Novel Full Chapter 1542 Blossom Doesn't Stop
Chapter 1542 Blossom Doesn’t Stop
The two mage-killers dropped into the basin still blinking smoke from their eyes and landed directly on top of a rune array Kaelira had carved into the dirt. The detonation launched both of them sideways into silver constructs Sylvaris had hardened to the density of castle walls, and the concussive boom rattled Blossom’s teeth even from twenty meters away.
Kaelira charged the nearest one with a war-hammer she’d forged mid-explosion, and Lyra closed on the second before he’d peeled himself off the barrier wall.
Blossom watched them engage and her stomach dropped.
The mage-killers were bleeding, ears ringing, shrapnel cuts across their faces, and it didn’t matter. “[Mana Sunder]!”
The first one deflected Kaelira’s hammer with a dagger parry that redirected the entire weapon’s arc without absorbing any of the force, and his counter came in the same motion, a short thrust that punched through Kaelira’s chestplate like the enchantments woven into the metal were decorative.
Dark energy cracked through the blade and into Kaelira’s torso. Every enchantment on her armor splintered at once and the artificer dropped to one knee with a choked gasp, the hammer slipping from fingers that couldn’t close. The mage-killer was already pulling his dagger back for the kill thrust. Wounded, ambushed, outnumbered, and he moved like the ambush was a mild inconvenience because killing mages and the people who fought alongside them was his entire reason for existing.
On the other side, Lyra’s sword cratered the stone behind the second mage-killer’s head and he rolled under it, daggers flashing. “[Puncturing Stab]!” The counter opened a gash along her ribs deep enough that Blossom saw the white flash of bone through the torn armor. Lyra staggered and the man pressed, another slash aimed at her femoral artery with the surgical precision of someone who’d spent centuries mapping armor gaps on corpses.
‘Blossom has to go.’
The thought was instant and absolute and it pushed everything else out of her head.
Kiryssa’s voice echoed behind it, silk-and-venom: ‘In all my years as an assassin, one truth kept repeating itself, little pup. The ones who defend die tired. The ones who attack get to look down on the throbbing, bleeding remains of their enemies.’
‘But Miss Kiryssa is far more powerful! If Blossom lunges in, she’ll become a liability to Master and her friends!’
‘Is that so? Then sit back and watch them die. Watch your husband and friends choke on their own blood while you stand there being careful.’ That cruel smile. ‘Or trust them to hold for three seconds and go tear something open. The choice is yours, little pup.’
“[Veil of the Hollow].”
Blossom’s body dissolved into void. The world shifted around her as color drained to grey and sound turned muffled and distant, and she moved.
The mage-killer’s dagger was descending toward Kaelira’s throat when his head twitched.
A fraction. The smallest involuntary jerk, the kind of motion that only happened when a predator’s instincts screamed louder than their conscious mind. He’d felt her. Even through the Veil, even without seeing or hearing her, some deep-buried survival instinct honed over centuries of killing in the dark had told him something was wrong with the air behind him.
His dagger reversed in a blur, sweeping behind him toward the space Blossom was occupying.
He was incredible. Fast enough to detect a Void Stalker mid-approach and redirect a killing blow into a defensive sweep in the span of a heartbeat.
He was also too late.
“[Null Rend]!”
Blossom’s claw gauntlets materialized out of the void and tore across his forearm just above the wrist. Void energy crackled along the rakes and shredded through leather and muscle and tendon in a single pull, and the dagger meant for Kaelira tumbled from fingers that no longer worked. He screamed, short and sharp, and his free hand drove his second dagger into Blossom’s shoulder before the Veil had fully dropped.
The blade sank to the crossguard. Her left arm went heavy and wrong, pain flooding down in a white-hot current that tried to lock her muscles the way Kaelira’s had locked. The Veil shattered around her as the damage broke her concentration.
‘Blossom doesn’t stop.’
She drove forward into his guard instead of pulling away from the dagger, closing the distance to nothing, and her right claw gauntlet hooked into the gap between his breastplate and shoulder guard. She ripped downward with everything her body had, tearing through the muscle of his chest in a ragged line from collarbone to sternum.
