Chapter 1755 – Vs Macuil 4 – Owed to Death
“He… heheheh…hahahahaha! Impossible?” Glory’s voice was shaking with fear and desperation. “Impossible?!” he croaked, shaking off the anxiety. “Yes, impossible!” he shouted, to himself, animating his instincts. “Ninian, will you ride with me one last time?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Zelos,” Famine groaned and got up. “We were always going to die together.”
“THEN LET IT BE TODAY!” Glory grasped and grabbed the handle of Inkaryl.
The mace rang like an angry bell, shouted like a distorted choir, rang like a wind chime in a storm, screeched like a mistuned violin, clacked like a broken piano, and beat like the heart of a man high on adrenaline. Pulsing and distorting without moving, the Mythical weapon threw its anger at the foremost of the Horsemen, the Grand-Marshall of Death, denying the unrightful hand to wield it.
What could possibly be more Glorious than to overcome that limitation?
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John had not thought that he would ever live out the opening of God of War 3.
‘That’s an odd thought to have right now,’ he told himself and kept on climbing. The scale of Atlas was even more ridiculous now that he had made it onto the back of the hand of the being. It was far from the first time that John had interacted with entities of this size, but that did not make Nathalia or Stirwin an okay thing to exist in the confines of the Abyss.
Like a louse, John grabbed onto whatever hairs there were on the arms to stay put. The Skittersteps helped, their Adhesive Soles always assuring he at least wouldn’t fall. He preferred not flailing in the winds though.
Their situation was dire. The Ascension buff had run out and with it the Overclock. As much as John wanted to activate the Secret of Mana one next, the enemy was simply too far away for John to deliver a meaningful strike with his increased power.
“Looking for me?” Macuil asked mockingly, a body of his bursting out of a nearby pustule. John blasted it apart with a simple Arc Lance.
A second pair of arms wrapped around John’s back. A hand slammed on the Gamer’s mouth. Fingers forced their way between his lips before turning liquid. The second Macuil body cackled behind him.
“Finally.”
Fire burned the body of the god of gluttony off the Gamer’s back. “John!” the apocalypse elemental shouted out, landing next to him. The arm under them moved, Atlas winding up for a punch. John spat out the rotten sweat disease in his mouth.
It was too late, way too late. The miracle had been that, with Particle Skin offline, it had taken this long.
“Just another timer,” he groaned. The other fighters on his side were getting fewer and fewer. Rave was not out, but she was down, the disease having taken what stamina she had remaining. Nia could scarcely do anything, remaining at the brink of Fading. Malady and Norahnon were both out. Since their return, Sylph and Stirwin had been squashed by Atlas and Macuil’s many outgrowths.
The god of gluttony was no longer playing with them, he was bringing his powers to bear in the most effective way possible and overwhelming them with sheer numbers and resilience. Moira did not have much longer either. Momo was running out of mana. Undine had long since run out, currently using her Unleash in a desperate manoeuvre to try and do something.
It only made her a bigger target. The titan moved quicker now that he was host to Macuil, grabbing the writhing, eldritch mass that was the abysstide elemental and ripping her off him like she was a starfish latched onto him. Trenches were left behind and quickly closed by oozing purple. Undine was smashed into the wall of the underground dome, killing her in an instant. A temporary death, thankfully.
‘At this rate, it won’t be temporary for long,’ the Gamer thought and kept on climbing. He had no specific plan after getting to the head, he just knew that was the best use of his time at that moment. The only combatants on his side that were still fighting well were the Artificial Spirits; immune against the disease and highly regenerative, they made for an excellent counter to Macuil’s strategy. It was too bad that it did not matter when they were this outclassed physically. Ehtra and Beatrice were circling the worm-face above. They were mere flies buzzing around a serpent.
And then, it happened.
The compartmentalization of John’s mind gave him a two-seconds warning. A tired smile on his face, the Gamer muttered, “And here comes the hero.”
“ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST! FOR THE ENEMIES OF DEATH – NO – MORE – DAWNS!”
Glory descended from the sky, a prismatic meteor of elemental wrath. Time and space magic had never been the rider’s primary power, he had said so himself – it had always been to do what was the most glorious in any given moment.
Inkaryl continued to howl against the unchosen hand gripping it, but beat like a mechanical heart all the same. The blades of the weapon turned a radiant gold, bolstering the elemental chaos around the rider on his horse further.
John was quite happy he had not even made it up the forearm, when he watched Glory impact on Atlas’ skull.
The scale of it all belied how quickly things moved. The head of the undead had been hit with the equivalent of a nuke, cratering a skull that was older than the first gods. It did not shatter – it cratered, the power such that even the solids behaved as if they were liquids. The megatons of impact from this speck of dust that had hit the mountain rippled down the entirety of the living landscape.
The animating light inside Atlas’ one intact eye vanished.
“WHAT?!” Macuil roared.
