The bridge day between the voting and the start of the tournant ca and went in a crawl. John would have loved to spend it entirely in a haze of frivolities, to et with Lu Zhi and eat her out until she could barely walk anymore. They did not get the opportunity for any of that. The Heavenly Jade Empress was busy with important matters and he spent his ti with his combatants, discussing their strategies. Although John fought side by side with them regularly and his erudite mind let him keep a mory of all these things, it was prudent to go over each of them and remind himself of their solo combat approach. That included himself.
To familiarize himself in this way served two purposes. The first was that they had a day to iron out any potential kinks through spars. They were unlikely to find any, all of them were seasoned veterans at this point. Being a superhuman master of an individual fighting style carried within itself the creation of habits that were unproductive, however. Best to keep routinely prodding and probing each other’s combat habits so nothing too ineffective manifested.
The second was that John could utilize the combat data to create an estimated Stat profile for their enemies based on their performance against his harettes.
Starting with himself, his tactics were many-layered due to the sheer breadth of tools at his disposal. Depending on environntal factors, his strategies varied trendously, utilizing both his arcane Skills and the elentals and their many Combinations to turn the match-up in his favour. In those elentals lay his path for information gathering. Gno allowed him to gauge an enemy’s Strength, Sylph and Siena to estimate their Agility, and Undine could take a few blows to create a profile of their damage output. It was not as reliable as Observe, but it was a start.
For this tournant, John had also made a few select changes to his loadout. Thanks to the Blessing of the Horned Rat, he had Arcane Resistance 5 innately, so there was no need to change his personal equipnt. The Creator Puppet, however, could be specialized for these specific fights.
The increased Arcane Resistance ca at a minor cost to Physical Resistance and Endurance, compared to other high-quality puppets. The problem with this specific model was that John had to be careful not to get it utterly destroyed. The requisite materials for it could not be acquired as easily, and if he lost more than two of them during this tournant, without salvaging the materials, then he would have to resort to other models.
John gave Beatrice a similar aid against this particular enemy. It was a bit difficult to find a suitable item for this on the Abyss Auction in a hurry, but after so scouting he found sothing that she could eat that would give her Arcane Resistance 7. He displaced the long defunct Sunlight Ascension to get that new Attribute in.
Beatrice was one of the fighters that John hoped would excel in this tournant. Her build was incredibly well-suited for single combat. Unsteady Limb and Twist Position allowed her to ss with the pace of the fight at her leisure, typically putting the enemy on the backfoot. Chronoshift let her reposition to a point she had occupied within the last few seconds which, combined with her ability to fly, was quite powerful. Even if she was put on the backfoot herself, Pendulum Stop allowed her to freeze ti for a few seconds and swiftly recollect herself, even if she herself could not act in that snapshot.
All of that was in support of her weapon, Perfect, and its Attributes. However, there was one weakness here.
Depending on the arena and the way the viewing worked, the Attribute would be inactive, which, in turn, disabled the most powerful parts of Perfect’s enchantnts. Beatrice was a powerful combatant even without those additional bonuses, but it would sting to lose them. Hopefully, what they had was enough.
tra, although under contract, he could not give the sa Attribute. ssing with her body’s makeup was ever a risky endeavour, and of all the fighters, he doubted that she required additional aid the most. tra was still the harem’s premiere single combat monster, with her ability to increase in power as long as she fought alone practically guaranteeing that she trumped her opponents in raw Stats. The Skills that allowed her to ss with dinsions diminished her only true weakness: her reliance on lee combat. Between her incredible defences and high regeneration, she was likely to shred anyone she faced, save only for the Father of Arcane.
Rave was a bit more of a wildcard. The combat potential of the Gar’s fiancée was self-evident. Combined with Copernicus, the quarter elental had an incredible Stat line, combining Spell Power with high Agility and decent Strength. Rave was gifted with a strong Innate Ability, a talent for Martial Arts, and a combat instinct that let her fight in wildly unpredictable manners. All of that being said, she suffered from having a very direct approach that, if countered, she had not as many ways to circumvent as tra did.
Much as he hated to think it, and even tell her, of their line-up, she was the most likely to suffer a loss against their enemies. Hearing that had no effect on her mood whatsoever. A little bit of snarky banter was followed by, “I’ll just do my best. It’ll be enough or it won’t.”
That was that.
Where Rave was a wildcard, Nia was a binary. The Maiden of Null had always preferred quick, direct, and effective strategies. Effective was more important than direct here; John did not doubt for a mont that she was capable of subterfuge if the situation made it the most viable course of action.
