Chapter 436 – VS the Contender

Chapter 436 – VS the Contender

In the split second in which Sigmund turned around, drew his sword and closed in on John, he himself only saw a blur. Aclysia and Metra reacted in the nick of time. The weaponized maid threw herself in front of John, Vol’Jin’Zul in front of her; simultaneously, Metra was still drawing her weapon from John’s inventory when it happened.



The full horizontal swing sent John and Aclysia flying. They broke through the front of the house and were sent tumbling over the transformed golf course until they were brought to a somewhat gentle stop by clashing with the edge of the barrier. It was like hitting a wall of rubber, stretching around them, threatening to rip for a moment and then throwing them back into the barrier.

“Not bad!” Sigmund shouted over to them as he stepped out of the hole he had just made in the charming little two-story house. “Few people can even block my initial strike, you got a pretty good sword there?”

As Aclysia and John got up, the latter to the feeling of his broken ribcage snapping back into an unharmed version, Metra finally jumped into action. In an instinctive move, Sigmund moved his arm upwards so the flat of the blade ran parallel to his back, blocking Qiada.

“What do you suggest as a name for this blade, Sammy?” Sigmund ignored Metra as she growled pushing against the unmoving giant.

“Let’s see,” a new voice added to the mix, distracting everyone. It was calm, female and graceful. The person it belonged to was a lady who was pale for a person of middle eastern descent. She had very long black hair, all the way down to her waist, and dark brown eyes. The swing of her cheekbones was graceful, as was the rest of her face. It seemed like she had been carved out of sandalwood to represent the perfect aristocrat.

She was wearing a dress of grey, the colour of dull steel, that appeared like metal but flowed like silk. The long skirt and sleeves ended in rims that shone with the silver of starlight. In her hands she held a black metal staff that ended in tiny curved blades of mithril, positioned like a scythe’s, pointing at opposite directions.

“I suggest Tiatan, from Tiamat and Titan,” she quickly added.

John felt a giant surge of wrath blasting out of the needle wide maze that was his connection to Metra. Feeling like his soul was being scorched with a single word, the first word that got through there since they made their contract, he heard the ancient weapon call out. “SEMINARIS!”



‘What the hell is that bonus to Spellpower?’ John asked himself wide eyed. He glanced at Metra as well at the occasion, checking her stats to see just how angry she actually was. The bonus had jumped straight to the maximum of 300%.

“Good to see you too, Sister,” the First of Patience smirked. The Astrotium armour pierced out of the berserker’s skin in a split second. Qiada was wildly swung around with such utter, brutal force that Sigmund’s nonchalant defence could not hope to stop it. The black swordsman was himself catapulted to the side, then Metra stormed at Seminaris.

A noise as if someone was pulling a stick over an abrasive surface reached John’s ears the moment Metra got within striking distance. Then a gate opened in the middle of the air, a portal to somewhere else, and threatened to devour the First of Wrath. “Always so impatient,” Seminaris berated with a smile on her face, sure that the portal would whisk Metra away to somewhere else.

“Always so fucking SMUG!” Metra screamed at her in return, ripping away at the portal. The younger metracana raised an eyebrow and then took a step backwards as her portal spell began to tear. “You should have gone for portal strength,” the berserker babe growled with her own grin, one of triumphant anger, “rather than distance.”

“At least this won’t be boring, then,” Seminaris said, taking to the sky the same moment as her current spell was ripped apart. Their fight began in earnest.

John still had an eye on Seminaris’ Observe window. The Spellpower bonus had fallen to 0 and was now ticking up again. A bonus based on the time between two spells, perhaps? ‘Master!’ Aclysia pulled him back into reality with an eye on Sigmund who was shaking his head as he got up.

“What a strike!” he exclaimed and then looked over to John. “Fighting you will be the best thing I had this year!”

John made a run for the water. He wasn’t going to be of much help regardless of where he went, so he could at least check on Aclysia. The Combinations were able to hold their ground just as two, for the moment at least.

When he reached the shore, she was dragging herself out of the water. The attack had sliced through her stomach, leaving the upper and lower half of her body connected by a slim piece around her spine. Control of her legs was temporarily lost due to this, but she was healing quickly. That was a relief, for the most part. “This is going to be very hard to survive,” John stated.

“If it becomes necessary, please escape on your own,” Aclysia stated.

