There was fantastic news for John when Jack arrived at the blacksmith’s workshop. All weapons were finished, displayed for John to see, each shimmering dangerously in the sunlight.

The dragon claw had changed the least. Still stretching from elbow to the fingertips, it was an assortment of unequally sized facets, spreading like obsidian scales over the skin, and ended in dangerously curved claws. Two differences stood out, however. The constant, red flickering around it, an aura of thin fire, and the back of the hand being covered with thin silver and black lines, Mithril and Oblivium respectively. They formed a pattern that reminded John of the eye of a snake, a gap like a slit pupil surrounded by lines like the fibres of a pupil.

As the appearance section said, this weapon also looked largely the same. Very largely. That being a play on how enormous the weapon still was. Two-metres tall, as broad as five hands placed next to each other, with only a third of that dedicated to the actual edge, and as thick as the span between thumb and extended index finger. A brutal weapon, made for superhuman strength and solely to cleave things apart.

The katana that was Eclys had gained a blue hue, likely due to the Poseidury that was now part of it. It had gotten a tad longer, but remained as graceful and deadly a weapon as ever.

This one was quite a bit more changed. The once quite simple, flat piece of sharpened metal was now covered in intricate lines. It had a proper grip now, clearly designated for just one hand, but no guard still. The blade was so long, it blurred that line between dagger and short sword. It was also now sharpened on both sides.

Last was the truly new weapon. An ivory shaft led into a spear tip of a rather interesting design. It had a diamond shape, but the central part was hollow and the penetrating pointy end curved where everything else was symmetrical and the corners jagged. The inner rim was also decorated with those blue and black lines.

It looked perfect for Beatrice, on the colour scheme alone. The balance between fluidity in the design and symmetric jaggedness was like a physical mirror of her personality. John had no idea what half of the Attributes on it or the other weapons meant. Sadly, he didn’t really have the opportunity to check right now either.

This was due to two reasons. For one, he had a battle to fight. His real body was still on the water, but things were going on everywhere and he really couldn’t justify reading text and analysing all the possible uses of everything for the next ten to twenty minutes. That would have to wait until later. This was, however, the lesser of the two reasons.

The primary one was that he did not currently hold of any of these items.

“Today must be my double lucky day!” exclaimed the woman that had them. She was a tall one, a giant by most descriptions, the kind of build you only see in video games or Guinness World Records books. Somewhere above two metres, broader than John, with arms that would have made Arnold Schwarzenegger (in his best day) get green with envy.

That she was, indeed, a woman was only distantly recognizable from her face and hair, a very square looking jaw, framed by very short, brown hair, but her large breasts were enough of a show. She was someone’s wet dream, muscular and looking like she could make ‘death by snu-snu’ a reality – but definitely not John’s.

‘I am so glad that Metra’s form was shaped by my desires and not her own, because that is probably what she would have looked like,’ the Gamer thought in an effort to calm himself. The items had jacked up her Stats by absurd percentages. 175% for Strength and Agility and 500% for Endurance. The 250% on Intelligence wasn’t going to be too impactful, but John’s analytic mind still noted it down.

Helen was holding all five of his new weapons. A task normal human biology should have deemed impossible. In addition to the two massive arms growing out of her leather-armour clad torso, a pair of spectral blue limbs was attached to her shoulders. Her lower right arm was surrounded by Purgatory, aside from that she was holding a weapon in each hand. The two heaviest ones, Tieamarath and Perfect in the lower arms, Eclys and Salver in the upper.

John scanned the remaining surroundings. The Mithril furnace had been shattered, albeit that looked like a work too meticulous to have happened during a fight. A few corpses lay around the place, security that he had sent here. Many of them simply had their throats crushed, a few had what seemed like stab wounds. John’s eyes darted back to the weapons that were rightfully his. All of them were clean.

She must have arrived with at least some weapons of her own, but discarded it when she found these better ones. Which could prove important. Beatrice still had the Deathmetal Spear, but Aclysia had nothing. For just one day, he had not made it a priority to give her a replacement. Not between all of the festivities and interesting other things to do. An oversight on his part.