The problem here was that their enemy was innately and utterly magical. Fighting and hurting them ca down entirely to Nia’s ability to neutralize their spells and, to a degree, their entire existence. Therefore, the equation was simply that of whether she had more anti-mana than they had mana. Assuming Nia had even the slightest edge, she would counter their enemies so intensely she would wipe the floor with anyone she fought. If they had the edge, Nia would struggle trendously not to surrender before she faded. If they were equally matched, then the little efficiencies and inefficiencies of combat would be the deciding factor.
As close to a binary as the back and forth of fights allowed.
Then there were the two goddesses on their side.
Nathalia was the one they could least estimate on how she would perform. Neither John nor she herself could recall when she had last fought an opponent 1 on 1 in a controlled setting. The dragoness had spent the majority of her existence in ssy circumstances, bullying weaker entities with overwhelming power or getting into tussles that were never as clean as a duel. Her control of volcanoes made for devastating area attacks and the sheer might of her true form would bring many to their heels.
The dragoness spent much of the conversation in deep thought, her face shifting from contemplative to almost angry. “Any thoughts you want to share?” John investigated.
“…I am considering a deeply troubling choice and it is mine to make. You will be inford of my decision once I make it,” she responded plainly and dismissively. The Gar was about to give his assurances that she could talk to him about anything, but she sent him a warning glare that had him swallow those words.
Not everything in the harem was solved via understanding. Sotis, the best thing to do to get along was to shut up and let soone work it out in peace.
Eliana, lastly, was mostly a psychological matter. When Eliza and Thana were synced up, the failed goddess was a devastating force that perford even better than tra. Hyper-regeneration made her nigh impervious to harm, if anything even made it past the exoskeleton. Blood magic could be woven into all manners of attacks and temporary boosts to her physical form, if Bloodburn alone did not suffice in overwhelming her opponent. Should raw power not be enough, the Martial Arts she had mastered could be delivered with a reckless level of devastation. Any backlash the overcharged magical circuits inside her experienced would be swiftly regenerated. A single Seismic Step could turn a plain into a crater.
The issue with all of this was that it relied on the raw power of Thana to combine with the learned Martial Arts that Eliana had access to. For all the overlap the two experienced, they were still separate entities. Even when they agreed on harming what was before them, the way they went about it was not always the sa. One wanting to dodge left and the other right would cause a desynchronization and with it a loss of half of her arsenal.
They had been working on figuring this out, but only a true stress test would reveal how much it had helped. Regeneration would allow her to commit a few mistakes, thankfully. Permanent harm and healing reduction effects were, to the best of John’s knowledge, not a part of the arcane playbook.
And while they all held their last sparring matches, Salamander watched her summoner draw a circle on the stone floor.
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“It was entertaining enough,” Plasia said.
The Mother of Fire sat cross-legged on a throne that was too large even for her gargantuan size. Towering over them like the infernal deity she was, the curvaceous woman mustered them. Her skin was a bloody red in the light of the streams of lava that ran down the sides of her seat of power, carved straight into a blackened mountainside. Sohow, her shark-like, obsidian teeth were even darker than the charred rock.
She shifted left to right, her every motion sending flickers of multicoloured flas out from the cascade of her ever-burning hair. Large breasts tilted along the rest of her torso when she placed an elbow on the armrest of her throne, and the side of her face on her knuckles.
“I really hoped for sothing more exciting,” she lanted. “At least one large scale inferno. Perhaps the park could have burned down.” The Mother of Fire cackled at the thought.
“I don’t think that was ever an option,” John told her.
“Yeah, these fuckers are way too reasonable for fun,” Salamander agreed, although not for any reason John would have approved of. “Can’t even start a little blood feud over harmless Quests.”
Plasia shook her head. “Weaklings… anyway, here’s what was promised. The last spark of power your soul can fit.”
It happened suddenly. The surrounding air turned into a vortex of embers that swirled around Salamander. One by one, they fused with her.
In a flash of bright red, the armoured gauntlets and boots of the apocalypse elental manifested. The vortex changed its direction, parting into four streams that gradually added material to those isolated pieces of armour. Up her thighs and down her chest, the plates of black tal and molten rock extended. The impossibly still lava assud the shape of the black lines that covered so much of Salamander’s body, inverting the colour sche where the coal coloured armour ca to cover her.
If that alone had not made it appear malevolent enough, the newly ford armour was of an all around sharp and spiky aesthetic. It rivalled and then overca tra’s armour in its sheer instinctively evil-looking design. The flas that had hidden Salamander’s chest and groin from view were soon covered by the advancing, thick plate. That did not quench them, only forced them to find other outlets in the little gaps all over. The plate extended all the way down Salamander’s tail, creating a cruel, curved blade at the tip.
