Collide Gamer

Chapter 271 – The Fluff Strikes Back 3 – Ebb and Flow

“So, for a start, how does your Unleash work?” John wanted to know and as an answer received the information straight into his brain. Undine did vow to communicate more, but it appeared she was meeting the limits of her social batteries. Also, this was way more efficient.

As a fellow introvert, he understood. Although recent weeks may have given a random onlooker the idea that John was quite talkative, if they actually looked a bit closer, they would have found that he spent most of his time with his mouth shut.

When grinding, he was mostly talking only to give orders; when at home, he was flirting around, but when given the choice, he was spending a lot of time just sitting with his girls or gaming, with about 10 words per minute falling.

While Sylph was the aspect of him that liked talking (and constantly did so), Undine was the complete opposite. She probably would have continued in her silent ways if John and everyone else didn’t urge her to come out of her shell some more. If such thinking could even be applied to his elementals. They were their own people, they were just attached to him by the soul.

Whatever they did, an introvert simply needed time for recharging. This was best done by not speaking at all for a bit. Therefore, John let this slide and, instead, concentrated on understanding what he just learned.

It was a long and complicated process of rearranging her magical structure through the constant use of her regenerative powers on others and her defensive tools in general. As she burned through more mana, a residue of it would build up inside her, eventually bursting through and creating a polarizing shift or a massive burst in momentary power.

To put it simply, once she had used her magic enough, being primarily defensive and healing spells, she unleashed like a sudden flood, turning her into a potent damage dealer for a short duration. Alternatively, she could channel that power into one stronger heal.

Not only was this good in and of itself, she could also use that unleashing whenever she wanted, given that the condition was fulfilled, of course. It wasn’t one of those horrible mechanics that forced one to use them the second they were ready. Although there was no extra power to it if she waited longer.

A long story short, Undine’s unleashing was exactly what he would want in a healer. She could heal them just fine all the time, and if she had healed them enough, she could either flip to deal damage and help get them out of a bad situation or heal them all so that they could do that themselves. On top of that, she now also had access to things like that defensive bubble. Tier 4 was nothing to sniff at, unsurprisingly.

Undine, in the meantime, had finally flowed off him. The process left his jacket clean of slime (and pretty much every other minor bit of dirt that had been on it) and dry. She may have been made out of a liquid, but she evidently did not leave herself everywhere just because her new form looked a bit drippier.

“You ready to try and become an item?” John asked. Undine nodded and took his hand. She was nervous, not because she was about to transform, but because of something else. Both of her palms closed around his right hand, the only item slot he had open anyhow.

Despite touching each other, her palms didn’t flow together. Slime physiology made very little sense; all John knew was that inside this blue jelly was a consciousness intertwined with his, a connection that grew more intense by the second.

He readily embraced this development, their minds intertwining like they had last when Undine had told him, and only him, everything and not for weeks prior to that. It was refreshing, like a glass of clear, cold water in a spring noon. It filled his mind with satisfaction.

Then Undine let go of her current form, and John’s right hand was suddenly covered in a glove. It was of a midnight blue, the same colour as the stubby horns that grew from Undine’s head, and reflected the sunlight on its latex-like surface. From the tip of John’s little fingers down to the far end of the glove just below his elbow, where it became thinner and finally just stopped being, the red scars wound over the surface.

Well, that was both nice and a disappointment. Before he could test how his hand could move within that new glove, Undine changed back. The nervousness had gone over to genuine shame, and she was slowly flowing away from John.

“What is it?” he wanted to know, as Undine retreated behind a mental wall again. Carefully he probed forwards, both mentally and physically. A tense moment, where he halfway expected Undine to flee from him and force them to repeat the cycle anew. Then the barricade developed the tiniest of cracks. Like a frightened animal peeking from behind the safety of its hiding spot, Undine sent a single question his way.

‘Are those not horrid to see?’

The scars that were following her, no matter what form her body took, were the source of her shame. With the translucency of her body, she had no way to hide them, no way to cover up what she regarded to be a clear marking of failure.

‘Do these not mark me as damaged goods?’

‘Of course not!’ John disagreed and gently touched her at the base of her legs, or what appeared to be legs anyway, where the lower end of these markings lay. Slowly, he followed them upwards as he continued. ‘These markings don’t make you any less beautiful,’ his fingers trailed over her flat stomach, ‘not all mistakes cause something to be lost.’ He wandered on to her naked breasts, the markings curving around her right nipple in cruel elegance. ‘There may be sins that can’t be forgiven and disfigurements too terrible to look at,’ his hand was at her throat and passed, ‘but you have neither committed one nor are you subject to such a scar, Undine.’

He gave her the brightest smile he had. ‘You are not damaged goods, you are Undine, my water elemental, my precious healer and…’ his hand rested on her cheek and he stopped dead in his tracks. The mental wall that had been crumbling down suddenly halted in its deconstruction.

John felt a moment of deep concern. He had no god damn idea where he should go with this... What? Wonderful companion? Universally true for all his girls. Endless ally? The hell was that even supposed to mean? Also, she had ‘betrayed’ him just this morning! Cuddle slime? Abysmal, but maybe she wouldn’t mind it because it was funny. Yes, that was the thing to go with!

