Chapter 124: Starfall and Steel

Chapter 124: Chapter 124: Starfall and Steel

Evelyn was on her feet before Damian finished speaking.

"Hold on to me," she said, and grabbed Donald by the front of his jacket, and stepped off the edge of the roof.

Celestial Ascent caught them both a meter below the parapet. The moment her hand closed on him, Donald felt the Dual-Cultivation Synergy take hold, the heat of it running through both of them at once, and Evelyn gasped as her own speed tripled. The tower fell away behind them. The lights of the city went past underneath in a blur, and then the black glass of the Field was rushing up at them, with the small white lamp of Helena’s generator at its center.

Out on the Field, two figures were already fighting.

One was Damian. Donald knew him by the way he moved, low and quick, with thin black threads of shadow pouring off his hands. The other was Evelyn.

She was tall and black-haired, and she wore the same dark coat that the real Evelyn wore on the Wall at night. She was walking toward the inner band of Helena’s ring as if Damian wasn’t there at all. When his shadow threads wrapped around her legs, she simply kept walking and tore through them, and the threads snapped one after another.

"Parasitic Snare," Donald said into the wind. "It isn’t holding her."

"Because she’s got my strength," Evelyn said, through her teeth.

The copy reached the second band of chalk and stopped. She looked down at Helena, who was still kneeling with her hands on the glass, her eyes squeezed shut, her lips moving faster than before. Then the copy reached down toward the back of Helena’s neck with one bare hand.

Damian threw himself between them.

He came up out of the copy’s own shadow, under her arm, and drove a black knife at her ribs. She turned and caught his wrist without looking, the way the real Evelyn would have, and threw him across the Field. He hit the glass hard, rolled twice, and didn’t get up right away.

The copy turned back to Helena.

That was when Evelyn let go of Donald.

He dropped the last six meters, landed on the black glass at the edge of the ring and rolled, and came up running. Above him, Evelyn hit the copy from the air with Starfall leading.

The copy’s hand never reached Helena. She threw herself sideways instead, and Starfall cut through the empty air where her arm had been and struck sparks off the glass. Then the copy rose off the Field on a column of pale light, and Donald understood which two skills she had taken.

"Ascent," he said. "And—"

"Divine Pulse," Evelyn said grimly, rising to meet her. "She took the two I use most."

They met twenty meters above the Field.

---

Donald had never watched Evelyn fight herself before, and for the first few seconds he couldn’t tell them apart at all. They had the same black hair, the same face set in the same hard line, and the same way of dropping one shoulder before a cut. They flew the way Evelyn always flew, in short straight bursts with sudden stops, and when they came together their blades rang off each other, one steel and silver, the other dull and gray.

That was the difference, and it was the only one.

The copy had taken Evelyn’s face and her two skills, but she hadn’t been able to take Starfall. The weapon in her hand was something she had grown out of her own arm, a long gray blade with the same smooth surface as a Faceless head. It held its edge well enough, but every time Starfall struck it, the starlight in the real sword flared and a thin crack ran across the gray.

Donald opened his Valuation Eye on the higher of the two, just to be sure.

[Target: Faceless (Mimic: Evelyn Vance)]

[Copied Skills: Celestial Ascent, Divine Pulse.]

[Copy Duration Remaining: 0:51.]

[Source Contact: 9 minutes 9 seconds ago.]

Nine minutes. Something had touched Evelyn just before she came up to the roof to sit with him, and the copy had less than a minute left before her face and her skills ran out. That was why it had come straight for Helena, without waiting.

He filed that away and ran for Helena.

---

The copy saw him coming.

She broke off from Evelyn in the air, dropped ten meters straight down, and opened her hands, and Donald saw the white light gathering between them. If she released Divine Pulse here, it would sweep across the ring in every direction. It would burn away every chalk symbol Helena had drawn in three days of work, and very likely Helena with them.

Donald didn’t have time to reach her. He had time to do one thing.

He threw himself across the last two meters of glass, landed on his knees beside Helena, and flared Aura of the Vanguard as wide as it would go.

It had been an F-Rank skill for his whole life as an Awakener, a thin shield of light over his skin that broke if anything heavy hit it. But it was the first skill the System had ever given him, and he had used it more than any other. He poured all the mana he could reach into it, and with Evelyn close above him, his Compound Interest pushed it further, and the thin light spread out from his arms into a low, flat dome over himself and Helena and the inner band of the ring.

[Aura of the Vanguard: Overcharged. Mana: 126 → 46.]

The Pulse hit it.

White light washed over the dome from every side at once. Donald felt it in his teeth and his spine, and the Aura buckled inward until it was a hand’s width from Helena’s bowed head. A long crack ran across it from one side to the other, and then another.

But it held.

When the light faded, the dome shattered into flakes of gold that drifted down around them and faded, and Helena was still kneeling with her hands flat on the glass. Her chalk symbols were still unbroken, and her lips were still moving.

Damian came up out of the dark at the edge of the Field, bleeding from the mouth, and stood over the two of them with a knife in each hand.

"Go," he said to Donald. "I have her."

---

Evelyn hadn’t stopped when the copy dropped. She came down behind it in one long dive, and as the copy turned from the shattered dome to face her, Evelyn did something Donald had never seen her do.

She dropped her guard.

She came out of the dive with Starfall held low and loose at her side, wide open, the way no trained fighter ever came at an enemy. The copy saw the opening and took it at once, as Evelyn would have. It drove its gray blade straight at Evelyn’s open chest.

Evelyn turned sideways at the last moment, so that the blade went past her ribs and through the edge of her coat, and caught the copy’s sword arm under her own.

"Marcus taught me that," she said quietly, face to face with herself. "He said the best way to beat someone who copies you is to do something stupid. You never did meet him."

Then she brought Starfall up through the middle of the copy’s borrowed face.

The starlight in the blade flared white. The black hair and the face and the dark coat ran off the Faceless all at once, until there was nothing left on the front of its head but a smooth gray oval, split from chin to crown by a line of silver light. Then it fell to the glass and didn’t move again.

[Target Defeated: Faceless (Level 66).]

---

The Field was quiet after that. Evelyn landed beside the body and stood over it for a while, breathing hard, with Starfall still in her hand. Donald got up off his knees and went to her, and she leaned against him without saying anything.

At the center of the ring, Helena opened her eyes for a moment and looked at the two of them, pale and worn out from the work.

"Thank you," she said hoarsely. "I felt every bit of that. Please don’t let it happen again."

Then she closed her eyes and went back to work.

[Genesis Anchor Turn: Day 3 of 10. Progress: 27%. Turn intact.]

"Something touched you," Donald said to Evelyn quietly. "About ten minutes before it walked onto the Field. Think. Who did you pass on the way up to the roof?"

Evelyn frowned. Then her face went very still.

"I came up from the Wall in the east lift," she said slowly. "It stopped on the thirty-second floor. A man got in, one of Harrow’s assistants, a young man with glasses. I’d seen him in the lobby before." She looked down at her left hand. "He held the door for me. His hand brushed mine when I went past."

Donald looked up at the TIG tower across the Field. On the thirty-second floor, behind the glass, every light was on.