“I take it you can face him?” Maximillian asked, prompting the Italian to smile dismissively. He had seen the man, the boy compared to himself really, fight in the videos. His movements were imprecise and sluggish.

“He is an amateur; all I need to do is take out his summons one by one,” Mario answered with certainty as he headed for the platform. The mana under his boots was impossibly stable, a wonder that only his emperor could produce. ‘It’ll serve as a good opportunity to remind this Gamer not to oppose the Apex,’ the swordmaster thought, looking at the platform across the sand field as he descended.

“So, what biome will it be today?” Jeff asked the audience. “Let’s hope it’s not the sandy stuff again, that would be super boring!”

From an entertainment standpoint, Mario was with the screechy man, but tactically, he would lose an advantage if they landed in an arena where the Gamer could hide. Despite his boasting, Mario knew full well that this John Newman fellow had more than one trick up his sleeve.

For a start, he would have to be on lookout for that shadow elemental. It would be best if their shadows never touched so that she didn’t get a free pass. He could stab at the darkness to his feet, but that would leave him vulnerable to attacks from the two flying elementals.

Truly, his numbers were of far greater concern than the Gamer himself. From what Mario had seen, however, he should be fine.

“Aaaand, it’s the small arena!” Jeff announced. In response, the room around John, his golem called Momo and Mario began shrinking. The walls were closing in. Literally, as the transforming magic of the arena bent reality for the entertainment of the masses. Granted, this system was incredibly stationary and fragile, so a military usage was impossible in the first place. The fact that it needed Fateweavers to work was also a problem.

The Knights of Rome had long since advocated for the simplifying of the arena to concentrate their slowly diminishing resources on more needed places. The fact that he himself was willing to participate in an event that would see it strained to the limit had earned him the ire of quite a few of his colleagues.

He saw a conflict over an ancient arena’s future as less important than the empire’s second strongest area running the risk to advocate their independence, personally.

The many swords and knives on his body rattled as he stepped towards John Newman. The smaller arena was to Mario’s advantage: the Gamer would have nowhere to run. In response to the swordmaster’s advance, John Newman stepped away from him diagonally, wanting to keep a distance between them.

His elementals were likely hanging around in their incorporeal form. Once they revealed themselves, Mario was ready to take them on. His road to victory was quite simple: he had to take out all obstructing elementals and then eliminate the Gamer.

The countdown started above. “Got a new sword?” John asked mockingly, back now against the wall. “You know, the last one looked unsalvageable.”

Mario grit his teeth for a moment but forced himself to relax. He had no idea why the Gamer wanted to taunt him, but these mage types always had some sort of scheme.

‘I am going to make you pay for taking glee in the destruction of my family’s most precious heirloom,’ Mario thought, and then the fight finally began.

His charge was interrupted as he finished his second step. Several things appeared, and several more people moved at once. The light blue shimmering shell around the Gamer was encapsulated by a bubble of water. Two hand-sized girls flickered into existence, one a pale green, the other fiery red, both flying at him, the support at John’s side took to the skies, and lastly, a twin-tailed, Asian looking brunette was attacking him frontally.

Aside from the pale one, they were all abysmally slow. Only the shadow elemental was unaccounted for, but he could easily guess where she was hiding. To the Gamer’s credit, he had been cunning to dodge to the part of the arena wall that cast the biggest shadow. Still, the options of where she could be were severely limited.

John was obviously protected, so just rushing at him was unlikely to work. That aside, one of the few things Mario had to be afraid of was that unknown fusion thing the Gamer had done before. It was literally without precedent, and the resulting elemental had been strong. Not dangerously strong, but strong enough for the swordmaster to keep out an eye for it and not get overconfident.

So, if the slow earthen spirit was already heading for him, he would take the invitation.

Two precisely thrown knives left Mario’s off-hand faster than they had appeared between his fingers, forcing the two flying elementals to dodge while he made his own move. He drew one of his swords, directly transforming the motion into an upwards cut.

