Back in that Crystal_
Our resident Share user had just narrowly evaded dipping his toes in an early grave less than a second ago. Using a crude and impromptu blade of his own blood, he'd redirect a surprise slash sent his way. One he barely got the time to react to thanks to his own tunnel vision and overconfidence.
A mistake he planned not to repeat again.
"Oh bugger off!" The god grimaced, breaking his singing practice to complain. "So damned annoying!"
It seems that Constantine really was his mentor...
With his last words spoken he threw out a follow up kick aimed for the spine of the burlier doll, who ended up taking it to the gut due to turning around. Sending her crashing into a tree a few dozen meters away. At the same time, the only light doll still in commision wound up a retaliatory thrust to the man's gut. Forcing him to back dash out of the way to evade losing his liver.
"Bite me." Gynesis spat out as he reeled from the recoil running up his leg. "Shit..."
'That freaking hurt more than I hoped it did...' The exorcist grit through his teeth as he nursed the definitely damaged limb. 'You know what? Fuck this planning shit...'
Like clockwork, the closest doll recovered and went back in on the offensive with zero time wasted. By now Gynesis had already finished tending to his foot, giving him ample time to see the thrust sent his way and react accordingly.
And by "reacting accordingly" he retracted his sword and turned it into a glorified glove as he reached to grab his attacker's blade with that same hand. Using it as a lever to spin 180 degrees and throw the blade's owner at her ally. Leaving himself holding the offending weapon by the blade for a second before the third surviving attacker showed herself from the side.
Over at the kicked ally, she'd found herself planted into one of the massive trees that surrounded the complex. Freshly getting herself unstuck from the angel she formed upon impact, the lighter silhouette of the feminine form ended up slamming right into her, making a double angel as a result of their impact.
"STRIKE!" A detached announcer voice called out from nowhere.
If either of those two had mouths, there'd have been a synchronous pair of screams of pain upon impact. Or at the very least a pair of grunts.
'No touchy feely!' Back to the male main character, he managed to spot the second heavier hitter in time, evading a halberd swipe right for his head. Which had prompted his internal verbal manifestation of a brain fart. At the same time throwing the sword he'd just gained right at the woman.
"HEADSHOT!" A deep announcer's voice bellowed, accompanied by the sound of a hitmarker.
In the middle of a follow up swing, that doll received a free lobotomy via saber to the skull. An outcome that instantly dispatched the entity. And like a puppet that got its strings cut, the visage of amazonian form ragdolled to the floor as if she were a clothesline victim. Accidentally sending her weapon right into her enemy's open hand.
"DOUBLE KILL!" The voice added, sounding rather enthusiastic.
'Huh, these guys are kinda weak... Then again, anything that isn't fucking Vinaya herself fits that description not gonna lie.' The ALU mused as he caught the halberd and twirled it like he trained with the thing for decades. Leaving the original owner to go crashing and tumbling off screen.
'Either way, that makes two down-' The god's thoughts were promptly interrupted by the downward slam of a particularly hasty spear, forcing him to parry with an upward slash of his own in retaliation using his newly acquired halberd. 'Nah, in the words of Mugen: I hah enough ah you bhai...' The man grimaced as he managed to intercept the path of the guillotine aimed for his neck with what looked like relative ease.
Are these dolls just that ass or was Vinaya just that overpowered?
"At this point? Both, not gonna lie." Gynesis answered the Narrator's question without the usual snark that doing so ensued, at the same time pushing the offending weapon away from him.
The new deity's next move was quite simple and kinda obvious: Beheading the amazonian before she could recover using a horizontal slash for the neck with his new blade. Using a considerable amount of his strength and all of the speed he could conjure to do so.
A damn-near impulse he acted upon before even bothering to iron out the kinks, such as factoring the lither woman's position at the time. A small detail that resulted in his slash getting redirected by said doll to save her own. An effort she didn't succeed on fully, but that was better than nothing in her opinion.
Instead of getting a clean beheading, the ALU managed to cut off the amazonian's left leg thanks to what was a glorified rapier's thrust. For him, the brief clash was like a car hitting concrete, enough to slow but not enough to stop. For the lither siloette, it was trying to stop a sledge hammer falling at terminal velocity with a toothpick.
While it wasn't his greatest moment, in the new god's humblest opinion that beasts nothing at all.
The injury didn't look like it hurt the thing, going off of its lack of reaction. It did cause the amazonian silhouette to stumble onto her knees due to the now missing limb. At the same time, the floor below her caved in just a bit under her weight. Showing just how heavy she truly was.
Speaking of cave ins, there was a trail of small holes showing exactly where the man's latest victim had laid to rest, with said victim face down in the dirt and her head a few feet off to the side.
