They kept strolling through the labyrinth unopposed. It was a tall construction, the walls some kind of waxed stone. The floor was slippery but not to a degree where John was afraid he would fall down at any given moment. This was the Tier 20 version of the Wall Shadow dungeon, and they had only been attacked once.

“Why don’t they come out, I am bored!” Sylph complained, flying from one wall to the next. Without a doubt, the monsters were hiding within the walls, something which they had confirmation for thanks to Siena checking. It was a short stint. Staying in these shadows would have been like taking a swim in shark infested waters with cut ankles.

“Because they are inherently cowardly creatures,” Momo told her. “Wall Shadows are the Abyss’ primary stealth assassin type monsters. They only attack when they think themselves unopposed.”

“In other words, they don’t see an opening,” John said; “The higher up we go in level, the smarter these things get. They must be heavily intimidated by us… or, rather, Aclysia.”

The artificial guardian tilted her head in a quizzical way as she looked at John. “Why would I be intimidating, Master?” she wondered.

“Maybe the way you turned the first few enemies that approached us into diced cheese?” he suggested.

Eclys wasn’t just sharp, it was too sharp. The blade went through the insectoid hides of the Nightlurkers (the local permutation of the Wall Shadow) like a hot knife through butter. Paired with an artificial guardian that had the knowledge of how to handle swords engraved into her subconsciousness, one got a rather dangerous entity.

John made a personal note to give her the level 2 version of Sword Mastery when it was available next time. The results should be rather remarkable. Of course, Aclysia hadn’t taken the whole enemy group out alone. Even with stupendously overpowered equipment, she was just one person and thus not able to be everywhere at once.

Between her offensive power, Undine’s defences, Sylph, Salamander and Siena’s mobility and John’s and Momo’s backline support, however, it seemed that the Nightlurkers had taken the rather wise decision to, well, lurk around until some form of opportunity presented itself.

The fact that they hadn’t been attacked at all spoke volumes about the current strength level of John’s group. ‘I wonder if they will get desperate enough to attack me eventually despite their cautiousness?’ he wondered as they turned a corner; ‘If that one speaking boss is to be trusted, they believe they become real if they kill me.’

Beyond that corner, they found the boss. It was a pretty creepy one, a husk of a man half-mutated beyond human features nailed to a withered tree. Bone tubes stuck out of his body, out of which insects crawled at a constant rate.

They beat it rather easily. John used Arcana Strike above the boss’s position, and two minutes of delaying tactics later the guy was nuked from orbit. The fight, like usual at this point, wasn’t easy, but it also wasn’t exactly outstanding. John had encountered most base mechanics he had already known from playing MMOs inside the barriers at this point. All he did was apply that knowledge with the added difficulties and benefits of fully real movement options.

Unless the boss did something outstandingly interesting or was an actual challenge, they were barely worthy of remembrance. John ported out and looked at his Stat screen, letting out a sigh of disappointment with himself.

“Man, I have been slacking off the last two days,” he mumbled. Between checking in with everyone and concentrating on loot over experience, he hadn’t gotten that level. At least he was richer now.

“Well, there will be a game tomorrow. You being a bit slower probably isn’t going to change much,” Momo said.

“There will be a game tomorrow if Lydia confirms that Undine is clean… speaking of which, let’s go see her,” John corrected his support, and the group went back to the mansion.

Lydia was still training in the arena, although she had moved on from simple distance training to fine tuning. What she was doing looked rather interesting. One of her knights was standing next to her, holding a deck of cards. He would pick one up to show it to her, and Lydia then would try to form the three-dimensional figure on that card with the pieces of metal under her control within 10 seconds.

It actually looked rather straining on the mind, and John didn’t want to intervene in an ongoing training section. Lydia let him know that she had noticed him with a quick glance and military nod but went through her current set before walking over. The knight just disappeared once John blinked.

“You come at an opportune time,” the princess said. “I have gotten word from the research centre back in Berlin, and they have found no remaining corruption. Luna texted me that they have come to the same conclusion.” John felt several days of paranoia finally relax at the back of his mind.

Undine, being physically around for this, actually relaxed to the point where her form lost a bit of coherence. The slime woman’s chest partly sunk into a puddle that previously had been her legs. “Ah, that’s great, that means I can go about the remaining combination efforts without worrying.” John had stopped those from happening out of fear that, if Undine was still corrupted, mixing essences would lead to some unwanted side effects.

“Combination efforts?” Lydia asked; she hadn’t been informed yet.

“Right, let me show you. Anyone up for fusing with Undine?” he asked his gathered elementals.

Of course, Sylph immediately raised a hand, “Me, me, take me, Undine, let me fuse with you, me, let me!”

