Chapter 54: Another one?

Chapter 54: Chapter 54: Another one?

Jason was already moving.

He drove the butt of the spear into one man’s ribs, spun, and swept the shaft across another’s knees. One of them went down hard. The other turned, and the spear opened his throat on the way back around.

Two more fell.

Three left.

The pain in his side sharpened. He pressed his arm against it and felt wet warmth soaking through his shirt.

’It’ll heal.

I Just need time.’

He didn’t have time.

---

The last of the lesser three lunged and stabbed at Jason’s wounded side. Jason twisted, but not fast enough. The point sank into his flesh, a hand’s width, and he hissed through his teeth.

The masked figure drove forward, trying to pin him against the statues.

For the first time, he gave ground.

One step.

Two.

The spear pressed deeper.

Then lightning flashed in his eyes.

He had not been retreating blindly. He had been drawing the man into a straight line.

Jason dropped his weight and slid sideways. The enemy spear scraped past his shoulder. He trapped its shaft beneath his own, twisted both weapons down, and slammed a burst of concentrated fire into the man’s chest.

The mask collapsed.

Two remained.

The Peaks.

The air changed.

Neither of them had used a drop of their strength until now. As they stepped forward in perfect, silent unison, their red energy surged, thick and heavy, a pressure Jason could taste at the back of his throat.

’Two at Peak. And I’m half empty.’

The first attack arrived before he could finish the thought.

Clang!

The spear hit him like a falling beam. The shock traveled down both arms and rattled his teeth, and his boots slid a full yard across the stone.

The second Peak was already on him. Strike. Block. Strike. Block. The blows came in a relentless, crushing rhythm that left no room for counters, and every parry cost him a little more of an essence reserve already running thin.

The lightning around his spear flickered.

His arms had gone numb to the elbows.

’Can’t out-trade them. Can’t out-last them.’

The first Peak pulled back his weapon for the finishing thrust.

Jason looked at the spearhead.

Then at the two figures standing before him.

He remembered the opening clash. The ten had assumed numbers would be enough. They’d relied on formation, on strength, on the certainty that he’d run dry.

They were still making the same mistake.

They thought his lightning was a way to move faster. They thought his fire was a way to hit harder.

Neither was true.

Lightning let him change the rhythm of a fight.

Fire let him decide where his enemies could stand.

He had been using them separately.

Time to stop.

---

The Stoneborn Spear dipped until its tip nearly touched the stones.

Lightning crawled down the shaft.

Flame gathered around it.

They did not explode outward. They compressed, layer on layer, wrapping each other in a tightening spiral until the spearhead burned a fierce red threaded with thin veins of blue.

He reached down into the denser portion of his Core, the refined essence he’d earned from Kane, and poured it into the technique.

’Crimson Thunder.’

The first Peak thrust.

Jason moved.

Not backward.

Forward.

His spear met the incoming weapon, and a crack like a thunderclap rolled across the plain. The enemy spear flew aside, its owner thrown off balance.

Jason passed him in a streak of blue and crimson light.

A short thrust broke the second Peak’s guard. The burning shaft reversed and swept across his chest, throwing him to the ground.

Only one remained.

He stood several paces away, red robes torn, mask cracked down the middle.

The man struck with everything he had left, a final, descending strike with all of his weight behind it.

Jason raised the Stoneborn Spear.

Steel met steel.

For one suspended moment, neither of them moved.

Then lightning flashed along Jason’s weapon, a narrow tongue of fire following it, and he shifted his grip by half an inch.

The enemy spear slid away.

The Stoneborn Spear stopped at the man’s chest.

Silence rolled across the plain.

Then Jason drove it home.

The mask fell.

---

He stood in the middle of ten bodies, the last embers dying on his spear.

His legs trembled. Blood ran down his side. His essence had dropped to a thin, shaking thread, enough for a handful of strikes and nothing more. He had maybe one technique left in him. Maybe.

’That one burns too much.’

He leaned on the shaft and breathed. His ribs screamed with every breath.

His bloodline itched under his skin, already knitting the wound closed, slow but certain.

No chime sounded. No reward.

’Of course not. Same level.’

He wiped the blood from his face with the back of his wrist.

And then the air changed again.

It wasn’t a gust. It wasn’t a sound.

It was a weight, settling over the plain like a hand pressing down on the back of his neck, far heavier than anything he had felt in the last hour. The statues around him seemed to lean away from it.

Jason’s head came up.

A single figure was walking out of the haze.

Not running. Not in formation. Just walking.

The same red robes, but a long, dark red cloak billowed behind him. The same blank white mask. A single spear, held loosely in one hand, point trailing the ground and scratching a thin line across the flagstones.

His Perception read it.

[Cultivation: Third Level, Peak Stage]

Jason’s blood went cold.

’Third Level. Peak.’

Kane had been Initial Stage of Third Level, drugged and unstable, and he had nearly torn Jason apart.

This man was at the very top of the level, steady and whole.

And Jason had a thin thread of essence left.

The figure stopped thirty paces away.

It lifted the spear.

Then the world blurred.

Jason’s Perception caught the first flicker of movement, and his body was already moving, spear coming up across his chest in a desperate block.

The masked man crossed thirty paces in a heartbeat.

Clang!

The impact sounded like a bell the size of a mountain.

Jason’s boots tore twin furrows through the flagstones. Pain exploded up both forearms. His vision whited out at the edges, and his teeth rang in his skull.

The Stoneborn Spear held.

Barely.

The mask hovered a handspan from his face, blank and silent.

Jason’s arms shook against the weight.

’One clash.’

’And I already know I can’t win this the way I’ve been fighting.’