Scarlett: Son of a whore… Okay, sorry, Bearings and Retropes put their heads together behind my back, they will be there in thirty minutes or so.

“I hate you Murphy,” John mumbled as soon he read the message from Scarlett. ‘Of course,’ he thought, ‘the second I resolve to go into an I.D. this happens.’ He sighed heavily and used Escape Rope to get out of it. That skill had been the reason why he went ahead in the first place, but that she messaged him the very second he entered an Instant Dungeon was the second most annoying moment he could think of.

The first was while he was in a boss fight and had whittled it down enough that he could kill it soon but not soon enough to also reach the Enclave in time.

John: That’s a seven-day cooldown gone right there.

Scarlett: Jeff takes his security seriously as ever.

Scarlett: Seriously, he must have had that whole conversation on paper.

Scarlett: Now I am forced to move my goons along as well, sucks… how about you give them a good slapping until Thorne is there?

John: Sure, not like I planned to make this convincing from the start or anything.

With that he threw his phone into his inventory and stepped outside the gate inside the I.D. Gate. “Sorry, Magnus,” he told the Fateweaver who had stepped only thirty steps away since opening this thing up for John. “Got the message, it’s going down.”

“Murphy’s law, applicable as always,” Magnus grumbled. “What a fitting day for the peak of this lie, however.”

“I don’t know if it’s the peak, but yeah, perfect day,” John agreed and amusedly blew air out of his nose after remembering the date. That actually put a smile on his face. “Anyway, time to gather everyone up.”

____________________________________________________________

About ten minutes before the attack would begin, John stepped out into the Enclave. The former tent city was now a thriving community. The original houses, crude constructs with only a few decorations left behind when Gnome put up the walls, had either been torn down or changed so drastically that they didn’t resemble anything like their original exterior. Every house was inhabited by an individual and looked that way.

Not all signs of previous poverty had disappeared. For example, individual bathrooms were still a distant dream. Toilets they all had, but for bathing they had to resort to a bathhouse. At least electricity and internet were readily available in all homes, thanks to Magoi. The High-Fateweaver had gone into that line of work with enthusiasm, saying it was refreshing to do some mechanical work that he had outclassed decades ago.

Right now, it lay mostly empty. People had been relocated to the Guild Hall, where they once again had to live in tents, or fled; the little that remained were low-class fighters. John felt pretty bad for even having those stay, but he needed some forces to struggle alongside him for the plan to look authentic. For Rave and Nia, he could at least claim they were injured.

With him were Beatrice and Aclysia and, of course, his elementals. He was going to need some serious excuses for all of them to be defeated. ‘I’ll pull something out my brain,’ John thought and just hoped that Sylph would actually act convincingly and not accidentally chatter out the whole plan.

“Mr. Newman,” Seth came running his way. He looked way better since they first met as well. Non-greasy hair, clothes that actually looked more like clothes and less like potato sacks and shoes fit for winter. “What brings you here?”

“Well,” John hesitated for a moment to pick his words carefully. “Okay, here is the gist of it. We are getting attacked, we will lose, and when I give you the signal, I want everyone to pull back to the teleporter and let Aclysia and Beatrice get you out.”

Seth became pale, “W-why are you so certain we will lose? I thought you were strong.”

“I am,” John pat him on the shoulder. “Trust me, I got a plan. For now, just pick the fights you can win and… there they are.”

Dozens of people started appearing inside the barrier. At first, they appeared as regular people in winter clothes, but soon the illusions they used to travel through reality fell off them. Others came in already unveiled, they probably wore some charms that made them invisible to mundane or weak people, like a worse version of the spell Herman had been using.

None of those worked on John, thanks to Observe working partially passively.

As long as the passive part was able to reveal someone, their hiding spells fell flat on him. At the current level of Observe, it ripped through almost every precaution people around John’s level could take, bar those who had an extraordinary amount of money or were just very talented in or dedicated to the field.

