“Okay, so here’s the strategy,” John exclaimed, once he felt like he had figured everything out. “Sylph, Salamander, you are going to keep the Razorteeth Divers occupied. For this first attempt, I want to see how well I fare with as little obstruction as possible. Gnome, you’re going to keep closely behind me. Protect me from attacks from behind and do make the ground more even if I am absolutely stuck. Aclysia, Beatrice, you’re going to clear the path ahead of me. Keep the enemies occupied, don’t aim at killing them. They’re just going to respawn. Keep Master’s Shield ready in case I fall. Undine, you’re staying in item form, as per usual. Siena, you protect me if I need to recover, so stay ready for emergencies. Stirwin…”

He looked at the crocodile hatchling. Stirwin was standing at attention as best as a hand-sized reptile could. With his silver eyes, the light spirit looked back, mouth agape and the fleshy tongue lolling out slightly, like a happy dog.

“Sit.” The command was obeyed, although Stirwin didn’t get down on his behind like a canine would have. Instead, he laid down in his entirety. Given the stubby legs of this form, that was the best he could do anyway.

John just hoped none of the enemies would make it a priority to hunt the crocodile. Stirwin’s hatchling form was entirely weighted into Endurance, so he could take quite a bit of punishment. Against lizardmen in the level 171 to 175 range, surviving a few stray hits wouldn’t really help if he got actually focused though.

‘One day, I’ll have the mana to make you big and strong,’ John thought, taking his eyes off Stirwin and checking a few last things. Purgatory was activated, his suit sat tight, Mana Protection was at maximum charge. That last thing was particularly important, since it let him make a few mistakes before he had to pay for it with his own mana. A maximum of five, if he had to guess. These lizardmen didn’t look like they would do anything short of skewer him.

Still, that meant he could take a pretty fair amount of stabs that would have been lethal for most other people. Bonus points, he didn’t even have to protect his vital organs. Aside from the brain, everything he had that was necessary for life had been torn, stabbed or cut at least once in his life so far. With no long-term detriment. Aside from the eyes, of course.

“Alright then.” John rolled his neck, everyone having assumed their position in the formation. Sylph and Beatrice were right at the edge of the spawn zone. “3… 2… 1…” Lowering his stance, he himself got ready for the command he was about to give. “GO!”

The group stormed out of the ruins. Immediately, the lizardmen went into action as well. Raising their spears, they drew their arms back, and dozens of the weapons suddenly cut through the air. There was no clear target for them, but the sheer number still made them a threat. Aclysia and Beatrice cut down a few of them mid-flight, the elementals simply dodged. John and Gnome were a little less capable, taking them head-on. Two of them bounced off Mana Protection in a flare of arcane blue, chipping a third off the pre-charge.

‘That would have been one third of my HP bar right there.’ John couldn’t help but feel a tinge of excitement at that. The only two enemies he had fought in the last few weeks that were actually able to hurt him were Jeremiah and Rave. Both of these had been in rather controlled settings. It was odd to feel a sense of happiness about actually being threatened.

The Mandala Sphere hovered above John, keeping pace with him and giving him the ability to look around himself. While the actual field of view he had with the sphere only covered about 180 degrees, he could change the direction he was looking at basically instantaneous speeds. Going back and forth too quickly would have a similar blur effect as shaking one’s head from side to side, but it still allowed him to keep a bird’s eye view of the entire surroundings at a high degree of reliability.

Through that, he could see Gnome behind him and how she took one spear to the chest. It buried into her, the impact slowing her for a moment. Calling her sturdy would have been an understatement. As she continued to run, she pulled the spear out as if it was nothing more than a pin stuck in her shoe, and tossed it aside. The rest of the projectiles simply missed them, burrowing into the grass of the small plain between the ruins and the hill.

