Yeah, i probably jumped ahead too much.

Suffice to say, things are going to get a bit anachronic. You know, like Pulp Fiction, this whole thing is going to be told out of order. Why? Well, reality is going to get/did get/is getting broken because of a bunch of things I don't even know where to begin explaining. Magic. Veles. Time Travel shit. Really, it's like Final Fantasy, you think you've got a good idea as to what is happening before the plot starts becoming completely nonsensical.

Anyway, back before my entire world was falling apart, say about a month's time, I was still relatively in control of the situation. Things were much more normal.

Okay, that's a lie.

Things were normal only in the sense of normal being the life of a LitRPG hero or high fantasy protagonist.

Which I was.

Technically.

I was travelling with my adventuring party through the air-filled parts of an underwater city underneath Śniardwy, which was the largest lake in Ledziania. It notably shared the same name and location as the largest lake in Poland, which was another sign that Larry C.C. Weis was completely unoriginal.

One element that was different was the one in Poland had a depth of about twenty-one meters, which was deep, don't get me wrong. The Śniardwy in Ledziania was closer to a kilometer deep and, as mentioned, contained a vast city inhabited by the Rusalka, mutated humanoids, and a variety of other aquatic creatures.

This was the former Grand Temple of Water and the final location for our war against the Old Gods. It was composed of beautiful spiral towers, Grecian buildings made of marble, and a bunch of twisted structures that had no real human architectural equivalent. It was also wholly corrupted by the influence of Beloblog AKA Cthulhu.

Right now, my party was in the middle of the Grand Temple's antechamber to Belobog's summoning room. In the previous three temples (one of whom we'd skipped entirely), wits and deception had gotten us past most defenses. This time, we'd pretty much had to brute force our way through. My seven-man group had fought our way through mermen, kelpies, water horses, naga, vodniks, living oozes, slime monsters, and mud monsters, elementals, and what I was pretty sure was Ursula from The Little Mermaid.

We were almost to Belobog now, so the forces of the Water Demon had regrouped to throw everything else they had at us. The thing was we'd taken on the Old Ones out of order and taken our time to level grind. We'd been completely overwhelmed fighting Chernabog and Zorya Nightbringer but here? Here, we were actually doing pretty well. Which, of course, meant something was about to go disastrously wrong.

"Cthulhu fhtagn!" One of the squid priests shouted as he shook his coral staff at me while displaying his bare chest with drenched robes around him. A seashell necklace hung around his neck. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"

The antechamber was a four-story tall room with a giant pair of golden doors facing north, a bunch of moist red tapestries hanging from the walls, and a set of stone steps leading up the doors with a moldy red carpet. Yeah, the Grand Temple of Water had seen better days. Light was providing by glowing crystals on the wall as we were presently being swarmed by dozens of squid-faced ogres under the command of the mutated priests to Belobog. There were also a few slime monsters that were totally not shoggoths as well as, I shit you not, a few evil giant starfish. How did I know they were evil? Because they kept trying to eat me.

"Okay, this is bullshit," I said, hacking through the tentacle-faced ogres that the squid priest was siccing on me. "What the hell does H.P. Lovecraft have to do with Polish mythology? The guy feared Welsh people, let alone Eastern Europeans. At least Robert E. Howard wasn't afraid of slightly less Anglo people than Medieval Londoners."

"Just go with it, Aaron!" Jon said, punching his fist through the head of one of the ogres. He was now enjoying his new shapeshifting abilities and had assumed what I suspected was an idealized version of his human self. He looked a bit like a young Keanu Reeves dressed in a white gi like Ryu from Street Fighter. The fact he was a dragon now should have meant he was less useful in human form but, well, he'd been an 18th level bare-fisted monk before he died. "You'll enjoy this world a whole lot more once you stop questioning how little sense it makes!"

"I dunno. I wonder about the intricacies of all this. Was HP Lovecraft inspired by this world or did Veles decide to mutate his son into something resembling the author's most famous creation? Is it perhaps an attempt to harness the collective psyche of Earth's modern mythology to make a more effective evil?" Bloodstorm said, hacking and slashing with his golden axe given to him by Mythras. He was a seven-foot-tall black man of mixed ogre and elvish ancestry that looked like an Adonis of muscle if you ignored his large bull horns as well as slightly pointed ears. He'd let his hair grow out long and was dressed in a new set of armor that mostly looked like belts with a loin cloth.

"What the hell is wrong with you people?" Ania said, wearing a tight leather catsuit with a cleavage exposing top that looked equally impractical for combat but had been enchanted with magic to work like Kevlar. She was a beautiful redheaded woman who I had been crushing on, at least her fictional version, since I was a teenager. "Focus on the task at hand!"

