Stemming the tide of Lorylim had been a difficult task from the beginning. The group had a lot of practice in fighting off a continuous assault of enemies, but even though these Lorylim were weaker from a pure level perspective, they struggled. The impact of the Arcana Strike had alleviated the initial burden. Although it had to be fired prematurely, it still killed three Lorylim outright, which activated Whisper of Mana and gave John the burst of resources he needed. Those were spent on letting Gnome set up the perimeter for their fight.

Beyond that, things had steadily tilted in the Lorylim’s favour, loathe as he was to say it. Assaults spawned numbers the group could handle, as long as they fought properly. The Lorylim weren’t bound by such a concept of fairness. Further, they were incredibly difficult to kill. Whenever they thought they succeeded, the ‘corpse’ and the next enemy just melded together. By this point, the incapacitated Lorylim lined the walls, making the environment they had freshly erected the group’s enemy. John thoroughly regretted that he hadn’t gone with Salamander’s unique anti-Lorylim evolution.

It also occurred to him that the reason he hadn’t and why Undine had supported him in that choice was strongly related to the remaining corruption that had been in their minds at the time. That was a theory to confirm another time.

While he and the girls around had been gradually worn down, he was also worried about Rave and Nia. He had no way to know what was happening with them. The last intel he had gotten was that Aclysia had been killed following their victory over the corrupted Metracana. What exactly had done it, he hadn’t been able to perceive, although he could make his guesses.

Then Thana had showed up. Despite the goddess of genocide not being the reinforcement he had hoped for, he couldn’t deny that she had slaughtered a whole bunch of enemies and brought them a moment of respite with the ensuing conversation. That being said, her presence, be it only as an observer, had a profoundly negative impact on the Gamer.

As the only pure human around, the aura affected him the most. His health regeneration was entirely offset and healing greatly diminished in effectiveness. The Lorylim, particularly those attached to a human host, also took continuous damage, meaning that quite a few that the group didn’t have time to finish off died on their own. Meanwhile, the elementals and Artificial Spirts were doing ‘fine’. Fundamentally, Thana’s presence was a net neutral.

“Out of my sight!” the goddess of genocide shouted, loud enough for John to hear, and grabbed a flying Lorylim in the middle of their dive. Mercilessly, Thana broke the Lorylim’s body on the wall she sat on and then tossed it behind her like a discarded handkerchief.

‘Perhaps she is a bit more than a net detriment,’ John thought, unsure what to think of the goddess. The flimsy excuses she so audibly announced were all the evidence the Gamer needed to know she was not entirely committed to the decision she had made. Regardless, it was what she had gone with and it was on them to adjust. Assuming that she would come down to help if he was about to die would have been naïve at best.

This entire situation was why he hated dealing with problems on low intel. There had been no way to know how well he had to prepare for this and it currently appeared that his estimate had been insufficient. Had he known what awaited him here, he could have steeled himself to sacrifice fully half of Fusion’s territory to get another couple of days of time-dilated training out of it. In an information vacuum, he was not willing to make such a terrible choice. Now, it appeared that would have been the wise one.

‘Great hindsight,’ he mocked himself and cast another Unstable Arcana. The silver energy waves covered the entirety of the corridor. The damage taken didn’t bother the Lorylim whatsoever; three of them lined up, exposing the red bodies their teethed, fungal growths were attached to. ‘Gnome!’

‘On it!’ The season elemental hastily erected a wall of stone, on which the flame breath of those Lorylim broke before it could reach them. This was another difficulty of the fight: they were fighting elementals. There was more to look out for than physical force.

Gnome had to keep her hands up, focusing her magic on keeping the wall where it was. There were other earth elementals trying to push it in, causing it to quiver and slowly inch closer to the group. Powerful as Gnome was, she was up versus many and John had little mana to still send her way. He only had about 2000 remaining and, thanks to Thana, his regeneration was negative. There would have been ways to amend this, primarily Arcane Rejuvenation. That would have required John to go into melee range, however, and with healing being so costly now, he did not have the confidence to get that close.

‘We need to use Combination,’ he informed everyone. He was still figuring out which exact ones to use. Could they come out of here alive if he took the safe route? He wasn’t certain. More importantly, time was of the essence, both because of Thana’s aura and because they needed to find Rave and Nia. It was time to commit to something risky. ‘5-type – Salamander.’

‘Fuck – yes!’ the apocalypse elemental declared, ever the pyromaniac and looking forward to the result even in this dire situation. Her and Sylph descended to their defending position, meeting up with Siena and Stirwin. Gnome kept the wall up for a couple more seconds, then forced it back underground so their enemies wouldn’t be able to use it.

Metra and Beatrice rushed into the resulting gap, buying the couple seconds they needed. Every elemental safe Undine coalesced in one spot and turned into a swirl of magical energy. A wave of unrelenting heat preceded the formation of a new force on the battlefield.

The elemental that formed had black hair that moved like a mixture of the surface of a lava lake and smoke, ending at the height of her hips. Her skin was red, marked all over with jagged, dark lines. Her limbs, including an immensely long tail, were covered in multi-coloured scales of crystal and stone. Her large breasts and sex were confined by manifested darkness, flickering as she rose upwards. Her eyes had the colour of coal, the pupils only visible thanks to the thin, golden lines that wound their way throughout like angled veins.

She was very tall and she was beautiful, as could be expected of a being created from the combination of John’s elementals. From her appearance to her name, she took most after Salamander.