'Are you fucking serio-' The god tried voicing his opinion on the current state of affairs, only to cut himself off halfway. Deciding it was best to deal with the faster of the two surviving dolls after that moment. Since he was getting tired of his attacks being interrupted last minute due to the speed advantage not being high enough in his opinion.
Yeah, this is a disciple of good ol' John alright...
"Do your job, will ya!?" The man exclaimed in exasperation, referring to the narrator's constant tangents as of late, while throwing out a reverse roundhouse kick to the more slender of the duo. At the same time the second amazonian was busy winding up a backhanded polearm strike, believing her opponent to be wide open due to his focus shifting away from her.
The lighter woman crashed to the floor from that kick. Happening so fast he managed to recover in time to catch the backhanding spear by the handle. Thanks to learning from his previous folies, that kick was severely held back as well. With just enough force to knock the moving brick wall off of her feet.
Which left the new god with the space needed to behead his second opponent since he arrived in this odd and new dimension he'd been dropped in. Not exactly what he had planned, but then again he didn't have a plan in the first place.
"RRAAH!" The man exclaimed.
He'd swing the other Amazonian's polearm down on her neck, cleaving into the floor beneath her thanks to the sheer force applied. In fact, there was so much force the damned thing got stuck. Something the man found out the hard way as he failed to retrieve the embedded blade before the final adversary managed kick herself back on her feet.
'And then there was one!' Gynesis grinned, glad he managed to get himself in a 1v1 with him and the last of the lighter-bodied. He barely even clashed weapons with the opponent and he already knew she was a free win for him.
'Come to think of it... The way I faced Vinaya was kinda stupid not gonna lie.' the deity mused internally, giving up on trying to retrieve Cuz how did I have access to over a dozen tools designed specifically for beings of pure evil, and managed to use a grand total of NONE of them?' While his mind ran on those thoughts, the Share user scanned around for his final body, tilting his head as he noticed her not being where he last left her.
*Shink!*
"Guh..." A sudden and sharp pain filled Gynesis's chest the very next moment, telling him exactly where she was: Behind him.
The new god's eyes shifted down to his chest, widening a little at what they'd fallen onto. Half of a 3 foot long straight blade stuck out of where Gynesis's right lung should be, mere inches away from his heart and covered in his leaking blood. And planted by none other than the visage thought to be a free kill herself.
She had managed to use the few frames he had spent trying to retrieve his stolen weapon to get behind him, and the next set of frames he spent looking for her winding up quite the forceful plunge with her rapier. Evidenced by the deity taking a knee on impact from the momentum transferred to his chest.
'There you are~' Despite getting stabbed right in the chest, Gynesis began grinning maniacally, his face threatening to rip in two as he looked over his shoulder at his attacker. Who was in the middle of going for a kick to his back, much similar to the one he tried to land on her ally less than 10 seconds ago. Almost as if he planned on her going for a sneak attack this whole time.
If that silhouette had facial features, they'd probably spell out some form of shock, seeing as the thing hesitated on its kick upon seeing the intruder's smiling face. A trickle of red liquid running down his lip from the injury he just got.
"Weren't you going to kick me?" He asked, almost taunting, the blood on the rapier no longer moving, staying on the thing like an adhesive. While the blood that was already on the floor shifted and pooled under both his feet and his enemy's.
'When I grabbed this thing earlier, I allowed my fingers to get cut so I can check to see if it had any negative statuses attached. There weren't any that I could find. Meaning that sword ain't killing me, at least not by itself anyway. A pity, I was starting to enjoy myself.'
Seemingly, the visage of the feminine form shook her head, before redoubling her efforts to end this intruder. She'd replant her feet before letting go of the offending weapon and going for a spartan kick, aimed right for the pommel to drive it in further.
The new god watched as it came, doing nothing to stop the kick from landing true. Instead, he allowed the attack to land. 'The thing about magic is that it isn't always about fancy illusions or cheap tricks...' Waiting until the offending limb made contact to enact his plan.
To the doll, her kick worked well, too well. Sending the sword not only deeper into the man's chest, but all the way through his chest, with her foot following that path too, Causing said appendage to end up stuck instead.
"Sometimes it's just a littlemisdirection!"
The ALU proclaimed the second half of his inner ramble as he snatched the weapon before it even crossed half an inch out of his chest. The sword reverse gripped, he went in for a stab at his adversary's temple, landing true due to not giving the woman time to even realize her foot was stuck, far less react. All in one smooth motion.
With that, the final fighter was down for the count, leaving Gynesis alone with his thoughts and actions. As well as two polearms for self defence. One of them he then used as a back scratcher.
"The hell was all that shit..." The new god sighed, scanning the battlefield that was the yard he ended up wandering in to.
Looking for any possible back up that may arrive, the male protagonist spotted the four corpses he'd left behind instead. All in pieces, sprawled about like air strike victims. A few accompanied by small craters littered about where the dolls had fallen and gotten back up.
