John landed on Governors Island, leaving the jetski sitting in the sand. The key, he removed and threw into his inventory. It would be quite embarrassing if he got stuck here because somebody stole his vehicle. Then he started walking. That there was no welcoming committee for him struck him as odd. He already knew, from Helene’s words, that they had seen him approach.

‘They’re either trying to get the drop on me further inland or are pulling back to avoid confronting me,’ the Gamer theorized, as the crunching of sand under his soles was replaced by the soft ‘thump’ of grass and dirt. Pillars of smoke were rising all over the island, meaning that picking one target first was kind of difficult.

‘H-hey, uhh,’ Gnome entered his thoughts very carefully. ‘Are you doing fine? Like, should we keep quiet so you can keep your concentration on both fronts?’

John shook his head physically out of sheer habit. ‘No need to, I can keep these two consciousnesses up in parallel without any issue.’ Effectively, he had split his mind in three parts. One was controlling Jack, one was concentrating on what his real body was doing, and the third was gathering information from both of them, filtering out what was essential. There was no need for John to keep track of the feeling of air rushing around Jack’s face as he flew around, but the things Helene said were potentially useful. Similarly, that third part was needed to properly ration John’s mana pool. It was a mental exercise of the highest degree, but months of controlling things outside his body and taking in information from the elementals had gotten him used to such straining spiritual activities. ‘It’s more advanced than the auto-piloting of a mechanical sparrow, but I have a lot of levels in Puppeteer and a truckload of Intellect now, plus it’s just easier with the Extension.’

‘Fucking genius we got here,’ Salamander responded, as she manifested along with Gnome, Sylph and Undine. Stirwin hung around at the edge of the island, swimming in the shallow water. Although the Light Island had allowed him to assume a form that was combat capable, it was still subpar when compared to the rest of them. He would be able to easily hold his ground against the average soldier, but in a fight against someone around John’s level, on land, the crocodile was more likely to get in the way. Better for the infinity elemental to survey and catch stragglers.

For once, he also didn’t equip Undine. He didn’t have any immediate concerns about his health pool, so he wanted to have the extra body on the field when getting into dangerous territory. He could have equipped Salamander or Sylph instead, but the same logic applied to them. Siena, on the other hand, he still hadn’t gotten to test what her item form even was, and this was not the time for experiments.

His earth-bound view was limited, so John instead followed Sylph’s eyes. The scope of the engineering operation that was happening at this place became apparent immediately. The original shape of the island had long been changed. With the help of Gnome and standard earth mages, the whole place had been transformed into a sort of bowl. Lying inside the deepest point of the depression was one gargantuan piece of metal. One could mistake it for some sort of monorail, but the true nature of this thing was quite easy, it was the central part of a ship’s skeleton. The spine to the ribs that grew into the sky in slanted fashions.

It had to be said that, due to the sheer size of the project, mistakes were quite often made. Just a few pieces being a few metres too long or too short, or many pieces being centimetres apart, could cause the entire ship’s skeleton to be stretched out of balance. When the hull would be hammered on top, those underlying problems could cause parts of it to snap open, and that was only the most obvious complication. The last thing John wanted was a supermassive battleship that looked like a child’s attempt to build something out of toothpicks.

Given that Fusion didn’t have a wealth of experienced naval engineers, it could therefore not entirely be credited to the sabotage that those ribs were slanted and hanging in unhealthy-looking angles. It was just a fact of the project that it would take a long, long time before things were built properly.

‘Good, they seem to have wasted a bunch of time on trying to damage the ship,’ John thought. ‘Less time for them to go after my material stockpiles. Siena?’

‘Yes, my Master?’ she moaned back, as inappropriate as ever.

‘Do sneak around and see what you can find,’ he told her. A black hand beset with translucent, dark blue claws of polished crystal reached out of his shadow, the rest of Siena’s body soon following. “You did say you were no less stealthy than before, let’s put that to the test.”

“I have been testing my new capabilities already,” Siena responded, smiling widely as the constellations on her hands, feet and tail glowed intensely. Then the surrounding skin shimmered, became translucent, only to completely vanish in the end. The invisibility spread all over Siena, until all of her had vanished, and that silver glowing dimmed away into nothingness.

John could still perceive her, instinctively thanks to being her summoner and properly thanks to the True Sight on the contact lenses. It wasn’t as potent a camouflage as hiding in actual shadows, but it would keep most eyes off her. As much as he would have loved to let her keep her secrets, he needed his intel to be as complete as possible to make accurate plans. While she ran off, she opened her mind for her master to quickly scan through the discoveries she had made this morning.

John had landed on the southwest of the island, Siena was going north, Sylph was keeping general overwatch, and Salamander was going east. The same direction out of which a new explosion shook the island. With no other leads to go on, John decided to take the rest of the group in that direction.

For once, he didn’t feel like he was crawling behind his allies. Gnome and he were roughly the same speed, while Undine had a theoretically higher Agility, but her slime body made running itself an ineffective way of movement. Instead, she moved over the ground by leaping as a wave from one spot to the next, like some sort of reverse skipping stone.

They quickly arrived at the site, a burning warehouse, with about twenty enemy combatants moving to leave the site behind. John stormed right at them, ready to force whatever commander they might have to reveal himself by brute forcing the issue. It was their clothes that stopped him. A wild mix of standard things that one would expect on civilians. Not the uniformity he was used of militaries.