The elementium alloy cut right through Gnome’s summer dress and sliced her stone body open from waist to shoulder. “Hey, no, bad, bad sword guy, very bad!” an annoyingly chirpy and quick voice reached Mario’s ear, and he threw another knife at the source.

Sylph narrowly dodged this second one as well; the girl was fast, much faster than the rest of the enemy team. But not faster than the swordmaster, who dodged both a flame strike coming his way and Gnome‘s flying fist.

The wound in her chest was a simple line that allowed him to see her dirt brown insides. Underneath the human surface there was nothing but earth and stone, no blood that could have flown, no flesh that could have scarred.

Regenerative abilities were obviously not part of the earth elemental’s repertoire as the wound stayed open and hindered her already slow movements even further. It was obvious who he would take out first now.

Weaving through slicing winds and bolts of fire, Mario kept going at Gnome. Her skin, usually more than enough to defend herself, had already shown to be useless. All she could do was try to dodge backwards, back into the shadows and the relative safety.

Mario kept watching her movements precisely as he inflicted wound after wound. As she was attempting her leap out of range, Mario used her momentarily immobile state, the short moment between a body tensing and jumping, to execute a wide-arching strike aimed at the elemental’s head.

A wild blast of wind, way stronger than anything he had thought that little elemental could muster, ripped his hand aside. If he had been prepared, he could still have hit his target, but as it was he had to just force his arm down in the turbulent winds.

Instead of her head, his blade sunk into the elemental’s shoulder. Hastily readjusted as it had been, it didn’t have the force to cut right through, but it left a deep cut in her shoulder and stopped her from getting out of range.

“Too bad for you that you can’t just immaterialize,” Mario finally opened his mouth, he felt like the battle was sliding towards his favour and allowed himself a bit of cockiness. It was one of the early things a melee fighter had to be taught about when fighting mages.

There was no such thing as immediately shifting between corporeal and incorporeal. Not only was repeated shifting extremely straining on the summoned creature, but for a moment before their physical bodies vanished, their magical essence was vulnerable, even to basic physical strikes. An attack successfully landing in that state would do critical damage.

When Gnome’s hands reached for him instead of trying to leap away again, he knew something was up.The alarm bells in his head only became louder once he saw the water shield around John opening, the Gamer raising his left hand. The one with the black glove.

A red ember, no, an insect, landed on his shoulder in the meanwhile. A sting, like from an electric shock, spread from where the firefly had landed, and his whole body was hit by a wave of weakness. They were trying to pin him down for something; he could hardly let that happen.

Whatever was about to happen had to do with that pointing hand, so all he needed to do was dodge that. Pulling the sword out would have taken too long; no risks could be taken. Mario let go of the handle and went for a deep swipe at Gnome’s legs. He might as well make the best of this situation.

Above his head, a stream of pure black energy appeared. A sword made from mana, several metres long. It was less a blade than a laser beam with a definite end-point. Mario realized that it wouldn’t just vanish, not immediately. This had to be the same attack that the recording had shown, which, a fact that Alexej had repeatedly burned into his mind, had lasted exactly 1 second.

A second was both remarkably short and yet sufficiently long for the attack to be lowered onto Mario, who had nowhere else to go. It would be like a guillotine, but, unlike the poor people normally underneath such devices, he was still able to use his hands.

With lightning speed, he pulled two daggers from their holsters underneath his shoulders and moved them in to defend from the lowering arcane weapon. The blades, magically forged and pure magic, came into contact, sparks flying everywhere. In that mere half of a second, the proficiently made weaponry started melting.

Then it was over; it was Mario’s turn to pull back as his position was assaulted from all directions, fire, thunder, earth and shadow all coming towards him. He had to take some hits; there was no angle through where he could escape unscathed. Judging it to be the least dangerous of the incoming attacks, he broke through the wall of fire into safety, discarding the now dull and deformed daggers in the process.