He kneed her in the gut hard enough to fold her over and send her skidding back across the dirt, and even torn open he was strong enough to make it hurt. But Blossom had opened him up and that was all that mattered because Ria materialized from his blind side with daggers raking across his back, and Feng’s Tidebreaker strike crashed into the base of his skull while his hands were busy holding himself together.
He crumpled.
Blossom was already turning because she could hear Lyra losing.
The second mage-killer had the Juggernaut against the basin wall. Lyra was fighting one-handed because her right side was soaked red from the rib wound and the arm on that side had gone sluggish, and the mage-killer pressed with both daggers in short, controlled combinations that tested her guard from angles she couldn’t cover. Each exchange cost Lyra another cut, forearm, thigh, a nick across her cheek from ear to jaw. Her teeth were bared and her sword kept coming, diminished and still dangerous, but the math was seconds from finishing.
‘Blossom knows what Kiryssa would say.’
‘Why do you even have tankers in your pack if they fold at the first real hit, little pup? If I were you, I’d let them bleed a while longer. See how much they can actually take before you waste your effort saving the wrong one first.’ A tilt of the head followed, lazy and interested, like a cat watching something squirm. ‘What about that pink-haired one, studying under Mearie? She’s a swordswoman with the Juggernaut class. She’ll hold. She was built to hold. That’s all juggernauts are good for. The others, though?’
Blossom hated it. Hated the way Kiryssa talked about her friends like they were pieces on a board, hated the cold arithmetic of watching people she loved get carved apart and ranking them by how long they could survive it.
But Blossom had already made that exact call. She’d looked at both friends dying and gone to Kaelira first.
Great assassins assessed the battlefield with eyes that had no room for kindness. Blossom hated that truth, but she’d used it anyway.
And Lyra was still standing. Exactly as she’d read it.
‘When bleeding and cornered, don’t you dare act conservative, little pup. Go all out and deal with the consequences later!’
“[Umbral Step]!”
Blossom crossed the twenty meters in a single void-step and materialized at the mage-killer’s back with her right gauntlet already swinging. He heard the displacement of air and spun from Lyra with one dagger tracking Blossom’s throat, the transition so fast it blurred. His read was perfect, he’d predicted her height, her angle, even the fact that she’d lead with her right because her left was compromised.
Felicity’s null magic hit his casting arm.
The defensive barrier he’d been channeling through his off-hand flickered and died for less than a second, and the gap between his prediction and Blossom’s arrival was just wide enough.
Her right gauntlet took him across the throat. The cut was ragged and ugly and tore through everything in its path, and Lyra’s sword punched through his back a half-second later, driven home with one good arm and a snarl.
He dropped.
Blossom stood over him with blood running down her left arm and pooling in the palm of her gauntlet, her shoulder a ruined mess of torn leather.
“I’m sorry, guys… I didn’t expect such a spell,” Kaelira cursed on her hands and knees, the Mana Sunder still crackling through her in residual jolts that made her arms tremble.
“That spell countered your class perfectly…” Lyra leaned against the basin wall pressing her hand to the rib wound. “Thanks, Blossom. You saved me.”
“Yeah, you were amazing,” Kaelira grunted.
“!!” Blossom jolted and a proud grin spread across her bloodied face as she saw her friends, cut open and battered but alive, offering their praise like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Blossom loves her friends so, so much!”
She looked up at the smoke-stained sky for just a moment, and the grin softened into something quieter.
‘Miss Kiryssa. Blossom doesn’t like the tone of your lessons. Miss Kiryssa is a cruel, sadistic woman. But Blossom owes her her gratitude.’
Feng and Ria were already moving, Aurora’s healing potions in hand. Feng pressed a vial to Kaelira’s lips while Ria knelt beside Lyra and poured a second across the rib wound, the liquid hissing where it met torn flesh. Felicity dropped beside Blossom and pulled the dagger from her shoulder with one sharp motion, then pressed a potion-soaked cloth against the hole before Blossom could yelp.
“Hold still, dummy,” Felicity muttered.
“Blossom is holding very still!” Blossom said while not at all holding very still. Well, she was trying her best, but…
“You’re wagging your tail really hard!”
“Felicity is a bad girl! She knows Blossom can’t help it!”
“Hehe… I’m innocent,” the girl giggled, caught red-handed.
Across the basin, the ground shook.
A hammer blow rang out like a cathedral bell, and Lucille’s war cry tore through the smoke.