John stepped out of the I.D. Gate and was faced with a group of exactly twenty people, standing and sitting in front of it. Hurriedly, the majority of them got into a two-row formation. Two people stood outside the formation. One was Ted, the other Medelnick. The Gamer raised an eyebrow at all of them.

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat. “I assume you are the volunteers… and Medelnick.” He glared at the scope-eyed doctor, trying to signal that he did not want him there.

Of course, he was just ignored.

“Yes,” Ted gave him the direct answer.

Eighteen out of the original fifty soldiers was a pretty impressive number, considering all the hurdles John had demanded be put in their way. “Each of you have been asked at least thrice whether you want to do this?” the Gamer wanted to know, slipping into his role as supreme commander of the army.

“”Sir, yes, sir!”” was the unified answer.

“And your families have been informed about your decision and had the opportunity to object?” the Gamer asked.

“”Sir, yes, sir!”” it thundered again.

“And you have listened to those objections? Considered that you are volunteering to put yourself into a world where you cannot scavenge for food? Where there are over a thousand entities capable of killing you? Where you will be left on your own, trying your best to provide relief to the locations I and my partners liberate?”

“”Sir, yes, sir!””

“Your conviction is truly admirable.” The president of Fusion nodded, deeply impressed. Then John sighed and scratched the back of his head. “You shouldn’t be here today though. I respect that you want to join me, and I will let you, but not today. I’m heading straight into a fight with the Emperor and for all I know the greeting committee will be a meteor the size of the Guild Hall.” He looked at everyone, including Ted. “Think you could survive that?”

“…No,” Ted admitted.

“Exactly, so you are staying here while I take care of that. I’ll contact you when I’ve got the landing situation sorted. Scarlett, can you do me the favour and equip them with all they would need to survive?”

“Sure,” the technomancer rolled her shoulders, “I do all the organising around here anyway. You pay for it?”

“Collide pays for it – so yes,” the Gamer responded, taking this time to transfer all of the Raid loot into the Guild Bank. “Also, you can use the vault.”

“Understood,” Scarlett stated, sounding cool as ever despite the value connected to that sentence. The vault was what he called both the physical location and the Guild Bank tab where he kept all of the Instant Dungeon loot he did not want out in the world, for fear that it may one day be turned against him or his people. “I’ll take it from here. Give ’em hell.”

“I’ll see to it that I do,” John promised her with a little laugh. He gave her a quick kiss, then turned to the rest of the haremettes that would not tag along with him. Lee was of no use in the Iron Domain, as Kingdoms were Natural Barriers of some description. Lorelei, he wanted to tag along due to her seer powers, but could not justify dragging right into a war zone. Nathalia stayed behind because she needed him to prove his worth. He gave each of them a goodbye kiss. He wasn’t sure how long he would be gone. “Contact me when Nightingale responds,” he gave a final reminder.

“Like I would forget that.” Scarlett rolled her eyes. “Get to world saving already, you fucking Samaritan.”

“It takes a world saver to be worthy of all of you,” he responded with a grin, then turned back to the I.D. Gate. It was the same door they had just left, nothing behind it anymore. Just a black space that could be filled with anything the Instant Dungeon Skill was capable of creating or connecting them to the Iron Domain. “Everyone ready?” he asked.

“Lead the way, tiger,” Rave responded in the name of the harem.

___________________________________________________________________________

The fortress was in the same state of vacant disrepair they had left it in. It must have rained recently as there were damp spots everywhere. After the summer they had spent the last three weeks in, the distinctly dull weather of this area of the Iron Domain felt extra depressing. It was about 12 degrees Celsius; the sky was overcast, not even the light of the stars shining through.

There had been daylight in the Guild Hall. 11 AM was a reasonable time in practically all seasons to spot the sun in the sky. Yet, in the Iron Domain, where nights were three fourths of the day and where artificial light was a luxury only afforded to those who could conjure it, the darkness was absolute. Even John’s superhuman vision could not see all the way to the horizon, despite them standing on the highest point of the outer walls. There was too little light for his eyes to catch.

Except for a single spot in the distance.

The hulking form of the Revenant-Emperor was illuminated by the baleful green light that drifted from his form. A luminescent mist, it drifted with the eastward wind, leaving a trail behind Arkeidos as he took slow, measured steps towards the fortress. He was over five hundred metres away. A small distance, in the Abyss, especially when it came to one such as him.