John put his hands into his pockets and walked towards them with the bossiest attitude he could muster. Wanting to look like he thought he owned not only the place but the whole city, he said, “Look at the rats, scurrying in right when I am around,” and immediately the invaders took a step back. They were winning, but the average joe still knew that he had no chance to defeat the Gamer, especially when he had two armed maids walking right behind him.

The leader of that bunch was less impressed. A level 79 Asian with a spear that had the end of a barrel between the split blade. He was a good looking fellow, sharp brown eyes, short black hair and an overall lean build that was perfect for an agile fighter. “Give up now and Bearings is willing to kill just you,” the man, his name was Zimmothy, which John found to be a terrible one, delivered the ultimatum. “The rest of your guild would be free to go.”

“That’s a pretty awful deal for me; if I die, who is going to take care of my loves?” he opened up his arms and his elementals appeared one by one.

“Are you denying our offer?” Zimmothy asked, grabbing his spear more firmly and pointing the tip at John. Immediately, Aclysia got in between them, wordlessly spawning Eclys into her hand and assuming an assault stance.

“I am just saying that the only way to get my dead body is over my dead body,” John stated with a mocking smirk. Fire and water engulfed his left and right arm. That was the signal for the battle to begin.

“NOW!” Zimmothy shouted and a whole dozen of the enemy revealed some sort of strange contraptions. They looked like world war one radio backpacks, complete with antenna and everything. To distract the Gamer, Zimmothy went straight ahead and attacked him.

‘Are they serious?’ John thought; he didn’t even know what those backpacks did, but one spearman wouldn’t distract all eight of them. Zimmothy seemed pretty convinced he was somewhere on John’s level though. ‘They are completely open, I could destroy those devices… but maybe they will give me an excuse to lose this fight.’

A bullet blew out of Zimmothy’s spear and hit Aclysia. The tiny piece of accelerated metal actually managed to penetrate her outer layer and the weaponized maid straggled backwards as if she had truthfully sustained meaningful amounts of damage. Zig-zagging through the elementals as if they were slower than him, the spearman reached John and thrust his spear towards him.

The tip should have rebounded against the Mana Protection, but Zimmothy immediately (as to say, quick enough to look immediately to all the average people around but slow enough to give John ample time to measure his response) pulled back into position and aimed the tip of his spear at John without falter. Another thrust, but this time it was prefaced with another shot from the barrel.

Doing the enthusiastic guy the favour of deactivating his barrier and looking shocked, John saw that second strike coming for him. As if desperate, he blindly raised his arms to block and made it look like he succeeded by sheer luck alone.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Zimmothy declared. “My Innate Ability allows me to ignore or enhance all rebounds caused by my actions! No matter how many rounds I fire, it won’t slow me down!”

‘Who gives away their ability and its limitation like that?’ John wondered. These guys were seriously not professional about this. Then again, they were mercenary forces, not a standing army like he was used to from Europe. “Very impressive indeed,” his clenched teeth and pained voice made that sound convincing. Silently, he thanked his past self for increasing Charisma as much as he did, that made lying so much easier.

John forced the guy back, who was then molested by a couple of weak attacks from the elementals. At that point all the average guys on both sides had begun to battle as well, the very small force John had against the almost hundred invaders. Aclysia and Beatrice averaged that out by holding dozens of enemies at bay by their lonesome, and they could have won if they just wanted, instead they were giving ground.

Just rolling over wouldn’t have been a proper deception though, so John decided to give this a back of a back and forth. Zimmothy was pinned by the coordinated actions of Gnome, Sylph and Salamander, then he suddenly had a cut on his face. “What the fuck?!” he screamed as he stumbled back, whirling his spear in a defensive way.

‘Siena, you are supposed to hold back,’ John scolded the shadow spirit.

‘This is so dull,’ she returned but obeyed. “Tsk, my unleashed attack missed,” she said; as bad an actress as she was, channelling her anger about having to purposefully lose into that phrase fixed it. “Such a bad boy with such great reflexes.”