The only one that remained in one piece was the lobotomy patient.
"That can't be all, right?" Asked the additional deity, shrugging and receiving no answer. "How quaint"
Clicking his tongue, Gynesis saw no reason to remain where he stood. Prompting the novice god to turn on his heel. Right into a brick wall. Forehead first, smacking right into the structure hard enough to crack it. That bitch hurt, but not enough for the wall-hugger to acknowledge.
"Oh, right, the massive complex..." As if he'd completely forgotten about the thing, Gynesis shook his head and took a few steps back to try regaining his unlost bearings. "I hope there's a way out in there somewhere."
Like previously described, the place was absolutely massive. By the exorcist's estimates, at least several kilometers in both both height and width. And that was based off of the barely visible fraction of the estate he was outside the walls of.
'Impressive, I can't wait to see what that has in store for me, not gonna lie... Okay I've said that too many times this chapter not gonna lie... Are you shitting me?.' Having enough of marvelling at the beast of a property, John's prodégé began heading to the gates he'd spotted earlier.
Dragging the halberd on the floor and resting the spear on his shoulder, his smile from earlier and the hole in his chest still very much there. Gynesis looked like he was on a casual stroll in the moonlight and not in some foreign and clearly hostile dimension. A casual stroll with a grievous injury, but a stroll nonetheless.
Even if the wound isn't bleeding.
"Now that I have time to think, didn't I have that Talisman of banishment? If only I'd just slapped that thing on her..." Gynesis mused aloud, finding the gate without issue, stepping up to it and tapping the gate leaf with the spear tip. "Stone..."
The gateway was a gray arch, with the gate itself split down the middle with no latches or other grips to open the thing. Standing at over nine feet tall, the exorcist guessed that both halves put together would weigh at least two tonnes.
"Compared to Valori's favorite form, these things should be feathers..." He mused aloud, pressing his hands against the two doors and pushing with a half hearted shove.
Instantly, one thing struck the man: These things haven't been touched in years. For one, they were dusty to the point of feeling more like two massive pillars of chalk than gates. For another, they were barely budging. Going at borderline one inch per second.
'Damn, these hinges need some freaking WD40... And a goddess-damned power washing too.' He grumbled internally, adding some more effort. About 40% if he were to put it into numbers. The sound of the doors moving quickly became rather annoying. Thanks to them mirroring a massive fork scratching a giant plate right under his feet. Coupled with how painfully slow they inched.
That didn't stop the ALU, however. Determined to see what was on the other side of the gateway, he pressed onward. And it didn't take too long for him to get the doorway open enough to get a sneak peak.
By now he had the gates wide enough to fit his hand, as well as peer into the place. As to what that movie trailer provided, it was what looked like a garden of sort. Complete with flowers, grass, fountains, and even sculptures of men and women in different poses.
It looked beautiful. Stunning even. With one little quirk about it all. The whole thing was made of ice. That or covered in a thick layer of the frigid substance. And not just the decorations either. But the grass as well. Even the very floor was either made of or coated in the frosty material. Catching the male's attention and derailing his train of thought, replacing it with itself.
'Weird...' He pondered, not noticing the fact that the "sculptures" of those people looked a lot like they were deliberately posed in positions of pushing heavy objects. Nor did he catch onto all around his body slowly shifting to a blueish hue. An event that was happening since he made contact with thee doors.
'For a place of ice, it doesn't feel very cold...' Gynesis huffed internally as he continued pushing, almost prying to gate wide enough to push his body through.
But when he did accomplish his goal- His body didn't stop moving. It kept going until the gate was fully open, revealing the vast and expansive garden in all it's glory. Which doubled as an icy wonderland.
The place truly was an awe inspiring wonder of the world. Too bad the new god didn't get to see it. As his soul had been ejected from his body far before the doors were fully opened. Around the time he was halfway there, hypothermia had slowly crept up the ALU enough to revoke his free trial of life, like a fast acting acting neurotoxin. Somehow letting his body finish its attempt at the gateway before every muscle locked up like a car's brakes in a flood's waters.
His body now completely blue, Gynesis's expired form stood there at the front door. Frozen in place due to being turned completely into ice. And from the looks of things, completely painlessly at that. So much so he didn't even notice his folly until he had found himself standing in an entirely different dimension yet again.
One utterly void of anything. There was no sound nor color. No floor nor ceiling was present within this new realm. Only the god himself and his thoughts. A sensory deprivation tank far beyond anything any man has ever conceived as an idea, far less experienced.
Arms still out as if pushing against objects that were no longer there, Gynesis paused everything, mirroring his original body without even knowing. His brain overloaded with the new information- or lack thereof- now being presented to him so much he had to go through a soft reset just to handle it.
