Gamer Girl Isekai: Book 2- Chapter 25- Masquerade (Patreon)

It wasn’t like fighting Groygar, not at all. And that was about the extent of Aexilica’s relief. She danced back from the giant creature as he swung for her, at first. Then her dances turned into flight, then desperate scrambling as her posture disintegrated against his speed and ferocity. Aexilica succeeded, after a moment or two, in breaking the man’s weapon. Her enchanted sword started by chipping the steel of his axehead, then split it open entirely.

He didn’t miss a beat, just discarded the mangled metal and sprouted claws—no, talons—from his fingertips to continue the assault. If anything, it was more intense than with a weapon. His raking slashes came from every direction, it seemed, at once. And Aexilica was hard-pressed even reacting to one blow before another had fallen. She felt talon tips carve through her shoulder, biting shallowly but still drawing a tear of blood to run down the arm. Her wounds hurt, her fatigue mounted. She was slowing down, and her enemy, it seemed, speeding up.

Vari, in the end, was who saved her. Maybe there was a lesson there about Emma and Aexilica’s mercy, good turns and fate rewarding the righteous. There was certainly a much clearer lesson about the merits of fighting two-on-one when the enemy was stronger, in any case. 

An offensive fighter by any measure, the Sculd took to the front of their two-person battleline and pressed the monster before them with his usual savagery. Aexilica, ever better at not being killed than she was at killing, opted to take a supportive role and give herself whatever recovery time she could with the lessened exertion. 

Not as lessened as she might have hoped, of course. That would have been too convenient. With both hands covered in those damned talons, the giant lunged for Vari what felt like a dozen times each second. Aexilica halted as many of his attacks as she could. Always, one or two slipped by. Vari was taking cuts. Shallow ones, awkward ones, but Aexilica knew they would bring him down eventually. 

They’d bring their enemy down, too, of course. Vari’s unrelenting aggression had the critical advantage of doling out a great deal of hits, and only most of them could be evaded even by a foe as swift as this. That their enemy also seemed to be a berserker helped quite a lot. 

Except he healed, fast. Impossibly fast. Faster than Aexilica herself a hundred—even a thousand—times over. To watch him fight, with his two hands, was like seeing the claws of a whole wolf pack in motion at once. But to watch him heal was like nothing in all the world. 

It didn’t matter that they were marking him with scratches and skin-splitting welts, because each one closed up just as the next one landed. All of Vari’s and Aexilica’s remained and added up.

An explosion rung out behind Aexilica, dragging her eyes behind her for the briefest moment to fall upon Krummer and Kruger. The former was fighting his way through the remainder of the enemy soldiers, practically blasting the men apart as his magic flew through the room like thrown javelins. The latter was focusing his powers singularly upon one of the leaders, the woman Aexilica had first stumbled onto.

And it was a lot of power to be focused, she had to admit. He had exchanged his weapon for yet a new one, now spitting fire and magic so fast that each shot seemed to blend into the next. It was a struggle even for her enhanced senses to count them.

One she abandoned soon, because her fight was still ongoing. 

Vari’s hammer smacked cleanly into the monster’s face, the finest collection he’d yet managed. With all his strength, and the weapon’s magic, Aexilica knew such a blow would have caved her skull in completely—killed her. If she was lucky, perhaps left her a drooling idiot instead. Against this foe, it merely cracked something. An eyesocket collapsed, slightly, and his brow deformed. But there was no sign of impediment beyond that, and she saw the bones slowly twitching their way back into place even as he defended himself from subsequent strikes.

Bone takes longer for them to heal?

It was not a great advantage, but it was something. 

And it spurred the monster on to ever greater heights. His attack grew, intensifying in pressure as he foresook defence altogether. Vari and Aexilica began stumbling away, barely able to even contest the speed of this foe.

What is happening?!

The sun was setting. They’d taken too long to cross the city, to infiltrate. Kruger had warned their enemies would be weakest by day, and now the creeping night was turning into his strength. Aexilica cried out as a talon nicked her wrist, almost opening the big veins and leaving her to bleed her life away. She saw Vari take a half-dozen more such gashes, knew the end was coming.

Krummer threw himself into helping them, just before it arrived. His power made a wall between Aexilica and her foe, slowed the talons just enough that she parried what ought to have been a death-blow. 

The flow of battle halted, almost. Still losing, still a march to defeat. But a sluggish one. Aexilica growled, a sudden fury upon her as she lunged forwards and felt her sword scrape along one of the giant’s ribs. He seemed surprised by her sudden rage—fair enough, so was she—and backed away from it. Vari’s hammer caught his hip, broke the bone. His leg dragged behind him as he fell back.

All of them pressed in, desperate now to kill the monster before his impossible body could reknit itself. But it happened so fast, and already their strength was abandoning them through exertion and wounds and fear. They had scored his body another dozen times, but only a dozen, when the last of his dislodged bone shrank in from the bulging skin to rejoin its whole. 

The monster’s full strengt returned, and his assault picked up again in earnest.

