42 John VS Beelzebub

…"John's" PoV…

"WE CANNOT BE STOPPED!" we say before rushing towards the creature, which smirks and kicks us away, shattering all our joints in the process.

"For fuck's sake, just Rewind! We can't handle that amount of damage, this will only increase our fragmentation!" a hundred of identical voices says in our head.

"W-Why are we doing this…? I want all of this to stop!" another meek voice say.

"Who let Fifteen out again? I thought we all agreed to suppress those iterations!" a voice shouts.

"Do you think it's that easy to track down all of them?! Our numbers keep increasing each time we fragment, and it's getting increasingly difficult to direct this shitshow! At this rate, Original will get his memories of our fragmentation back and… It's not going to be a good time." A booming voice echoes.

*Guys, this is Current speaking. Shouldn't we find a way out of this mess instead of arguing with each other-*

"Looks like the damage was too much and we fragmented again." The ex-Current says with a dejected face. "Can we at least Rewind? I can already feel another fragmentation coming-"

"You worm, I will feast on your soul!" Beelzebub says before jumping towards us.

"This demon is rude; doesn't he see that the person he's fighting against is busy arguing with his own fragmented soul?" a copy asks.

"Yeah, I'm sure a giant demon is worried about what we think of him."

*Don't worry guys, new Current here. I'll fix that up in a jiffy.*

Time rewinds to before we got punched, and we try our best to avoid the strike but we fail miserably.

"Please don't let this become another Edmund." A bunch of voices says in unison.

"We are literally facing a biblical demon, and you expect us to beat it without a truckload of Rewinds?" another John reply.

"You make a fair point, but don't we have those super shotgun shells…I believe they are called MH Shells?" someone asks.

"We do, but they don't do shit besides leaving a scorch mark. If our goal is to ruin his skin then we are golden, but if we want to do actual damage then we'll have to find something else."

"We'll have to make do with them since the Field Pistol is even more useless…"

"G-Guys, I may have an idea. You remember that weird ghost thing that directly attacked us?"

"How could we forget? That bastard destroyed a lot of us; we honestly thought we were a goner this time around."

"Yeah, that guy. Remember how I ate him?"

"So it was you who did it?! How on Earth did you think it was a good idea?! I bet you though something likes 'What's this, an unknown soul that infiltrated us? Let's fucking absorb it, nothing bad will come out of this-"

"It worked thought." This particular John replies while grinning.

"Yeah, and we still don't know how and why. So what, do you propose that we let the soul of a doomsday machine infiltrate us, and hope we can beat it? I think all the idiocy went into you-"

"Of course not you dumbass, but remember all those fancy techniques he used? For some reason I think I know how he did it, maybe I absorbed his memories or something. So could I become the Current for a bit, maybe it will work?" the copy declares.

"Yeah sure, whatever." The others say.

*All right, now let's see how-And he cleaved me in half. I'll Rewind again, this time I teleport away and-*

An orange glow forms around our fist, and excitement surges into all the iterations watching through our body's eyes.

"Could this be? Did we finally find a way to use magic-"

But the hopes and dreams of everyone watching were crushed when the light fizzled out, but not before melting half of our flesh off.

"That didn't work, it seems like our body can't handle the power no matter what I try." The one who ate the ghost says in an apologetic tone.

"Well, it was worth a try. But now we still have a problem in the form of an angry giant demon who wants to eat us."

"Yeah, and being eaten doesn't sound like something we can just shrug off."

"And, as if it wasn't enough, there's another-"

The void around us trembles and a lot of new voices appear.

"And we fragmented again. This time it looks more serious, we have a few feral ones running around, but we should take care of them right about now-"

Portals appear over the newly created feral copies and a blast of soul shard head straight into their heads, turning them back to normal on the spot.

"Usually it's only Current that goes feral… it isn't a good sign if we start to see them here. Don't get me wrong, our feral brethren are quite effective in battle, but-"

"Quite effective? The Current that went feral when we purged that ghost thing was awesome! This ghost was scared shitless by the end of the battle! We're lucky we can't act on our own when we're in that wasteland, or I would've been dancing! "

"See, I'm awesome. And eating it was the right call!" the piece of John's soul who ate the ghost was feeling quite smug now and grinned at the one who called him out on his behavior earlier.

"Yeah, I get what you're saying. But it isn't something we should worry about. Feral ones get back to normal after a while, and we can always force them back to normal." someone says while doing his best to ignore the smug John that was now making poses.

*Guys, I don't want to sound needy but I'm kind of struggling against this demon here. We are still Rewinding to avoid this one punch, so-*

"Don't worry Current; you're doing a fantastic job. Keep us updated!" this John then turns towards the swarm of his identical copies. "Guys, you'll never guess who can materialize a deck of cards!"