Missing the deep sarcasm in that phrase, it fixed Zimmothy’s ego, but he still saw his allies getting pushed back. The people with their backpacks were continuing their work. “You are stronger than I thought,” the spearman said and took a new kind of stance, aiming the tip of his spear behind himself.

What followed could have been surprising, but John had already been told what the Asian’s power was. So, when he shot a bullet behind him and reinforced the rebound to catapult himself forwards, that was just the move John had expected him to pull.

‘Jesus Christ, did this guy learn fighting in one of Rave’s anime series?’ the Gamer thought. He could have murdered the guy on several occasions. Sudden panic appeared on John’s face instead, as if this attack was deeply threatening to him. He only ‘barely’ managed to dodge and then rolled around the place as if he was a Dark Soul character fleeing from the one-shot attacks of a boss. “Salamander, Undine, Siena, Sylph!” he shouted while fleeing, as if the names were somehow necessary.

Sylph was just there instantly as she moved, like Salamander and Siena, with her regular speed, which was really fast to everyone else. They converged around Stirwin and Undine, appearing out of incorporeality and the glove form respectively.

The combination made fights all over the place stop as they sensed the arrival of something oppressively powerful. A known girl of small and lean body appeared at John’s side. She wore a Gothic Lolita outfit, a dress of black satin with a large assortment of green frills that were bright at the shoulder but got darker towards her loose miniskirt. Dark, greyish green hair flowed in contrast to her vampirically pale skin. When she smirked, she revealed her eight canine teeth, her yellow eyes staring hungrily.

“I am back!” Edge announced and immediately conjured daggers of shadows that scattered about the place as she threw them at Zimmothy.

The first few were too fast for him (and by no small margin, John couldn’t even perceive them with his own senses) and caused him a few shallow wounds, but Edge soon adjusted her attacks to be slow enough to be dodged. Luckily for everyone, she was not interested in killing, just in causing the maximum amount of pain humanly imaginable.

“I have knives, so many knives, and they all got names on them! I don’t know the names, but what do I care? Hihihihi,” the vampiric murder fairy was in an incredibly good mood for all the five minutes she would exist.

The knives, conjured by waving her right, clawless hand around, didn’t hit the spearman, but they did hit his allies who had unluckily positioned themselves behind him. Surprised gasps of pain came from all around as people were struck when they didn’t expect it.

“Yes, yes! Scream for me! Bleed for me! Bleeeeed mooooooore,” Edge moaned and giggled.

“Congratulations, you forced me to use my absolute trump card!” John announced. “My four-elemental combination! I spent the days since Thorne declared war on me cultivating this technique! All my mana went into her existence.” It was a blatant lie, but they didn’t need to know that.

“How much longer do you dicks need?!” Zimmothy didn’t have the grace to answer John, instead screaming at his allies.

“Suppressor 1 online.” “Suppressor 2 online!” “I got I- Suppressor 3 online…” they reported moments later, and John got a sudden pop-up.

‘Huh, that’s a thing,’ John thought. That was a total of 360 mana per minute more he had to pay, or 6 per second. Thing was, he regenerated 15 per second, so while this was a pretty good debuff, it was not quite what Zimmothy then claimed it to be.

“Now, whatever petty rest of mana you still have will bleed out of you in record speed!” the spearman announced, triumphantly tapping the flat end of his spear against the paved ground.

“Urgh, what vile trickery!” he had to admit, that one was a bit too thick on the acting side. ‘Edge, just dis…’

“You really thought we came here unprepared? It takes two minutes to research you and your massive usage of elementals!” Zimmothy interrupted his thoughts with his mockery. “Your whore spirits can harm us no longer!”

‘Okay, you know what, unleash on him and his crew, I don’t care,’ John aborted his plans. Allowing himself the smile of a villain, he straightened his back. “Well, I have enough mana to show you one more thing.”

