The plan was layered and yet straightforward.

Their goal was not the annihilation of the Azure Tribe or even the permanent harming of its present members. Neither of those outcomes were desired in the long run. That prison Hailey imagined was far from capable of being in practical use and John doubted anything short of killing Liakan would remove her from this competition.

Therefore, the only thing he wanted was to defeat her in a way that satisfied the Quest. By previous measurements, this meant that Liakan had to be knocked unconscious, be incapacitated, or surrender. John wouldn’t want to test Gaia’s patience when a Mythical Ichor was on the line, so he was just going to assume a surrender had to be earnest rather than said for the cheese of it. He was also going to assume that he could substitute combat for something else, as long as it was something that took a similar amount of effort.

For Liakan, combat would have to do. Getting her isolated was therefore the primary target of the plan, preferably for a time long enough that the fight could finish.

Step 1 of the plan was to send out Momo. The sassy support needed little convincing. Accompanied by a cohort of protectors and companions in the form of Nahua, Hailey, Scarlett, the AM, and Ehtra, they would be studying the obelisks found all around. The act of doing so was far from unusual. Even that she went out past midnight was in character.

Indeed, it was so usual, so predictable, that the Azure Tribe had a countermeasure in mind. It was Karia who was sent out to stalk Momo and her companions. At best, she must have hoped to make off with the core of the sassy support. At worst, she would be learning a few secrets by listening to them chatter.

That put Karia out of the reach of the base.

Step 2 was to get Singed removed from the situation. Obviously, the battle junkie could be goaded, but Liakan would not let go of him easily while Karia was out. The best that could be done was to fight near the energy shield and have Singed respond to an attack of the elementals and Aclysia. It was the kind of force they could not ignore.

At that point, Liakan would have to identify that something was going on. John would not have sent this kind of force if he did not want something done. The demigoddess would begin to scan for anything that was in and around the forest that John would have wanted her distracted from.

Step 3 was to await that response. Liakan couldn’t pull Singed back, but she could try to get Karia. If she did not do so, which she did not, then her only three options were to do nothing, to send out her soldiers, or to head out herself. In her situation, John himself would have gone out personally. After all, the soldiers could be individually taken out, while Liakan herself was sturdy, fast, and too important to kill.

Into that decision also played the headcount. With everyone else that was on the field, the members of John’s harem that were not accounted for were Nia and Rave. Obviously, he himself would not take the field. It wasn’t his style under normal circumstances and the Azure Tribe knew, through Singed, that Particle Skin had been Flayed off.

Step 4 was then to carefully maximize the distance between the three of them. Then, Momo and her group would attack Karia, Aclysia and her group would double down on their fight with Singed, and John would casually appear in front of Liakan, Rave behind him.

“Which is how we got here,” John told the arcane dragoness.

“You love the villain monologue thing,” Liakan answered drily and tilted her head. The pair of eyes on her otherwise smooth face stared curiously. “Do you have the time for that?”

“I assume you have means of long range communications, but I heavily doubt they are as reliable as mine.” John tapped the side of his head. “Until we start fighting, I doubt they’ll be able to find you.”

“Is that a fight you should take?” Liakan presented another question. The forceful relaxation of her tone did not match the way in which she clutched her spear. It was two against one and even if John was weakened, the one with him was his first fiancée.

Rave could hardly contain herself, swaying on the spot like a child that had spotted a cotton candy store. Liakan was strong, incredibly strong. This wouldn’t be easy. The distant sky was a shade of purple, growing more light with each second.

“I suppose your excitement answers that question,” Liakan remarked dryly. “Then what is the goal of this fight? Have you decided to kill me?”

“Intimidation, measurement, and I got a Quest to beat,” John revealed. “Plus, my Hailey wants a field test.”

The Gamer reached into his inventory and pulled out a device that embodied the word ‘prototype’. Every segment of it was bolted and glued together, no aesthetics in mind. Cables connected surfaces covered in glyphs. In dimensions, the inelegant thing resembled a shoebox. It made the golden rose of metal petals around a ruby gem more radiant in its appearance. The seven-spoked wheel it hovered on top of was embedded into the top of the box.

Liakan took one look at the Rose of Artifice and launched a series of arcane strikes. John teleported to the side, a reaction Liakan had taken into her calculation and that Rave knew he would take. The projectile bound for his new location broke on Rave’s reinforced arm. Gold seeped into her hair, turning her blonde. John pushed the button on the device.

The petals of the Rose of Artifice lit up. Outlines first, then the runes, sending pulses of energy outwards. It was a golden, distorting discharge, spreading outwards from the item in separated but closely adjacent waves. A rose sprouting from a rose, it appeared, and that new rose bloomed until it surrounded them in a vast dome.

Liakan slowly lowered her arms. The effect had washed over her harmlessly. “What did you do?” the demigoddess asked, more interested than anything. The light of the dome was dimming down until it was a faintly visible wall of swirling iridescence. It resembled the surface of a soap bubble.