John actually kind of wanted to prevent this from happening, the fusions with Sylph had all been terrifying this far. Shadowflame had been an edge-fest of destructive proportions, but Edge (yes, that was the actual name of the combination of Siena and Sylph; all of Siena’s mixtures had some rather try-hard names) was all kinds of sadistically insane.

Even Thana running amok had more sensibility than the erratic, babbling, super-sadistic knife fairy that was that mixture. Sylph still had had fun; Siena had complained about a headache afterwards.

He would still combine everyone once. Seemingly, none of the elementals actively disliked the process (despite Salamander’s initial worries), just to know what exactly his choices were. Might as well get it out of the way.

Everyone was up for it. The others just weren’t as eager as the tempest elemental. “Okay then, you two go ahead,” John said and just wondered what was about to be created by that mixture.

Lydia watched as Sylph and Undine first overlapped, then swirled together and then became a new person entirely. Her expression followed the development with curiosity, confusion and then downright disbelief.

“This should be impossible,” she said as the new girl appeared in front of her.

The combined elemental was about the size of Sylph’s big form, so about 1,50 metres. The short stature made the D-cups and her wide hips stand out even more. A short and stacked woman, without a doubt.

Hair made from the cleanest water cascaded down to her feet, or would have if it would have regarded the common laws of gravity as something that should be obeyed instead of meandering through the air like a river cut through the landscape.

She was fair-skinned, porcelain white with a slight blue tinge to it, and naked. The red scars of Undine chased even this form, albeit changed to a degree. Where they had looked swirly on top of Undine, on this new elemental they looked more like someone had taken a ruler and tattooed sharp lines into her body.

Her golden eyes shone with power, and when she crossed her arms, John spied her fingernails. They had an interesting colouration to them, switching between light green and azure blue with each finger.

That was a very weird Stat distribution.

“There is no reason not to believe it,” the newly mixed elemental informed Lydia in a secretary-like tone; “Also we should start talking about compensation.”

“Compensation?” the princess raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, I think you are getting off way too easy in this whole ‘winning the tournament for you’ deal,” Menyh stated.

‘Okay, so if you combine Undine’s tendency to rip on people’s flaws when she is mad with ceaseless chatter you get someone who will very aggressively haggle,’ John noted.

“Not only is John fighting for you, but also his girlfriend and Thana. Also, he is giving you a good dicking almost every day. I think this demands some further compensation than just letting his debt go,” Menyh continued on.

Lydia raised her hand. “Okay, stop. This topic needs to be delayed until I have an answer for a much more urgent question. How?”

 That was directed at John, who just shrugged. “I got a Skill for it,” was all he could answer.

“This is incomputable. The unification of a human and their contracted elemental is only possible because they are already bound on a soul level anyhow. All you do is remove any semblance of distance between the two,” Lydia spoke in a mumbling fashion; “To mix two elementals should be impossible. On a primal level, it is heard that they may eat each other, but that is limited to elementals of the same kind. This should not be.”

“Well, it was called a ‘Game Breaking’ Skill,” John admitted.

“It indeed breaks what little understanding about elementals we thought we have…” Lydia sighed, “but rather than tell the researchers to rework their theories, it would be more serving to ignore you as the exception you are.”

“Why thank you, I will keep on breaking the world around me without worry then,” John grinned.

“…The saddening part here is that I am unsure whether or not you will not accidentally do that,” Lydia let out yet another heavy breath. “Your existence is going to make my hair go grey rather soon.”

“I can’t have that! Your auburn hair is wonderful! Stop worrying so much!”

“Stop making me worry,” Lydia demanded in return. “Ah, maybe loving you was a bad decision… not that I had much choice in the matter.”

“How about I make you relax a little instead?” John suggested and put index finger under and thumb on her chin. The princess immediately took him up on the offer and kissed him. Her lips tasted salty from the exhaustions of her training; John’s insides flared at the forward gesture.

“That did indeed help a little. Although we should keep such displays of affection to the indoors,” Lydia said, clearing her throat as she slightly blushed and turned away. “Now, I will have to beg your pardon, but I need to continue.”

“Sure thing, Lyly,” John teased. His reward was a venomous glance.

This was the last day of the break. Come tomorrow, they would be back in the tournament. The game that had been delayed twice thanks to the ongoing question of Undine’s corruption was without a doubt going to happen. After that, he would fight.

Then they needed to see who had made the most progress. ‘I, for one, just look forward to actually fighting in the tournament,’ John thought. He had been taken out of the equation so far, either by enemy planning or chance, and he was itching to try all of his abilities against people that were hailed as elite.

The wonderful thing about asymmetrical gameplay was the uncertainty about who was how much stronger and what the weaker could pull off on mechanical ingenuity to get back ahead. It was something that the Instant Dungeons, being balanced around his level, just couldn’t provide.

He looked forward to tomorrow, although the question remained. What kind of game had been planned?