The energy increased with each step. Soon the trail he left went from disparate swirls of mist to a path of sickly, necromantic green. Under his feet, the ground turned into lifeless, grey sand. “Guess we are jumping straight into it,” John told everyone.

“LET’S SEE WHAT HE GOT!” Metra screamed and leapt off the wall. Her skin was replaced with armour, Rex Magnar appeared in her hand, and she sliced the air. John, too slow to stop her, saw her drop through the tear in space she had just opened.

“After her!” John shouted, the rest of the group following after the aggressive First of Wrath. He would have preferred scanning for traps, but that was no longer an option. Although he had given the order to advance, he himself stayed where he was. As a tactician and long-range mage, an elevated position was just fine for him. He only put the Creator Puppet together, to send with everyone else. As everyone ran, he connected to Metra’s senses.

Flashing dimensional lights filled the gap between the entrance and the exit of the Tear she dropped through. Halberd at the ready, she swung at the giant of armour and soul. Parts of the mist stirred, like muscles of a human neck, when Arkeidos turned his head to face Metra. If he was surprised, he had no face to show it. The dark metal of his animated helmet was imbued with the green tint of his powers.

Metra, reckless as she could be, understood that she had to go all out from the start. Lifted behind her back, the head of Rex Magnar crackled with violent energies, forming swiftly into a pillar of plasma that shot out of the spiked side of the halberd. Feeling the Extreme Plasma Burst’s heat through her Astrotium armour, the First of Wrath kept her grip tight, using all of her muscle power not to swing the weapon, but to direct its trajectory as the enchantment accelerated it in a wide swing. Its wielder in mid-air, aimed at Arkeidos’ head, Rex Magnar screamed with an insistent need for violence.

The Emperor raised a hand, fast to meet the attack. Axe blade collided heavily with the metal palm of the lich. The shock travelled through Arkeidos’ limb. What had appeared to be a limb of solid metal was revealed to instead be made from a multitude of individual plates covering the muscle groups. Out of the gaps streamed the baleful magic, intensifying continuously while his hand was slowly pushed back by the force of the enchantment.

“Yes,” Arkeidos’ deep voice reverberated with gravitas and ignited passion. He planted his feet, digging into the lifeless sand. “You are a fine servant for a conqueror!” More power streamed towards the raised left, halting Rex Magnar’s advance and then reversing it, in spite of the plasma still torrenting aggressively. “A fine weapon,” the Emperor complimented. “It rivals my own.”

Arkeidos opened his right hand, still lowered, and then grasped at something invisible. Another light brightened the darkness, as streaks of light of all varieties of elemental colours consolidated into a long grip. Thick enough to be worthy of the hands of a giant whose arms alone had the length of a grown human, the shaft extended in both directions. Although the light was a display of prismatic radiance, it dulled into the dark grey of Arkeidos’ armour. One end of the shaft was a terrible thorn with six corners. The other revealed the exact type of weapon this was: a mace. Attached to a central chunk of Astrotium were six jagged, terrible blades. Each of them shone in a colour of the elements and all fused at the border between handle and head into a ring that had the same prismatic appearance as Rex Magnar.

Arkeidos swung the mace of Astrotium and Fusionals at Metra’s exposed side. The speed at which he acted made a mockery of his size. The force of the impact caved the First of Wrath’s armour. Metra was catapulted off to the side, and her bent body bounced over the empty plane, disrupting the soil each time.

The mace pulsated, the blades visibly spreading outwards and then slotting back, each time creating a sound like a beating metallic heart. Arkeidos looked up, as a silver glow truly illuminated the night.

Skyfall cut through the clouds and descended on the Emperor’s position, a spherical mass of silvery-white mana. John had conjured it immediately when Metra had left, an opening gambit to gauge the Emperor’s defensive power. However, he had done so with the hope that Metra could handle Arkeidos for a while longer than she had. There was nothing preventing the lich from dodging.

Yet, he stood there, waiting.

‘He’s gauging our aggressive power,’ John realized, as Skyfall landed and exploded into an expanding wave of silver. It was an incredibly clean explosion, expanding equally outwards into every open direction. A ring of fire preceded it, the distilled arcane energy setting the area around ablaze before consuming it fully. The colour tilted purple and blue, gradually, as the star dissolved further. Even at the quick speed and relatively low mana cost of 10’000 that John had employed here, the Skyfall absolutely obliterated an area of over fifty metres.

