Chapter 65: Entropy

The bell was still ringing hard enough to make the shop windows tremble when Bind finished taking shape, which meant Jaxir could afford a little noise without announcing his exact position to everyone outside. What he couldn’t afford was time, since sooner or later the Village Head and whoever else guarded Glimmer Village would realize the second entrance to their dungeon needed protecting.

Bind struck first.

Silvery-blue mana snapped outward from Jaxir’s staff and wrapped around Orlan in overlapping bands, not physical chains so much as pressure folding around every point where the man’s mana tried to move.

A Level 5 Mage attempting to suppress the abilities of a Level 18 Tank should have been laughable, but Jaxir’s Bind had long since far surpassed his level by a more than exaggerated degree.

Unfortunately for Orlan, he realized that one step too late.

The Tank’s hand jerked beneath the counter as mana surged through his arm, probably the beginning of some defensive ability meant to harden his body or raise a barrier. The spell never formed, since Bind closed around the movement before it could complete and crushed the flow back into him.

Orlan’s expression changed immediately.

"What the—"

Jaxir was already chanting again.

Fracture followed before the man could recover, and the world around Orlan seemed to split into a web of weaknesses only Jaxir could properly see. Thin fault lines crawled over the Tank’s shoulders, chest and arms while others ran through the mana gathered beneath his skin, except they no longer appeared as the crude fractures Jaxir remembered from when he’d first learned the ability.

Light Mana had changed them.

A pale silver-blue glow traced each fault line first, almost beautiful against the heavier mana inside Orlan, before thin crimson sparks began snapping along the edges. The cracks didn’t merely show Jaxir where Orlan was weak anymore, they seemed eager to widen the moment anything pressed against them.

Orlan roared and ripped a heavy sword from beneath the counter.

The weapon came free with enough force to split the wood above it, and the Tank vaulted over the counter despite Bind still choking his mana. Jaxir saw the movement, saw the angle of Orlan’s shoulder and where his hand needed to land to carry his weight, then released the Cast he’d been holding.

The mana sphere clipped Orlan’s fingers at the exact moment his palm touched the counter.

[-7]

His hand kicked sideways.

Orlan’s entire leap collapsed with it, his shoulder striking the edge of the counter before his weight carried him onto the floor in an ugly tumble. Jaxir stepped around the end of his staff as though he’d planned the fall several seconds ago, already layering Channel into his next spell while Orlan dragged one knee beneath himself.

Wither settled over the Tank.

The curse slipped through the fractures Fracture had exposed, silver-blue mana threading itself into Orlan’s own before turning vicious once it reached the deeper channels. Jaxir could feel the difference now. Wither wasn’t just any simple decay spell, instead it found whatever mana structure the target relied on and poisoned it, letting the victim’s own power spread the damage.

Luckily for Jaxir, all of these high level NPCs of this village used a mana he was decently familiar with.

Glimmer Mana.

[-24]

[-23]

Orlan’s body jerked as crimson lightning snapped across one of the fractures on his chest.

[-27]

More cracks opened.

The Tank planted his sword against the floor and tried to force himself upright, but every attempt to push more mana through his body only fed Wither into another weakness. Fracture peeled those weaknesses apart as quickly as they appeared, leaving red-white seams spreading beneath his skin while Bind continued strangling every ability he tried to form.

Jaxir’s chanting changed. He had been waiting to use this one.

Mana began pouring toward him from the room, first in thin streams and then in swirling pools that curled around his legs and climbed his body. The silvery-blue light gathered so densely around his staff that the dusty shop seemed to dim around it, while something inside the spell made the air feel unstable, as though every curse already lodged inside Orlan had suddenly become fuel.

The Tank looked up.

For the first time, Jaxir saw fear.

"Entropy."

The spell landed without anything dramatic leaving Jaxir’s staff.

For half a second, nothing happened at all.

Then every curse inside Orlan reacted at once.

BOOM.

[-46]

A muffled explosion burst somewhere inside his shoulder, jerking the Tank sideways before a second detonation struck his ribs.

BOOM.

[-51]

Orlan screamed.

The next blast came from his thigh, followed by another from somewhere deeper in his chest, each one feeding off the instability Bind, Fracture and Wither had already created. Entropy didn’t add another weakness so much as take every weakness already present and turn the stored potential between them into a chain of internal detonations.

[-49]

[-57]

[-62]

Orlan crashed onto one elbow, sword slipping from his grip as another explosion folded through his abdomen. Crimson lightning raced across the silver-blue fractures now, every seam flashing just before another pocket of cursed mana erupted beneath it.

[-54]

[-48]

By the time the sequence slowed, the Level 18 Tank was little more than a trembling near-corpse.

He trembled on the floor with one knee still trying to push beneath him, blood running from his mouth while Bind finally began fading from around his body. Jaxir watched the last silver-blue bands loosen and realized the entire combination had done exactly what Entropy’s description promised, taking three separate curses and making their overlap far more dangerous than any of them should have been alone.

Orlan still tried to stand.

Jaxir almost respected that. Almost.

He raised his staff and aimed it toward the man’s head, a smile pulling across his face while a silvery-blue jester emblem unfolded behind his shoulders. The image hung there like a mocking shadow cast in light, its grin wider than Jaxir’s own as mana gathered at the end of the staff.

"Bye bye."

Cast fired.

[-71]

Orlan’s body collapsed before the damage number finished fading.

A notification immediately replaced it.

―

[Grave Deed Committed]

[You have deliberately killed a lawful NPC while acting under hostile Alignment.]

[Continued actions of this nature may progress your Alignment from Bad → Evil.]

―

Jaxir barely looked at it.

"Where the hell is my Experience?"

He stared at Orlan’s body as though the dead Tank had personally cheated him, waiting another second in case Divinity was simply taking its time. Nothing appeared.

"You’ve got to be kidding me."

Maybe the game didn’t want to incentivize players to walk into villages and farm guards for levels, which Jaxir could admit was probably sensible design. That didn’t explain the dungeon, though, where he’d nearly died fighting three people possessed by Demi-Goddesses and somehow walked away without a single useful chunk of Experience for the effort.

Jaxir dismissed the Alignment warning and vaulted over the ruined counter, scanning the floor while the bell continued pounding through the village outside. Nick’s marker sat almost directly beneath him now, which meant the entrance had to be somewhere inside this miserable excuse for a shop.

He stomped once near the shelves, then again closer to the counter, listening past the ringing bell for the difference beneath his boots. On the fourth strike, the floor answered with a hollow wooden knock instead of packed earth and stone.

"There you are."

Jaxir hooked his fingers beneath the edge of the disguised trap door and tore it upward, exposing a narrow staircase descending into darkness beneath the shop. Voices and movement echoed somewhere far below, faint but unmistakable, while Nick’s marker remained fixed at the bottom of his map.

Jaxir tightened his grip around the staff and started down.

The bell above kept ringing.