An unpleasant smell indicated that he had lost a fair amount of hair. “I have underestimated you,” Mario admitted, although he doubted that the Gamer could pull that stunt more than once; he hadn’t expected this match to be such a headache.

“You tend to do that,” John shouted back, giving a worried glance towards Undine. “I mean, you even thought you could beat Thana.”

The swordmaster would have much preferred to not hear that name ever again. “It seems I need to humble myself,” Mario said, “but…” His retort was cut short by noticing something falling towards him. Another arcane attack, this time some kind of bubble, identifiably weaker than that last one.

With no intention to find out what that thing was about, Mario decided to throw a knife at it and then another right after. His body felt normal again, just as agile as ever. The two knives connected with their targets, the first one hitting the attack, causing it to explode overhead in a wave of blue and purple, while the second ripped off the wing of a sparrow.

Elementals, arcane magic, artificial spirits and now even a possession combined with the ability to have it cast spells. Each for themselves would have been a strong ability to have. The fact that the Gamer had all of them was discomforting to say the least; one day he would become a monster even amongst the upper ranks.

But for now he was still green, and Mario had to use that and the terrain advantages he had. The ground of the arena was shallow before hitting an immovable fundament, so the Gamer wouldn’t be able to erect any meaningful barriers. Truly, the small arena was of great help to the swordmaster.

There was no more time to dwell, the enemy had a healer, and the fact that John Newman was wearing a glove clearly water elemental in origin meant that that healer was currently bound to him. If he wanted to take advantage of the wounds he had already caused, he couldn’t loiter.

Gnome removed the sword still stuck in her shoulder, but John didn’t move in to heal her. Instead, he sent a wave of numerous shards of arcane power his way. Grabbing his last remaining, non-throwing weapon, a claymore, Mario analysed them for what they were. Dodging the purple and dark blue ones, blocking when necessary, he let his metal reinforced leather armour take the hits of the lighter shaded shards, which barely chipped his armour.

On the other side, he was promptly met by a fist of molten rock. The short time his vision had been obscured by the attack had been enough for the Gamer to use his impossible skill of fusing two elementals together, and now he was faced with the product of that.

Still, she was crawlingly slow compared to him. The fist aimed at his face was easily dodged, and Mario got a full view of the volcano elemental. She had an attractive figure, as had all of the Gamer’s elementals. If Mario hadn’t been in the middle of a fight, he would have wondered if his opponent was the kind of summoner that slept with his familiars, but he had no time for that.

The important information here was that most of the wounds that had been covering Gnome were now also covering this fusion of her. Particularly the nasty cut in her shoulder was bleeding a river of lava down her form.

The two-handed sword he was now wielding may have slowed him down slightly, but it didn’t matter against an opponent not even half as fast as himself. In many ways, it actually was going to be more suitable.

Still, the burning elemental fought cautiously, drawing their engagement out. Furthermore she had back-up in the shape of that green, blabbering pest. “Hey, hey, you! Yes, you!” the air elemental chattered while they all fought; “How dare you, yes, how double dare you to cut a girls chest! That is super not nice! You hurt Gnomy, I am not amused, yes I am not! Siena, go cut this guy!”

Cut? That walking volcano in front of her had no knives, the only one who had was…

Mario threw a knife at the clawed hand reaching up from his own shadow before it had even properly reached out. It cut right into the hand, the swordmaster making sure it dug deeper by stepping on the handle. Sometime in the past minutes of their clashing fists and blades, the shadow spirit, apparently named Siena, must have gone into this sturdy girl’s shadow and now made it into his.

That was bad, very bad; as long as he had her hand nailed to the ground, she couldn’t move too much, but he now was being attacked from above, below and the front. What was worse was the swarm of fireflies that landed on all of them.

Once more his body felt sluggish as the conjured insect vanished, while having the opposite effect on everyone else. Siena lashed at him from below, her form radiating darkness like mist from what Mario guessed to be an unleashed state. The other two synced up their attacks; he would not get out of this one by retreating.