As the lizardmen rearmed from weapon stands standing under their watchtowers, Beatrice fluidly jumped up the first hurdle, a five-metre-tall wall. One leap mid-sprint, and she simply landed on top. A feat Aclysia almost mirrored, running closer, then jumping and stretching her left arm out, her right holding Eclys. Getting a grip on the edge, she pulled herself up. By the time she joined Beatrice, the younger maid had already gotten into a brawl that John could also only see thanks to the Mandala Sphere.

John was a fair bit behind. Aclysia and Beatrice both had considerably more Agility than him. Himself being at, all buffs included, 126, he was outclassed by Aclysia’s 215 and absolutely left in the dust by Beatrice’s 595. Although they all seemed slow compared to the speed devil in the sky, zapping pterodactyls.

John had to jump to the side to not get hit by a falling, electrocuted monster, which scattered into ash-like particles upon impact with the floor. He finally reached the wall and grabbed one of the vines covering it, pulling himself upwards. Propelling himself halfway up the wall with his brawn, he reached upwards with his left. Purgatory failed to get even close to the edge or another vine, but John had aimed for a weak-looking part of the wall anyway.

The dragon-scale grade equipment rammed into the gap in the stone, breaking it open into a comfortable grip, allowing John to pull himself even further. Looking up, he was suddenly met with the yellow gaze of a female Broctean. Holding a spear that was adjusted for her size, she had no problem stabbing down and actually threatening to reach John. The first attack found him unprepared.

‘Three highly active Possessions make keeping track of the Mandala Sphere harder than I thought,’ John realized, blinded for a moment by the flash of arcane that rebounded the impact. Something that bothered his opponent more than him, since the Gamer no longer looked through retinas that would stay bothered after the fact.

The second stab he managed to dodge. He had secured a grip with his right hand again, the Undine-glove covered hand tightly closing around another vine. By letting go of the crack, he gave himself the opportunity to twist out of harm’s way.

He wanted to look up to the enemy, anticipate their next movements. Only one eye obeyed that command, the other following the still moving spear tip as it rushed past where his head had been. Quickly, he closed that eye, putting more stock in the Mandala Sphere, as he used the internally stored mana of his Extension to conjure a Mana Blade on it.

1500 MP were transformed into a glowing blue blade, which then transformed into a ring as the Mandala Sphere started rotating its outer layer at max speed. The whirling death passed by the enemy, cutting them in half in the process, leaving John to climb the rest of the way up.

Beatrice and Aclysia were involved in a skirmish with four other enemies, another two just standing by, simultaneously cutting off their retreat and blocking John’s path for advancement. One of them charged at John once the Gamer was standing on top of the wall. A smart strategy, on the face of it, since he had decided to stand still for the few moments it took to readjust his eyesight.

However, the Gamer had anticipated this response already. Having spent 1500 MP gave him a stack of Shifting Momentum. As the spear came for him, he disappeared in a series of blue, white and purple flashes, only to reappear immediately ten metres further down the path. Keeping to the left, wanting to take advantage of the gap the offensive had created while also steering clear of the skirmish, he ran. Behind him, the sound of rumbling earth announced Gnome, raising herself up on a stone platform to easily clear the obstacle.

The second Broctean guard didn’t just leave the gap open and ran to intercept John. In this, he opened his back to Beatrice, who suddenly used Twist Position to, just like John, move instantaneously. Her spear found its way into the back of the monster’s knee, painting the white blade purple with the creature’s blood.

This allowed John to advance a little bit unobstructed, but soon the main force of the skirmish moved in his direction. For several seconds, he was forced to stand still, engaging in the dance of attacker and defender with a couple of large bi-pedal reptiles. John repeatedly feigned left and right, trying to get the defenders to commit to anything. They just shifted their weight so they could react in time. Either of the Artificial Spirits could have broken up this situation, but this wasn’t meant to be an effective clearing but a test for John. As such, they held back from exerting too much influence.

