Collide Gamer

Three of John stood on one side of the arena.

One Nightingale presented herself as his opponent. In John’s personal opinion, the world couldn’t have handled more than one of her. Pale as starlight, a mature, gorgeous face framed by hair of the deepest purple put him in her thrall. Truly, just the stare of those eyes threatened to defeat him. That body, so slender and feminine, only further locked his attention into her orbit. White thighs south of shadows woven into a leotard, talons for feet and feathered wings for arms, all of it added to the whole of her attractiveness.

‘I do love monster girls,’ John swooned to himself.

“I will do the honour, my patriarch?” The dark, naturally sultry tone of the harpy pitched upwards towards the end of the sentence, transforming it into a question.

John had gotten used to that title, but that only took it out of the ‘unexpected’ category, not out of the ‘my ears are wiggling with the joy of a thousand honours’ one.

“We are fighting,” Nightingale reminded him, a slight smile on her lips, that she poorly hid behind a half-raised wing. A teasing gesture, almost girlish in its bashfulness, turned ladylike entirely by the grace and deliberation with which she employed it. “You ought to concentrate, John.”

“I am entirely focused,” he reported, truthfully. “Go ahead.”

Nightingale stepped up to the wheel. One digitigrade leg lifted. Her claws grabbed one of the wheel’s pegs. Then, she gave it a nice tug.

While it spun, John pushed aside his horny mind and moved into battle focus. He would not dishonour one of his women by going easy on her. He didn’t think he would have the luxury to either.

The prospect of fighting the night goddess was tantalizing in its own right. Nightingale typically trained with Nathalia, more focused on learning how to properly channel her Faith-given powers than partaking in combat exercises. She was, in the grand scheme of things, still a young goddess. John’s influence further muddled her certainty of having learned the extent of her abilities.

She had gained about 200 levels since they had first met. For once, he couldn’t entirely attribute that to the Mark. Between her own nature as a goddess that was still coming into her full might and the Faith she received as a patron goddess of Fusion, she was perfectly capable of reaching these heights without him. That being said, the Mark clearly helped accelerate a natural trajectory.

‘I don’t know the full extent of what she’s capable of,’ John thought. ‘Still, I would give myself the higher likelihood of winning.’ He glanced over to the Creator Puppet. Even though it was one of the Dreg models, designed to be discardable, it possessed an Agility of well over 3000 and a Strength approaching 2000. This singular body would keep her on her toes, but the true reason why he considered himself the favourite was much simpler.

Nightingale was a utility mage.

John had Particle Skin.

The spinning wheel finally stopped on a segment saying ‘mountains’. The changes began immediately. Random spots all around the arena were marked, to become the peaks of the grey stone formations that followed. By the constraints of the arena’s dimensions, calling this a real mountain would have been an insult to the Alps and other such ranges. Though tall and impressive, the peaks went less than a hundred metres into the air, making them mere facsimiles of nature’s true splendour.

Magic allowed them to mimic much, but the power of millennia of tectonic movements was still just a bit out of reach even for Gaia-sponsored abilities.

“Alrighty!” Jane shouted. “3… 2… 1… LET IIIIIIIIIIIT RIP!”

‘This isn’t Beyblade,’ John drawled in his mind.

Darkness enveloped him in the same second. It was a sudden and complete descent of a night both artificial and real in all ways that mattered. Light became a distant suggestion, vanishing even from his elemental senses. His Darkvision still worked. The Blessing had been given by Nightingale, but the power had been fully integrated into him.

That only gave him a couple of metres of visibility. Beyond that, Nightingale’s darkness was so magically rich that not even the combination of his contact lenses with the Perk could pierce it. He sucked on his gums, wondering what to do. ‘She isn’t striking me. She knows that wouldn’t work out for her without a plan. In a normal fight, I would just wait right here and wait for any of my familiars to wrap things up on their end.’ He crossed his arms. ‘Can’t do that in an entertaining arena match. How would I catch her? Should I try to flood the arena with summons?’ He shook his head, trying to invite Nightingale to attack him as he thought. She did not take the feigned vulnerability, leaving him standing there. ‘No, the individual summons are too weak, they’d just get locked by her area effect. It’d cost me more than her.’

