Collide Gamer

Chapter 1019 – Necessary Rest and Planning

“I don’t think the power of friendship is a good enough explanation for you becoming stronger than Eliza,” John stated.

“Stronger than… uh, before we lose ourselves in explanations, ya mind explaining to me what happened that we got the reclusive maneater back?” Rave asked and gestured at Thana. The goddess of genocide didn’t even look in the Lightbearer’s direction. Her bone and blood wings had already been pulled back into her body and the gaps of her bone armour no longer ran red. “Oh, right, I also have this…” Rave lifted the leaden object she had carried with her.

It looked like a nightmarish mixture of a human skull, a lizard and some kind of alien beast. That part of the four maw segments that extended forwards had trenches melted into them only furthered that impression. John had a bunch of questions about it, but kept his mouth closed. Just a few metres away from him, Metra calmly placed Rex Magnar on one of the benches.

The First of Wrath was completely quiet, her expression vacant and even her mental landscape forcefully calmed when she took what remained of one of her younger ‘siblings’. “Ehtra…” she mumbled, followed by a series of words in the ancient language of their home. She continued, while raising the skull to her forehead. Her arm was steady when she finished the ritual and handed the remains over to John. “Bring this home for me.”

John inspected the skull from several angles. “I’ll have Salamander burn the remaining taint off first, then I’ll store it in my inventory,” he promised.

“Alright,” Metra nodded and walked back to her weapon, sitting down on the same bench. With a wave of her hand, she dismissed the heavy air in the room. “We all die one day. That Mother Chaos would be the one to see through the end of one her children is… well, it’s not entirely unexpected, but this form is sickening.”

“I suppose there are no further doubts then?” John asked, placing the skull on top of the altar. The spores still on it weren’t worrisome at their concentration, it matched the content in the air, John was just being cautious.

“I never met another entity that had a maw like Tiamat,” Metra said. “Once with Jeremiah could have been a fluke, but twice… Together with all of the other circumstantial evidence, it’s concrete. Mother Chaos is part of the Lorylim. I… have no fucking idea how, though. I watched Gaia eradicate her.”

“That’s a mystery for another time, just like it’s a mystery how the Horned Rat is involved with all of this,” John said and everyone in the room, even Thana, stared at the Gamer with some level of surprise. “The prophecy he spoke at my birthday, it had the following passage:

I have plans and schemes and plots,

And know stars that will grow with rot,

Will you accept what they will have wrought?”

“Stars that will grow with rot,” Undine repeated. “Enki?”

“Enki, the ceiling of this Sanctum, corrupted Metracana, all of them qualify as ‘stars’ in some way and all of them have grown in power through the ‘rot’ of the Lorylim,” John stated. “The Horned Rat knew something about this place. The question is just what and from where. From my own experience, I can say that tiny hunches are enough to create an oddly fitting image of the future…” The Gamer was reminded of his encounter with Jeremiah earlier. “It means we are getting towards the end of that prophecy…”

“Okay, stop, we are doing exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” Rave chimed in, her cat ears standing on end. “We can talk about prophecies later, can we catch up first? I’ve no idea what happened after Aclysia died.”

“Things on our end were pretty straightforward.” John quickly broke down the chain of fights that had ended with them reuniting about twenty minutes earlier. “The elementals are reviving now. That will take a couple of hours.”

“What about Aclysia and Bae?” Rave asked.

“I don’t have any metals on hand to restore them, so they’ll have to wait until we get out of here.” John sighed and rubbed his head. “Hopefully their minds are inactive until I take them out of the special inventory slot… Aclysia hates being left in there…” How he would have loved to vent his frustrations by tearing apart the entirety of the Lorylim landscape outside. Wiser than following that impulse, John pushed down his wrath. He would get to indulge in it soon enough.

“So, we’re down Aclysia, Bae, Jack and Eliza,” Rave summarized and glanced at Thana. The goddess of genocide stared back, knees drawn to her chest and staying quiet. “Ya wanna tell us when we get our pretty little psycho back?”

“The parasite will need time. Several days at least,” Thana told them. “Do me the favour and die before then.”

“Someone’s salty,” Rave remarked and got ignored again. “So, what was that about me being stronger than Eliza?”

“You surpassed her by about 50 levels,” John informed her and took another look at her Stats. “Well, you might actually still be weaker than her… she has 7 Stat Points per level and you are still at 6, so she actually has more Stats than you despite her lower level.” ‘Also Bloodburn is incredibly absurd in terms of power,’ the Gamer added mentally.

Rave checked her character screen via their group function. “I jumped like 200 levels… that’s pretty absurd.” Her voice and her cat tail swung with how pleased she was, despite their overall circumstances. That tail, her ears, and the slit shape of her pupils were all too persistent for John to ignore any longer.

“Let’s talk about what happened to you then,” the Gamer switched topics. “Are those permanent now?” He gestured at the top of her head.

“That’s a really good question,” the feline Lightbearer wondered. Fumbling around with her own ears and tail, she eventually walked over to John to let him inspect things. At first, he did so with purely scientific interest. Both additions to her body were purely magical in nature. There was no ear canal at the base of those ears and her tail, while attached above the butt, did not actually have any bones.

