Chapter 221: Splitting Up

Chapter 221: Splitting Up

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Splitting Up

My Aurora exploded into existence around us and immediately aspected towards water, taking form as a bizarre, personalized water spout. As Gilgamesh entered my range, I felt his presence as a swift moving object literally burning a path through the flowing wind and water, boiling anything that touched his skin with friction alone.

He was fast, more so than anyone I'd ever fought, and that made all the difference in a fight. Most of the Grimm I opposed were massive creatures and there was something to be said for thatbut they were unwieldy, too, so massive that everything they did seemed almost glacial. It wasn't, truly; logically speaking, any of the Grimm moved at truly absurd speeds given their size. But to me? They were mostly just giant targets. Some of the Grimm, the truly powerful ones, had other ways around such things, but those that didn't

Well, they were a big part of how I'd gotten this strong.

And Gilgamesh wasn't like them at all. If anything, he'd been built with their weaknesses in mind, leveraging the absurd physical prowess of the Grimm to even more absurd levels, without anything to hold him back. I wasn't foolish enough to assume that he didn't have anything else up his sleevemy life was rarely that easybut even without whatever he was keeping in reserve, he was on a different level than the Grimm I'd fought thus far. He was fast by my standards and with nothing but his physical stats, managed to move at speeds I could only match with layered skills and outright time manipulation. It was, quite frankly, kind of ridiculous.

But so was I.

I held my Aurora in place for only a moment, gauging his approach, and then Fluctuated, flickering away just as he cut through the space I'd inhabited. Even as I moved, I let Xihai slip from my flesh, her spiritual presence seeming to rise from my skin like water vaporand while I disappeared, she remained just where she was, forming a forming a physical form from the surrounding water. That was part of the reason I hadn't put aside Varuna instantly, in fact; though I didn't consider it the best of my Elemental Embodiment skills, it did have a fair bit going for it, among them the casual ability to either summon or create water. Without any increase in cost, Aurora had generated a massive amount of water; enough to flood skyscrapers and more than enough to serve my and Xihai's needs.

As Gilgamesh hit the other side of the rough sphere my Aurora had created, he didn't pierce throughrather, the sphere distorted, a portion of it stretching out with him and turning it into an odd cone-like shape as water pulled at him even as he pushed forward, slowing him slightly. At the same time, the rough coils of the former water spout transitioned into actual coiled, complete with dark blue scales. It spiraled upwards, water swirling into a more definite shape as it gathered into the form of giantess with six arms who's body flowed seamlessly into the serpentine scales just above her waist. Even as Gilgamesh finally broke free of the water's grasp and literally exploded out of her back, she didn't so much as flinch, water shifting back into place ever as what was boiled away began to condensate. Instead, she simply looked at Gilgamesh with nine pitch-black orbs; two in her face, one at her collar bone, and one on each of her arms, just below where her shoulders merged. From each of the eyes came a steady stream of clear water, flowing into and feeding the rest of her body.

Of all the improvements I'd made prior to this battle, this was, while not the greatest, definitely one of the closest to my heartmy Elementals had made the jump from Lesser Elementals to True Elementals, with my Elemental Affinities all doubling in the process. More importantly than that, however, was the changes that had come to my friends.

"Stop, monster," Xihai said calmly, forming the sounds on her own as she watched her foe. "We won't allow you to do as you please any longer."

Gilgamesh stopped for a moment to simply look at her for a moment before making a strange sound, like someone clicking their tongue but somehow off.

"To be expected, I suppose," He said, looking back at me. "As per usual, you are startlingly divided for one meant to represent unity."Visit no(v)eLb(i)n.com for the best novel reading experience

"You have no idea," I answered, shifting my feet slightly as I focused on gathering my power.

"We are united in all the ways that matter," Xihai declared, looking at Gilgamesh. "A creature such as you should understand that."

"Perhaps so," Gilgamesh allowed easily. "Nonetheless, it's interesting. Are you the same, beneath the surface? Or have you changed in death as well, spirit of water?"

"All things change," She said, as if the question was meaningless to her. "In life and death and time. I am not the same as I was, whether yesterday or a thousand years beforeyet what does it matter? Whatever has been gained or lost, so long as you can continue on, that is strength."

Gilgamesh tilted his head and considered her, having to tilt his head back to do so.