In the centre of the silver, purple and blue crackling of arcane energies, Arkeidos fell to the deepest pit of the crater. Through the lights, John could barely see him raise his own hand. The rest of the haremettes were ready to engage the Emperor, the quickest almost in attack range now. Then the glow of the lich’s magic transformed into a mixture of gold and silver. He clenched his fist and brought it down.

The clouds, disrupted at a single point where the Skyfall had broken through, became further tattered as a myriad of smaller projectiles descended from the heavens. They curved in their trajectory, aimed at whoever was closest. Salamander, surprised by the sheer speed, was hit by one. The golden torrent sliced through her head, obliterating it and causing her body to fall aimlessly towards the ground. As an elemental, this did not kill her instantly, it did not even take away all of her body control, but it so thoroughly jumbled her senses that she could not coordinate properly.

Sylph bombarded Arkeidos with a salvo of lightning attacks, all of which were absorbed by the armour without notable effect. Even the Skyfall appeared to have done barely anything, as John could now see through Beatrice’s eyes. The clockwork maid thrust Perfect forwards, only to have her weapon swatted aside by the Emperor.

Whose body immediately after turned into a stream of golden light. It weaved through the assaulting haremettes and the Creator Puppet, avoided all of their swiping attacks and left them to worry about the falling streaks of light instead. There were many of them still descending, focused primarily on the flyers in the group. They made it impossible for Sylph to follow Arkeidos, as he rushed towards the fortress.

‘Don’t blow your teleports,’ John instructed them, while the streak of light arched up to the wall.

‘But Master…!’ Aclysia’s thoughts reached him.

‘Resource management is the key to any victory,’ John told her and turned towards the Emperor whose form reconsolidated atop the wall. The light his body emitted changed back to green. “Sorry about the sudden assault,” the Gamer said sarcastically. “Difficult to control people sometimes. I’m sure you understand.”

Arkeidos lifted his mace and brought it down on John, who narrowly dodged the deliberately slower strike with Magus Step. “I have not known disobedience in a millennia – only loyalty and treachery,” the Emperor responded. “I had already resigned myself to disappointment, John. Your absence on my arrival was a sour surprise.” Arkeidos let the weapon rest on the ground, while he took two steps towards John. The blades stretched out of their sockets, then slotted back in another metallic heartbeat. Five of them changed their colour, all of them appearing brown when they slotted back in.

Arkeidos swung his weapon in a low arch. The stones that his missed strike had shattered, much of the entire fortification, followed the swing as a swarm of rock that flew towards Momo. The fairy support rapidly distanced herself from the wall. “Sounds like a paranoid existence,” John remarked, standing his ground. There was a massive trench between them now. One that Arkeidos could, and did, bridge with a single leap. Without his magic, the compromised structure would have collapsed under the weight of the Emperor.

“I understand now what you are,” Arkeidos stated and swung his mace. A little quicker this time.

Perhaps John should have dodged again, but he hated being measured like this. Staring back he let the mace collide with Particle Skin. His mana dropped considerably from that single hit. Not enough to make John believe this was the force that broken Astrotium. “And what am I?” the Gamer asked.

“A tactician,” Arkeidos responded and rested his mace on his shoulder. Another beat and the weapon returned to six colours. “Your power is distributed between your familiars. Your own body is weak. It puts me in a conundrum.” His left hand reached for John’s head. “Should I destroy you or should I enjoy this war for all that it is worth?”

“Well, if you can destroy me at any point, why don’t you completely ignore me for now?” the Gamer asked with a mocking smile. “I mean, if you are that superior.” Arkeidos turned his head, looking at the harem who had now turned around. ‘This is why you don’t charge in without letting me formulate a battle plan, especially against an unknown opponent, Metra.’

‘Fuck me, I already paid for that mistake,’ the First of Wrath responded, getting tended to by Undine where she had landed.

‘What is the plan then, Master?’ Aclysia wanted to know.

‘Oh, the plan is currently scaling the wall.’

“No,” Arkeidos turned his gaze to John again. “Why would I continue investing time into you, when I could continue my research into the breakdown of the barrier between worlds.” The Emperor’s hand descended on John’s head. An attempt to squash it like an egg was sure to follow.

Then ‘the plan’ pulled herself over the edge of the wall. Words of power filled the air. “To achieve what it takes, I will immolate myself,” growled a thoroughly pissed, battle-hungry, and crazy woman of two nearly melded minds. She landed and immediately launched herself at Arkeidos. “Bloodburn.”