Collide Gamer Chapter 321 – Reign of Blood

“Group fights, aw yeah, those always get hyped up,” Jeff shouted.

“Everything always gets you hyped up.” Dra shook his head, and that was about all that John could stomach of these two right now.

The mood on their team’s platform was bad, to say the least. The recent happening hung in the air like a poisonous fog, infecting whatever words were spoken and killing conversations before they could beco more than awkward small talk. John fully embraced the developnt. He would get this fight over with as soon as possible, and then they would fix this whole ss.

He glanced over to Thana, who stuck to Lydia in their current divide, the two of them sitting on another table while Rave sat with him; Nia and Momo refused to be caught up in this. “So, it is a 2vs2, let’s go ahead folks, pick your fighters in the next 5 minutes!”

“Your decision remains the sa?” John asked over the two tables.

“Yes,” Lydia’s tone was indomitable, she had made up her mind and was now going to stay the course. Understanding of her reasons remained, just as his wish this wasn’t what they would have to do.

The ti ran out, and he and Thana rode the platform down to the arena. “Are you that angry?” Thana mumbled into the quiet, undoing her scarf and handing it to John.

Sighing, he answered and took it, safely storing it in his inventory until after the fight, “I am not angry, I am concerned, Thana.” The blood mage shook her head in what John first thought to be an understanding nod but turned out to be more of a near-collapse as she took a reflexive step forwards to keep her balance.

John was close, ready to catch her. When she stood steadily again, he couldn’t help but burst out, “See? Sothing is clearly not working with you right now!” Thana stayed silent to that.

Only when the platform dissipated underneath them did she mumble, “I have to be useful, I can’t be the insane fucking girl that is just dead-weight.”

“You will never be deadweight!” John growled as they strode towards the centre of the arena, “I won’t let y-“

“Hello,” Alexej interrupted with a happy wave, “how are you.”

“About ready to rip your spine out,” John growled. His anger found a way more fitting target. Thana’s recent instability had started with this manipulative fucker’s ddling.

“Wow, hostile,” the informant laughed at which point all of John’s elentals materialized.

“We are going to end this quickly, okay?” he said to everyone.

“Let’s fucking murder that brown-robed brown-noser,” Thana growled in agreent as the bio wheel landed on the standard arena.

“I will turn his skin into a nice and crispy layer,” Salamander hissed.

“Well, I like quick, so making this quick works for , way more important stuff to do,” Sylph hyper-actively nodded.

Gno did her usual fist-pumping, “We can do this, w-we can!”

“For everyone’s security,” Undine said and changed into her glove form.

“Those two are fine to cut?” Siena asked.

“You can torture Alexej a bit if you get your claws on him,” John allowed.

“Let’s just do this so I can find so books on psychotherapy,” Momo hovered off the ground.

“Ah, such hope, but I am sorry, this victory will be mine!” Maximillian said, and then the fight began.

The opening moves were the sa as the last group fight. Thana made a break to reach the duo, activating Bloodburn imdiately, but then was hit by the reinforced gravity magic, slamming her to the ground.

However, this ti they had to deal with John and almost all of his familiars, who all advanced to imdiately take advantage of the situation. “Quite sorry,” with these words the black hole that was Maximillian’s elental appeared.

A sudden pull ripped all four of the openly manifested elentals from their course towards Alexej and Hawpler. Only Siena, dwelling in John’s shadow, was secure from this thing. ‘That cannot be sustainable for long,’ John thought as all of them fought against the gravity well that was clawing at them. He threw three quarters of a wave of Shardbound at the elental, directing the last one towards Maximillian.

As he had anticipated, all of them were uselessly sucked into the black hole. John had no idea how it worked in detail, but it seed to be the case that Hawpler was sothing like a selective black hole. Whatever he chose to exert a gravitational pull on, no matter what it actually was or what rules of physics he had to break in the process, once unleashed, that was what he did.

“Soulburn.” While John was still running forwards, undecided whether he was going to attack Hawpler, to free his elentals, or just continue in his efforts to free Thana, the blood mage pulled her own ace. The red flas of Bloodburn got replaced by the six pillars of blue fire.

Under the shocked eyes of Maximillian and with a scream of anger, quickly swinging to maniacal laughter, Thana fought herself to her feet. “I hope you are ready for a fucking rodeo! You looked down on for too long,” the bundle of insanity howled and threw herself at the gravity king with reckless abandon.

Her movents were way slower than they should have been, but she was still faster than Maximillian, who had the honour of getting punched in the stomach by a fist engulfed in blue flas that had withstood the weight of a mountain sized dragon.