Salamander grinned and laughed like the evil overlady she liked pretending to be throughout the whole process. She raised her arms and stretched her legs to inspect herself and the death tal worthy appearance she had found herself in. An oddity of her armour, however, remained.
The stretch from collar to shoulders was much thicker than was normal for armour of any kind. Circular cut-outs opened like shallow tubes above her shoulder blades, both of them filled with glowing orange energy. John was confused about the purpose of those holes for only a second.
Additional arms sprouted from the sockets, complete with their own set of covering plate, ending in pointy, incandescent claws. “Oh, fuck yes!” Salamander declared spreading her six arms out, conjuring balls of black and gold fire in each of them. She lobbed the four in her newly grown limbs randomly into the craggy landscape, while slamming her two original hands together. The infernal energies fused into a spear of supernatural fla. She proceeded to stab wildly with it.
‘I suppose she is the child of Krieg,’ John thought. The additional arms were nearly identical to what the god of war had shown during their fight two days ago, although he was thankfully spared the additional heads.
Salamander gradually dismissed her armour. First the torso, showing her breasts and groin once more wreathed in tantalizing fla. Then, the gauntlets and leg coverings. The arms remained, the additional shoulders attached as logically as these things could be. One pair, then the other, Salamander made those disappear too. Even the blade at the end of her tail was gone at the end. The transformation left her base appearance largely untouched, just as the two that had preceded it.
“Alright, you got what you wanted, have fun with that,” Plasia declared and disappeared in a pillar of fla.
Salamander and John followed her example, returning to their temporary ho.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The Great Coliseum of Ro.
A location of such grandeur, it was undeniable. Any cracks in its walls from the beginning of the Five Day War had been nded with such expertise, John could not tell they had ever been there in the first place. The structure was an unparalleled marvel of Illusion Barrier engineering. The sa do that protected the onlookers from stray spells also created its own Protected Space underneath it. It was the only Protected Space in the world that could be looked into from the outside and passed into just by walking. The energy upkeep for that was horrendous, to the point that not even Romulus kept the enchantnts running when they weren’t needed.
At this very mont, neither the shield nor the Protected Space were engaged. Down on the plane of carefully evened dirt, in the oval heart of the arena, a dozen teleportation platforms had been installed. They stood in a line, and behind them towered the currently vacated viewing platform of the emperor himself. In front of them stood a massive vase, clay shaped artfully into a pleasing curve with a long neck, painted with imagery of gladiatorial combat.
Romulus, Sol and Luna stood by that vase, forming the heart of the otherwise bisected gathering on the bottom of the arena. To the left was the Azure Tribe, to the right the seven fighters of Fusion. All of them looked like ants from up above, such was the size of the arena. The watching areas were filled to the brim, and all over the city and beyond, hundreds of thousands of people were tuned into whatever magical or technological connection they could establish that bead the ongoing events to the large screens hovering far above the arena.
Although they would not fight in the coliseum, it was the best place for this gathering to occur.
The opening ceremony, the speeches, all of that preamble was already taken care of. John had sat and participated in it all impatiently. A part of him was eager for the combat to begin, to show the entire world how far Fusion had co. Rumours of their fight against Arkeidos had spread, but this would be televised. The only thing that halfway managed to reign in his enthusiasm for the display was his concern that they might lose.
Romulus stepped forward, lifting the wooden lid of the vase. A storm swirled within, keeping the nas in constant tumble. It was far from a surprise that Romulus had an ancient artefact even when it ca to the sortition of gladiators. “I shall now draw the nas of the fighters!” he declared. His hand disappeared twice in the vast vase, retrieving a slip of papyrus each ti. He handed one to Sol and one to Luna.
“Liakan of the Azure Tribe!” Luna declared. The coral-horned entity stepped forward.
“tra of Fusion!” Sol followed. The wolf-eared berserker dragged Rex Magnar’s tip through the consolidated sand as she stepped forward.
Romulus placed his hand in the vase a third ti. “They shall fight in… the plains,” the regal tone of the Apex betrayed disappointnt. Regardless, he stepped backward and pointed the opponents towards the teleporter. “Enter the domain of your combat. Wait on the designated spots, until the signal tells you to begin!”
‘This is off to a promising start… or I am about to get the reality check of my life,’ John thought, as he watched tra head towards the teleportation pad.
‘I’ll never disappoint, my king,’ tra told him.
Then the flash of blue energy moved her too far for ntal communications.
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