"Well said," He answered, almost as if applauding the words. "But I would disagree somewhat. Even after all this time, at least my heart has not changed, nor my will. In my eyes, I consider that to be what makes me strongthat no matter what happens, I am still myself."

"I wouldn't consider it a matter of pride to cease to change," Xihai said. "That which does not change merely stagnates and that which is not added to is doomed to decline; these are simple facts."

"A valiant effort," He said. "I've always considered Elementals to be worthy foes and their very nature can make them seem unsurmountable, for even the complete destruction of their physical forms accomplishes nothing. Butthat's only if one is unaware of how to deal with them. I hope you didn't expect me to be caught off-guard by such a thing; there are benefits to several millennia of experience."

"So I can see," I mused, hiding my worry. None of my Elementals seemed injured as such, but whatever he'd done to them had come as a shock. I guess it was probably the first time any of them had felt pain and I didn't like seeming them that way.

"Do you have any other Elementals you wish to summon?" He prompted. "Or perhaps to merge into some greater forms? Or are you alone now?"

"You'll find I'm very rarely alone, I think," I replied, casting a glance around. "My apologies for keeping you waiting, however; I was a bit preoccupied."

"Were you now," Gilgamesh answered dryly, looking me over once before chuckling to himself. "Very well; I'm away this is a trick of some kind, but I'm curious, so I shall play along. Let's continue our game, Archangel."

I didn't so much as blink as he swung his sword towards my head, Fluctuating quickly to the side. In that same moment, I took a breath and the world around me erupted into flames, Agni setting my renewed Aurora on fire. I fanned the flames quickly, activating my other techniques to turn the area around me into a hell for anyone caught inside.

It should go without saying that I made sure Gilgamesh was standing right next to me at the time.

The ancient Grimm actually flinched once, recoiling at the sudden rush of flames. He didn't evaporate as lesser Grimm had, didn't even start to immediately burnbut I saw his armor heat and glow and knew it must have hurt. He recovered quickly, however, lashing out at me with one hand without the slightest care about entering the core of my flames and

Um. Well, technically, what he did was grab my head with one hand, lift me off the ground, and slam me back downbut when Gilgamesh was doing something like that, it was the type of thing that was best described with words like 'smite.' The already broken ground shattered for another few hundred meters as he plunged me straight into the field of molten earth my presence was creating, driving me down until I hit something solid. I reached up reflexively to grab his wrist, instinctively trying to leverage him off, but in a contest of pure strength, Gilgamesh probably had more in his fingertips than I did in both arms. He held on and made it clear he wasn't letting go as his grip tightened on my skull, other hand pulling back to strike me in the face, pushing me further and further down.

All his attention was focused on me now, which was technically what I'd wanted, but I admit this wasn't quite what I'd had in mind.

But oh well. I'd long since accepted that improvisation was what I did for a living. And Gilgamesh was right about one thingit was a trap.

As Gilgamesh pulled back a hand to strike me again, clearly intent on pummeling me a few hundred feet deeper into the ground, he abruptly flinched once, a spear of gleaming white piercing cleanly through his chest. Unlike me, it seemed he had a bit of trouble seeing clearly beneath a forty meters of molten earth, but to his credit he didn't question ithe just moved, throwing himself away from me with enough force that the miniature lake I'd created all but exploded outwards, leaving me behind.

A moment later, however, a hand reached out to me and I took it gratefully, letting someone who hadn't just gotten smote pull me out of the lava.

"Are you okay?" A voice asked as I coughed slightly. The damage wasn't too bad and most of it was stopped outright by Agnibut I'd swallowed some lava while I was getting punched in the face and it tasted pretty horrible.

"Of course," I said, shaking my head slightly. "It's me after all. I couldn't look myself in the mirror if I couldn't shrug off something like that."

"True," The voice said, helping me to my feet. Or helping me upright, rather, as we were both floating in the air at the moment. "We good to go then?"

I nodded and looked up at him, smiling slightly. Gilgamesh hadn't noticed what I'd done when I Fluctuated away from his attackor rather, he hadn't noticed that I'd Fluctuated twice.

I suppose that couldn't be helped, given what he didn't know; after all, I'd left the same place both times.

"Hey, Jaune," I said to myself. "Still looking sexy and amazing, I see."

"Damn straight I am," I replied easily as I scanned the surrounding area. "You too, Jaune."

By raising The Hidden Heart to level 99, you have gained the skill 'Thaumiel.'