*I hate my fucking job…*

Current smiled bitterly as his copies sat down and played various card games against each other while he was doing his best to handle the demon.

…Beelzebub's PoV…

This is getting annoying.

I was summoned back to Earth after so long, and after getting rid of the weak pests pretending to be my children then I found the ideal meal waiting for me. The worm with a strong, defenseless soul was supposed to be easy to kill, but…

He keeps avoiding my fucking attacks!

This puny human keeps teleporting around, and while his magic is terribly inefficient it's nonetheless pretty effective.

*When I think about it, those warriors were also teleporting around…*

It looks like magic changed quite a lot since I last walked this Earth. Back in my day, teleportation was something only reserved for the most elite of demons, and even then it required a lengthy ritual.

But my esteemed self won't be fooled by petty tricks like these! I fire a beam into his torso, thus carving a massive hole into him. He should draw his last breath, and-

I roar in frustration when his mortal wound disappears in an instant.

*How is this possible?! I didn't even feel a trace of mana! And his soul's strength increased again!*

This human is full of surprise, the strength of his soul increases by several magnitudes each time I attack, something that shouldn't be possible.

*At this rate, he'll catch up to me…*

I push the foolish thoughts in the back of my mind: I'm still the Primeval Demon, and this human wouldn't be able to catch up to me even if this battle lasted a hundred years!

My feet stomp the ground, sending the human flying before he crashes into the ground, dyeing the already blood-soaked mud with even more blood. The human groans in pain and sinks into the ground before reappearing on the roof of the massive grey palace.

He points his weird staff towards me and unleashes a focused beam of energy, scorching my already damaged skin. I have no idea how he does this without using any mana, but I'll soon learn all his secrets once I consume him.

*This could be interesting... if I could refine this technique then who knows how strong I'll become?*

The spell this John Thomson uses is terribly wasteful, but it easy compensates this weakness by using a tremendous amount of mana. The twelve beams of pure mana are all firing in one single point, and even this vessel would be in danger without a barrier.

But I, the great Beelzebub, naturally have a barrier that transcends what those puny mortals can do.

A zap of red lightning interrupts my thoughts, and I see a female Werewolf standing on top of a pile of rubble preparing another spell.

She's burning her lifeforce to attack me, an interesting but ultimately futile effort. I wave my hand and send her and her minions flying, causing even more wounds to appear on her damaged body.

Speaking of lifeforce, I can't feel any coming from this human. He's not undead since I can't feel any death energy either… He can't be a golem either, or else I would've already overloaded its core with my lingering aura.

The world has changed a lot since I was gone… But as expected of me, I'm still at the top of the food chain!

A blinding light briefly stings my retinas, and I glare at the human who aims his staff at me.

"WE CANNOT BE STOPPED!" he says before jumping away, just in time to avoid the giant fireball I sent in his direction.

*I wonder why he always says the same thing; maybe he's really a Golem? Could those worms have found a way to isolate the core of a construct to protect it from my aura?*

No, it can't be. There's no way mortals can even dream of facing me on even grounds…

…"John's" PoV…

"And I'm happy to announce the inauguration of the first Congress of Universally Nice Time-Travelers, or-"

"We're not calling it like that; we don't really want our acronym to be that, do we?"

*I agree, and we all know why you started this meeting anyway.*

"Well, my dear Current, whose fault is that? You kind of lose interest after five years of playing with cards. Some even started to throw cards around while pretending to be Gambit, so-"

"You did it as well."

"I'll have to admit it was nice for an hour or two, but-"

"You did it for five hours."

The John in question coughs, "Well, that's not the point of this meeting. So like I was saying, we'll start this first session of the John's Emergency Repeating Killings!"

"This is… acceptable I guess." The copies say.

"Well, for this first session of JERK, we'll discuss the current situation… so how do we kill that thing?!" this iteration of John slams his fist onto his open palm. "We fragmented ten times in less than an hour, so the situation is getting critical. More and more feral copies are appearing, and we're seriously at risk of recombining into the Original with all the fragmented memories intact."

"That would not be good; this amount of pain and suffering would make the Original go insane… I mean more than he already is. After all, we are literally a single person who's talking to thousands upon thousands of copies of himself. But why are we so at risk? We didn't even spend a fifth of the time we wasted on Edmund…"

"I don't know myself, but I think it's linked to the intensity of the fight. We took more damage in an hour than in an entire year with Edmund.."

"Yeah, that makes sense… Maybe we can try beating Beelzebub with the same technique we used against the lich?"

*I could try it. But for that, I'd need to teleport a crate of Magicite here. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure it's no longer possible to engrave anything on our skin, we regenerate too fast for that. And we couldn't write anything on the demon either.*

"Well, we're back to square one… Any other ideas?" the John who coined the name of JERK asks.