‘Aclysia, we’ll distract her for a little while longer, you go inside the house and see if you can grab anything you can fight with,’ John instructed. ‘Also see if Marathyu is around.’ The maid nodded and slowly began to move, something that Helene followed with a watchful eye.

The Gamer, under other circumstances, would have jumped straight at her. His festival getting ruined was one thing, the loss of life among his subordinates a severely higher other. However, her Stats had her both quicker than Beatrice and stronger than Aclysia, he needed to play this tactically.

Hiding his anger behind a dry smile, the Gamer spoke up, “You wouldn’t be friendly enough to give those back if I just ask nicely?”

Helen did genuinely laugh at that, which annoyed John even more. “Hell no, boy,” she shouted, her lightly wrinkly face contorted into a toothy grin. “I just went to the place with the most security, thinking I would have a fun time! Didn’t expect you actually commissioned FIVE things from that insane blacksmith!”

Aclysia had made her way to the house, only for the door to be pulled away from her as it was opened from the inside. Scar covered, like always, Marathyu stepped out, hands bleeding, some fingers crushed into a state where the white bones had penetrated the skin from the inside. “YOU CAN’T WIELD THEM!” the blacksmith screamed, furiously gesturing. “YOU ARE THE WRONG ONE! YOU MISHANDLE THEM! TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF THEM, THEY WEREN’T MADE FOR YOU!”

“Don’t make me come over and crush your legs too, oldie,” Helene mocked, while Aclysia forced Marathyu to sit down. “Anyway, finding these is a REALLY nice thing, but finding you…,” the tip of Eclys pointed at John. His own anger was only amplified by Aclysia, seething that her weapon was threatening her master now, be it only a fake body. “…yeah, you’re the real prize here.” The hand holding Salver reached to her right ear, pressing some sort of communication device. “Yeah, guys, I got eyes on him.”

‘I have found her discarded weapons. Only one is a sword.’ He was sent mental images of blood covered weapons, two axes, some sort of thorn on a handle, and aforementioned sword. It wasn’t much to talk about, more white and silver, a low-parts Mithril alloy, but a sword regardless. This still meant that Cutting Flurry wasn’t going to be usable for this fight since that required three swords total.

“Huh? Yeah, of course I am sure, hard to mistake the guy for someone else, he looks like Prince Charming went through hell but still made it in time for his make-up appointment!” Helene communicated with whoever was on the other side of the network. “The FUCK do you mean you can also see him?!”

‘NOW!’ John commanded and Beatrice stormed forwards. The Arc Lance flew by her, an elongated, sharp mass of mana, half crystalized, half raw, crackling energy. Although it failed in John’s secondary aim, to blast off the left half of Helene’s face, the primary objective was fulfilled. To dodge, Helene twisted her body – and did so just a tad too enthusiastically. The Arc Lance ripped off her ear and the communication device with it.

That the enemy had confirmation that he was at two places at once was useful for him. However, he couldn’t allow them to communicate that one of them had a visible aura and the other didn’t. It was all about minimizing the chance for them to get to the right conclusions.

“FUCK YOU!” Helene screamed and reared around, hammering in Beatrice’s direction with all four weapons. Greeted by such a wall of arms (John more than got where Helene got her title now), the passive maid stopped. Only a step back aided by Unsteady Limb allowed her to dodge, even then, only at a hair’s width.

Helene was faster than Beatrice and stronger than Aclysia, this was already established. What gave John hope they could still win was based on three factors. Numerical advantage, Skills and the enemy’s inexperience with her newfound power. He had seen it before, with Eliza, the inability to accurately gauge just how much force a move would have. If they could keep her off-balance, neither her speed nor power would matter.

‘Why do you have to have the perfectly annoying ability in this situation?’ John mentally complained as Helene whirled all her weapons in Beatrice’s direction. Once more, the passive maid dodged backwards, with more space between them this time. This strike she had anticipated.

“Fuck, that bleeds a lot,” Helene growled, reaching to her ripped off ear. “You know what, fuck you, I am just taking your shit and…” the woman reached up with one hand, evidently trying to leave the barrier. One moment, John felt nervous, then Helene’s face turned red with what little more anger could possibly boil up inside her.