“In practice, I have no idea,” the Gamer answered and put the box away. The crystal at the heart of the Rose of Artifice had been reduced to a red-tinged white. A recharge was in order later. “What Hailey puts together never makes sense to me. In theory…” He spread out his arms. “Welcome to our personal thunderdome. No one gets in, no one gets out.”

“A blatant lie,” Liakan stated. “I know when I am inside an Illusion Barrier. That Rose is ridiculous.”

“Only I get one, so it is fair,” John retorted.

“Urgh,” Rave stomped her foot. “No more TTS references! Let’s fight.”

“This is an isolated space?” Liakan asked.

By all estimations it should have been. The shoebox had been put together by Hailey and Scarlett, supported by theories developed by Lee and Lorelei, in order to reinforce one of the absurd number of things the Rose of Artifice could do. In layman’s terms, it opened an Illusion Barrier in an Illusion Barrier. A first step towards that prison realm John would have liked to have.

This current iteration was unfit for the purpose in every way. Not only was the person using the Rose stuck in the same Illusion Barrier, it was just that: an Illusion Barrier. Had it not been for John’s levels in the Fateweaver Class, Liakan could have just left.

Important to Liakan’s question, this was its own copy of the environment they had just stood in. John nodded, knowing what would come next. If they were no longer on her prospective ally’s lawn, then, well…

Liakan raised up her halberd, balancing the weapon on her thumbs. “Let my arcane dominion flow freely…” she spoke slowly, prepared to dodge any attempt by the duo to interrupt her, “…let me see it all…” the form of the coral-horned humanoid crackled and twitched, “…and let fog come.”

Liakan burst with energy uncontained.

The first barrage of attacks she had unleashed was nothing compared to the explosion that accompanied the release of her true form. There was no spell involved, just sparks of raw arcane power that spread out in a storm of chaos. Like firework, the fragments of colour were sent flying everywhere.

John and Rave glanced at each other, smiled, nodded, then grabbed each other by the forearm. A terrible idea for basically everyone about to experience a bullet hell in real life. John and Rave were not everyone, they were only themselves.

Rave yanked John out of the way of the first explosion, twirled out of the way of the next, and put her fiancé down just in time for him to blast another projectile with neutralizing counterforce. Twice more he did so, then he put his Companion Cube between him and a particularly large attack. The silver wall cracked, but took the force of the attack with it.

Being thrown was rarely one of John’s favourite activities. When thrown out of a blast zone, he could just barely accept it. One moment he stood there, the next his significant other had lobbed him through a gap in the carpet bombing. She leapt right after him. She made a tiny gesture with her chin. More communication than he needed.

The Companion Cube was a tiny fragment of what it could be after tanking a hit for him, but Rave only needed a hovering something to grasp and pull them up by. Using a material piece of arcane magic as steps on a ladder was a kind of flight that was rather unusual, if it could even be qualified as such.

All of the sparks of arcane that had originally been launched upwards now turned down. Had they stayed on ground level, they would have had to deal with the overlap between them and the still spraying explosions. This way, they could manoeuvre through the gaps in the sky.

By the time it stopped, the Companion Cube had regenerated enough to stand on. A platform that hovered far above the ground. “We don’t fly like this because it’s simultaneously too slow to compete with attacks on our level and because the different levels of drag between the platform and your head would make it very uncomfortable.”

“Get out of my head, tiger,” Rave purred.

“But it’s so pink and fluffy in there.”

Fog gathered around them. Arcane purple and blue, the swirling cloud crackled with latent energy. It was thick and only became more so. The two of them peered over the edge of their platform, locking eyes with Liakan Unleashed.

A discordant array of wings without uniform size streamed from the base of her tail to the end of her spine, growing and shrinking as they went. Much of her shape had changed from ethereal blue to purple and black.

Still, the daughter of chaos struck a gangly silhouette. It was only emphasized by her taller, less human form. She was a bipedal dragon, her double-jointed legs nearly twice as long as her serpentine torso. A slender neck ended in a coral-crowned, draconic head. She was sand and metal plates, covered in scales of black and purple mana. Her maw was a monstrous thing with two gashes, splitting it into four.

John had seen the lightning-wreathed form before. He could not help but notice the second pair of ribs that sat on top and between the ones that were supposed to be there. Orkos’ contribution to elevating his people to a position of power and relevance.

‘A descendant of Tiamat, once in flesh,’ John thought. ‘Now metal like the rest of her sane daughters.’

Poetic waxing was consumed like the form of the halberd-wielding dragoness. Fog covered everything. The Companion Cube collapsed down to its regular form. Rave and John dropped, still holding hands. A black crystal of arcane energy flew past overhead. Shardbound, one of John’s old Skills. Liakan made considerably better use of it.

John tugged on Rave’s arm and she kicked the air. The Martial Art launched them another way on quick notice. A torrent of arcane energy erupted from the ground a moment later, incinerating what level of the forest had survived the bombardment in the sector of the Illusion Barrier.

At least John had to assume so. The veil of fog reduced visibility to a few metres. He was simulating what he knew of Liakan’s manoeuvres in his head. The data was inconclusive, prone to failure on the micro level. For that, he had a woman driven by instinct by his side.

