Chapter 49: Strike Two

Tayo didn’t lunge again right away.

He pulled his spear back into the groove of his shield, planted his feet, and began to circle once more. That same low hum of Fortify settled over him, thickening by the second.

Jaxir circled with him and did absolutely nothing, not even raising the staff past his waist.

’He’s stacking it again.’ Jaxir saw through it.

Fortify wasn’t defense at all in this man’s hands, he was using it as a method of quickly gathering mana. This was probably how non-magic classes got around not having Cast and Charge.

The correct answer for Jaxir was to interrupt him. Force him to spend it early, chip him down, kite him, and pepper him to death.

Jaxir didn’t, though.

Tayo’s eyes narrowed behind his guard. He didn’t know why Jaxir was just letting things play out the same. He didn’t like it. But his timer on Fortify was ticking, and there was one thing that Jaxir was right about: he couldn’t keep this up endlessly.

He committed.

The spear came out low and fast, glittering with winding lines of Twinkle Mana, and the blanket of stored gravity snapped taut across the arena.

Jaxir felt his chest yanked forward, but this time he didn’t even try to fight it. In fact, he helped.

His hand had already come up with a card between two fingers, and it wasn’t Twinkle Rupture.

―

Name: Twinkle Vacuum

Grade: Uncommon

MP Cost: 4

Description: Form a void pocket that sucks enemies in and diverts attacks toward it.

Recommended Classes: Magic; Tank

―

The circuits lit in his eyes and a pocket of nothing opened up half a meter behind Tayo’s shoulder.

Jaxir was already being pulled forward. Now the two forces overlapped, stacking on the same line, and his body went from an uncontrolled stumble to a blur.

Tayo’s spear was aimed at where he thought his abilities would be able to drag Jaxir to...

But Jaxir moved at over twice the speed, passing over the spearhead entirely.

CRACK.

A knee caught Tayo square across the bridge of his nose.

[-11]

It was a pitiful number, Tayo’s defenses were too tough and regardless of his boosted body stats, Jaxir didn’t have any real physical power. But that didn’t stop Tayo’s head from snapping back all the same, his guard folding, his shield arm swinging wide to and failing to catch his balance.

Jaxir planted a palm on the man’s pauldron, flipped clean over the top of him, and landed on the balls of his feet with barely a sound.

"Nice." He grinned to himself.

Tayo staggered two steps, and Jaxir sensed Twinkle Vacuum again. The Vestigem Card was still active, a little energy remaining within it.

He pulled on it and Tayo’s boot skidded out from under him, the rest of the balance he was trying to catch failing to find purchase.

And in that half second of watching another man’s balance get stolen out from under him by a pocket of hungry air, everything in Jaxir’s head slid into place at once.

’They’re the same spell with different applications.’ It all clicked for him.

Twinkle Pulse pushed. Twinkle Vacuum pulled. He had been treating them like two different tools sitting in two different drawers, and they weren’t.

Repulsion and attraction. Positive and negative. You wouldn’t call magnetism by a different name just because it reacted differently to another magnet, would you?

And then Jaxir made a further connection.

’Twinkle Rupture is both.’

That was why it had felt so much more complex than Twinkle Pulse or Vacuum alone had. Twinkle Rupture caught an attack by pulling it in, held it by pushing back against it with equal force, and let the two fight each other until the seams gave out.

One after another, all five of the Twinkle Mana Vestigem Cards that Jaxir had in his possession fell into a calm order in his mind, and then formed a web of connection between one another.

Their circuits overlapped and played out their tune in his eyes, a complexity of light and weaving lines shining into the atmosphere around him.

Every single one of them functioned on the same law.

―

Cast Lv32 > Cast Lv34

―

Channel Lv32 > Channel Lv34

―

Attune Lv34 > Attune Lv36

―

Jaxir exhaled, and the air around him seemed to grow heavier.

Tayo got his feet back under him and turned, and whatever he saw in Jaxir’s face made his jaw set hard.

He wasn’t a stupid man. He had watched this Magic Class out-race him through an obstacle course he had memorized, and now he had been kneed in the nose by someone whose Body Stat was clearly a joke compared to his. Playing the patient endurance game against an opponent who kept getting better every thirty seconds was how you lost.

Especially when said opponent seemed far better than you to begin with.

Tayo slammed his spear flat against the face of his shield.

CLANG.

The sound didn’t fade like it should have. It layered, ringing out in echoing lines that spread across the arena floor in pale rings that grew out from one another in a cancerous pulse. And when they washed over Jaxir he felt his mana stutter.

’Oh, that’s annoying.’ Jaxir cursed.

His Twinkle Mana went slack in his grip. It felt loose, sliding out of his fingers every time he tried to close around it and pull in the reins.

Tayo lunged into the gap he’d made, spear leading, all of his former patience washed away.

Jaxir grabbed for his mana again and his fingers slipped through it once more.

He grabbed again.

’Come on―’ Jaxir cursed.

The spearhead approached in winding brass lines. They crawled along its edge, radiating a scent of loss and death... to almost anyone else.

Jaxir suddenly had an idea and stopped trying to pick his own mana back up and reached for Tayo’s instead.

The stutter broke and he immediately mimicked Twinkle Rupture once more.

Spiralling threads of dusted gold and copper caught the spear mid-thrust, and this time they didn’t just slow it for an instant. They locked it. Pulling on one side, and pushing on the other, the two forces meeting in a knot Tayo’s arms couldn’t muscle through.

Tayo’s eyes widened.

Jaxir grinned and reached out with his staff, tapping the very tip of it against the end of the spear.

"Knock knock."

BOOM.

[-134]

Tayo left the ground. He crossed half the arena in the air with his shield spinning away in the other direction and hit the stone hard enough to skip once before he stopped.

Jaxir looked down at his staff with genuine interest. He was surprised it was so effective.

And he understood why almost immediately. Tayo was already trying to exist outside the bounds of his Class by using Twinkle Mana like he had. He overextended himself a bit too much. The Endurance Path he picked didn’t even have real attack methods at his current level.

Taking control of mana he couldn’t properly control in the first place was easy for Jaxir.

And Jaxir was only getting better at the very same control Tayo lacked.

He grinned, raising his staff and casting Wither.

Tayo pushed himself up onto one knee.

Crimson lightning fell in a swirl of dried leaves and Bind sank into his shadow, and the knee stopped rising.

Then Jaxir raised his staff and simply started shooting.

[-38]

[-41]

[-36]

[-40]

The second eight-sided star above his head cracked, and a red X burned through it before it shattered into motes of brass light.

Jaxir rolled his shoulder and let out a long breath, checking his MP with a wince.

"And that’s strike two." Jaxir grinned.