“And then… and then… I dieeeeed… waaaaahaaaaaaaa,” Sylph was finishing her recount of what had happened before she died. Since John had been preoccupied with Abraham at that point, he actually didn’t know. He was giving her lots of pats on the head since that kept the bawling thunderstorm elemental somewhat calm. As a reward, his hand was zapped every time he came in contact with her hair. Seemed like a crying storm conducted electricity accidentally.

“It’s okay, Sylph, you still technically won,” he told her. “Getting rid of that flying gear tower sounds more important than just looking at treetops.” Although that did explain the explosion in the middle of it. “Anyway, we shouldn’t waste any more time.”

It had taken almost an hour to restore Sylph. 48 minutes 59 seconds, to be exact. John kept tabs on these things nowadays to figure out if there was some sort of formula. Well, that there was one was basically a given, figuring it out was the hard part. He had the rough idea that it was dependant on the elemental’s Tier and Level, but there were some modifiers involved that he wasn’t sure about yet. His sample size being a bit small was the problem, and he wasn’t going to create a bigger one anytime soon. This was knowledge he didn’t covet nearly enough to kill his elemental girls over.

“Yeah, let’s get done with this,” Chemilia agreed.

At the side, Terkal finally moved out of his stasis in the corner, “Yes. Let’s rip out Abraham’s intestines until he coughs out how he killed… her.” The general hesitated using Imerella’s name and ultimately failed; his clenched fist quivered. “I just wanted my battalion funded and now this… all of this shit…”

Ted hummed in agreement and they all left the building. The rest had turned what remained of the army into a proper organization again. John had a testing glance over all of them. The level floor was 25, the ceiling 50, taking the odd level 16 recruit out of the equation. Utterly average fighters in most regards, beaten into a viable state through steady drills, but a whole 200 of them, formed up in three segments that were not at all equal. Terkal’s forces had clearly diminished the most, less than a quarter of the total remainders was under his command. With over half of the remainders, Ted’s forces were the ones that stemmed the most members, his wife’s troop making up the rest.

John remembered fighting a force like this, one guided by a giant, buffing machine in the sky over the capital of a state that history just loved to take up the back entrance. At the battle of Warsaw, he had fought one battalion of roughly that size. He had almost lost back then. To be fair only Undine had been there to help him, but that wasn’t the point. All things taken together, current allies, enemies and the deceased all summed up, the Little Maryland couldn’t even approach one tenth of the gathered army size that the Blood of the Proletariat, in itself one of the weaker Divided Gates, had mustered at that battle.

No superweapons, no large-scale weaponry, basically no navy, that was the force John needed because it was better than anything he had. It put things into perspective rather drastically, just how far the actual elite guilds were above everyone else. Made John wonder what kind of forces Romulus could muster in their entirety, with his currently reforming empire. Worse, what kind of resources the Horned Rat had access too.

200 people, no superweapons, no large-scale weaponry, basically no navy, Fusion had a long road ahead of itself if it wanted to take the seat John’s quest and ambitions asked him to put it in. ‘I should seriously look into building some sort of automatic war machine, like Liberty Prime or the Grey Golems… except maybe not that unnecessarily huge.’

At least the people they had were all healed up, mentally rested and there were a few Fateweavers among them. They gathered up and left the barrier behind. John watched with interest as all of the uniforms transformed into different mixtures of something like a dozen different articles of clothing. Just enough for people to not seem to dress in unison, but looked at as a block, John saw some repetitions here and there. When it came to disguising, the Abyss had it figured out.

Thanks to DC being a pretty populated city, to put it mildly, 200 people walking around in relative density wasn’t that unusual. They headed for the obvious target, the White House. By the time they arrived, daylight had finally faded. They were in the twilight phase of the day, where the sun’s rays were still lighting up part of the horizon but everything was becoming darker by the minute.

The proper White House was resting peacefully behind iron fences, guards walking around. Thinking that those security people that only had to worry about guns were pretty blessed, John entered the barrier. What mundane fence had been before him a moment ago was now the borderline for a barrier that spanned over the entire building.

“No money to spare for anything but his own security,” John mumbled as he looked at the expansive shield. Protecting that much space that way couldn’t have been cheap. On the other side of the barrier, he saw what Abraham had quickly gathered or had held in reserve. Way more than John thought, in fact, as every single bureaucrat that could fight also joined their president and his forces. The numbers had already been on Abraham’s side, now he more than doubled John’s force.

That they were already getting into position to fight meant that they had positioned some individuals to stand at a street corner and just wait for John and his allies to approach. A simple phone call would have warned Abraham of their coming. The remainders of John’s forces warped in slowly.

For a moment, John contemplated talking to Abraham and his forces again, but to what end? Abraham wasn’t about to admit to his sinister schemes at this stage, he would rather sink with the lie. Instead, John equipped Purgatory and Undine again and punched the barrier. Not particularly damaging, but cost effective. “Can you tunnel under it, Gnome?” John asked.