Assaulting them wouldn’t have been too easy anyhow. Even here, the ground was sloped. At basically every point along the path, the defenders of the objective would have the high ground. Now John Newman wasn’t Anakin Skywalker and the Brocteans sure as hell weren’t Jedi Masters, but that was still an advantage to keep in mind. For people that were limited on footing, anyway.

John finally went for the strongest distraction he had, charging at the enemies. They took aggressive stances, missing the Mandala Sphere that had circled around them. Spending the remaining 500 MP stored inside the Extension plus 1000 of his own, the flying ball once more became a spinning blade of doom. John was quite liberal with this spending, as every kill he managed to get this way added a further stack to Whisper of Mana.

The passive didn’t get to shine too often, since he got most of his kills with his elementals rather than arcane magic. In this situation of self-reliance, however, it was working wonders. That the restored Mandala Sphere allowed him to use Mana Blade at considerable distances was a sure help as well.

What would have been the certain way into the business ends of two pointy sticks now became the easiest path forward. He passed between the two falling over lizardmen, like through a macabre swing door, and advanced towards the next hurdle. The earth became progressively steeper, until John could no longer run but had to half-crawl, half-climb further.

It wasn’t too different from playing in the woods near Springfield, he found. Simply manoeuvring from one graspable obstacle to the next. Except that any imaginary enemies he may have had as an enthusiastic child were now very much real and threatening. Every trap as well, as he found out halfway up the slope.

One root gave away under his hand in a strange way. John felt like his weight pulled something. He tried to put it elsewhere, maybe undo the mechanism, but it was too late. At the top of the slope, numerous stone contraptions suddenly shot out of the dirt. It was a shallow wall, riddled with holes. Holes out of which three salvos of arrows were suddenly loosened.

A surprisingly unthreatening trap. John just moved the Mandala Sphere ahead of himself, the projectiles bounced of the whirling Baelementium like nothing. As he made his way up the rest of the slope, Aclysia and Beatrice ended their engagement down below and stormed to arrive at the next location ahead of him.

Something that they, especially Beatrice, did with ease. It made John feel quite slow, although all this destruction was buffing him up, thanks to Purgatory and its own Attributes. Slowly he was getting more Strength and Agility.

‘This is going to take a while…’ John thought, realizing he had only beaten the first two hurdles. He was maybe a tenth of the way up and the path winded along. Nothing new, just felt a lot different in action. ‘Well, moping about it won’t help me.’ His feet hit the ground again.

Pitfalls, more arrow traps, lizardmen throwing their weapons or weight his way, steep ascensions, climbs and even a little maze. He had to get through all of it, and much to his satisfaction, he felt it actually helped. Which was saying a lot. Usually, growth was noticed after a while, not felt actively. A particular example of this was when an earlier situation repeated: him narrowly dodging a spear by twisting to the side.

While his one eye, again, tracked the tip as the other remained staring forwards, John didn’t need to close it this time around. He still had to concentrate on having the lens angle snap back into synchronicity, but he could do so before the enemy had even finished their strike. John ignored the enemy. Something that they retaliated by changing their thrust into a body slam. Nothing too threatening to John.

Even though the pre-charge had long since been broken through, John was anything but vulnerable. With now 4 stacks of Whisper of Mana, he was regenerating 5 times the normal amount of MP. In theory, that put him up to 69 mana per second. However, as the sustained costs of elementals and everything scaled with his current regeneration, rather than his base one, that number was brought down by a little over 17. Using all the decimal numbers, he came out at 51,64 mana per second or 3098,83 per minute.

All he needed to do was keep the buff refreshed. To that end, John went through a rhythm of ignoring enemies for 30 seconds and then trying to kill one the next half minute. Refreshing the buff was high priority. Having more mana to spend meant that he could use Shifting Momentum more often and it buffed up his tankiness tremendously.