John spotted Liakan a split second before the four-way jaws bit at them. Rave already had a hand raised. A devastating blast of light blinded Liakan. It was enough to make her miss. For a moment, John got to see the dragon, perched on crackling plasma as if the torrent or arcane energy it came from was a mighty tree and she a bird utilizing its branches.

Another Martial Art prevented them from hitting the ground too hard. They let go of each other’s arms, exchanged one more smile, then Rave bolted in one direction and he teleported in the other. The impact of another arcane projectile shook the earth.

John ran. On his own, he moved through the fog. The ground was a burned, upheaved, unpredictable landscape of shattered obelisks, toppled trees, and crystals that formed and grew from the amount of arcane exhaust in the air. Every breath tingled in his lungs. The crackling of energy in the air dealt constant damage. It was negligible, yet still present.

A halberd cut through the fog. It was the spike that slammed into John’s stomach. Twice in the same day, he was skewered. Liakan whirled him around, then slammed him into the ground, pinning him. “It does not fit you to be impulsive,” the dragon told him. Her head was a disembodied thing, her neck disappearing into the mist. “I do not wish to kill you. The fallout would be terrible.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll give up before my HP bar depletes,” John told her. “Just give me everything you got.”

Liakan did not take the bait. She ripped her halberd out of his chest and retreated just in time to escape a laser of a kick slamming into her face from the side. How Rave knew where Liakan was, John had no idea, but his first fiancée would always know where he was. A woman’s intuition could be a scary thing.

That she had not taken the bait hardly mattered. John had pulled the ripcord on a whole host of measures. Half his mana was depleted, but what did it matter? Not having Particle Skin encouraged a vastly more offensive approach.

Several Unstable Arcana exploded simultaneously in the vicinity. Mana Chains followed, confirming a few hits on the obscured enemy. John spawned more of the exploding spheres in that area. Half second explosion intervals kept Liakan busy, blocking the chains that followed. Damage she could take, but the immobilization she would not suffer.

It kept her distracted from the star that fell from above.

Skyfall slammed into the battlefield. The arcane ordnance ripped the fog apart, replaced the dense blue and purple with a thin veil of silver, but failed to achieve its secondary objective. Revealed, Liakan stood underneath a barrier erected by her raised hand. The devastation had left her untouched. A flex of an arm broke the one Mana Chain that had connected.

Rave immediately jumped into the gap. The feline Lightbearer landed one good punch, then the shaft of the halberd slammed into her side. Liakan opened her maw wide, revealing a gathering mass of purple and black energy. The arcane dragon breath was unleashed as a laser, disintegrating and slicing the ground where it travelled.

Magus Step brought him above Liakan’s head. He pulled Inkaryl to his position. The weapon was too heavy for him to wield and dropped like an anchor. Liakan twisted out of the way. Rave jumped back in. Backstepping took Liakan out of the kick’s path. An Unstable Arcana exploded. Silver energy broke on particle scales. A shardbound projectile broke the Mana Chain before it could connect. Rave landed, raised her knee, foot dangling by the ankle, then brought it down in one swift stomp.

The Seismic Step broke the ground and created another gust that kept the fog at bay. The sudden breaking of the ground made even Liakan topple forwards. John landed on the ground. He and his fiancée swung at the unbalanced arcane elemental. Liakan reared back. Her tail caught a Mana Chain, breaking it after it had dug into her surface.

Rave advanced faster than the opponent could retreat. Liakan concentrated her defensive efforts on the attack she had to take. Scales spawned and thickened on the segment of her shoulder. John went practically ignored.

No one expected the Remnant Strike.

Punch boosted by all the mana expenditures of the past minute, the Gamer hit Liakan’s leg. Arcane energy put enough force into it to blow the limb sideways. The reward was doubled by the Arcane Rejuvenation that activated in the same instant. Every arcane attack that had landed on Liakan, even if it was a deflected blow, reimbursed John with 0,5% of his maximum MP.

Mana back to 70% and Liakan hissing in genuine pain, John would have kept going, had the ground below them not begun to glow. It was a warning sign, a short-lived one. Moving back rapidly, he and Rave managed to get past the danger zone of the second arcane torrent that ripped upwards.

‘It really does look like a tree,’ John thought, gazing up at the flowing trunk of arcane might and the branches of purple plasma.

Liakan appeared in front of them.

The daughter of chaos slammed the point of her halberd through Rave’s shoulder. Teleportation was a new spell in Liakan’s repertoire. Where the feline Lightbearer failed to react, John stood no chance either. A hand seized him by the midsection.

The couple was slammed against a wall of dirt, created by one or all of the several explosions that had wrecked the landscape so far. “Let’s end this foolishness,” Liakan hissed. The fog gradually crept back towards them accelerated by the constant arcane exhaust from the two torrents of arcane might. “You two cannot beat me.”

“Hate it that she’s right, tiger,” Rave grunted, blood oozing out from the gap between bodysuit and halberd. “The power couple buff ain’t enough to sort this out.”

“Shame,” John sighed. “Guess we’ll have to add a stack then.”

Aclysia appeared, surrounded by glacial winds.