“Uhm… let me see…” the soil elemental closed her eyes and felt downwards. “…S-sorry, no, extends all the way down, from the feel of things.”

That already put them at a disadvantage. His side would tire itself, even if it was just a little bit, in tearing down this pre-charged barrier. Nothing he could do to prevent it though. “Alright, the traditional wa-“ John wanted to announce.

“Fuck that,” Metra had other plans, ripping open a rift through which she emerged on the other side. Before anybody could follow, it shut close again. The ancient weapon’s portals were not known for being stable or long-lasting.

‘I am not even sure if this is a good or bad situation,’ John thought as he watched the berserker babe descend on her lonesome. It was good in so far that the enemy had clearly not thought they were already getting attacked. The grey armour wrapped around Metra as she fell five metres down and into the still formation taking enemies. Although sight on her was lost, John could guess where she was from the body parts suddenly flying around. “Not even she is going to be able to fight all of those forever, let’s get in there!” John stated and they began pummelling away at the barrier.

Waves rippled over the blue surface from every attack it took. The more damage it took, the bigger the ripple, as if stones of varying sizes were thrown into a pond. The army, spread around the rim of the shielding energy bubble, covered the barrier in whatever means of sustainable offense were available to them. The chaos Metra’s appearance inside had created shielded them from being hit by counterattacks, at least for a little while.

“Get off my lawn!” John distantly heard Abraham’s voice and saw the mountain of muscles, well, more of a hill since he wasn’t the tallest person, charge Metra. In the hour that had passed, the president had buffed up to what John assumed was his maximum power. It looked somewhat ridiculous, the guy now had a neck broader than his head, but the strength was undeniable.

He punched Metra and the Astrotium clad creation actually groaned in pain. “Yeeeessssss!” was the battle-hungry reaction by the First of Wrath and she attempted a counter attack. John didn’t have time to keep looking; Abraham occupying Metra meant that his army now had time again to throw spells through the inside of the barrier and at John’s allies.

A unified barrage of spells, like a salvo of guns over a barricade, blasted at the attacking line. Several people were mowed down immediately, the rest attacking all the more desperately. If John hadn’t feared ripping down half the White House in the process, he would have used Arcana Strike to crack this barrier like an egg. There was no way it had enough Maybel stored up to resist that raw destructive power.

‘We really need to get through this quicker,’ John thought, racking his brain which Combination would be best for that. Nearby, Nia managed to slip past the barrier thanks to her own nature, moving through it like it was a waterfall. That put the second wave of spells off, as the mages now had a blank to worry about.

Nia didn’t get to act too offensively. Getting through the barrier had clearly taken her a lot of effort already, her body being dangerously translucent. Until she managed to anchor herself again, all she could do was to harass, dodge and go for the most opportunistic of attacks. Even with that strategy, she couldn’t be ignored, which was all John needed.

Never getting an answer, the Gamer was quickly delivered from his dilemma when someone else solved it for him. “Ya better give me some space, people!” Rave shouted out, blue particles around her suddenly moving towards the cat to her feet. Her pink hair and blue eyes both lit up gold as Copernicus swelled up into the form of a large tiger, the power she drew from him also turning into overdrive.

Everyone scrambled to follow her advice as the techno lover struck a cool pose, arms pressed together at the wrist, and then unleashed a blast of massive energy. Yellow, blue and red all flickered within the beam as it ravaged the barrier, the shockwave travelling over the entire surface, all the way to the back. It was a more concentrated, refined version of the continued blast that Rave had used against her mother in the tournament. Months had passed, so she had worked to make it fit her bursting fighting style. Also on it not leaving her fainting from the exhaustion.

Still, the barrier stood. Rave wasn’t disheartened by this, instead quickly going through a series of punches, supported by Copernicus lending the strength of his own claws. All of her physical attributes were also in overdrive for however long she could maintain this form. Each punch came along with an explosion of light around her; she looked like she was the centre of a disco ball reflecting the lamps at a rave. The barrier began to show cracks, the hardened mana fragmenting just that little bit. No gaps large enough to break through, but nevertheless there.

Jumping upwards, Rave raised one leg high and let her heel crash down on the obstacle. The gold was drained from her hair from the base outwards, as she spent all of the remaining energy on a massive blast of pink light that finally saw the barrier shatter and dissolve completely. The sudden loss of anything hard under her foot made Rave lose her balance, but her boyfriend quickly moved in to catch her.

“Good job,” John told her with a smile. Noting the lack of her cat ears, he added, “You fine?”

“Gonna need a minute, but I won’t faint,” Rave answered, winking at him. “I’ll catch up with ya. Go mess up Abraham.”