‘Just too bad that the cost of Mana Protection isn’t counted for Shifting Momentum,’ John thought. If he could take 1500 mana worth of damage and then immediately teleport ten metres away, that would have made him a lot more versatile in situations he was on the backfoot on. Anyway, he had finally reached the top of the mountain.

Two four metre females were the final hurdle, or would have been if the maids hadn’t engaged them already. The enemies were quite tough, but their scales couldn’t stand against the high-grade weaponry Aclysia and Beatrice used. The former had an easier time, Mithril cutting through the scales. Not quite as easily as normally, the second-hardest metal in the Abyss, Mithril sunk through most things like a hot knife through butter. Through the scales it was more like a solid chocolate bar. Which was to say, there was resistance, but nothing a bit of extra force couldn’t solve. Which was exactly why Aclysia was going after her opponent with the cleaver Marath.

Beatrice's weapon, while also white, wasn’t Mithril. However, a spear had the advantage of being designed to puncture through things and puncturing was one of the best ways to handle armour, be it forged or natural. Combined with Beatrice’s Agility and skills focused around quick movement, she danced around her target, stabbing at the weak joints or aiming to slide the blade between overlapping scales.

Regardless of the many injuries the two Broctean females sustained, the moment John passed between them, their attention immediately shifted towards him. One or two standard hits from the smaller males? John could shrug those off quite confidently. Two desperate thrusts at his back by the oversized lizard women? That was just asking for his mana pool to be depleted.

He dived forwards, the Mandala Sphere confirming the spears missed, and rolled forwards. The plan had been to get right back onto his feet, but as he rose up, he felt a sudden rush of vertigo. His eyes were looking in different directions, he stumbled, then fell flat. Immediately, he tried to get up again. Aclysia used the enemy’s unbalance to unleash a crimson energy wave upon the Broctean’s back, killing her instantly.

Beatrice lacked such a burst option and could only harass her own opponent further as a hissing scream echoed from the Broctean’s many-fanged mouth, going for a second stab. It would have connected quite clearly, were it not for Siena, rising out of John’s shadow in a mass of bladed tendrils, all connected to her back. They wrapped around the spear, twisted it out of its path, before the nightmare elemental leaped at the monster and gouged out the creature’s eyes with her sharp claws.

‘Thank you,’ John shared with the shadow spirit, as he used the very same pole that held the objective as help as he got up.

‘Don’t worry, I love to get my hands dirty for you,’ Siena mused into his mind, before slipping back into his shadow as he grabbed the orb. It was surprisingly heavy and radiated a pleasant warmth. About the size of a football, it was possible to hold it with one hand, but two was just better for security.

As it left the socket, and John immediately began to move, the atmosphere change. Courtesy of all the gecko-like heads that shot out of the underbrush. The Slerkins watched John for a moment, then like a tide of Yoshis, all began moving. John could feel the vibrations in the ground, due to the sheer number of them getting into motion. Around a hundred, that much he was sure of with a simple look through the Mandala Sphere.

He conjured a wave of Shardbound, separated it into ten individual crystals, and then shot them out equally spaced in all directions. He didn’t even have to aim for every single one to hit something; the Slerkin were all going for him and had no regard for their own security. All they were created for was to secure the shiny thing and put it back in place.

Every Shardbound hit and instantly killed one Slerkin. The information that they had very little in the way of life force didn’t give John much solace. More were already spilling out of the tropical forest surrounding the obstacles. Killing them wasn’t an option. Only running was.

John no longer had the luxury to pay attention to other peoples’ battles. Instead, he was burdened with the task of heading back down every last slope. What had been exhausting to crawl up was now becoming the reason for an ever accelerating sprint. Through enemies and over hostile terrain, he moved at breakneck speed. Quite literally, as John found himself unable to keep his view straight.

He had trained running a lot. The faster he moved, the higher the chance that his eyes would get stuck on something individually. Why that was a thing, he didn’t know, but that was what he had learned over time. Regardless, what he had practiced was normal back and forth running, usually in the same environment. Right now, he was above his usual top speed, with hundreds of things around him that could be instinctually focused on.