After he had confirmed those things, his inspection got more indulgent in its nature. After all of the combat, scratching her soft cat ears was soothing to the mind. She purred and they sat down before the altar, with her in his lap. That they were both pretty filthy didn’t bother them and they exchanged a quick kiss.

“This doesn’t answer the question,” he finally pointed out.

“Yeah, I’m trying, but I think those might just be part of me now,” Rave told him. The bodysuit crawled off her left arm, revealing the geometric patterns covering it from the shoulder all the way to the fingertips. “Just like this is.”

John exhaled slowly, unable to entirely withhold the growl in his throat. ‘Yet another Lorylim scar,’ he thought. It was black, just like his own, Salamander’s and now Undine’s were, so there was nothing to fear in that regard. Visually speaking, it wasn’t displeasing at all. If it had been a tattoo, John would have found it quite stylish. Its origin was what he took issue with.

“Cheer up, tiger,” Rave smiled over her shoulder at him. “It’s not their mark of corruption, it’s my mark of victory.”

“The mortal body is a canvas for marks of conquests,” Metra supported that interpretation of events. “That mark could partly explain how you managed to pull off that miracle, by the way.”

“Please!” Copernicus shouted into the room. “Some explanation for how this happened!”

“Why are ya so annoyed, Cappy? We both got to live!” Rave’s answer was just as loud.

“Yes, we both got to live and it’s absolutely IMPOSSIBLE!” screamed the eclipse elemental. Only Nia kneeling down next to him and rubbing his neck kept him somewhat calm. “I demand an explanation.”

“Cats have nine lives, there ya go.”

“That’s stupid, stop being stupid!”

“Way I see it, I’m awesome and me being awesome allows ya to sit over there and be your cattiest self ever.”

“The Lorylim are part Mother Chaos,” Metra moved on with her explanation. “The rules of magic and physics get twisted when the goddess of chaos is involved. Her influence in Jane’s body may have distorted the way the ritual works.”

“Well, let’s hear the details about the ritual first,” John decided and looked to Rave. “Catch me up on what happened after Aclysia got destroyed.” It only took a couple of minutes, then he nodded. “Yeah, sounds like Metra may be onto something there. The spores would also have been in the summoning circle, so they would have mixed with your blood and essence. Could also be that the circle you used was modified in some way you didn’t spot in your haste.”

“Alright, y’all can stick to your ‘chaos did it’ theories, I’ll sit here and stay with the ‘I’m just that awesome’ truth,” Rave declared.

“You are pretty awesome,” John let her know and cuddled his girlfriend. He would have done a lot more, to celebrate their survival, had they been in a safer place. “Alright, Nia, how did things go on your end?”

“I scouted,” the pariah reported swiftly, having her thoughts and answers sorted already. “Intervened in fights as I found them at the time. Failed to keep with Jane. I am sorry.”

“Worked out, don’t sweat it,” the feline Lightbearer waved off.

“I found this church and a sealed entrance at the side of the wall. Teleporting to the other side, I found a much cleaner tunnel system. I did not explore deeply,” Nia finished her report.

“Oh? That’s interesting.” John considered the implications. This was still Enki’s sanctum and the god of stars had to rest somewhere. Finding him was paramount if they wanted to get out of here. “We’ll head over there after we have fully recovered.”

“We’re fighting Enki?” Metra asked, because it was expected somebody would.

John hesitated in his answer, wondering who might be listening. “…We might not have another choice,” he said. “I don’t have control over the barrier and it’s clear who does. Even if we could leave, the Death Zone remains. We need to stamp this out before it spreads further.” He reached into his inventory and pulled out a Communication Crystal. He only had two more of them, but just one would be enough for what he had to do next. “Chemilia?” he asked. “Chemilia, are you there?”

“John?!” her voice was confused and a little groggy. “Am I dreaming or is that you?”

“It is me. Am I disturbing you during your break?”

“Yes, but who the fuck cares? What is happening? Are you safe?”

“No, but we found shelter for the moment,” the Gamer responded. “The Death Zone is a Lorylim infested area. There’s things down here that can threaten even me and the air is so thick with spores the average soldier succumbs within two days maximum, if that.” John thought back to Mark and how quickly the infestation had spread under his skin. “Is the Death Zone still expanding?”

“Still expanding and still accelerating in growth,” Chemilia told him. “We no longer know at which rate. We decided to pull back 200 kilometres. A couple volunteers are halfway between us and the last recorded vanishing point. They’re the only intel we have. Any hope you can solve this soon?”

“Very little,” the Gamer told her truthfully. Mindful of their time and other factors, he wasn’t willing to elaborate. “I’ll explain everything when… if we make it back.”

“We’re counting on you,” Chemilia said, and they cut the connection.

“Alright, that makes things definitive,” John said. “We need to solve this in the next couple of days or die trying. Otherwise, there’ll be nothing left of Fusion. For now…,” he looked over to the golden figure, covering the church entrance with her six wings, “…we should take the opportunity for a nap.”

That they did.