NOVPUB
Chapter 1199 – The Emperor Strikes Back 1 – The Lure
“Meteora is attacking us.” Half of the room was already on high alert before those words left his mouth. The nervous waiting of the past few days finally manifested into something tangible and it was the last thing John wanted – again. All that proved was that Arkeidos knew what he was doing. The fundamental axiom of strategic competition that the correct move was the one the opponent least wanted to see.
Rave immediately jumped out of her chair. Light engulfed her naked form for a moment, then she was completely covered by her bodysuit. Similar scenes of rapid dressing took place all over the war room. “What do we do, tiger?”
‘Good question,’ the Gamer thought, his thoughts racing faster than Eliana could finish pulling her robe over her arms. ‘Nia is still in the west, so in an emergency she can slow down the Ironborn advance by herself. We can go east now, but that may be exactly what Arkeidos wants. Fundamentally, if it’s just Meteora, then Aclysia and Jack might be able to handle it.’ “We wait,” he decided. “I need further intel.”
The mood in the room was tense, while they either followed the engagement or waited for the next statement on the matter. At first John felt relatively relaxed. Meteora had assaulted them by hurling/surfing a mountain peak at them, but that had been completely countered by a well-placed Skyfall. An initial clash between Aclysia and Meteora marked them as physically equal, roughly speaking.
Then everything got a lot more complicated.
“The second Iron Maiden is there too,” the Gamer reported and finally rose to his feet himself. Now there was only one course of action. “We’re meeting Claire halfway.” Rather than waste time leaving the fortress the proper way, he gave Gnome a simple mental signal. Running at full speed at the wall, and the next two behind it, the season elemental created a makeshift tunnel for them. Even as they ran after her, he told everyone, “This is almost certainly some kind of trap.”
“And we’re running straight fucking into it?” Metra asked.
“He got me by the heart,” John growled, angry that someone would even dare employ that strategy.
“I wasn’t complaining,” the First of Wrath laughed, “I don’t fucking care what gets us action as long as I get a second chance to bash the asshole cunt’s skull in.”
John snorted with amusement. The confidence Metra had in violence was soothing, in its odd way. His feet carried him past the edge of the fortress. Along everyone else, he sailed down the slanted grey wall. It was enough of a drop that the Gamer rolled to diminish the impact. Some mimicked the proper landing technique. Others just landed with both feet first and immediately leapt forwards again.
‘Sylph, don’t get too far ahead.’
The thunderbolt in the sky suddenly stopped, the magic ebbing away, without completely vanishing. ‘I could be there in like 30 minutes tops! Just lemme go there and I’ll make a shocking entrance! Hihi, shocking entra- Not the time for puns, Sylph!’
‘As I said, this is almost certainly a trap and I don’t want you to spring it,’ the Gamer retorted. ‘Arkeidos must be planning something. There’s no way he just had his Iron Maidens wait randomly in the countryside.’
Reluctant agreement radiated through the mental connection. Magical electricity crackled once again and Sylph dashed back to the main group. They stayed as a loose clump, careful not to stick too close nor drift too far apart. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, they ran. The passing time only increased John’s nervousness. The area around the Cardinal Bastion had been under constant surveillance by several of the mobile members of the group. Nothing could have been staged in the direct vicinity.
The earth nearby bloated and bellowed. It was the only warning they got and an incredibly short one. Green grass and brown dirt turned into grey dust, scattered outwards by a massive torrent of necromantic energy. With no hesitation, John used Magus Step and the Skitterstep enchantment. Once, twice, three times, he went through the duality of uses, teleporting him a total of 66 metres in his chosen direction. Only by the last time was he finally out of the cone of the attack.
The rest of the harem scattered just as quickly. Everyone’s first priority had to be to get out of that attack. Not everyone was lucky enough to do this swiftly. Sylph was caught out by the immediate blast and torn to shreds in a matter of seconds. She had been unluckily positioned and her low health pool made that mistake fatal. ‘So, this is your game,’ John thought, recalibrating his strategy at two different positions. ‘Drawing me out so you can get to Eliana.’