Grinning widely, the annihilator elemental ignited fire around her sharp-nailed hands. It burned red, simple red and golden. By the colour alone, it could have been seen as natural fire.

Without a word or glance to John, Sally started flying, and all illusion of naturality was dispelled when she cast her flames at the Lorylim below. She was the source of a steady stream of extreme heat, her body continuously dissolving until she was nothing but a black mass of ash and smoke that left fire in its wake. She was the only smoke, her fire burning without remains. It jumped over to stone and ate away at it as much as the Lorylim, turning the walls and the ground into burning hot magma and the abominations between them into screaming, shambling piles of charring sludge.

Within moments, the environment was transformed from one kind of apocalyptic hellscape to another. Everything was burning, melting, and John reached to Undine to allow her to fuse with Purgatory. The Lorylim charged at him; driven by madness, their impending end didn’t bother them.

John glanced up at the melting wall, to find Thana already gone. The goddess of genocide must have decided that there were more pleasant angles to view this from. Tending to agree, John focused his senses and used Magus Step twice in quick succession. Once to jump next to the wall and a second time to jump through it.

The Lorylim cried with impotent anger and John ran for it. While the fire itself wouldn’t hurt John thanks to the friendly fire Guild Perk, the secondary effects could damage him. Above, the annihilator elemental was circling. Whatever she passed caught alight and bombardments flew out from her in random directions. Entire houses folded in on themselves as if they were made from wax.

Cries transformed into triumphant shrieks. ‘They’re onto me again,’ John thought, running across the molten ground. As long as he kept moving and moving fast, there was enough surface tension to let him keep kicking off the ground. He had no choice but to keep running and Sally, an unfittingly cute name for living armageddon, increased the scope of her pyromania.

John looked over his shoulder and watched the Lorylim follow him. Their bodies were shrinking with each passing second; all he had to do was to outrun them. He concentrated on his additional senses. There weren’t a lot of environmental factors in close proximity that he still had to pay attention to, but nasty surprises could spring up at any second.

One of them was the aerial Lorylim. Although burning just as much as their earthbound counterparts, they were a lot faster on average and managed to catch up to John. Where Metra and Beatrice couldn’t take care of them, he needed to be ready to Magus Step out of the trajectory.

‘One more minute,’ John thought, counting the seconds in his head. The 5-type Combination only lasted five minutes. The amount of destruction they could cause in even that short timeframe was evidently massive. This was the first time he actually used one of them, rather than just reading their descriptions. ‘Sally, could you come over here?’

The request was outright ignored, if it was even heard. The annihilation elemental was entirely consumed by her desire to burn all that she could before she stopped existing again. As the Perk had warned, 5-types were somewhat disobedient, which made them riskier to use than less powerful Combinations.

Those Lorylim in pursuit were now collapsing, one after the other, their bodies burned to such a degree that they could no longer move and sunk into the lava lake. John, Metra and Beatrice had finally made their way to the edge of it and jumped on the roof of a halfway intact building to get a good view of the final moments.

In the distance, the annihilation elemental flew her last circle and then stopped in the middle of the scorched field she had created. There was nothing left. It was just a plane of molten rock and the remains of monsters, set alight. A sphere of smoke and fire, the 5-type Combination grew brighter and brighter with each second, until the smoke could no longer contain the incandescent light.

A massive bang turned John deaf for just one moment, then Gamer’s Body fixed that issue and left him to experience the full volume of the howling wind that followed from the shockwave. An explosion consumed the lake of lava, annihilating fully even what the elemental had eradicated in the first place. The shockwave was so intense that it blew down the house they were standing on.

The trio managed to catch themselves quickly and the shockwave petered out behind them. Left behind from the explosion was nothing but a massive crater, at the centre of which five bodies fell. As for John’s current environment, it was an utter ruin.

“What a show,” a well-known voice said with the unfamiliar tone of a predator. John looked up to see Thana sitting on top of a toppled over roof.

He wasn’t sure when the goddess of genocide had arrived next to them, but the fact that her aura had never stopped affecting him had let him know that she was never too far away. “Sorry to disappoint you,” the Gamer said.

“Disappoint…? Do you think you’re safe?” Thana sounded genuinely baffled by that idea. “Watch your feet.”

John just barely noticed the rumbling underneath him thanks to her warning. Magus Step saved him from a maw that burst out from the ground, while Metra and Beatrice dodged the traditional way. Infected earth elementals groaned grotesquely as they unburrowed themselves. At first it was only three of them, but more and more poured out of the tunnels. The abominations surrounded John and his group on all sides. The elementals were called back via teleport.

After all the Lorylim had left the tunnels, a tar-like material came gushing out of the holes. Before a single drop could hit the ground, the pillars turned into trunks, growing branches and leaves. Blood pulsed through visible veins on the surface, spores were breathed out through gills, both combined to give the three trees something that approximated bark. Hollow, grey vines expanded from the branches, connecting to the other Lorylim around. The colour of those connections shifted red as the blood began to pulse through them as well. Under his feet, John could feel a distant heartbeat.

Whether the Swarmhost had lain in wait or been stirred to action by the destruction Sally had caused, the group was now in the exact same, dire situation as before. Worse, they were lower on resources and Thana’s presence still continued to wear them down. John could feel his own life decay by her presence alone, a fact currently neutralized by Undine’s presence. Mana would eventually run out, however, and that would be the end of them.