Chapter 540 – Victory & Mouth 16 – Übersetzung

Chapter 540 – Victory & Mouth 16 – Übersetzung

“And then... and then... I dieeeeed... waaaaahaaaaaaaa,” Sylph was finishing her recount of what had happened before she died. Since John had been preoccupied with Abraham at that point, he actually didn’t know. He was giving her lots of pats on the head since that kept the bawling thunderstorm elemental somewhat calm. As a reward, his hand was zapped every time he came in contact with her hair. Seemed like a crying storm conducted electricity accidentally.

“It’s okay, Sylph, you still technically won,” he told her. “Getting rid of that flying gear tower sounds more important than just looking at treetops.” Although that did explain the explosion in the middle of it. “Anyway, we shouldn’t waste any more time.”

It had taken almost an hour to restore Sylph. 48 minutes 59 seconds, to be exact. John kept tabs on these things nowadays to figure out if there was some sort of formula. Well, that there was one was basically a given, figuring it out was the hard part. He had the rough idea that it was dependant on the elemental’s Tier and Level, but there were some modifiers involved that he wasn’t sure about yet. His sample size being a bit small was the problem, and he wasn’t going to create a bigger one anytime soon. This was knowledge he didn’t covet nearly enough to kill his elemental girls over.

“Yeah, let’s get done with this,” Chemilia agreed.

At the side, Terkal finally moved out of his stasis in the corner, “Yes. Let’s rip out Abraham’s intestines until he coughs out how he killed... her.” The general hesitated using Imerella’s name and ultimately failed; his clenched fist quivered. “I just wanted my battalion funded and now this... all of this shit...”

Ted hummed in agreement and they all left the building. The rest had turned what remained of the army into a proper organization again. John had a testing glance over all of them. The level floor was 25, the ceiling 50, taking the odd level 16 recruit out of the equation. Utterly average fighters in most regards, beaten into a viable state through steady drills, but a whole 200 of them, formed up in three segments that were not at all equal. Terkal’s forces had clearly diminished the most, less than a quarter of the total remainders was under his command. With over half of the remainders, Ted’s forces were the ones that stemmed the most members, his wife’s troop making up the rest.

John remembered fighting a force like this, one guided by a giant, buffing machine in the sky over the capital of a state that history just loved to take up the back entrance. At the battle of Warsaw, he had fought one battalion of roughly that size. He had almost lost back then. To be fair only Undine had been there to help him, but that wasn’t the point. All things taken together, current allies, enemies and the deceased all summed up, the Little Maryland couldn’t even approach one tenth of the gathered army size that the Blood of the Proletariat, in itself one of the weaker Divided Gates, had mustered at that battle.

No superweapons, no large-scale weaponry, basically no navy, that was the force John needed because it was better than anything he had. It put things into perspective rather drastically, just how far the actual elite guilds were above everyone else. Made John wonder what kind of forces Romulus could muster in their entirety, with his currently reforming empire. Worse, what kind of resources the Horned Rat had access too.

200 people, no superweapons, no large-scale weaponry, basically no navy, Fusion had a long road ahead of itself if it wanted to take the seat John’s quest and ambitions asked him to put it in. ‘I should seriously look into building some sort of automatic war machine, like Liberty Prime or the Grey Golems... except maybe not that unnecessarily huge.’

At least the people they had were all healed up, mentally rested and there were a few Fateweavers among them. They gathered up and left the barrier behind. John watched with interest as all of the uniforms transformed into different mixtures of something like a dozen different articles of clothing. Just enough for people to not seem to dress in unison, but looked at as a block, John saw some repetitions here and there. When it came to disguising, the Abyss had it figured out.

Thanks to DC being a pretty populated city, to put it mildly, 200 people walking around in relative density wasn’t that unusual. They headed for the obvious target, the White House. By the time they arrived, daylight had finally faded. They were in the twilight phase of the day, where the sun’s rays were still lighting up part of the horizon but everything was becoming darker by the minute.

The proper White House was resting peacefully behind iron fences, guards walking around. Thinking that those security people that only had to worry about guns were pretty blessed, John entered the barrier. What mundane fence had been before him a moment ago was now the borderline for a barrier that spanned over the entire building.

“No money to spare for anything but his own security,” John mumbled as he looked at the expansive shield. Protecting that much space that way couldn’t have been cheap. On the other side of the barrier, he saw what Abraham had quickly gathered or had held in reserve. Way more than John thought, in fact, as every single bureaucrat that could fight also joined their president and his forces. The numbers had already been on Abraham’s side, now he more than doubled John’s force.

That they were already getting into position to fight meant that they had positioned some individuals to stand at a street corner and just wait for John and his allies to approach. A simple phone call would have warned Abraham of their coming. The remainders of John’s forces warped in slowly.

