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The Gamer Chapter 1691 – Chase for the Cure 9 – vs Huitzilopochtli
🕑 Added 2024-06-03 08:30:14 +0000 UTC
The god of sacrifice charged again. John spawned two Unstable Arcana’s in his path. The spheres pulsed, covering Huitzilopochtli’s skin in silver, arcane fire. It vanished as quickly as it came, progressing like a flash burn, and left little visible marks.
The goal wasn’t to deliver initial damage anyhow, it was to create two Mana Chains that shot at the god’s back. As the Perk-created projectiles rippled out of their dimensional anchors, John shot two additional ones from his current position and through the slightly removed Companion Cube.
A whirlwind strike hit all of the Mana Chains, throwing them off their course. Huitzilopochtli turned the momentum of the turn into a leap. Holding his ornate spear in both hands, he aimed for John.
The Gamer let the attack pass through. Particle Skin flared as the tip of the weapon slammed into it. 4201 MP were evaporated in an instant, a little more than 10% of John’s HP bar. Since he was built around regeneration, that amount of damage was only in the ‘respectable’ category and far from ‘concerning’.
Which confused John to no small degree.
The elementals had spread out to allow the strike to pass and now launched a multi-directional assault on the god of sacrifice. The three-metre-tall humanoid bowed out of the way of a lightning strike, then expertly knocked away the double strike of swords that the six-armed fire spirit attempted to hit him with. Even Siena’s attack from behind missed, the god conjuring one of the portals that so often appeared to strengthen the followers of Huitzilopochtli. A barrier of crystallized blood stopped the claws of the midnight elemental in their tracks.
All of them had just been rouses. The god had expended all the motion even a fighter at their level could execute in a single moment and even showed a defensive trick. In doing so, he left himself open to the truly devastating impact.
Gnome hurled her fist. By their standards, it was slow. Even John found it easily traceable. To Huitzilopochtli, it must have appeared like an inevitable hit. Maybe if he had known how much strength was behind it, he would have pulled an emergency measure.
Knuckles pushed into the god’s stomach. Gem eyes bulged. John thought they would fall out, even, while the massive man was folded around the averagely sized woman’s fist like tumbling paper around a swinging bat. Spit flew, then the entire god flew, catapulted away from the scene of the fighting.
Only for dozens of watery tendrils to grip him.
Undine yanked Huitzilopochtli back down into the crowd of elementals. A powerful shockwave evaporated the tendrils in an instant, allowing the god of sacrifice to land short of being surrounded. A portal opened under his feet. He dropped through and re-appeared a few metres away in the massive chamber.
‘Metra would be useful here,’ John thought. “In a mood to negotiate yet?”
Huitzilopochtli answered with a mechanical motion, taking his spear in both hands again and charging once more. The action had John puzzled. That was the third time the god went for the exact same strategy.
Paranoia got the better of John. ‘Disperse,’ he ordered his girls. Teleporting back with Magus Step and Skitterstep, he put distance between himself and the god. The thrust of the spear had gone for John once again and the instant that he became visible again, the god once more charged forwards, a determined look on his face, devoid of any emotion besides guided aggression.
“I see… this is even more of a waste of time than I thought,” John mumbled. ‘Smlere.’
Gnome and Salamander moved towards each other, while John loosened the golden egg hanging from his belt and tossed it in the path of the boss. Stirwin Unleashed, manifesting at a size to rival the god. Large by objective measurements, but on the small side for what the crocodile could be. What John needed right now wasn’t the most powerful version of the Celestial Devourer, he just wanted an extra body on the field.
The galloping crocodile’s maw closed around the golden shaft of the spear. Pushing back, Huitzilopochtli was locked in place, unable to dodge the pulses of the five Unstable Arcanas John had spawned in behind the god. Combined, the waves of arcane fire managed to singe the skin of the god’s back. Then, five mana chains buried themselves into his skin.
1000 Mana each, the Unstable Arcana’s kept pulsing in half second intervals, adding more and more shackles to the back of the god of sacrifice. At the end, each of them had expended their stored mana. The old Mana Chains would have disappeared with the Unstable Arcana they originated from, but the Chains of Babylon remained present, anchored in their own dimensional pocket, rather than the dissolving spheres.
Like an uncaring machine, Huitzilopochtli continued in his power struggle against Stirwin, slowly pushing the crocodile back. Only when two elementals leapt for the god’s head, did he rip his spear back. Some of the Celestial Devourer’s teeth broke from the sudden motion. A resistance that was enough.