“You got it,” John nodded, prepared to end this whole thing in a final confrontation. Neither side had Fateweaver supremacy, thanks to the president’s recent losses, so it would be hard for Abraham to flee this time. They could end it all here, this whole affair of ups and down would finally conclude.

Everyone else was already tearing down the fence. There were some more losses amongst the common soldiers as they tried to fight through the physical barrier and were shot at by the enemy who desperately tried to fend them off. At that, the enemy gathering of mercenaries, bureaucrats and professional soldiers were steadily showered in attacks by Sylph, Salamander and Nia.

Aclysia charged at the fence while John let Rave sit down. Brandishing Marath, she executed a massive vertical swing, the enormous cleaver cutting through the fence, sending shards of metal and the stone base flying. Dismissing the weapon entirely, she and Gnome threw their heavy and strong bodies against the damaged fence. It bent, a second assault broke several of the segment’s bases from the fundament, and then the two girls had successfully created a breach. The governmental guard immediately tried to plug it up with their own bodies, the white-armoured knights taking position, but Beatrice was so swiftly through the gate that Twist Position carried her behind their ranks before they closed them.

The passive maid methodically stabbed one of them in the small gap between helmet and neck, severing the vital nerves and instantly killing the person. They had to turn around to face that threat, but in doing so they opened themselves up to John, who threw two Arcane Echoes in quick succession as he stormed through the breach himself.

The two waves of purple energy closely followed and partly overlapped, breaking on the armour of the knights but still causing clearly pained shouts from within as arcane burns covered whatever side they had turned towards the person that was hit by both of the attacks, who went to the ground. Not dead, John knew this thanks to Whisper of Mana not triggering. His mana regeneration increased by 100% if he successfully killed someone with an arcane type spell. The disgustingly pragmatic part of John urged him to finished the falling guard off with a cheap Shardbound. Instead, John took the time to grab the knight and drag him out of the way of his remaining allies squeezing through the breach and spilling onto the White House’s front lawn one by one.

He had to tell nobody to keep casualties to a minimum. Everyone was too aware that they were fighting their own people. He left the average fighters to battle it out amongst themselves, between Chemilia, Terkal and Ted they had enough high tier support. Somewhere in the distance, John saw Nia clash with the other blank again. At least they had their logic-ripping clash somewhere away from the main battle this time.

Turning back to his actual target, John threw out a Shardbound at Abraham, who simply ignored it as he pummelled Metra with a flurry of movements. He was punching her so quickly in the air above him, she was stuck in place and kept getting pounded. It was incredibly sobering to see someone dominate the ancient weapon this way, even if her armour kept her from being too badly damaged.

Abraham pulled down and gathered energy in his fist. ‘Shit!’ John thought and attempted to interrupt the Ascending Cut like he had last time. He was too slow; the power infused fist rose upwards and hit Metra in the stomach. There was a visible discharge of energy and then she vanished. Simply disappeared as if the world had swallowed her.

Whirling around to face John, Abraham’s eyes were wide with… confusion. “What the fuck did you just do?!” The Gamer was too worried about the berserker babe’s sudden disappearance to worry about the president’s feelings.

“It’s just another of your tricks, isn’t it?!” Abraham hardened his resolve and faced the Gamer. They were about to have their confrontation, John accompanied by Aclysia, Undine, Sylph and Salamander versus the hulk of a president.

Only two more metres between them. John wasn’t thinking quite as logically as he should have, staying back and sniping at his enemy while letting Aclysia tank. The loss of Imerella and now the worry for Metra urged him to feel the primal satisfaction of punching someone in the face. With Aclysia around, they would have the advantage in melee anyway.

John noticed a movement of all elements not far above him. It didn’t take a genius to know that something incredibly bad was coming. Abraham’s own trained reflexes, bordering on precognition, seemed to warn him about something similar. Both of them suddenly reverted their course. Just in time to dodge a black blade coming for them in the middle of a meteorite of darkness.

Earth exploded everywhere as the landing of a massive humanoid created a crater. A cloud of shadows hung cleanly around, only the split, double blade of a massive sword moving. Wearing heavy plate armour of black metal, the darkness concentrating in the shape of a tattered cape, black with grey decorations, hanging from his back, the newcomer stepped out of his crater. A face covered in battle scars came into view. Despite its grizzled look, the man it belonged to couldn’t have been much older than John, one eye closed with a particularly large scar running across it. The other, dark green, looked ecstatic as he rested his nightmare of a weapon on his shoulder. The entire thing was about two metres, which still made it smaller than the broad framed warrior holding it. The hilt, forged into the shape of an ice flower, hit the pauldron with a silent chink.

In his left hand, the black swordsman was holding something that looked like the kind of orb used by fortune tellers, completely with swirling energy inside. “Now this seems like a worthy challenge,” he grinned and crushed that orb in his massive fist. Energies quickly expanded out of the sphere, which reached the ends of the barrier and created a grid on top of it. A very clear indication that this barrier was now in lockdown.