In the background, Aclysia giggled. She may not be part of the conversation, the artificial spirits had links to his mind that were separated from the much broader link that he had to his elementals, but she could feel John’s predicament.

To his surprise, Undine also laughed and leaned forward to kiss him. The rest of the wall broke away, and now they were one again. Their lips met, and a moment later, he was wearing a glove again. ‘I will think of these as a warning, not to repeat the mistakes of the past, instead of a constant reminder of my own failure. Will that make you happy, John?’ Undine stringed together an untypically long sentence that echoed in his mind.

‘I very much am happy with that,’ John agreed, clenching his fist. He barely even felt that she was there. Their nervous systems, or whatever passed for the equivalent of a magical ooze creature, were completely linked. It wasn’t the same state of synchronization that he achieved with Aclysia sometimes; it was more akin to the relationship between a singer and a songwriter. He was giving the instructions, she performed.

Their mana circuits were also linked up. It was a one-way street, she had access to his mana but he didn’t to hers, but it was a completely thoughtless flow. It wasn’t near instantaneous, like the exchange with his elementals usually was, it was just instantaneous.

A small bubble of water manifested around his hand. Excitement filled him, and he allowed himself a jolly smile. He had always wanted to command the elemental powers himself but had been forced to do it by proxy. Granted, this was still true even now, but it was probably the closest he would get.

A simple bit of his mana more and the bubble swelled until it was the size of a melon. He raised his right arm and then brought it back down in a fierce movement. The water lashed out like a whip and splattered on the floor without any impact.

‘Mhm,’ he thought, ‘not quite what I intended.’ He knew the surface tension of water could be magically increased, that was what had made Undine’s water bubble into an actually effective shield. Using that should have allowed him to make a whip that was quite damaging. It wasn’t going to be anywhere near as effective as his other aggressive spells; he was just interested if it was possible for him. The difference between defensive and aggressive was just a point of priority after all.

A whip of water that had a level of hardness that surpassed common metals was hardly something to sniff at, no matter if that level of surface tension was originally dedicated to block attacks. ‘I wonder what exactly your Unleash will do to make you a stronger damage dealer,’ John thought towards his ocean elemental.

‘Projectiles,’ was the single word answer he received. ‘Aggression. Pressure.’

‘That makes sense, I guess,’ John thought as he gathered up the water from the floor. Actually, he still had Undine do it. It was a bit of a weird feeling, being in control but also not having any influence over the details.

‘Now that I think about it, it isn’t that much different than playing a video game,’ John thought as the orb hovered over his hand again; ‘I am using a controller -the item, in this metaphor- to put in orders, but in the end the code -Undine- does what I tell it to do. I am only giving input.’

With that state of mind, it was now just a matter of going through the process of learning a combo in a fighting game. As long as he gave the correct input to Undine, she would get him the wanted result. Bugs -in this case Undine making a mistake- notwithstanding.

After a solid ten minutes of practicing, John finally managed to get a whip together that created a crack on the stone plate. ‘I wonder why I won’t get a Skill for this,’ he thought as he continued his experiments, shaping the water into a shield. He opened his character screen to take a look if it had any great impacts.

Skimming over his Skills, he did indeed find a thing that was levelling interestingly fast. The passive skill Elemental Unity, which had barely seen any increase in level since he got it, jumped from level 5 to level 7 during this exercise. Which was pretty good, since the skill increased the two main attributes of his elementals by 0,5% per level.

So, the ability also increased his synchronization with his elementals. Made sense, with that name. There was just another thing to test. “Aclysia, stab me,” John told his guardian.

“Not this again, Master,” Aclysia lamented. “You know how much I hate doing this. Please retract that order.”

“For science, this is necessary!” he exclaimed.

Aclysia pressed her lips together and pulled Ashkandi out. Last time he wanted her to stab him to test out Undine’s healing power, this time he wanted her to stab him to test out Undine’s healing power. The situation was almost comically the same. Gnome even had the same uncomfortable expression on her face as last time.

After John had pulled off jacket and shirt (no reason to waste mana on fixing the hole that would result from this), Aclysia went to do the deed. As gentle as possible, her eyes forcefully opened to prevent herself from making that cut any more grievous than it needed to be, Aclysia plunged Ashkandi into his shoulder.

The second the blade was retracted, the wound was gone. Aclysia looked with anger at the blood on her blade, then at John. “Don’t ever make me hurt you again, please?” she requested in a quivering voice. “It makes me sad.”

“Well, someone needs to do it,” John said and checked his health bar. This had done a mere 75 damage, which was nothing to his 2130 health. That was not important though, he cared less about the strength of the heal than the method. A simple thought and a bit of mana and his HP was topped off again. ‘So, as long as I wear Undine, I can instantly heal myself… that’s pretty good,’ he thought.

The whip was less useful, but now that he figured out how to keep the water hardened while in motion, the defensive bubble would be easy, adding an extra layer to his already good defences. Even if someone somehow broke through, he could heal himself pretty easily. That was, if he was wearing it at all times. He wasn’t sure yet how tactically sound that was.

‘Time to test whether or not I can heal people from a distance,’ he thought and created a green shining bubble. The experiments continued.

Until a reading black bird flew right into his side.