Rave landed next to him, letting John breathe a little bit easier. She was one of the untraceable elements, after all. His relaxation was immediately replaced with concern when he noticed the white tips of her hair. The necromantic spell had drained some of the life force out of her. Worried as that made him, at least she had gotten out before the noxious green mingled with a secondary torrent of bloody red. Fire flickered around the wailing souls, scorching and salting the earth even beyond the attack itself. Hell had cracked through the earth, cascading continuously down the landscape.
It finally abated and John immediately started to give the orders to consolidate their position. “Now I have to get a haircut!” Rave complained, as she darted after her boyfriend. He would have laughed, had there not been so much at stake.
‘Where is Eliana?’ John thought.
‘Report: I’m by her side.’ Moments after Beatrice let him know that, the dispersing energies finally cleared enough that John could visually confirm what general shared awareness told him. Eliana had ended up about a hundred metres from John. Fundamentally not terrible, especially since they were on the side of the crater the massive explosion had come from.
Immediately, he started running towards them. The attack had hit several members of the group hard, but several Undine clones were already seeing to that being fixed. What John needed to secure most of all was that she was in a good position. Eliana was baring her teeth at the hole and the many figures that streamed out of it.
Ahead of them all was Arkeidos. The mace resting on his shoulder, the Emperor stepped forward with confidence. The armour he possessed had a prismatic sheen to it. All of the colours were the same as what was inside typical Fusional weapons, but it was dulled and only stretched over the surface of an otherwise dark green-grey armour. It seemed more like it was covered in a thin layer of oil. Each step he took was accompanied by the muffled ringing of a massive bell.
Behind, having to run just to keep up with the strides of the tyrant, were two figures.
John assumed the two figures to be Serevest the Quiet of the east and Jevaine the Golden of the south. The latter was especially easy to identify. Reportedly she was a queen, but all sexual identifiers were completely buried under bulky plates of gold, silver and bronze. Gemstones were either inlaid into her armour or dangled from any limb, spike, hook, or other surface her asymmetrical armour had to offer.
Severest was a lanky Ironborn. His limbs were stalks, his hands long and sharp claws. Typically, Ironborn retained the appearances of or at least the girth of muscle and bone, but Severest looked like a nightmare creature out of a children’s book. His smooth head only had a pair of dark eyes that darted around independently. The noxious green mist typical to his kind exuded from his ribcage and from the two dozen Ironborn that followed them.
Nothing could be confirmed with Observe, not the identity of the two nor the power level of the other Ironborn. Arkeidos must have blocked all of it, just like he tried to block access to Eliana. The six blades of his mace stretched out, like John had seen in the previous fight, and then slotted back in, changing their colour to earthy brown in the process.
With one heavy swing, Arkeidos devastated the landscape. Everyone, even his allies, threatened to fall over. Seismic shockwaves rippled through the dirt. Some of the energy spread equally, but most of it was channelled into a line of spikes that gushed upwards like mud, only to solidify into solid rock in an instant.
Magus Step and his Elemental Senses let John get through that barrier without as much as a break in his stride. He made it to Eliana, just as the rumblings ended. He trusted that Rave could take care of herself, especially with everyone else recovering, but Eliana was an unsteady factor. He held her by the arm. “Don’t do anything rash,” he pleaded.
The failed goddess growled, but minorly relaxed her stance.
“You do well in keeping your subjects in order,” Arkeidos complimented, shouldering his weapon once again.
“She’s not my subject, do we need to go through that entire argument again?” John asked, while evaluating his options. The primary objectives were to beat back Arkeidos while assuring the safety of Eliana’s mind and Claire. Could he still afford to have the entire group move towards Claire? Could he at least send someone? Siena or Metra, in the absence of Sylph?
The answer was a solid no. They couldn’t afford to miss anyone right now, not when Arkeidos had brought out the entirety of his elite alongside an armour that appeared to be composed of elemental extreme metals. While Reetha was nowhere to be seen, it was a guarantee that she lay in ambush somewhere. If they had wanted to retreat, they would have needed to do so as a unit. Currently, they were scattered all about the site. John needed to buy time to consolidate and then they could consider what to do next.
