Chapter 22: Prey

"Quickly, the bounty for this guy is huge."

"Stop rushing. You’re going to tank your HP if you blitz through your stamina like that."

"If we don’t hurry the others will get to him first."

"If we hurry too much we might die easy."

A pair of men raced forward. Both of them had bows on their backs and simple leather armor. They were certainly better dressed than the previous grunts.

―

Name: Corven Ashe

Class: Ranged (Precision)

Level: 7

―

Name: Bram Ostley

Class: Ranged (Barrage)

Level: 7

―

The two suddenly came to a grinding halt as a man with feet twinkling like stars appeared.

Bram reacted instantly, his bow vanishing from his back to appear in his hands. He raised it and fired a single shot that spread out in a rain of six. They pelted down from above, closing off all avenue of retreat.

...

Jaxir was moving along, trying to get more used to using Cast to move more freely.

It was tough because usually when he used Cast there was one main goal to it all. But here, he was just trying to blanket its application to his every movement, trying to make himself lighter and more agile.

That required constantly shifting and changing the Cast method, but he didn’t have any specific references to follow, so it had been a terrible failure from the very start.

He was actually starting to get frustrated. Everything else had come so easy until now, but this felt like he was literally learning to walk again.

The best success he had was when he mimicked Twinkle Step to lift off walls, trees, or rocks, but he couldn’t follow up on that well at all.

Then before he really caught what was happening, he was suddenly being attacked by a barrage of arrows.

Jaxir reacted on instinct, pulling on his concepts of understanding from Concussive Wave, gathering all 50 MP his staff had formed, and blasting it outward.

DENG. DENG. DENG.

The arrows were sent flying before they could manage to touch him, reflecting off the nearby trees, but the danger warning signs told him that things weren’t over.

Corven seemed to have reacted later than Bram did, but his gaze had actually caught sight of Jaxir first. His bow had likewise appeared in his hands. His path, though, was different from Bram’s.

He charged a single attack, with a single arrow, and the instant Jaxir spent all his MP, his gaze flashed with a red light and he loosed his arrow.

It whipped through the echoing carnage, timing its appearance perfectly for the tail end of Jaxir’s wave of mana.

SHUU.

In an instant, it was in front of Jaxir.

"Gotcha."

Jaxir’s head suddenly and quickly dipped to one side, causing Corven’s eyes to go wide.

PENG.

The arrow embedded itself into a tree and Jaxir looked back toward where it landed, his eyes watching its quivering feather nearly completely buried in the bark.

Jaxir pressed a free hand to his chest. His heart was beating erratically and the pressure was getting to him a bit. He had run his stamina a bit ragged trying to get his Twinkle Mana to work properly, and the sudden close death sent a pang through his chest.

His doctor’s warning flooded his mind. He hadn’t exactly recovered from pushing himself so hard against the twinkle twinkle bear king either.

Too close.

A flash of cold radiated from Jaxir’s eyes. When he looked back at the duo, something had shifted inside of him.

Corven and Bram both felt a chill and their hands trembled on their bows before they tightened them. Bram readied to fire again, but the hand Jaxir had on his heart suddenly rose up.

He swiped down at the air and a flash of silver and blue light bloomed.

Corven suddenly felt a wind slide down his back, but he ignored it, trying to focus on the enemy in front of him until a Vestigem Card he very much recognized appeared in Jaxir’s hand.

Sleight of Hand.

―

Name: Tracer

Grade: Common

MP Cost: 1

Description. Tag a target. For 8 seconds, your shots against the tag gain +10% accuracy and +5% damage

Duration: 8 seconds

Recommended Classes: Ranged

―

Jaxir used the card immediately. His mana raced through its circuits, and those lines that reflected in the card began to reflect within his eyes as well.

But only the duo across from him could see this.

Jaxir, though, saw something else.

Prey.

Bram immediately raised his bow to retaliate before Jaxir could act again, but without missing a beat Jaxir cast Bind.

The shadows beneath Bram’s feet leapt at him, lining themselves in a dark gold that sought to swallow him whole. He tried to dodge but he was too slow and his bow suddenly felt heavy in his hands.

Jaxir completed the first circuit and a tag appeared above Corven’s head. Without waiting, he used Encore and poured his mana into the card again, seamlessly splitting his attention two ways.

The echoing circuits were further ingrained into his mind and psyche as Jaxir raised his staff.

He could feel it in that moment. It was almost like a line was connecting his senses and the duo across from him, and another line connected his staff and their heads.

Everything happened so fast that the two couldn’t even understand what they were seeing, the shock that ran through their veins paling as a duo of Casts formed before Jaxir’s staff.

Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa.

Jaxir began to fire so rapidly Corven felt that he was facing off against Bram, and Bram felt like he didn’t understand how someone, especially not a magic class, could possibly fire so quickly.

A crackle of glass descended around Bram as he ran in vain attempts to dodge. It looked like the space around him fragmented, and suddenly the bullets that seemed aimed toward both him and Corven all bent through the air, landing on him and him alone.

Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa.

[-57]

[-57]

[-57]

[-44]

It was complete overkill. Bram was dead before he even finished his first maneuver, his health hitting rock bottom so fast the last two uses of Cast that landed on him didn’t even do any additional damage.

―

[You have killed player "Bram Ostley"]

―

+3 Experience

+213 copper

―

Jaxir didn’t even seem to register the notifications. As though he had become some kind of murderous machine, his attention had already turned back to Corven. The latter was still trying to dodge, having thought that the Cast magic bullets were coming for him. He wasn’t ready to counter or attack at all.

And by the time he realized they weren’t for him, it was already too late.

Jaxir had long completed yet another cast.

Shadows wound around Corven’s body, stifling his mana and cutting off his chances at ever finding the room to counter.

In that moment before his death, Corven couldn’t help but wonder...

Just when had Hex Paths ever been so powerful?

―

[You have killed player "Corven Ashe"]

―

+321 Experience

+173 copper

―

Jaxir’s gaze regained its focus as he stared out ahead to the two piles of items that were left of his enemies.

"Okay, maybe I lost my temper a little bit," he scratched the back of his head, chuckling.

Right now, because his Body Stat had gained a +50 advantage, his HP was 550 flat. That one shot wouldn’t have killed him, but something about the idea of getting hit by it made him feel disgusted.

Not with Corven, but with himself.

It was a weird feeling, but the more Jaxir thought about it, the more he accepted it.

"I should have higher standards of myself. I’ve let myself go for too long."

His gaze became more serious again.

It seemed that they really were going to be sending the house at him.

His serious expression gave way to a grin.

"Let’s go, then."

The moment Jaxir said this, a beacon launched up from the dead bodies of Corven and Bram.

"Hey, hey, wait, at least let me loot their corpses first."

Jaxir was, in fact, not given that much time.

It seemed that the first round of people was just the bait. The moment they died, the beacons were launched and Jaxir’s exact location was revealed.