The sound of a man laughing maniacally echoed over to John and drowned out even the beginning of his retort. “WHAT AN ASS, WRECKING MY SHOP!” Marathyu screamed, throwing his giant hammer at the end at what John identified to be another mould. Afterwards he grabbed a chisel and a smaller hammer and created fine lines in perfectly measured gaps. He was forging whatever was inside by changing the shape of the mould around it, talking to himself, screaming and laughing in the process. “Such a genius, now I can renovate my house, yes, yes, GLORIOUS IS MY SWORD!” Marathyu threw his hands in the air, throwing away the chisel and hammer in the process. He then looked around, as if he was confused where he was. “What am I...?” a moment of clarity seemed to reflect in his eyes, as if years of madness were suddenly snuffed out. “Oh no...oh no, what am I?! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!” Then he laughed out loud. “I FORGOT THE LAST INGREDIENT FOR THIS SWORD!”

John was preoccupied with trying to get Aclysia on her feet. It was an ultimately futile gesture, she would heal the same speed either way, but it made him feel less useless. “Watch out!” Aclysia cried when he was halfway through lifting her.

Marathyu charged at him with a spear that was really just a sharpened iron rod. The blacksmith’s Agility was abysmal, but he caught John by surprise and the Gamer’s mana was low enough that Mana Protection got penetrated with relative ease. Hot pain seared through his body as his lower abdomen was penetrated. “THE FINAL INGREDIEEEENT!” the insane man screamed more, twisting and turning the weapon some more before retracting it without any announcement and running back to his anvil. The attack and pain ended as suddenly as it had begun.

A new wave of hateful anger hit John’s spirit as Aclysia waited for control of her legs to return so she could break the neck of the scar-covered madman. For the moment, she couldn’t, and even if she could, John wanted to see what Marathyu was going to do with his blood.

“Blackened by sin, blackened by sin, from the master giving blood unwilling!” the man chanted as he scraped John’s blood off the improvised weapon and into tiny hole in the mould. “Oh, I can smell it, fire of destruction, prophecies of rodents, they pulsate in this blood! You have good blood, young man, very good blood, blessed by powerful, evil entities, yes, YES! A taint of corruption, Lorylims echo twice, chaos sings and screams and falls from the tower they ruined!”

As he spoke he poured more and more liquids into the mould. Then a final drop of something John didn’t know caused a chain reaction. A new cloud of steam announced the birth of a new sword.

John felt less and less of Aclysia’s weight on his shoulder as her regeneration restored her body, even if her HP was still two fifths down. She stood on her own by the time a scream echoed out of the clearing air. “NO!” the disbelieving voice was accompanied by the stomping of naked feet on the wooden planks. John was reminded of an eerie drum he never truly heard. “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! IT’S WHITE, WHY IS IT NOT TAINTED BY SIN!”

The air became clear and revealed Marathyu crying in happiness at the blade he so loathed with his words. It had an enormous grip, more than enough space for four hands to hold it. The guard was paradoxically slimmer than the blade itself, a knotted black thing designed to hold in place the enormous blade attached to it. Knowing the madness of that blacksmith, John doubted there were no secrets hidden in that design though.

Same held true for the blade itself. John wanted to refuse calling it a sword. In shape and design, it reminded John more of a utility cutter, just scaled up to a massive size. From the keen edge to the dull backside, it must have been twenty centimetres wide and at least ten thick. To call it an absurdly sharp slab of metal with a handle wouldn’t have been inaccurate. Thin lines separated the mithril silver-white blade into segments along the sides.

“It must be destroyed, it’s too perfect, I don’t want this, it’s bad, I don’t want this! WHY IS IT NOT TAINTED?!” Marathyu shouted out slamming the blade onto the anvil over and over again, despite his clear problems lifting it. The only thing that got dented in the process was the anvil.

“Because,” Aclysia stepped towards Marathyu and took the sword from him. For a moment he wrestled with her, then she shoved him back and he just cowered together on the floor, rocking back and forth. “My John is flawed, imperfect and maybe not the greatest person out there – but he wouldn’t be my John if he were a sinner bad enough to stain this metal.” She looked at the blacksmith for a moment, then she raised the weapon to kill the man in revenge for earlier.

The weapon stayed raised for several moments. “I want to see the forest again, there was so much wisdom in that forest,” Marathyu whimpered, rocking back and forth. John and Aclysia both froze in surprise. “Where did the crow go? Where did my tool go? The beautiful, beautiful blade...”

That sounded strangely similar to the story John had told Aclysia on the cruise. Was it just a coincidence rambled on by an insane mind? Had John accidentally spoken a prophecy back then? Did he even have that kind of power? Either way, it made Aclysia lower her blade and leave the blacksmith alone with his continued madness. “We better help Smlere and Sinflut,” she told John.

“You are right,” John answered just in time for the former of those two to crash nearby.