Chapter 281 – Not without trace…

Chapter 281 – Not without trace…

John yawned as he watched over the edge of his fortress. Settings restored to the default, he was currently doing his usual grind. Everything was the same as ever, except that he had to do even less now. With Undine guarding the walls with her iron-hard water bubbles, John could sit back and grind by letting his familiars do all the work.

“Is this truly all you are required to do to level up nowadays?” Lydia asked, hurling a dispensable piece of metal at a Bugpanther below. It pierced through the being’s eye, causing it to roar in pain. Aclysia whirled around Vol’Jin’Zul, the giant blade crashing into the feral insectoid’s blind side. It didn’t even get a chance to fall into the lava pit, as it died in the middle of the air from the grievous wound that attack had caused.

Lydia was the only one of John’s non-familiars that was around here. Everyone else was either training, fucking or busy chasing cats through alleyways. At least that’s what John presumed Nia was doing in her free time, aside from appearing randomly in rooms and staring at the ceiling.

“I mean, I am doing A LOT!” John defended himself, using his non-gauntleted hand to navigate Youtube. ‘Just how many Binding of Isaac videos can the guy make?’ John asked himself as he was watching a certain egg-head do yet another boss rush.

“Badabu-badaba,” Sylph giggled as he sent mana her way, a blade of wind isolating a single enemy from a group of four Bugpanthers. Salamander then blinded the enemy with a quick burst of fire. Another one of the remaining three, the only one in the back row of the now triangular shaped formation, was suddenly assaulted by purple blades ramming into its stomach from below.

While it wasn’t killed instantly, Siena assured that this state would be swiftly rectified. With no choice but to make her opponent’s suffering as brief as possible, due to the rule John had put in place, she severed the head of the creature from its neck. A moment later, it became naught but dust.

Siena sent a displeased glance his way just as a random Bugpanther jumped out of the burning treetops and at John, a direct collision course. It was honestly kind of impressive that these things hated him enough to go against survival instincts to such a degree. Climbing through burning branches and aflame leaves, surrounded by the rising ash of one’s natural habitat, couldn’t be pleasant.

John didn’t even move, the Bugpanther just smashed into a liquid wall that quickly erected itself between the flying insectoid and John. The monster crashed against the hardened water like a fly against a windshield at moderate speeds.

Desperately, it clawed at the unforgiving barrier between it and its target, barely managing to stay in place. “Doesn’t that hurt?” John asked Undine. This wasn’t just a water wall, as he noted, the red marking over its curve indicated it as the ocean elementals’ actual body.

“Only the slightest bit.” Undine’s true form rose out of the side of the wall. A jolt of information filled John’s head; Undine used this moment to heal herself, as she was about ready to use her new offensive capabilities. Just the slightest bit more healing and… she was ready.

“Well then, I am interested in seeing how this goes,” John smirked and gestured for her to Unleash. He hadn’t seen it before, surely it would be a spectacle.

“As you say, John,” Undine nodded, tried her best at returning a smile but only managed to produce an awkwardly slanted lip movement that could somehow be interpreted as a smile.

Her healing and defensive properties shifted in the blink of an eye as, the condition fulfilled, her powers flipped their focus. Her mouth twisted into a deeply disturbing, wide grin, pulling her full lips into a thin line. A malevolent red replaced the calm gold of her eyes, and John immediately knew that this was indeed going to be a spectacle, but not of the kind he had wanted. Anger and undesired hatred bore their way through common sense, creating a deeply psychopathic mixture of dark thoughts.

The howl of a siren on the prowl accompanied Undine as she turned into a torrent that jumped off the fortress wall. The Bugpanther tumbled helplessly inside her. It paddled in the slimy water, swiped at it, but there was nothing it could hurt. Then it hit the ground, and John was witness to the more than a little more disgusting display of Undine invading the being’s insides, like it was little more than a sponge, and then rapidly increasing in volume.

Words loudly sung in the olden elemental language filled the forest. John kept close watch on her spirit. To him, it all seemed normal. Out of her character? Without a doubt. But there was nothing there suggesting any sort of further corruption.

“…Are you not going to tell me that this is pretty much proof that she is still infested?” John wondered towards Lydia as Undine’s arms transformed into thin whips that cut through the air, more than a couple of trees and finally a Bugpanther with ease.

The show filled him not with surprise but with sadness. He would have been naïve to just expect things to remain as a scar on her body. He had hoped, yes, but hope and the conviction of being in the right were far too different. It was the mark of a great mind to entertain a thought without believing in it, some important philosopher had uttered these words once.

He wasn’t surprised, because this had been one of the many outcomes he had entertained and now that he saw it, believing was unnecessary. Factual truth unfolded before his eyes in the shape of Undine ramming her hand down another Bugpanthers throat and a myriad of spikes ripping the monster’s head apart from the inside.

The song of depraved brutality that was on her lips as she did that only filled John with sadness.

The duo of monsters that had been engaged with Aclysia was momentarily distracted by the howls of Undine’s battle hymn and the cracking of collapsing trees, long enough for the artificial guarding to ram her mithril dagger into one of their eye sockets and catapult the other into the lava pools with a swift kick.