It clashed with what his brain usually did in these situations. To suppress the reality of murder for as long as it was necessary to be effective, John concentrated on what made his enemies a unit. Military uniforms were the easiest things to look at, an article of clothing and also a manifest, observable thing that made it easy to ignore the individual that had friends and family and just see the servant of the enemy faction.

‘God, I hate war,’ John thought, coming to a forceful halt. Gnome, Undine, as well as Sylph and Salamander, all stopped in their assaulting motions in response. They were sacrificing their advantage, born by the suddenness of the, perhaps expected, attack. “Surrender,” the Gamer spoke out loud.

It was an absolutely unrealistic prospect. John didn’t have the capability to ensure they would really sit this out. This was the Abyss, disarming someone wasn’t as easy as taking their gun away. They could promise to sit this out from this point onwards, the Gamer would move on, and they could just continue.

“Please,” he added, urgently, looking at a bunch of either confused or mocking faces. “Just surrender, sit down, look at the water, wait for this whole thing to be over with. You just blew up some material, I can live with that. Surrender, stay out of the fight. Keep to your word, or I will have to-“

“Let me interrupt ya right there, your gameness,” one of the soldiers shouted. “We aren’t going to surrender, so you can take your compassionate speech and shove it up your ass.”

John took a deep breath and closed his eyes, regaining his calm. That someone took that opportunity to strike at him was absolutely expected. An axe collided with his head, bounced off Particle Skin, while leaving the Gamer standing as straight as before. “I guess I should thank you for making this easy for both of us.”

Eyelids flying open, John moved directly into an uppercut. Feeling the jaw of his enemy break against his knuckles was a feeling he wasn’t used to. Normally, he wore gauntlets or gloves, dulling that reverberation in his arm.

That person flew back; John didn’t know if it was a man or a woman, he was ignoring their faces. Without a uniform, it was harder to get into the state of mind he used for battle, but by no means was it impossible. He had done what he felt he had to, now it was the chaotic simplicity of battle.

Although calling what ensued a battle would have been a misuse of the term. There were twenty soldiers and five creatures that were, by comparison, demigods. What few strikes reached John left him unfazed, Particle Skin preventing the impact from even influencing his balance. At the same time, his kicks and punches, delivered with skill of a seasoned kickboxer, catapulted enemies away. They landed, dizzy, coughing, vomiting or writhing with pain, depending on where they had been struck. He was the nicest target to fight against.

Where his punches broke bones, Gnome had to hold back to not pulverize them. The soil elemental tried her best not to kill and, unlike Salamander, Undine and Sylph, she did not need a reminder for that. The fire spirit scorched the attackers with her grey and golden flames, the ocean elemental defended her master’s territory by locking people into bubbles of water they couldn’t escape from, and Sylph’s lighting ravaged the bodies of fighters carelessly. Those three, for their individual reasons, were not as concerned with taking lives.

The battle came to a clear and sudden end when Gnome used too much force in grappling someone. Their arm came off their shoulder with one disgusting sound and they screamed their lungs out as they went to the ground. As he went to the ground, John corrected himself. The few enemies still standing were not keen on continuing upon seeing that culmination of raw superiority. The battle over, John could see them as individuals again.

“S-sorry…” Gnome stammered, unsure what to do with the arm she was now holding. The guilt on her face was just another reason why John wanted brutal engagements like this to be over as quickly as possible. His women, powerful as they were, were not weapons of war but a harem to be loved. Sure, Metra enjoyed her massacres, but he could convince her to find other past times.

John gently took the arm from Gnome and then kneeled down. “Hold him still,” he commanded Gnome, as he tried to press the arm against the blood-spurting socket. Undine flowed over, dropping the few people she had kept occupied, who immediately started coughing up saltwater.

“LET ME GO, YOU FREAKS!” the male soldier screamed, terrified. Adrenaline, pain and whatever stories he had heard about the Gamer made that a justified feeling. Regardless, his writhing was suppressed. John held the arm in place, while Undine dropped a large helping of her green-tinged healing slime on top. Fresh skin closed the bloody gap between body and dismembered limb. Then one of the fingers twitched and the man fell into a quiet state. No less panicked but, with his body restored, now without the impulse to claw at his surroundings.

“Make sure you let an Apothecary look at that within the next three days,” John told the soldier, just giving someone who surely knew it a reminder. “If Gaia decides its not properly reattached, you won’t have a fun time with necrosis.” Then he stood up, turning to Undine, “Make sure nobody is in a life-threatening state. Then catch-up with us.”

“As you wish, John,” Undine responded, immediately splitting into two, then four versions of herself. Those copies were too difficult to control at a large range, so she couldn’t leave one of them there while they all moved on, but it was going to allow her to quickly see to the task.

Just so the blind elemental wouldn’t have to individually touch everyone up and down for their injuries, John took one more detailed look around and sent her to everyone that seemed gravely injured first. A couple of those he had to quickly retract again, as they were dealing with corpses. Cruel as it was, John turned with hard eyes to the survivors.

He could have used Gnome to cement them in the ground, but that would have taken time and mana he didn’t want to waste. “You have surrendered,” he told them, waiting a few moments for anyone to do or say anything that would prove the opposite. “I will remember your faces. If I come across any of you on this battlefield again, I cannot spare you or anyone of the Lake Alliance again. Sit here, keep your heads low, wait until you’re taken prisoner or take your opportunity to flee, when you see it. I don’t care – Just do not fight.”