‘If backwards is not an option, then I will push forward!’ Mario made his mental declaration and pointed the tip of his claymore at the volcano elemental. His legs were covered in nasty cuts, winds caused his skin to get slashed open, blood ran into his left eye. His shoulder rammed into the burning form of Smlere, seething heat only made bearable by the reinforcements in his armour.

His strategy paid off, however, as the Claymore broke through Smlere. She screamed, her voice parting from one into two as Mario pulled his blade up and cleaved apart her body, which disintegrated a moment later as the elemental lost the ability to maintain its physical shape, forcing its consciousness to enter a state of coma.

He had taken out two of the aggressors and kept running and hacking at his own shadow as he scrambled out a health potion. Pulling the lid off with his teeth, Mario quickly gulped it down. The sound was incredibly loud compared to the…

Compared to the what?

There were no sounds anymore. Not the hammering of his boots on the sandy floor, not his sword slashing at his shadow, trying to hit the elemental with his enchantments, no breathing, nothing. The only sounds he could hear were the ones of his own body working, blood rushing through his veins as the healing potion rapidly mended what wounds he himself had suffered.

He finally managed to catch Siena in his shadow, once more nailing her hand to the floor, this time by impaling her arm. Darkness swathed up like mist out of the wound, and he grabbed and forcefully ripped her out of his shadow, tossing her behind him and then taking a ready stance.

The silence prevailed.

First, Mario looked at John Newman, who was hiding behind his shields like mages loved to do. What he had expected to be the Gamer’s work turned out to be unlikely by the pure surprise on John’s face, quickly turning into a smirk. ‘That can’t be good for me,’ Mario thought, and his attention was caught by a lightning bolt flying his way.

Thrown like a spear, the thing barely missed him as he used one of the few magics he himself possessed. Without raising a single foot, he moved half a metre to the left. The attack had been fast enough to warrant that measure; magic strained him, and it was a trump card he would have much rather kept hidden. His limited mana had uses for which he would have much rather had kept it.

The source of the deafening silence found itself in the chattery, small, fairy-like air elemental. Her face a disapproving grimace of judgemental wrath, the hand-sized girl had turned into a, still fairly small, person. Mario, even if he had possessed a voice, wouldn’t have had time to mock that as another lightning bolt was thrown at him like a spear.

There was no real choice here; these attacks were dangerous, and the silence was messing with his senses. What mana he had he used to activate the most basic martial art there was in the Abyss. His aura became visible to the naked eye, his body swelled with power. He may not have possessed a lot of mana, but what he had he burned fast to achieve the biggest possible bonus.

He charged around the strike of noiseless thunder, feeling heat and electricity fill the air as he stormed right at the air spirit. Much to the swordmaster’s astonishment, Sylph actually managed to dodge the first strike, then the second and third. A battle of speed ensued; the little girl was able to keep up with him, but he had her on the ropes, driving her back with no returning attack.

But he was just that bit faster, and that next strike would cut open her chest and tilt the balance completely in his favour. Then the unexpected happened.

John Newman himself jumped between the two of them. A human shield, heavily defended himself, between him and the air spirit. If Mario was presented with such an easy opportunity to win, he would take it without question.

All of his mana burned in one last flare of his aura, reinforcing the strength of this strike to almost double his normal capacities. The claymore cut downwards, first through the water shield and then it got… it got stuck.

Mario’s eyes went wide as sound returned to the world, Sylph almost collapsing and his own power-up petered out. “Well, to your credit, you did just obliterate one thousand MP… must be the hardest I have been hit since… ah, not important,” the Gamer chatted happily; “You almost got the better of my strategy there, congratulations.”

“Your… strategy?” Mario was confused, his sword still pushing against the protective mana barrier. As far as the swordmaster had noticed, he had been on the offensive since the start. What strategy could the Gamer have had where two of his elementals were knocked out.