Everything was going according to schedule; the barrier was already in lockdown. As long as Magoi could keep his concentration (about an hour, he had assured, for an Illusion Barrier of this size) and the IBMA was active, nobody could leave. Not unless the High Fateweaver allowed it.

“…FINE!” Helene spat out, turned away from Beatrice and came storming towards John. He could feel the vibrations of her trampling long before she reached him. “If I can’t go, then I will just murder you on my own! Who even needs reinforcements?!” A white ring barely touched the charging warrior’s feet, and with a scream of wrath, she changed course. The same Skill that had hit her told her that bad things would happen if she didn’t comply to this urge to attack another target.

Aclysia stood her ground. Her Devotion spent on Master’s Shield, she could only use generators to counteract the enemies attacks. The thrust of Perfect, she met with a Servant Strike, deflecting the shaft to the side, before the tip could reach her. With True Block, she attempted to knock aside the arm wielding Tiemarath, another successful thing. That the weapons she was wielding were so differently weighted didn’t help Helene’s balance issues.

Still, when over 200 kilos of muscle, woman and metal charged at anyone, even deflected blows had an impact. Simply running Aclysia over, they both went to the ground. Pinned under all that weight and power, the weaponized maid was stabbed in the face – once with Salver and Eclys each. It hurt, John could feel it, it blinded Aclysia, but as a being without a brain, it was far from lethal.

The artificial guardian reached for the dagger in her face and tried to keep it where it was. Distracted by this, Helene didn’t notice Beatrice swiftly approaching until the passive maid was already in her thrusting motion. The Wall of Arms twisted around, Master’s Shield didn’t prevent someone from blocking or counterattacking. The latter was out of the question, and even the former was a failed effort. Beatrice’s spear, despite being as straight as a weapon could be, seemed to weave between the blocking blade’s, found a hole, and sunk into Helene’s armour. The Deathmetal Spear cut through the leather, cut through skin, but only managed to hit a rib.

Helene forced Beatrice back and then jumped off Aclysia, pulling Salver from the weaponized maid’s grasp, when she was threatened to be stabbed in her vulnerable side. Quickly getting on her feet as well, Aclysia’s head turned from a destroyed mess into the beautiful face John was used to, with a sharp, dangerous look in her eyes.

“Taking Master’s gifts from me is unforgivable,” the weaponized maid stated, every word delivered with murderous intent. “I hope rot eats you alive, dishonourable deviant.”

“Honour is no fun. And what honour is in blasting my ear off anyway?!” Helene returned. Likely thanks to her Endurance, that wound on the ear was bleeding a lot less now. The cut at her back was shallow. Neither wound would hinder her, or cause her to slow anytime soon. All parties stared at each other, unwilling to make the next move carelessly, until the white light under Helene’s feet faded. “You can keep your threats, while I go and take your ‘master’s’ head!”

With that announcement Helene turned to storm at John again. Master’s Shield had run out, nothing was stopping her from going after John again. Of course, the Gamer had expected this. Rather than just watch, he had moved further and further back towards the water. Now that the Wall of Arms was bulldozing his way again, he did nothing. Nothing until she was so close that he couldn’t take any more risks.

There was one giant advantage that controlling Jack had over his proper body. One that John used to make a slightly comedic escape. Standing there, arms crossed, wide-legged, and smirking tauntingly, he shot up into the air. The Mandala Sphere could fly, and thus, so could Jack. Helene tried to leap, to still hit him, but he just went diagonally and she flew by him, flying ten metres forwards until she landed in the water.

It was for this one moment, that John regretted having filtered the Hudson. Although a petty satisfaction, having her submerged in the murky green soup that was the New York Bay could have been a small bit of payback.

Aclysia and Beatrice hurried over, while Jack remained in the air. He wouldn’t be a help in the physical battle anyway, his job was to coordinate and throw a spell where he saw an opening. What this little trick of his did was force Helene to fight on the softer ground of the shore, where her weight would be a disadvantage, for as long as the maids could keep her from pushing back inland.

Helene effectively walked on the floor of the sea. At her height, she could stand and breathe after only a few steps. The trio could see her approaching easily, thanks to the clearness of the river. “Maybe more threats after all,” the Wall of Arms growled as she approached slowly. This fight was far from over, neither side had taken real damage yet.