“No, this is a rather expected consequence,” Lydia informed him; “I am honestly relieved that she got away with only this amount of damage… although the words she sings are rather uncomfortable.” John nodded. The fact that Undine got away with only falling into a berserker rage while in an aggressive form was surprising.

It hadn’t been for long, but she had been listening to the voices of otherworldly beings, even had hosted a part of them inside her. The fact that she was generally unscathed from that experience was remarkable. Then again, it hadn’t been too long ago that it happened. Some flaws were going to stick, others they could hopefully surmount over time.

‘Siena, would you come here for a moment?’ John’s tone made sure that it wasn’t a request. The shadow spirit appeared a mere few moments later. A Tropico Highmane spawned and was immediately subjected to being tormented by heavy rainfall. Rain that was harder than steel, little drops of water at frankly absurd speed, ripping little holes into the lion looking monstrosity and drilling their way into the gaps. “Is this what you wanted?” John asked the nightmare elemental.

“Obviously not,” she hissed. “I just wanted her to learn how to deal with things on her own.”

“Not the worst intention,” he had to agree, “but your methods led to this.”

“I didn’t force her to do any-“

“NO, YOU DIDN’T!” John interrupted her by shouting in her face.

Salamander and Sylph came to Undine’s aid. Strong the Tier 4 elemental may have been, but taking on a boss monster completely alone was still a tall number.

“You didn’t force her to do anything, you didn’t want her to become corrupted, you didn’t want her to fall into this state,” John stood up, his Purgatory clad left hand extended. Index finger resting against her collarbone, he spoke his final verdict on the matter, “But this is what we got in the end. You can be happy that I don’t throw you back into the hole I took you from and spice it up with some extra measures. Instead, I gave you a light punishment to give you time to think.”

As he spoke the claw pricked Siena’s skin. Dark mist rose from the wound, barely more than a trickle of it. John felt the rush of anger from Undine subside and looked at her through Jack’s eyes. The realization of what had just happened to her was clear in her behaviour. Self-disgusted feelings flooded John’s and all of his familiar’s thoughts as Undine flowed backward from the tattered boss.

The insectoid feline was still breathing, but every single one of its chitin plates had been ripped off. Unclean and without any care they had been removed, causing flesh wounds which were now oozing purple blood. Broken bones and riddled skin, legs that could no longer support the body. Salamander did the thing the mercy and finished it off.

“But this cha-“ -nges things - That was what he wanted to say, but Siena gave him a look that made him shut up. Not because he was intimidated or anything, she had no way of truly threatening him. The look on her face was… genuinely upset and these feelings weren’t aimed at John or Undine or anyone else who was getting on her nerves.

Siena was annoyed with herself, because no one had wanted this outcome. “I will try to help her get that under control,” Siena said. “That is what you wanted of me anyway, isn’t it?”

After a few moments of them just staring at each other, John nodded, “Yes.”

He pulled back his hand, and Siena vanished into the ground, making her way over to Undine who was quivering, ripples like a pond that had been disrupted by a stone spreading over her surface. ‘Master, you think it is wise to trust Siena with this?’ Aclysia asked him via their mental connection.

‘Hell to the no, I am keeping a close eye on those two,’ John sighed. ‘I am going to try and get them to form some sort of alcoholics anonymous of impulse management. Not sure how curable those rage attacks even are, but we got to try, right? Probably should get Thana involved and have Momo look over their efforts…’

‘That sounds like a splendid idea, Master. I would be happy to help them as well,’ Aclysia said.

‘You just want to reprimand Siena until she stops disrespecting me,’ John noted.

‘Most certainly, and under the cover of helping her to stop being a thorn in your side, I will have more than enough excuses,’ the artificial guardian told him.

‘Well, then you are welcome to try and teach them,’ John allowed her.

“Do people usually recover from these incidents?” John asked the princess at his side.

“They get better, but they don’t recover,” Lydia said with a sorry expression. “She’ll be able to assert control over it eventually, presumably. Torrential outbursts are common among water spirits and this seems to have worsened that fact. A pre-existing character trait may be easier to get control off, but there are few success stories.”

“Then I will start there and then continue to try to one-up the world,” he sat back down. “No matter what the cause is, if we try hard enough, we should be able to overcome it eventually.”

“I will be perfectly frank with you, John: whenever you next deal with anything Lorylim related, have her stay in her own plane of existence, break your contract if you must,” Lydia told him. “The Lorylim are largely unknown to us aside from the fact that they are dangerous. I haven’t heard from someone who was cleansed and remained unscathed, and I am certain that no mind will survive a second touch of their tainted ways.”

He looked as both Siena and Undine changed into their incorporeal forms to get away from their distanced position, making their way back to the fort in safety.

“They are my loves,” John said. “And they are my weapons. They will become strong enough that nothing like this will ever prove a threat to us again.”

“You are fundamentally underestimating the first foe,” countered the princess. Sighing, she added, “Maybe I am underestimating you as well. I know too little about you and them. Just be aware that I do not expect to be proven wrong on this.”

“I don’t expect to need to prove you wrong on this; whatever Lorylim related thing I will encounter in the future, I will destroy without mercy before it gets a chance to fuck me over,” John looked at Purgatory, completely aware of the insane amount of mana inside. “They dared to threaten one of my own, I will nuke them with whatever means I have at my disposal.”