"I might have an idea, but it will take a lot of time."

"Having a lot of time is kind of our thing in case you haven't noticed."

"Yeah, I know… But with how our soul's integrity is acting up, we might run out of time. Our soul can only fragment to a point until it's forced to recombine. The Rewinder helps in that regards, but multiplying our numbers by two each time we Rewinds doesn't help with the whole fragmentation thing."

"Well, we still have the force that stabilizes us, so at least we won't shatter, but…"

"Relying on an unknown force doesn't sound like a good idea to me, but we aren't really in a position to negotiate."

"Wait, isn't that force the Rewinder?!"

"We have no idea, most of the Johns think it's the case, but some are rather skeptical about the whole thing."

"Well, it doesn't matter right now! So what was your idea?" the leading John asks.

"I was thinking, we recently added a third mode on the Portal Gun, right?" The other Johns nod, so this copy continues.

"So we could program the Gun in advance to constantly teleport us around. That way we'll be untouchable, and we should avoid any further fragmentation."

"That…sounds hard but ultimately doable. But putting this plan in place will take a lot of efforts and time just to not get hit. If this was our priority then we would have already teleported into the Bazaar or something." one John retort.

The one proposing the plan nods, "Of course, but let me finish…" A savage grin creeps onto his face. "We know the demon is unable to be damaged externally… What about doing damage from the inside?"

…Alice's PoV…

The situation is… hard to describe. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely worse than everything we could've ever expected since the soul of Beelzebub was forced back on our planet. Not to mention that he took over Erdis' chimera, but…

Everything is somehow under control.

Or rather, it appears to be. I don't know how this human is doing it, but he's quite resilient and has avoided the Primeval Demon's strikes with surprising regularity.

*This kind of resilience is something that could be troublesome in the future, so we should look into it if we survive this ordeal…*

I have no delusion about the potential future, and I'm certain that this John Thomson will make waves again. He'll be let off the hook this time if he somehow kills that demon, but I'm convinced that this human will dare to rise against another Family in the future.

*And he might get help since his actions are being broadcasted on the HiddenNet right now…*

I click my tongue, this is all pure speculation based on an already impossible premise. This human cannot possibly beat Beelzebub no matter what he does. Even I who sacrificed a lot of my remaining lifeforce didn't even put a scratch on this chimera.

*Well, at least the demon isn't paying attention to us now.*

Honestly, I can't wrap my head around how he survives. His teleportation is crude and terribly inefficient; it would easily get detected by almost everyone. Not to mention that-

I raise an eyebrow; his actions are getting increasingly puzzling. He teleported away and is now typing something on his gun-shaped artifact with surprising speed while ducking and weaving through the enraged demon's attacks.

What is he thinking?! And why does he keep repeating the same words over and over again?

'We cannot be stopped.' This litany keeps coming out of his mouth with an increasingly distorted voice. Not to mention that the predatory grin creeping on his face doesn't suit someone facing a being that has the potential to wipe out all life forms on this planet.

My jaw drops when he glares at the demon and raise his middle finger before lightly tapping on the screen of his artifact. A quick sequence of portals keeps appearing in and out of existence, and the human's figure is barely visible each time another set of portals appears.

*This speed is commendable, but I wonder what does he hope to achieve with this? Moving fast doesn't mean anything if you can't attack.*

This human's artifacts are unusual, and this trick of creating twelve beams of mana out of thin air might deserve an investigation in the future. But as showy as his attacks are, they are no match for our Strategic spells, and even our strongest one didn't stop the chimera that was still being controlled by Erdis. So what can this human do when the abomination's almost indestructible body is further enhanced by the soul of an ancient demon?

"Come on, do it…" two voices whispering to each other reaches my ears, and they belong to my children who are watching the battle with clenched fists and hopeful eyes.

This is a problem. I don't know what happened between them but they are way too friendly with this particular human, especially Steve who was looking down on them just a few weeks ago. Their reports about the Edmund incident were full of obvious lies, but they wouldn't reveal what happened no matter how much I threatened them.

And the matter of me trapping the Outsider into a torture spell for so long only served to strain our relationship even further.

*At this rate, I'll have to deal with internal conflicts…*

I know well that the bonds between soldiers who fought together can be quite strong, especially when facing against a strong enemy. And even if they don't say it, I know they are still resenting me for what happened during the last Council meeting. So combining those factors might push them over the edge and they could become the figurehead of a new rebellious faction of disgruntled soldiers who were unhappy with my plan.

*My head hurts, what am I supposed to do? I couldn't possibly purge our already weakened Family, so-*

A collective gasp interrupts my thoughts, and I soon find the reason behind this reaction…

The Outsider just jumped into Beelzebub's mouth!