What he understood about Nightingale’s powers was that she controlled ‘the night’. An esoterically vague matter that could be further categorized by virtue of individual utilization of such powers. There was the broad area usage, affecting a land and all those in it, and the focused application on the individual. For someone of equal or higher power, the latter was necessary to achieve more than a mild hindrance.

Usually John would have considered whether he could just wait someone out, but the invisible hand of balance had blessed Nightingale with her own deep, swiftly regenerating mana reservoir in exchange for her lack of offensive power. She had been able to keep one of Arkeidos’ bodies locked in place on her own. The tyrant had been stronger than her but also severely damaged by Sol, so charitably the level came out about equal. It had also been the Schattengarn body of the lich. John did not have the same degree of Shadow Resistance.

If anything, John was an easier matchup for Nightingale. She could likely sustain this degree of suppression indefinitely.

‘Could just blow everything up…’ John considered, then sighed. ‘No, Skyfall could break the shields and it costs a lot of mana to be effective… plus, it originates outside the arena and I don’t know where I am aiming. I might not even break the shield; I could just hit the viewers.’ He uncrossed his arms. ‘Well, I guess I don’t have any obvious options. Let’s just get moving.’

The four Ego Blades that John had Possessed before the fight darted off in different directions. They provided him four more vantage points. Sense of the distance and the disturbed air let him…

John furrowed his eyebrows. The two senses did not send him matching input on the location of the Ego Blades. ‘Did she learn how to mess with Possession?’ the Gamer wondered. ‘Connection senses in general? Interesting.’ Careful to keep speeds uniform, he willed the Ego Blades to return. There were notable differences between them.

The darkness changed, growing even more intense. The elemental senses were shut down one after another, made useless in the same vein as one could hardly taste anything when a strong enough scent was present. Either Nightingale had only just realized her blunder or she was necessarily venturing into new fields of power.

Either way didn’t matter. John had acted too cautiously to capitalize on his discovery. Simultaneously, Nightingale had lost the element of surprise to her new capacities of sense suppression. Their invisible chess match continued on.

“Hey, tiger!” Jane’s voice echoed through. “Ya don’t win by just standin’ there!”

“Very funny, Gale,” John drawled. He was only able to hear the first empress complaining because the lady of the night let it be so. “Alright then…”

John created three Unstable Arcanas. Each of his bodies took hold of one, then set out in a different direction. Casting a singular pulse sphere cost him barely any mana at all, just 600. The spheres would pulse if ever there was an enemy in range. Granted, that was in the hope that Nightingale’s magic didn’t neuter them too.

It was a thing to have on hand if Nightingale slipped up, if nothing else.

John shot Blast Rays into the air as his mana was topped off. Chances of hitting Nightingale were exceedingly small, but it cost him nothing. He was of half a mind to activate Purgatory and just fling Arc Lances or Mana Chains everywhere. Alas, the arena was large and Nightingale likely up in the air. At 1000 Agility, even if he was aiming in the right direction, she had the speed to dodge.

A multitude of deep purple chains, far more agile than John’s arcane equivalent, clanked and rattled as they shot out of the darkness. The Unstable Arcana pulsed once, tricked by some esoteric mechanism into believing the chains were an enemy. It incinerated a first wave of them, thin and weak, then there was nothing left to protect the Ambassador Double from the wrapping restraints.

Nightingale must have come to the conclusion that she, too, could not sit idly until the crowd died of boredom. The connection inference was enough that John became uncertain where his Ambassador Double was located, but not enough to break the extra body from his mind.

That exertion of Nightingale’s power was reserved for the Creator Puppet. Now that it was physically out of sight, the night goddess hit John with a sense-suppression so potent that his third body was like a limb that had fallen asleep. Somewhere in this supernatural dark, the golem was flailing around wildly. The Ambassador Double shrunk to the Mandala Sphere state in an effort to escape. All that did was make the chains wrap even tighter around it.

Sealing both bodies like this, however, was more than a passive effort.