Siena added more bloody trenches to the god’s exterior, moments before Smlere crashed into him with volcanic might. The combined elemental had even more Strength than Gnome. The god went flying again, then was yanked back again, this time by a combination of chains and watery tendrils that he could not escape from.
The god of sacrifice was shackled to the ground, beset on all sides, and pummelled into submission by Smlere’s cataclysmic fists. “Just stop, please!” the combination of Gnome and Salamander requested. Her fist broke through the god’s ribcage and turned the heart within into pulp.
Within moments, the entity began to turn transparent. A portal opened underneath. Smlere backed away swiftly, not to fall on through with the spear and crimson stakes that were left behind.
“That was too easy, wasn’t it?” Sylph asked.
“Y-you airhead!” Smlere stammered.
“Oh, that’s new, Sally stammering at me in Gnome’s voice, that’s cute! Keep talking, Smlere, you’re cute.”
“O-of course I am!” The curvy amazonian woman answered, putting her hands on her hips. Brown eyes in red scleras wandered around, looking for any signs of enemy activity. John did the same.
“That was just an avatar,” John informed Sylph. “An obstacle conjured to test us and if I was a god powerful enough to create avatars like that on a whim…” Two portals opened before them. “…I wouldn’t regard this test as over.”
Two new Huitzilopochtlis stepped out. One was once again armed with the spear, the other with a pair of obsidian daggers. “”You have no right to my daughter.”” They spoke in unison, then charged with robotic determination.
Their only target was John and he teleported out of attack range just before they could get to him. Weapons bounced off the surprisingly sturdy floor. At least they wouldn’t deal too much damage to this historical site. Their lack of any learning pointed towards something more going on than just them being tested, however.
‘A safety mechanism, perhaps?’ John wondered and looked at the seal. It was faint, but magical energies did connect to the two avatars. Either they would keep respawning for as long as the seal was in place or until whatever charge it held was exhausted. Considering the amount of power that had gone into this place, it was best to assume that would be more than John was willing to exhaust. “Smlere, split.”
The Combination slammed her fist into the stomach of the spear-wielding avatar before following the order. Salamander flew upwards, while Gnome ran over to the seal. She would attempt to fake the keys while they delayed the enemy.
Undine turned into a torrent. Her Unleash was far from prepared, but even so she could turn herself into a monstrosity of eyes and teeth that was too large an obstacle to ignore. The Abyssal medusa enveloped the dual-wielding avatar, dragging it off to one side, while Salamander slammed into the spear-wielding enemy with a dropkick.
Siena and Sylph joined one fight, John and Stirwin the other. Whatever ‘programming’ these avatars followed, it wasn’t so singularly focused that they would only ever attack the Gamer. With distance between them and a larger target before the dual-wielding version of Huitzilopochtli, that avatar preferred Undine and Stirwin as his targets.
The attacks they had to deal with remained powerful enough to be respected but fell short of being feared. Speed and strength behind them were impressive but handleable. Raids had prepared them thoroughly for encounters like this.
‘Okay, okay, so this angle is used repeatedly, is there like an order these should be placed in or…?’ Gnome stayed in connection with John’s mind. The Gamer was split between his efforts to dodge the repeated thrusts of the spear and helping his earth spirit figuring out any riddles that may have been left on the disk.
‘It’s segmented into eight areas. Start with the south. That’s the god’s domain. Then go west, because that’s where we are. Then north and east last. I don’t know why Quetzalcoatl is held in low regard on this side, but he seems to be the lowest ranked of the four.’
Throughout the explanation, John expended his Magus Steps. Each time he did use the Skill, he followed it up with the free Skitterstep. The momentary invisibility turned the instinctively guided avatar passive for a split second each time, allowing Salamander and Stirwin to get in cheap shots.
‘Roger that… Alright, so…’ Gnome created a block of stone with her own mana. A costly endeavour, as creating solids typically was. From that stone, she pulled the material to shape the keys that they did not have.
Undine hissed. A parallel slice had separated her from the mass of her body so quickly, she had not split her mind in time. The slime lady landed on the floor, splattering out before rapidly reshaping into her usual form. The expanded mass turned into a torrent of water, flooding the even stone. Fortunately, the enchanted paint held.
‘So that’s the angle!’ Gnome cheered in her mind, completely focused on her work. The absolute trust she had in her comrades let her ignore all the sounds of fighting around and instead focus on slotting piece after piece into the puzzle. Some of the key fragments were the size of a forearm, others smaller than a finger.
