed wildly as the mechanical bird clawed at his eyes before slipping and falling off, hitting his head on the pavement and being an easy target for John to take out a moment later. ‘I will see Eliza’s progress,’ he thought as he turned to glare at the enemy force.

‘Momo will sass at me again, and Nathalia will complain about the lack of food to me,’ he continued as he ducked under a swing by a two-headed axe and grabbed the user’s leg in the process, ripping him off the ground and tossing him off to the side with a fair bit of physical effort.

‘I will watch Nia chase after cats again,’ he told himself, feeling his muscles slowly tire. Gamer’s Body restored his stamina quickly when he rested, but if he kept going like this, it would begin to show. Jack descended on another attempting attack from above, but this one was prepared, catching the bird just as he jumped off and then crushing Jack under the force of impact. The mechanical innards of the bird scattered all over the floor.

Now John was surrounded from all sides, more and more of them jumping down from above. If he had used an Arcane Echo, he would have easily hit more than ten people with it no matter where he aimed, but to gain the amount of mana he needed for that was impossible.

“I will not save Lydia only to die myself,” he growled at the people that had surrounded him, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike like a band of hungry wolves. Then they all jumped at him at once. Fist crashing into one face, whip of water whirling around. If the supreme Fateweaver hadn’t used up his Spell Storage, this would have been perfect.

Mana Protection flared up and died, then flickered and died again, as it worked only with the mana he regenerated, which was now back down to the usual amount. It still saved him a lot of hurt.

However, his arms began to slow, then to burn, weapons penetrating his defences. Daggers scratched over his ribcage, maces broke his shoulders and other bones, and swords were stabbed into his guts. People grabbed his arms, fixating him for mere moments before he managed to free himself, but then more took their place. An endless pile of bodies stacked itself on top of him, and eventually the weight became more than he could carry.

But even then he didn’t give up hope, for he knew that a way out still existed. His health was dwindling, but he still would live a for a little bit longer, and if he was going to die, the Arcana Strike would make sure that every last bastardly uniform that was around him was taken with him.

A blast of air and lightning suddenly struck the pile of bodies on top of him and gave him the opportunity for one last push. His upper body broke out of the darkness of winding bodies. “GRAB MY HAND!” a male voice called out as a kingly cape fluttered on top of a flying piece of debris. John reached out, his right hand was red, water had mixed with spilled blood, but he gripped true and was pulled out of the mass.

John breathed heavily as he halfway collapsed next to the king. “Thanks... buddy,” he pressed out.

“You are insufferable,” Maximillian shook his head and playfully kicked him as Sylph created a cloudy whirlwind that protected them from projectiles and obscured the vision of the mages below; “You can thank that blabbering air spirit of yours for guiding me; the others were too slow.”

“I know,” John groaned and sat up again; he was already beginning to feel better. His HP were quickly ticking up again thanks to Undine, and his mana, although Tip’s regeneration had long ended (lasting only a minute), was restoring by the second. “You think I just blew away all my mana at the start of the fight without insurance?”

“You did what?” Maximillian, who had no idea how Arcana Strike worked, asked.

“Well, let’s just say I knew it would come down to a fistfight and how long I could last. I knew that Undine, if she focused on healing, could keep my alive for a while and that even my physical stats are pretty above average by now. Because, you know, I am a bullshit character,” John explained; “In a fistfight bunkering all my resources for defensive measures would have been pretty meh, so it was either using them for spells in the fight, which I didn’t really need since most of them are like level 50 or something to that effect and go down pretty quickly, or I would use them as my insurance to end this fight in my favour... I think we are up high enough now.”

With that, the Arcana Strike fell on the place where they just fought, desecrating the fallen body of the Grey Golem even further while wiping out the whole stack of people that had assaulted John in an instant, consumed by pillar of blue coloured energy.



“...You are trying to tell me you planned on me saving you?” Maximillian stared at the purple and azure veiled crater where the remains of power still crackled over the ground.

“I actually thought you would be a bit slower, then again, I didn’t fight as well as I thought I could,” John shrugged; “This whole Boxing thing is still new to me. However, yes, I knew that Aclysia had urged you to go forward and save me, just as I knew how quick Sylph is. It was a pretty educated estimate.”

“I dread the thought of you and me becoming true enemies,” Maximillian said, unable to raise his eyes from the crater.

John glanced at Hawpler, wordlessly existing besides his summoner, and then remembered the forces under this man’s control. While it was kind of funny that Maximillian would say the same thing that Lydia once had said, John couldn’t help but feel earnest about this, “You and me both.”