For several moments, he managed to fight back the desynchronization with sheer willpower. Every time one eye threatened to derail, he blinked and immediately got it back on track. Then, he failed, just a little bit, but it was enough to get one step confused. Stumbling over his own feet, he turned into a high velocity projectile of limbs and confusion. Although the steep slope was passed, the general trend was still downwards, so he only picked up more speed.

Several times he rolled over something hard or sharp, chipping off at his HP. Mana Protection shielded him from enemy action, not his own ineptitude. What his fall finally stopped at was the flat surface of a wall, which he collided with chin first, causing his neck to rock back with a remarkably disgusting sounding CRACK. For a moment, he couldn’t feel anything from his neck down, then Gamer’s Body kicked in and prevented him from becoming a paraplegic permanently.

John shook his head in an effort to recover. “Nerve damage is super unpleasant,” he complained with a mouth full of dirt, opening and closing each eye individually several times until his vision was recalibrated. The ten seconds this took were more than enough for the Slerkin to catch-up to him. At the very least he still had the objective.

The tiny creatures piled onto him, were immediately rejected by Mana Protection, but only to recover and jump at it again. For a moment, John looked at nothing but a display of, remarkably cute, monsters covering his entire field of view. Stuck between a wall and a swarm of thieves, each of them taking a chunk out of his mana pool, he had no choice but to ask for some help. ‘Gnome, could you help me out here?’

Rather than give a stammering answer, the soil elemental let deeds speak. The ground under John suddenly shot up, scattering the assailants into several directions, while giving him a boost back into running. He quickly found his footing and then almost lost it again as a trap activated and spewed slippery slime all over the next steep decline in the landscape. Regardless of the fact that he was more sliding than walking, he managed to get down and roll. This time, without planting his face into the dirt on the recovery.

The chase continued with John improvising a lot of his path rather than just follow the one he had taken up. With his superhuman physique, he could simply leap down a number of obstacles. Dropping ten metres reverberated in his legs, sure, but they weren’t going to break or anything. On the decline, ignoring the winding way was quite possible. Even if the enemies did their best to make his life hell.

That John still had the orb in his arms was nothing short of miraculous by the time he arrived at the foot of the hill. Only the plain now separated him from reaching the goal. Not that the Slerkin made this any easier. On the contrary, so close to failure, they seemed to go into a frenzy, doubling their speed and suddenly catching up to John. They jumped and clawed at his Mana Protection, exceeding his regeneration by a long shot.

Just once, it wasn’t his eyes that made John fall. Instead, the small beasts managed to break through Mana Protection. Several of them grabbed his heel, yanking his left leg backwards. ‘Shit!’ John thought, so close to the goal. In an effort to get this done without having to call for help, he tossed the sphere forwards. It just needed to hit the bowl; from there it would roll into the endpoint on its own accord.

It was a shoddy toss, hastily done mid fall. As such, it flew through the rim of pillars and bounced. The second it first hit the ground, every last Slerkin suddenly let go of John and rushed after it. John already felt his heart sink. The objective bounced a second time, then a third, only to come to a halt in a gap between two of the cobblestones that made up the floor. Right at the rim of the endpoint.

John could see it, just sitting there, so close. ‘Wait… through what am I seeing that?’ the Gamer realized that the Mandala Sphere was hovering way too high for the perspective he was looking through. Additionally, the perspective was waddling closer to the orb, not the kind of movement the Mandala Sphere employed.

Almost unable to believe his eyes, John saw a tiny golden crocodile, that had just been sitting there, turn and boop the sphere with his snout. The Slerkin were quick, very quick, but Stirwin had given the ball the little push it needed to roll down to the endpoint. It vanished down the black hole at the centre and unleashed an invisible shockwave that transformed every last monster still in the barrier into scattering particles of dust.