“I’m more than open to having it,” the Gamer added.
“No, I think there is a different talk to be had,” Arkeidos said slowly, his voice filled with the usual charisma and gravitas. “I underestimated you, Conqueror John Newman. I admit this right here, right now, in front of my subjects. Your powers struck me as respectable, your subjects as capable, yet I failed to consider the power of superior communication.”
“You overestimate me, it’s just a well-executed grand strategy,” he tried to play it down.
Arkeidos’ head, a hovering, highly ornate helmet, shook left to right. “Do not play me for a fool,” he chided the Gamer. “The fundament of this plan was to test the speed of your reaction and to lure you with your threatened subjects and the traitor Claire. You have means of instantaneous exchange, there’s no doubt about it. This makes this war, for me, untenable.”
John tilted his head. “Odd choice of showing a surrender, all of this?”
“SURRENDER?!” Arkeidos’ voice boomed over the landscape, blowing dust and dirt outwards. “What a horrific word to be uttered by a fellow conqueror. You should know that people like us do not surrender – they find ways to achieve what they wish.”
“I guess you’re right in that sense,” John agreed and bowed his head. “My apologies, it is simply that, between the two of us, it must be known that there is no way to...” While he put on a bloviating show, he checked up on everyone. Total consolidation was impossible, but the haremettes had at least joined in smaller groups and were largely healed up. The loss of Sylph would make this more complicated. Their primary win condition remained Eliana and there were still emergency resources he could tap into. 𝓷ℴ𝓿𝓹𝓾𝓫.𝓬ℴ𝓶
Arkeidos raised his hand to stop John’s one-sided babbling. “You speak when you think it is advantageous for you to win time,” he called out the Gamer, which immediately put him on high alert. If the Emperor was fully aware of that, then this current lull was, in some way, also advantageous to him. “Amusing as you are, I tire of this. You will be crushed here or tomorrow. We will all find out which one it is.”
“You’ll get your fucking soul torn into its miserable shitty pieces!” Eliana screamed. Every fibre of her being radiated rage. “I destroyed your tincan once, I can do it a-fucking-gain!”
“It is indeed true that you destroyed my previous body.” Arkeidos raised a hand and clenched it into a fist. “This one is stronger. I imbued this metal with the soul of the last mortal king of this world. Yet, I deem it not enough to deal with you adequately. No matter. As I said, a conqueror always finds a way to overcome what he has been faced with.”
‘ATTACK!’ John gave the order immediately. ‘TARGET THE GOLDEN ONE!’
All of the harem sprung into motion, including Eliana and Rave. A variety of spells all flew towards the golden Ironborn, as she put a hand on her Emperor’s arm. The fully decorated living armour looked like a child next to Arkeidos, yet she was more dangerous than anyone else at that moment.
“I, Arkeidos, offer the value of this form, body and mind, to Jevaine the Golden – Do not disappoint me.”
How much value was imbued in a body forged from tens of thousands of souls, laced in elemental extreme metals, in the possession of a tyrant for almost a thousand years? How much value was in the craftsmanship of the many intricate details? How much value was there in the materials? How much value was there in the sentimental attachment? How much value was there in a fragment of the Emperor’s soul? How much value in a hundred years of invested time?
All of these questions rushed through John’s head, as the titan before them collapsed into a speck of energy the size of a marble. It happened in a near instant. The intensity of the change created a shockwave of such intensity, it distorted and destroyed the magical projectiles launched at the Ironborn. An eerie silence spread, in which only the rising, metallic laughter from within the armour could be heard.
Whatever discipline Ironborn were meant to possess, Jevaine displayed none of it as she reached up with trembling fingers at the manifested power. She clutched it in her fist. Prismatic light spread through her ecstatically quivering form. The many pieces of jewellery spread all over her clattered and sung.
How much value was there in what Arkeidos had just sacrificed?
Too much.