And even that wasn't enough. Unsure of anything, the man tried looking around. Had he been asked if he was turning his head at that moment, he wouldn't have given a coherent answer. Breathing felt wrong, blinking felt incorrect. '...' The ALU was at a loss of both words and actions. For him, describing the sensation into words in that moment would be in the same vain as trying to explain astrophysics to an amoeba.
"Where am I?" He tried asking himself, hearing nothing escaping his mouth, feeling nothing exit his lungs. "What's going on now?" He added, this time with a lot more sarcasm accompanied by an attempt at an eyeroll. With his brain back in functioning order, or at least what felt like functioning order to him, the exorcist closed his eyes and began meditation.After all, there was quite literally NOTHING else he could do.
So why not do a bit of self reflection and introspection to find out where you went wrong in life? "This was her doing again, wasn't it?" He spitballed to himself, speaking aloud even if it didn't accomplish anything. "After all, she put me in the first dimension, so why not this one too?"
Well scratch that on the whole introspection part then... "It has to be Vinaya's doing... But there's no point in festering now though. It's not like I can do anything about that even if I were to confront that monster right this second.." He continued, his mind filing through his brain's memories as he mouthed off aloud, commiting the meditation's equivalent of talking in his sleep. Even if that kinda goes against the whole point of "not moving a muscle and achieving complete concentration".
Yet again, showcasing arguably cognitive dissonance between what he was doing and what he was thinking. The new god began looking back on his life. Specifically his early days of childhood.
Instantly, those memories manifested around the exorcist, forming an old building around him as a result. reintroducing the concept of visual stimuli to the confused close-eyed deity. Albeit silently. On top of adding his sense of touch to the equation, telling him he was sitting on a wooden floor, a dusty wooden floor.
"WHAT?!" Opening his eyes to the sudden realization that he can feel again, Gynesis rose to his feet on instinct, baring witness to a very familiar floor and ceiling with a racing heart and panicked stare. Stumbling just a bit like he was waking up from a day-long sleep, or a chronic drunk 6 bottles in. Luckily, it didn't take the man very long to realize where he was. Or where it looked like he was.
"Oh..." He mused, leaning onto the wall he'd barely avoided falling onto just a second ago. Trailing off as he tried to figure out how he should feel. "Am I..?"
Those hardwood floors and their mysterious stains, the scent of cleaning products and abandonment, the leaky ceiling that had water stains forming intricate patterns. It all felt... nostalgic. Warm. Welcoming even. For the ALU, this was where he'd spent most of his younger years, alongside many unfortunate like himself.
"Home?" More confused than anything, the man halfheartedly started walking through the building like a zombie. Reliving his many memories he'd made here. His brain going as far as playing much of the music he'd loved listening to, much to his headmistress's headache. Most of those tracks were quite explicit for a 10 year old after all.
"Aunt always was one for trying to ensure everyone found a home..." Gynesis pondered aloud, roaming the empty and silent corridors he once called his home.
Figuratively and literally going down memory lane as he stepped down the halls of his childhood, many faces flashed through the exorcist's mind, friends made and relationships lost. All now meaningless in the vast expanse of... here.
He has only amassed one regret. That regret being him not using the charm of evil banishment on the Lioness Sin. 'That seal was hand crafted by Zatanna to use the evil energies of those it was planted on in order to banish them to a realm their evilness matches. In that VPU's case I can bet it's the furthest pits of hell itself. Then again, putting her there might just be like arresting a convicted murderer by putting a loaded gun in their hands. Even so, she would've been out of my hair...' Quickly- Slowly? Eventually, that singular regret became all the ALU could think about. The thought of that major fuck up refusing to leave his mind alone for even a second.I think.Pestering the man's psyche like a clingy ex after a bad break up. Any time he tried changing the subject, he'd end up right back there. Reminiscing about his fun times hanging out with any of his close friends? One of his many battles with the occult?
A particularly intense spar with Valori? It didn't matter. They'd all get interrupted by his fated meeting with that well-dressed lioness. 'BLOODY HELL! I GET IT BRAIN!' Was merely one of the many curses flung whenever that blasted feeling returned. Always in full force. It had the man trying anything and everything to get rid of it. Singing, dancing, coming up with epic battles of himself defeating Vinaya with billions of dollars of collateral damage as a result. Mixing the three together. Anything to maximize the amount of ram his brain had to use at once, hoping it would be enough to stop said organ from trolling him with that regret.
After a while, it reached the point where the man simply chose to stop caring about that regret altogother. His logic being "If I can't get rid of it, I'll refuse to focus on it. It's a damned distraction at this point." At least that was what he told himself before making the feeling go away. Well, it was still there, but there in the sense of when someone is speaking, you're listening, and you still didn't hear what they said.