‘At least she is having fun,’ John thought, just as he was caught by a sideway swing of the avatar’s spear. The extension of the god of sacrifice immediately followed up with a punch. John wanted to lower his Particle Skin to have his HP take the blow instead, but doing so would have potentially exposed him to the disease.
‘Alright, south done, west next,’ Gnome informed everyone.
‘Aclysia, are you free?’
‘My apologies, Master, but I am rather preoccupied!’ she answered and sent him a quick flash of her sight. Three cyborgs were on top of her, incapable of keeping her down but certainly capable of annoying her. ‘Should I expend my teleport?’
‘Things aren’t that dire,’ John answered and teleported away with Magus Step. In his stretched and sleep deprived state, he made a tactical misstep, teleporting too close to the second avatar. Attention snapped to him, the summoner getting focused over the summon, and the huge humanoid charged straight at him, tackling Stirwin aside in the process.
‘Alright, normed shapes, so that makes things easier,’ Gnome thought. She was getting faster at shaping the keys, filling out the grooves and gaps with fluid motions. ‘West done.’
John found himself up shit creek without a paddle. Magus Step was on cooldown and both avatars were smacking him about. His mana was taking hit after hit, only made sustainable courtesy of the interventions of the elementals.
‘North done!’ Gnome informed him.
‘Not to hurry you, but please hurry!’ John returned. One charge of Magus Step was back just in time for him to dodge an otherwise unavoidable three-way attack by two daggers and a spear. The points of the weapons all met where his throat would have been.
John did not follow what happened next. He let himself fall to the ground, kept himself flat, and let the five elementals crash into the two extensions of the god of sacrifice. Crawling away like a soldier moving under barbed wire, he just waited for the good news.
‘Done!’
Gnome’s announcement was reflected in the world. The two avatars suddenly stopped moving. Their energy was sucked into a pair of portals opening up behind them, dragging them away into whatever origin point there was.
Relief filled John. “Uhm… the stone is bleeding.” The relief was undone quickly.
He stood up, to see this with his own eyes. Where the stone keys had been inserted into the disk, red ichor was bubbling up. A vile foam formed on top of the disk as the surface cracked and crumbled. A hand broke through the centre. Raw, red flesh surfaced. Muscle fibres, fat deposits, skin, and bone all were exposed to the air. Blood gushed from the meat with every motion.
The long limb grabbed the created edge with sickle-like fingers. Each was a knife of the utmost sharpness. The body attached to the arm dragged itself upwards, breaking the top of the seal completely. Inside it had been something like an amniotic sack, out of which this new creature rose.
All of the humanoid entity was skinless and bleeding. In some places there were white veins, pumping some kind of liquid to the different parts of the body. In others, the marbling of exposed, white fat took the shape of Aztec glyphs. Pieces of torn leather covered the monster here and there. The faces of those that had been the provider of the skin were still visible in places.
Hunched over, the humanoid entity took a step out of the crimson soup of its dwelling. Long, gold hair fell in greasily clumped strands, hiding much of its face. What little was visible was wrapped in bandages made from human leather, soaked in blood. The eyes were lidless and red.
“Faking the seal’s keys… daring.” The voice of the creature reminded John of a blade gliding over a whetstone. “There can only be one punishment for this.” The three-metre tall creature glared down at John with greedy, malevolent eyes of deep purple. “Peel your own skin off and I will consider letting you live.”
“Alternatively, get out of my way,” John growled, taking the short moment of conversation to open the Harem Comms. “Or answer me why you are here, Flayer Lord.”
The creature tilted its head. “You know who I am, yet offer resistance? Interesting… your skin will be a coat for more than 20 days.”
Xipe-Totec raised a clawed hand, but froze before bringing it down. Aclysia and Claire both had manifested in front of John. Could he have taken the god-warrior on without them? Almost certainly, even with his diminished mana, but he really was getting tired of these interruptions. “Out – of – my – way.”
Somehow, his lipless face contorted into a grin under the bandages that revealed bloody teeth. Purple eyes flitted from one target to the next. “You are looking for a cure… you want Nahua…” He rolled his shoulders. “I’m in no mood to experience my first death. Have it your way, outsider. HUITZILOPOCHTLI! LET ME INTO YOUR DOMAIN!” The roar was answered by a portal opening underneath Xipe-Totec. “The sovereign is bored. We’ll meet again.”
“Doubtlessly we will, monster,” John answered.
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