His sword was forced back as the water bubble returned. Sure of his victory, the Gamer left open a window to have his voice be easily heard.

“Well, I knew that you were carrying a potion with you as preparation from your fight against Thana, and yesterday’s video did reveal some of those magic based skills you have. Not that I didn’t assume you could do that aura thing from the start,” John explained. “So, what do you do when your enemy obviously has things in the back of his hand? You either rush them or you exhaust them, standard value trades. Well, with your speed, I can’t exactly rush you. The fact that you took out Smlere is rather surprising, but I got repaid with seeing Sylph Unleashed. I tip my hat to you, good sir.”

The Gamer grinned even wider once he had finished the announced action.

“And I am going to beat you up now,” the Gamer said, his smile turning sour. “I know we are fighting, but I still can’t approve of you hurting my girls.”

At that Mario could only snarl, “How? Two of your elementals are out, and that ‘Sylph’ girl there seems like she will blow over at any given moment. I am able to take the rest of you on quite easily.”

Mario looked over the air elemental, now back to blabbering while flopping around in an attempt to keep her body upright, to the shadow elemental licking the mist-like blood up with a hateful expression, to the firefly swarmed, apparently useless, monochrome girl in the sky and back to the Gamer, clad only in defensive skills.

“Well, who ever said that I can only combine Gnome and Salamander?” John presented a question that immediately threw Mario into action.

‘That is impossible,’ he thought, contradicting his own beliefs with his actions and the cold sweat that was running down his back.

If he was able to combine all of his elementals, then this reality defying ability of his wasn’t just weird. How was he supposed to plan for so many different combinations? It was utter bullshit!

In a wild frenzy, he hammered on John’s shield. “Eh, only 200 mana this time. To think I used Tip for this,” John shrugged inside his barrier, then he froze and mumbled into his hand; “…Wow, I do sound like a proper dick… even though I would totally be roasted if you depleted my mana…”

How? How did he have this much mana?! There should have been no barrier on that level that was able to withstand so many attacks. The truth, Alexej’s theory that it was that golem of the Gamer, came too late to him.

“Hiiiii,” a new voice chirped and ripped Mario out of his frenzy and caused him to jump right away.

She was only the slightest bit taller than Sylph, wore a black dress with lots and lots of green frills, pale at the neckline and flowing into a dark shade at the end of her short skirt. The long sleeves and stockings covered most of her skin. Deadly pale of tone, it contrasted with the dark, greyish green of her hair.

“Can I cut you?” she asked menacingly, her voice manifested sadism. Her left darted forwards; the fingers had only two segments and were basically only long blades on joints. She was fast, worse, she was faster than him. Not by a lot, if he had still had all of his powers, he could have taken her on, but the Gamer was right.

He had exhausted his resources, ground them against what he thought to be a sure victory. ‘Nobody should have this many skills!’ he mentally complained as he felt this new elemental dig five lines through his armour, his flesh and itching their width into his rips.

Those claws were sharper than his armour could account for. He whirled around, this new enemy was a bigger threat than the Gamer himself could be. The road to victory was still there, it just got a whole lot narrower.

“Hihihihi,” the gothic looking girl opened her mouth. Between her sharp teeth, her eight canines gleaming dangerously like fangs, darted out her tongue and licked the blood off her claws.

“Sorry, I just did it without waiting for an answer, but you look so tasty, ah, delicious, delicious fear, you know you are fucked right? Oh, yes, yes you do, yes you dooooo,” this nightmarish thing just babbled on as it tasted his blood as if it was the finest wine; “Ah, that look on your face is so nice, I just want to cut it off and put it on a frame!”

Suddenly, she moved at him again, “Can you bleed some more for me?” His answer was a quickly whirled around sword. The Claymore, previously to his advantage, now became a deadweight. The enormous weapon was too slow for this contest of speed.