John trusted in his intuition and used Magus Step to teleport backwards. He barely sensed something move in the air where he had been a moment prior. The Unstable Arcana he had left behind exploded. He fell. The average angle he had calculated for the mountainous slope had not included the cliff he hadn’t known was behind him.

It was a graceless plunge, ending with him on his ass. Not knowing where the ground was made anything else impossible. He rolled to the side physically, trusting on the few metres of visibility he had more than the emergency measure that Magus Step presented.

Nightingale landed on the ground where he had been a moment prior, talons digging into hard rock. The already wickedly sharp claws were enveloped in a swirling purple. John only got a brief look at them before Nightingale leapt back up into the air, soaring out of his vision.

John managed to get on his feet. Calculations ran through his head of Nightingale’s Stats, her average speed, and any deliberate delays she would build in to throw him off. He knew this way of attack already. The harpy hadn’t learned this one from Nathalia. Dive attacks like this were Ehtra’s speciality.

The night goddess plunged back down. John narrowly dodged, leaving himself open on purpose. It was enough to entice Nightingale into a follow-up attack. A dancing dervish, the harpy spun, her wings cutting through the air. Razor thin blades of shadow magic protruded from her feathers, deep purple things that almost but not quite blended with the near blackness of her gown. The blades broke as they sliced over the surface of the Particle Skin, taking John’s mana without slowing her motion.

Nightingale spun out of the range of his counteracting grasp, then leapt into the air once more. ‘Clever way to try and take me down,’ the Gamer congratulated his lady love in his mind. He would give her the honour aloud after he had won. Even he wasn’t so conceited that he would let his urge to monologue win out when he was fighting one of his women. ‘Neutralize my additional bodies then pelter me with rapid attacks. In theory, she can exhaust my mana this way before the strain of keeping my bodies locked does hers.’

John wasn’t certain Nightingale would actually win this match if they made it a magical endurance question. Likely a circumstantial question, depending on how many familiars John was willing to dismiss and the time of day.

Since he didn’t know, John laid his plan to win the direct way.

Nightingale’s next strike HAD to come soon. Her expenditures were constant, John’s reactive. When she dove for him again, John used Magus Step to teleport himself backwards one meter, then used Skitterstep to immediately put himself back into the initial position, his presence suppressed for a brief window.

The flicker of movement combined with her claws actually hitting her target was enough for Nightingale to be thrown off her rhythm. The shadow enchantments on her talons tore a tenth of John’s mana away in an instant. 40% more followed when he used his Free Casting to create an exceedingly simple spell: a rope that wrapped thrice around Nightingale's ankles, connected to John’s Companion Cube.

Surprise delayed her once, the rope delayed her more, and combined that was enough that John could grab her legs and pull her down. The consistent flailing of the Creator Puppet wasn’t useful for much, but it had stacked Echo of Destruction – that was certainly enough to push even John’s unimpressive Strength far above Nightingale’s own ‘measly’ 339.

“I yield!” Nightingale exclaimed, the second her back hit the ground.

The night disappeared into tumbling shreds of lingering darkness, giving view to a somewhat confused crowd. They didn’t know how much of a glass cannon the harpy was. In game terms, this had been a battle between a utility mage and a DPS class. For all the disruptions Nightingale possessed, it only took one good combo to get her taken down.

“Very good effort,” he told her. “Didn’t know you could mess with my extra senses like that.”

“I theorized. I took the chance to try,” Nightingale answered. He would have extended a hand to help her up. Since that wouldn’t have worked, he exerted his patriarchal privilege and just grabbed her under the armpits to do the same – though Nightingale seemed to be of the mind to remain on her knees. “You intend to make your culture lewder,” she reminded him in a conspiratorial whisper. “May I?”

John considered the offer, then shook his head. “I don’t think forcing the issue at every turn is going to do much. Plus, it’s more that there are others that need to be seen to do the same thing…” ‘If I could get Magnus to do it, that’d probably be the quickest way to get there.’

“Mhm… I concur…” Nightingale let him help her up fully, then nuzzled up against him swiftly. “All the same, this goddess is your comfort hole for the next fifteen minutes, Master.”

He certainly was going to take advantage of that.