***

Emma and Isolde were alone, which was good. Isolde was starting to perk up, which was better. And she was taking her clothes off—best of all. The only thing spoiling the effect was that she did it all behind one of those stupid old-fashioned changing screens, like something from a Victorian woman’s bedroom. In fact, everything seemed to be from a Victorian woman’s bedroom. Probably because it was a woman’s bedroom, and the Nocturnal Nation was thoroughly Victorian.

A shirt was flung up to hang over the top of the dressing screen, Emma found herself imagining what was beneath that shirt. She paced, suddenly feeling…Pent up. 

“You know Emma, your powers are unlike any I’ve seen before.” Isolde called out, her voice barely cutting through the fog of Emma’s frustration. 

“Right.” Emma noted. 

X-ray vision was not, of course, included among Emma’s powers. That would have been too convenient. The temptation to use her ring grew by the moment, though Isolde was probably powerful enough that it would’ve had mixed success like it did with Groygar. Oh, and spying on naked women was wrong. That was actually why she wouldn’t do it of course.

“We could use you.” Isolde continued, stockings appearing to fold themselves over the top of her screen now. “A lot. Your powers would go far in our cause, make us…Powerful.”

“What are you getting at?” Emma asked her, rather more eagerly than she’d intended. She certainly liked the sound of this, a permanent place among the hot gothic woman sounded like just her sort of arrangement. 

Isolde revealed herself then, not naked but, perhaps even better, in some black-and-red underwear that left approximately nothing to the imagination.

…”So what do you say?” She asked.

“Huh?” What? What? Emma had lost a minute or two there, not entirely her fault. Isolde’s nipples had been pressing very obviously against the outline of her bra. The woman grinned, stepping closer towards her.

“My eyes are up here.” She chastised.

I know, but they’re not what I’m interested in seeing. Women tended to get angry when Emma said that sort of thing though, so she kept it strategically to herself. 

“Sorry.” Emma lied. “Please continue.”

Isolde just grinned. “You’re awfully cute when you get distracted like that, like a puppy.” 

Emma lost another few minutes, this time as a result of her brain just sort of shorting out and denying access to her higher cognitive functions upon hearing that. Once she’d recovered, she found Isolde was a great deal closer to her than she was before. 

“I think you could become one of the Nocturnae, join our ranks…Become mine forever.”

“Yes.” Emma said, instantly. She’d spoken faster than she thought however. Did she really want this? To spend eternity as the property of some weird, sexual goth woman who lived in a castle?

“Yes!” She repeated.

Isolde grinned. “Well there’s a way we can do that, a way we can make you more powerful. Ever-living, loyal and…Perfect.” Emma actually didn’t hear much of what she was saying, not consciously at least, because the woman was leaning in by the word. Her lips drew close to her neck even as she gently turned Emma’s face away from hers. 

Emma just stayed still and let her do whatever she wanted, liking where this was going very, very much indeed. 

“Do it.” She croaked. “Let me join you.” Okay, so she’d probably never get her harem, but being someone else’s harem-bitch was a decent consolation prize at least. 

Isolde leaned closer, but just as Emma felt cool lips brush the skin of her neck—lips, and the sharper touch of pointy teeth—the room shook. 

Instantly, Isolde snapped back with wide eyes and a tight face.

“What was that?” She asked.

“Probably nothing.” Emma assured her, but the woman was backing away, shaking her head. “No, that was…I think we’re under attack, I need to go and check on that—”

—“FUCK!” Emma roared, whirling for the door and blasting it off its hinges with a pulse of Energy. She sprinted out of the room, making her way through the fortress and hurrying towards the source of the shaking. 

The corridors were long, and the fortress winding. Emma sprinted as fast as her muscles would allow, and added a touch of Force to make herself faster still. She’d have had to worry about navigation more than speed, if it weren’t for the constant rumbling of combat that let her make a beeline straight for wherever things were going wrong.

Fucking clam-jamming assholes, I’ll show you all. Whoeveer this was had ruined the best thing to happen since Emma got here, there would be a fucking reckoning when she found them.

Larry was back at her own room, and as tempted as Emma was to leave him there just so she could do without his whining, she knew better. Taking a mild detour, she snatched the head up and continued her run.

“What the fuck is happening!?” He snapped.

“I don’t know, we’re under attack.” 

“You mean this Nocturnae assholes are under attack?” He shot back. Emma wished, for a moment, that she could spare the magic to stuff something in his mouth and shut him up again. He did not become any less irritating for the rest of her run, no matter how much she accelerated or how many corners she bypassed.

Finally Emma arrived at the source of the beaver dam and quickly found her aimless rage disintegrating. It tended to do that when she realised she was not the most dangerous creature present. 

Ahead, she saw a room in chaos. Flames licked everything, where pools of molten stone weren’t slowly settling back into shape, and a half-dozen figures threatened to tear the whole thing down in their combat. She recognised Eric and Marceline, and two people she’d never seen before…And she recognised Aexilica and Vari, because of fucking course she did. 

Larry started laughing.