Chapter 51: I’ll Take Two

Jaxir barely saw Zay move before the edge of her tower shield filled his vision, the heavy slab of metal crossing the hall with a speed that had no business belonging to someone her size. He twisted on instinct, but there was nowhere to go, and the shield crashed through his guard hard enough to lift him off his feet.

[-118]

[-96]

The first number came from the shield, the second from his body slamming into one of the pale columns behind him, and more than 200 HP disappeared before Jaxir even understood what happened.

He bounced off the stone and slid several meters along the polished floor, one shoulder scraping hard enough against it that pain flashed all the way down his arm.

Nick wasn’t doing much better.

Telik had appeared in front of him instead of bothering with his bow, burying a shoulder into Nick’s chest before Tayo’s spear shaft caught him across the side. Nick spun through the air and crashed down not far from Jaxir, sliding on his back until both daggers dug into the floor and finally slowed him.

"What the fuck?" Nick coughed, forcing one knee underneath himself while blood ran from the corner of his mouth. "Did they just gain fifty fucking levels?"

Jaxir pushed himself upright with his staff and stared down the hall, his chest still aching where Zay had introduced her shield to most of his ribcage. Tayo, Zay, and Telik stood where they had stopped after the first exchange, the divine patterns across their faces burning beneath eyes that no longer looked entirely human.

Something was wrong, though, and it wasn’t just the fact that Zay could now cross thirty meters before Jaxir finished blinking. They hadn’t used any mana.

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed as the three began walking toward them, his awareness spreading past their bodies and into the atmosphere around them. Tayo’s spear wasn’t gathering Twinkle Mana, Telik hadn’t activated whatever movement Skill let an archer close distance like that, and even Zay’s shield was just a shield, with none of the layered circuits or Vestigem effects Jaxir had grown used to sensing.

"They aren’t using Skills," Jaxir muttered, then his expression twisted when he realized that wasn’t remotely good news.

Whatever those Demi-Goddesses had done to the three of them had seemingly stripped away most of the complicated parts and replaced them with raw physical power so ridiculous that they didn’t need anything else.

A Level 10 shouldn’t have been able to move like that, and a Level 10 tank definitely shouldn’t have been able to erase more than two hundred of his HP with one ugly swing of her shield.

If anything, Skills might have made them easier to deal with, at least then Jaxir would have something to read.

The trio accelerated.

"NICK!" Jaxir shouted, already moving away from the column. "I’ll take two, you take one!"

Nick looked at him as if the shield had hit Jaxir in the head instead.

"You’ll take what?"

"The archer’s yours, you’re faster and he’ll be annoying as hell if he gets space." Jaxir kept his eyes on the three approaching bodies, then pointed his staff toward Telik. "Can you handle him?"

Nick glanced toward Telik, then toward Tayo and Zay, and whatever answer first came to mind clearly wasn’t one he wanted to say out loud.

He had already been fighting Telik before they were dragged into this room, and that had been before some Demi-Goddess poured enough power into the man’s body to turn him into a battering ram.

His grip tightened around both daggers, clearly unsure of how he’d deal with a stronger version of someone he had already been struggling against.

"Yeah." Nick bared his teeth and lowered his stance. "I’ve got him."

His eyes shifted toward Jaxir again, lingering on the other two.

"You know you’ve got two, right?"

Jaxir’s mouth curled upward. "Yeah, I can count."

A Vestigem Card appeared between his fingers before Nick could argue any further, and Jaxir poured mana into the familiar circuitry until copper light spread across its surface.

―

Name: Twinkle Anchor

Grade: Uncommon

MP Cost: 4

Description: Form an armor of twinkle mana, confusing mana that lands upon it to divert at improper and wrong angles

Recommended Classes: Magic; Tank; Melee; Ranged

―

The card burned away between Jaxir’s fingers as Twinkle Mana rolled over his body, first as thin streams of flickering copper and dusted pale gold, then in widening bands that wrapped around his chest, shoulders, arms and legs.

The colors swirled over one another with a faint starlit glow before settling into a hardened layer over his robes, while the air around him bent in subtle waves beneath the weight of the gravity held inside it.

Twinkle Anchor had originally been designed to confuse mana and knock attacks away from their intended angles, but Jaxir had learned a long time ago that the description on a Vestigem Card was more suggestion than law.

It wasn’t just armor, it was gravity given shape around his body, and right now he needed everything it could give him.

He stopped retreating.

Jaxir planted his feet in the center of the hall and rolled his shoulders once, his eyes burning brighter as his mana surged through every circuit he understood. There wasn’t much of it left after the arena and everything he’d done against Tayo, though, and even with his staff returning chunks of MP at a time, fighting two monsters like these would empty him long before they ran out of bodies to hit him with.

But then Jaxir felt what had been sitting around him this entire time.

Twinkle Mana filled the hall.

It wasn’t just dense, there was so much of it that the entire room might as well have been underwater, packed into the columns, drifting beneath the false starlight and pooling in the polished stone beneath his feet.

Jaxir had been too focused on the statues and the three possessed players to appreciate it before, but now that he reached outward, the answer was almost embarrassingly obvious.

"Well, that’s convenient."

His mana spread into the room, not forcing the Twinkle Mana around him so much as catching the current and pulling it into himself. Copper and pale gold peeled away from the columns in thin streams, then more followed until ribbons of light spiraled across the hall and folded into his armor.

Twinkle Anchor brightened.

The glow became dense enough to paint Jaxir’s face in copper, and the pressure around him increased until loose dust began floating from the floor. His robes shifted beneath the armor while his eyes remained fixed on Tayo and Zay, every part of him suddenly alive with the sort of battle intent he hadn’t known he still had a few weeks ago.

Tayo and Zay moved at the same time.

They went from a run to blurs within a step, Zay leading with her shield while Tayo disappeared into her shadow with the spear ready behind it. The layered voice of the Demi-Goddesses rolled from both of them at once, heavy enough that the sound itself seemed to press down on the room.

"Kneel."

Jaxir pulled another card from his holder.

His second Twinkle Pulse.

"Yeah, no. I think I’m good."

The card ignited between his fingers, and a star of concentrated Twinkle Mana appeared in front of him just as Zay’s shield entered range. Jaxir fed the surrounding deluge into it, twisted the repulsive force until every part of it faced forward, then released it all at once.

The hall boomed.

Zay’s shield snapped backward into her chest, while Tayo caught the edge of the pulse a fraction of a second later and lost every bit of impossible momentum he had built. Both bodies left the ground, flying backward through the copper-lit hall as the recoil drove cracks through the stone beneath Jaxir’s boots.

Twinkle Anchor blazed around him, the surrounding mana already rushing in to replace what he had spent. The second both of them hit the ground, Jaxir planted his feet again and raised his staff high.