For a moment, John contemplated talking to Abraham and his forces again, but to what end? Abraham wasn’t about to admit to his sinister schemes at this stage, he would rather sink with the lie. Instead, John equipped Purgatory and Undine again and punched the barrier. Not particularly damaging, but cost effective. “Can you tunnel under it, Gnome?” John asked.Follow the latest novels on no/velbin(.)com

“You got it,” John nodded, prepared to end this whole thing in a final confrontation. Neither side had Fateweaver supremacy, thanks to the president’s recent losses, so it would be hard for Abraham to flee this time. They could end it all here, this whole affair of ups and down would finally conclude.

Everyone else was already tearing down the fence. There were some more losses amongst the common soldiers as they tried to fight through the physical barrier and were shot at by the enemy who desperately tried to fend them off. At that, the enemy gathering of mercenaries, bureaucrats and professional soldiers were steadily showered in attacks by Sylph, Salamander and Nia.

Aclysia charged at the fence while John let Rave sit down. Brandishing Marath, she executed a massive vertical swing, the enormous cleaver cutting through the fence, sending shards of metal and the stone base flying. Dismissing the weapon entirely, she and Gnome threw their heavy and strong bodies against the damaged fence. It bent, a second assault broke several of the segment’s bases from the fundament, and then the two girls had successfully created a breach. The governmental guard immediately tried to plug it up with their own bodies, the white-armoured knights taking position, but Beatrice was so swiftly through the gate that Twist Position carried her behind their ranks before they closed them.

The passive maid methodically stabbed one of them in the small gap between helmet and neck, severing the vital nerves and instantly killing the person. They had to turn around to face that threat, but in doing so they opened themselves up to John, who threw two Arcane Echoes in quick succession as he stormed through the breach himself.

The two waves of purple energy closely followed and partly overlapped, breaking on the armour of the knights but still causing clearly pained shouts from within as arcane burns covered whatever side they had turned towards the person that was hit by both of the attacks, who went to the ground. Not dead, John knew this thanks to Whisper of Mana not triggering. His mana regeneration increased by 100% if he successfully killed someone with an arcane type spell. The disgustingly pragmatic part of John urged him to finished the falling guard off with a cheap Shardbound. Instead, John took the time to grab the knight and drag him out of the way of his remaining allies squeezing through the breach and spilling onto the White House’s front lawn one by one.

He had to tell nobody to keep casualties to a minimum. Everyone was too aware that they were fighting their own people. He left the average fighters to battle it out amongst themselves, between Chemilia, Terkal and Ted they had enough high tier support. Somewhere in the distance, John saw Nia clash with the other blank again. At least they had their logic-ripping clash somewhere away from the main battle this time.

Turning back to his actual target, John threw out a Shardbound at Abraham, who simply ignored it as he pummelled Metra with a flurry of movements. He was punching her so quickly in the air above him, she was stuck in place and kept getting pounded. It was incredibly sobering to see someone dominate the ancient weapon this way, even if her armour kept her from being too badly damaged.

Abraham pulled down and gathered energy in his fist. ‘Shit!’ John thought and attempted to interrupt the Ascending Cut like he had last time. He was too slow; the power infused fist rose upwards and hit Metra in the stomach. There was a visible discharge of energy and then she vanished. Simply disappeared as if the world had swallowed her.

Whirling around to face John, Abraham’s eyes were wide with... confusion. “What the fuck did you just do?!” The Gamer was too worried about the berserker babe’s sudden disappearance to worry about the president’s feelings.

“It’s just another of your tricks, isn’t it?!” Abraham hardened his resolve and faced the Gamer. They were about to have their confrontation, John accompanied by Aclysia, Undine, Sylph and Salamander versus the hulk of a president.

Only two more metres between them. John wasn’t thinking quite as logically as he should have, staying back and sniping at his enemy while letting Aclysia tank. The loss of Imerella and now the worry for Metra urged him to feel the primal satisfaction of punching someone in the face. With Aclysia around, they would have the advantage in melee anyway.

John noticed a movement of all elements not far above him. It didn’t take a genius to know that something incredibly bad was coming. Abraham’s own trained reflexes, bordering on precognition, seemed to warn him about something similar. Both of them suddenly reverted their course. Just in time to dodge a black blade coming for them in the middle of a meteorite of darkness.

Earth exploded everywhere as the landing of a massive humanoid created a crater. A cloud of shadows hung cleanly around, only the split, double blade of a massive sword moving. Wearing heavy plate armour of black metal, the darkness concentrating in the shape of a tattered cape, black with grey decorations, hanging from his back, the newcomer stepped out of his crater. A face covered in battle scars came into view. Despite its grizzled look, the man it belonged to couldn’t have been much older than John, one eye closed with a particularly large scar running across it. The other, dark green, looked ecstatic as he rested his nightmare of a weapon on his shoulder. The entire thing was about two metres, which still made it smaller than the broad framed warrior holding it. The hilt, forged into the shape of an ice flower, hit the pauldron with a silent chink.

In his left hand, the black swordsman was holding something that looked like the kind of orb used by fortune tellers, completely with swirling energy inside. “Now this seems like a worthy challenge,” he grinned and crushed that orb in his massive fist. Energies quickly expanded out of the sphere, which reached the ends of the barrier and created a grid on top of it. A very clear indication that this barrier was now in lockdown.



Sigmund had arrived.