“You know, I reaaalllyyyy hate you?” Small cuts, aimed to inflict pain rather than cripple him, spread over his body. “You hurt Sally and Salamander and Gmean and Gnome and Smlere and similar.” The cut above his eye, which had been healed by the potion earlier, was now replaced by a new one. “And now you want to pull off a little game? Let me show you a little game!”

This entire time this impossible elemental had only been attacking him with her clawed left, her right, normal, hand had remained unsteady. She still wasn’t using it, but her high-heeled foot flew through the air as she delivered a spin-kick to his head.

The world was ringing bells and sharp pain as he flew to the side. “Hihihihihi,” the vampire-esque spirit laughed and lapped up yet more of his blood. “Do you feel it yet? Sure, yes, sure you do? Want to see the knives? Let me show you the knives!”

The schadenfreude of his opponent was staggering. However, Mario was faced with a stroke of luck: he had been catapulted right next to where his one-hander was. Recovering, he quickly went for the weapon and darted off as stilettos pierced through the air where he had just been.

“Ah, you run so well, you bleed so well, if I wasn’t in love already, I would like you, but you hurt my friends, so I will hurt you!” Like she needed any excuse to hurt him. Mario was quite able to identify a totally mental person when he saw one, just took a bit of common sense.

She waved her right, a thick trail of darkness appearing and then quickly manifesting into a new wave of stilettos flying at him. She did it two times, and then nothing happened, “Oh, oops, out of mana, my bad, totally helpless now, this sucks! Whatever will I doo-dilidy-doooo, hihihi.”

Her black lips contorted into a pouting expression. It didn’t take a genius to smell the trap, but he had no other openings, so he went for it. He had managed to gather up the slightest bit of mana again, enough to power him up for this one assault.

If he didn’t succeed in taking her out now, it was game over.

“You have seen the knives,” the elemental blabbered, “now let me show you the scythe of vice.” All shadows inside the arena suddenly started moving. Breaking physics itself, all places where, by right of the angle of the sun and other light sources, there should have been a shadow suddenly found themselves robbed of that privilege.

The world’s depth became harder to grasp as all of its darker parts were removed, as if someone had taken a picture manipulation tool and forcefully evened out the light levels. The shadows converged on a single, pitch black spot.

Then the power of darkness was unleashed. Eyes of a glowing, sulphuric yellow now were on top of a sclera of pitch black; the singularity of shadows became a scythe. “I am Unleashed,” the elemental laughed and whirled the scythe at Mario.

A scythe was a terribly impractical weapon; all he needed was to knock it away, and he was free to attack the elemental. Afterwards, he could finally deal with John.

But the curved blade simply passed through his blade and then pulled through him. There was no wound, no cut, nothing, yet he experienced pain. As a knight of Rome, he had gone through terrible training, realistic torture situation, to make sure he would keep the secrets of the eternal city until his last day.

Yet, he was screaming now. It was as if someone was ripping out his veins where the scythe had hit and replacing them with an amalgamate of neurotoxins and molten metal. Worse yet, it spread from there outwards, making each passing moment more painful than the last.

He barely noticed that he hit the ground; he was too busy hoping that the pain wouldn’t reach his head. Just the imagination of what this would feel like behind his eyes was already driving him mad in pain.

“Aww.” He barely even noticed the voice, but he concentrated on it. Even if it was sadism made sound, it was still better to think about than this pain. “You look so cute now, but I need to end this before I split, so let’s make this easy. Imagine you are a very, very mushroom looking poor little thing and I am an Italian plumber in a Japanese video game.”

The hell was she on about? Is what Mario would have thought if he still had the capability to think instead of groan and scream in agony.

“Dada-daa-dada-daaaaaa,” his tormentor sung a little tune and then jumped on his head with her heeled feet.

Mario, hearing someone in the Apothecary camp screaming for painkillers, wished he could pass out. What had just happened?

Lydia: 6, Maximillian: 7