The shadow knives flew back to Edge, who began licking the blood of all of them. “The secret… is just a little… iron…,” she palavered between the licks. “All blood… forges… my favourite little tool… hihihihi… so close to seeing you all scream… tangled in torment.” She grinned, her formerly white teeth stained red. “You all have felt the knives, so how about…” the shadows were sucked from the floor and the buildings. Everything lost its perceivable depth, as everything became an average light level except for a singular pitch-black spot between Edge’s hands. “…I show you the scythe of vice!”

The spot extended into a long shaft and a giant blade at the end of it. It swelled even larger, extending the reach of that next attack, as John poured mana into her.

“Everyone dod-!” that was as far Zimmothy himself got before the scythe reaped through the clashing groups in a split second, Edge using all of her Agility to execute the attack near sonic speeds. Through most people, it passed without doing anything, leaving them confused as they looked at the few unlucky ones that had their blood ingested by Edge, Zimmothy as their highest profile member.

Screaming their lungs out they collapsed in what was the worst pain imaginable. Edge’s unleash triggered every single pain receptor in the body from the passing through point outwards. The pain only got worse by the second, even people trained to withstand torture would have cried like babies at this, and once it hit their brains, their whole world was only that tortment.

“Yes! YEEEEEEEESSSSS!” Edge laughed stridently, dancing from one foot to the other, as her time came to an end and she separated into her components, which retreated into John’s soul right away to make it seem like he was actually out of mana.

“Man, you Bearings personnel can’t do anything yourselves,” a new voice commented. A person, leaning against a building without any care, joined the fray. He was a muscular ginger with curly hair and robotic limbs hidden underneath a lot of clothes. The only reason why John knew was because his Observe sheet gave it away. “Have been watching this shitshow for a minute. Yo, Mr. Newman.”

“So, Thorne stopped sending their lackeys,” John made an unsure smile that he wanted to make them feel like it looked like he wanted to convince them that he was still on the top of his game. Basically, he was acting that he was badly acting. Layers of bullshit.

“Our lackeys did that stuff on their own… did he just piss himself?” the ginger looked with disgust at Zimmothy. Fights all around had ceased.

“In his defence, he is in very bad pain right now,” John said.

“Too bad for him I don’t care,” the ginger returned. “We are here to take you out,” he reached up to his ear, probably sending some sort of signal to his comrades outside the barrier as they entered a moment later. There was a moment of strained silence. “GET HIM!”

Immediately all the mechanically enhanced soldiers came for John, and he turned tail as if he was genuinely afraid. “RETREAT!” he screamed and everyone scrambled for the teleporter. Beatrice began teleporting the first few people away while Aclysia came to his aid, fending off the Thorne soldiers (some of which turned out to be cleverly disguised robots).

Of course, these soldiers acted with the genuine intention of capturing or killing him. There was no way Scarlett had shared her plans with anyone of them, she hadn’t even told her own board of directors. Using Marath’s flat side like an oversized baseball bat, Aclysia swatted away three attacking robots and thus cleared John’s back.

The evacuation of a small force such as theirs took basically no time at all, and once he had reached the pavilion shaped teleporter, he had basically assured his escape. He made sure to take a miserable posture, slanted shoulders, slightly leaning to one side as if he was hurt and Gamer’s Body could no longer keep up. He even had a prepared bag of fake blood oozing from a cut in his vest.

“We will leave this standing in case you want to crawl back and negotiate, John Loseman!” the ginger shouted at him. That must have been the lamest insult the Gamer had gotten to date.

“Sure, just one more thing,” John answered and the teleporter took him away at that very moment. Immediately he fixed his posture and removed the blood bag from the inside of his shirt. He stretched, much to the surprise of everyone who had fought with him just now and was still around the teleporter. “April Fools!” he shouted out loud, despite the pranked no longer being able to hear him.