To John’s surprise, not only did Maximillian not get instantly thrown to the Fateweavers by this, rely being catapulted backwards and rolling over the floor like a skipping stone over the pond, but he also kept his attack in place. Every step Thana took dug deeply into the sandy earth, caving under her inhuman weight.

The six pillars disappeared as whatever emotion she had been burning ran out. “Soulburn,” she growled once more and fought her continued advance towards Maximillian. “What kind of monster did Lydia find?” the king couldn’t help but ask out loud.

“The kind that will murder you. The humans all need annihilation.”

Thana stopped dead in her tracks, “Did I just fucking say sothing?!” She shook her head as if she was standing in the middle of a swarm of bees.

“Keep your head in the ga!” John shouted and jumped at Alexej. This needed to be over as quickly as possible, sothing was seriously wrong, and it wasn’t getting better.

Alexej was an informant, and there was a reason the guy had never fought. Like Herman before him, he wasn’t going to be all that great at fighting. ‘Sorry, girls,’ John apologized to the elentals he left behind.

With a series of simple punches, John assaulted the informant who, despite the strained look on his face, managed to dodge backwards. While he wasn’t able to land a single hit, the Gar wasn’t worried. He was delivering Alexej straight to the arms of certain defeat.

Which the informant himself only realized when it was too late and he was about to collide backwards with Thana. “Normally I’d introduce you to my fucking foot, but you two have t before,” the blood mage laughed and spin-kicked the manipulator straight towards his master.“…What the fuck, I don’t feel lighter,” Thana growled, almost budging in as yet another emotion ran dry. “Soulburn,” a third ti she used the one-word chant to keep on her feet.

“You okay, Alex?” Maximillian asked, keeping his eyes on the two of them; “This might look pretty grave right now but we will prev-“

The sound of a cell phone rang from Alexej’s robes. “Excuse , I will have to take that,” the slav sat up, coughing up blood as he did.

“Oh, hey, what is the contestant Alexej doing there?” Jeff comnted what everyone was thinking.

“Taking phone calls in the middle of the ga is against the rules, as far as I know,” Dra said and took out an overly thick book. “A mont of pause please.”

A victorious grin appeared on Alexej’s face as he listened to whatever the person calling him had to say. “Alex?!” Maximillian was obviously angry at this developnt.

“I am sorry Max,” the manipulator put away his phone with a shrug. “This was always the only way this could end.”

A sudden burst of speed brought the support right next to the confused gravity mage. A knife glinted in the sunlight, then disappeared into the flesh of Maximillian’s soft side.

“What the hell?” John asked and suddenly all hell broke loose as the audience started screaming in confusion, panic quickly spreading as the sound of alarm bells rang all over the city of Ro.

“For the revolution!” Alexej shouted and pulled the knife back, before aiming for Maximillian’s throat.

Instead, his own hand suddenly was subject to an attack. A blade of dark purple, connected to the betrayer’s shadow, penetrated through the unprotected arm and ripped it aside. “Nothing worse than a traitor,” Siena hissed as more tendrils of bladed darkness wrapped around Alexej and forced him aside.

John finally caught up to the whole scene and started healing Maximillian as all elentals, from Hawpler to Gno, helped restrict the monk-robe wearing Alexej. Even now, Observe did nothing and John didn’t feel like it would be smart to use mana on Reveal at the current ti. Even now, Alexej wore his victorious smile. Exactly now, the king looked back with the eyes of a man who experienced the ultimate wrong.

“Why?” Maximillian finally managed to ask a single word.

“For the revolution, I wasn’t subtle about it,” Alexej dismissively said.

‘What revolution?’ John asked himself and had already figured it out by the ti Alexej went on.

“The Blood of the Proletariat will deliver this world into the utopia it was ant to be.”

“Why?!” the king continued on; “You had a good life under , I don’t understand.”

“UNDER YOU, YES!” Alexej laughed in his face. “Born into serfdom, what an honour indeed! To be a slave to one as self-centred as you.”

“Why would you try to stab him?” The world around John seed to crumble. He turned to look for Thana, who was simply confusedly looking around. At the very least, she seed fine for the mont. “Fateweaving is still in effect, he would just have been teleported away,” John laid down.

“Oh, you should look up and think again if it is,” Alexej giggled. Hesitatingly, John and everyone else did. The reason for the alarm bells beca apparent imdiately. The sky had been cut apart. It was as if a thin knife had been applied to a canvas. The gap in the outer wall of the Protected Space of Ro was pitch black in the cloudy sky.

“It would have been nice to take you out personally, but I will take the second-best thing and die with you all,” Alexej announced as sothing fell out of the gap. It was an object with an unmistakable form, normally ant to be dropped out of a plane and not a dinsional gap. A round, black painted head followed by an elongated, thick tal shell and a cylindrical end.