"Talking is a free action according to the rules of the divine concordat!" Rachel Morning, my sort-of daughter, said. She was a beautiful girl with her own distinct resemblance to Ania, red hair and pale skin, but a goofier girl next door sort of beauty. Rachel was wearing a red witch's hat and robes while carrying a crystal tipped staff.

Oh, and she was a reincarnated goddess of war as well as sex.

Rachel blasted one of the giant starfish that attempted to engulf her, exploding the thing into so much seafood. She had replaced Agata as our chief spell lobber and was someone who could throw down with the best of them. Unfortunately, her presence caused a lot of questions and misunderstandings. After all, she hadn't existed until less than a year ago and was vulnerable to corruption by the Twisted Ones.

The penultimate member of our group was a white-haired girl with pig tails wearing a hooded white robe trimmed with gold and solar symbols. A group of ogres were attempting to bang their clubs against her but a glowing shield surrounded her, providing a lot of room for us to maneuver while they were distracted. That was Pope Joan the First of the Church of Mythras, a fifteen-year-old girl who I hated bringing into battle but was every bit as powerful a wizard as me.

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"We are close to facing down the Water Demon!" Joan said, proudly. "We must reserve our strongest spells to defeat him!"

"Easy for you to say!" Jon said, kicking an ogre with an impractical somersault kick that made me wonder where he'd learned these crazy martial arts or if they were just another sign of how ridiculous this world is.

"Screw it," I said, seeing that there were even more monsters coming in. "CHAIN LIGHTNING!"

The chief squid priest shouted a warning of alarm before trying to COUNTERSPELL the effect, only for him to get a knife thrown into his throat from seemingly nowhere. That was my cousin, Alek, who had used his ring of invisibility to clear a way through much of the Grand Temple ahead of us only to botch the final stretch due to an ALARM spell put on the privy.

Those always seemed to screw us in the end.

Either way, the lightning shot from my fingertips and leap frogged from one ogre after another as well as several other unidentifiable creatures. The blast took down almost a dozen in the end and gave my team the edge they needed to rush on the wounded to finish them off. From there, I cast WEB against the door the reinforcements had been coming through. The steel-like spider goop wouldn't hold them forever, but it might allow us to finally get to Belobog's chamber. Which was, when you thought about it, an insane thing to hope for. We wanted to bring the giant corrupted god's avatar into existence so we could kill it. It was the only way to finish off the Old Gods and stop Veles from feasting on Mokosh's power.

Ania took a moment to pause for breath before staring at the many corpses in front of us. "Did anyone else think that was too easy?"

Jon turned to look at her. "Hell no!"

"I agree," Bloodstorm said, frowning. "That was way too easy. This temple should be crawling with Veles forces but is strangely underpopulated."

"Underpopulated?" Jon asked, shaking his head. "We've probably killed two hundred guys since the alarm started."

"Which is pretty small for a city full of evil monsters," Ania said. "Agata and the Dwarvish Navy were supposed to lure their forces out so we could strike Belobog but there's nothing more than a token force guarding this place."

"I hate to agree with Ania on this but she's right," Alek said, disengaging his invisibility spell. Unlike Tolkien's One Ring, it wasn't perfect and worked more like the Predator's light-bending effect. Super-duper camouflage rather than actual invisibility. The real Alek dressed in army fatigues, a bandana, and resembled a bearded version of me. Which wasn't surprising since we were brothers biologically despite being raised by different parents.

No, you don't get to call us brother-cousins.

"Shut up," Jon said, looking at Alek. His look was one of disgust and anger, which I'd hoped would have gotten better over our time together but hadn't. "You don't get to contribute to this conversation. You're like our Scrappy Doo. No one wants you here and we're only tolerating you because Aaron likes you."

"I like him!" Rachel said, cheerfully.

"You can't fuck your uncle either, Rachel," Jon said.

"Aww," Rachel said, always undercutting Jon's attempt to gross her out by acting like she was into that sort of thing. "He looks so much like dad too."

At least I hoped she was acting.

"Seriously, both of you are horrible," I said.

Rachel smirked.

"Personally, I think of myself as more your Sixth Ranger," Alek said, smirking.

Everyone stared blankly.

"Seriously, no one watched Power Rangers?" Alek asked.

"Sorry," I said. "Never saw a single episode. That's the one with the girl from Felicity, right?"

Alek sighed.