The entirety of the titan began the keel over. ‘Oh shit, oh fuck!’ John cursed in his mind when he realized he was on the side of the arm headed for collision with the ground. Even if he had enough HP to survive the landing, he would be buried under thousands of tons of titan flesh. ‘Really, that’s how I die, because I climbed up an arm without a plan?!’
“Would be kind of poetic, wouldn’t it?” Momo asked.
“No,” Beatrice disagreed.
The two maids had activated their cooldowns simultaneously. Both were needed to get John off the surface the wind was pressing him against. On fairy and dragon wings, the Gamer was carried, soon hovering far above the battlefield.
And for a solid while, they did just watch.
Laughing with all of his bravado, Glory rode on prismatic elemental energy, exchanging blows with Macuil as Atlas collapsed. Attack for attack, the Horseman blew chunks out of the parasite, diminishing the size of the god massively each time. Each blow was less legendary than the last.
Glory had not just wallowed since the Grim Reaper had been devoured. No, the leader of the riders was perhaps the only person in the Abyss that could claim that despairing was the tactically sound option. All of that despair was finding its outlet in the current situation, and as the odds became less impossible, so did the rider’s power wane.
‘Alright, time I finish this off,’ John thought. “The secrets of mana unlocked!”
Did John Newman think well of desecration of the dead? No.
Did John Newman think he was a sadistic person? Yes.
Did John Newman love turning the tables? It was not among his admirable qualities.
“COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE!” John shouted and began a devastating bombardment. All of his MP with every second of its regeneration was turned into falling stars. Falling at minimal speed and at maximum damage, the first couple of impacts from Skyfall massively widened the hole that led from the island above into the sealing chamber. Everything after that was a cataclysmic rain of silver arcane on the body of a being that did not deserve the treatment, but involuntarily hosted one that very much did.
Atlas’ hijacked corpse was made the target of a rain of projectiles that contended with Liakan’s Unleash for the gold medal in Abyssal carpet bombing – except that Liakan’s Unleash lasted a minute at the most between start and end.
John went for the entire duration of his Overclock. Ten minutes of uninterrupted devastation delivered to the corpse. It said much about the durability of the titan that he merely looked like he had been riddled with a machine gun by the end of it, rather than the scarcely sensical mountain of flesh he, by all rights, should have been.
Then the last one came in.
The final Skyfall came down from the firmament, zapping down in a streak of light that competed with Malady for the fastest thing that day. The universal purple fog in the chamber was incinerated as a whole, replaced with arcane radiation that melted the surface stones of the chamber, blew the hole yet further open, and made John genuinely worry for a moment whether or not he had just killed the present allies.
The explosion had the earth quaking like the steps of dozens of titans combined. It only lasted for a few seconds, outliving the blinding silver-white of the arcane impact. Everything was slow and yet went by incredibly fast. Adrenaline stretched the perception of time.
‘Everyone still alive?’ John poked through his mental connections.
‘We managed to move them to the edge of the dome before you nuked everything,’ Metra informed him. The maids, Momo and Beatrice aside, were with Norahnon, Malady, Zelos and Famine. Everything had gone according to plan.
Atlas’ chest had finally been destroyed by the last Skyfall. Bits of his spine and shoulder blades remained, otherwise the long-dead titan had been reduced to his head and limbs. ‘Really not proud of that part… although I am certain he would prefer being blown to bits over being gnawed at forever,’ John justified it all to himself, while Momo and Beatrice flew him down to the bottom of the neck stump. ‘Now if I was an arrogant god that is about to lose everything, would I be able to deny myself this opportunity to strike?’
John just finished the thought, then glanced over his shoulder. He, Beatrice and Momo all went wide-eyed when the plague naga was suddenly above them, in all of his initial grotesqueness. A lure the Gamer had wanted to be, but he had not anticipated Macuil turning clever enough to shut his beak after this many mistakes.
“I ONLY NEED YOU TO DIE! DIE!” the god of gluttony roared, three arms slamming Beatrice aside, another one grabbing Momo. The massive head of the chimeric god opened up, plague breath worsening John’s disease in an instant. A tongue stretched out, ready to pull John in and dissolve him forever.
Cliiiiiiiiiing.
The exceedingly satisfying sound of a gold coin reverberated in the air. It flowed through the tiny gap between god and Gamer. In its wake moved Hikari. The samurai stopped underneath the body of the god. All of his lifelines had been exhausted, all of his positional advantages and secrets undone.
Time seemed to distort around the samurai. It wasn’t that she was actually using time magic, but that her physical presence went so far beyond the understood. The Aura around her was just a thin layer, an outline of blue and white swirling together that reminded of the daystar blending through mist. She grabbed her second blade.
“Sunrise Style – Infinite Slash.”
The plague naga before them collapsed to the ground. While the body was still hitting the ground, the edges were beginning to fray, turning into dust. The only part of the god’s body that wasn’t affected by this was his torso. A diagonal line ran clean through from shoulder to pelvis. Both arms had been slashed across the same line.
“Huh?” Macuil produced a single confused sound, before hitting the ground.