"Even with the much-diluted forces we've faced here, we've expended a large amount of magic fighting them. We might not have the remaining strength to fight Belobog," Joan said, remaining laser-focused on our goal. The events of La Tiene had left her traumatized and she still hadn't fully recovered from being willing to betray her god to bring back her mother. Something that had, in the end, been all for nothing.

Joan didn't even like being referred to as Pope anymore, which was a shame since like six Antipopes had been appointed by the various feuding Emperors back in the Empire. Mythras was willing to forgive her but Joan wasn't willing to forgive herself.

"I have some potions of refreshment," I replied. "We should take some of those before make a direct assault. Either that or take some time to hang around in AARON'S AWESOME BATHHOUSE."

"Did you have to name it that?" Ania asked, staring at me.

"What?" I asked. "It's a sauna."

"Yes, full of elemental sexy people," Jon said. "You realize it's a wizard spell for sex, right?"

"It's for relaxing!" I said, frowning. "Safety at night rather than a campfire. Maelor taught it to me and said it was a perfectly valid military resource."

"Soldiers like to fuck too, Aaron," Alek said.

"Are we not supposed to have sex with the bathers?" Ania asked, unwittingly paraphrasing the Eddie Murphy classic Coming to America. "It's not cheating if they're spirits. Err, not that I am. Because Aaron and I are monogamous."

Everyone looked at her.

"You're not fooling anyone," Bloodstorm said. "My sister Angelica has told me you've managed to break Aaron out of his shell. Her, Winter Chill, Shakra the Goblin, and Theresa Miller. It's all over Dragon Keep."

"Mrs. Miller?" Jon asked, mocking me. "For shame, Aaron! She is a married woman!"

"Her husband turned out to be gay," I said, defensively. "Ania and I were just providing a comforting service."

"Oh wow, you believed that?" Ania asked. "No, Klaus is just terrible at sex."

I stared in horror.

"Yeah, your attempts to win Ania over from the Charlie Sheen/Lindsay Lohan lifestyle aren't working great," Jon said. "Real bang-up work in converting her."

"I'm going to say mocking him for that isn't the flex you think it is," Alek said, crossing his arms. "It's a bit like insulting Vin Diesel for being badass and a Dungeons and Dragons nerd."

"Yeah," Jon said, sighing. "Just doesn't have quite the same punch as the incest jokes. Also, shut up, because you suck. You're the Star Trek: Discovery of our franchise."

"I don't even know what that means," Alek said.

"You suck!" Jon said.

"I like Discovery," I muttered.

"No one likes Discovery!" Jon said.

That was when there was an enormous creaking that didn't take much to figure out was coming from the giant golden doors in the chamber. Suspecting we were about to fight Belobog or more of his minions, all of us assumed battle stances. From within, there was an eerie incandescent white light that obscured anything beyond.

That was when a spectacularly beautiful older woman with a voluptuous figure, long black hair, and olive skin stepped out of the light. She was dressed in a single wrap around her body that displayed her belly and was almost translucent. On her head was a five-pointed crown covered in purple sapphires that glowed with witchfire. Her fingers were also all covered in rings.

I recognized the woman from the fact that I'd had to work on her digital model for several months while still employed by Epic DungoneeringTM. It was the Witch Queen of Angho’horak, most powerful of all sorcerers in the Southern Kingdoms after the gods themselves and (possibly) the Wise Man. She was notably the ruler of the Thirteen and the first Lich, which really took away a lot of her attractiveness. She was, even more than a vampire, a very pretty corpse.

"Well, this is going to make fighting Belobog harder," I muttered, lifting the Sword of Perun.

"Hey, Suzie!" Jon said, waving.

I glared at him. "Suzie?"

"You didn't think her name was Witch Queen, did you?" Jon asked.

"I hadn't really given it any thought to be honest," I said, sarcastically. I was, however, ready for the fight of my life. The Witch Queen had destroyed whole armies with her magic and come perilously close to conquering Mokosh on multiple occasions. I'd say she was the Saruman to Veles' Sauron, but I wasn't sure that she wasn't the Sauron to his Morgoth.

"Do not fear, Aaron Bartkowski," the Witch Queen said, "I do not come here as an adversary."

"You created the death rot," Ania said. "You killed millions. Also, you slept with Jon and I'm not sure which is worse."

"Hey!" Jon said, irritated. He paused before turning back to her. "Okay, I admit, that's actually pretty funny."

"Where's Belobog?" I asked.

"Preparing to attack Crossroad with all the armies of darkness," the Witch Queen said. "Veles has abandoned this world and gone to yours."

I blinked. "Okay, maybe we should start from the beginning."

See, I told you this was going to get confusing.