Chapter 113: Have to Be

"JAXIR!" Nick’s voice barely made it across the deck over the crashing waves and the splintering hull. "Pull it together! You’re getting your ass kicked!"

Jaxir slipped past the point of Verren’s trident, but the captain turned the failed thrust into a sweep fast enough to force him back another step. He laughed anyway, silvery-blue light flickering across his eyes as something finally settled in his mind.

Nick was right.

Jaxir had spent most of Divinity relying on the fact that Mana seemed to make sense to him faster than it did to everyone else. He learned quickly, reacted quickly and usually found some strange way to exploit whatever was in front of him, but against someone whose fundamentals were just as developed as his own, instinct and talent weren’t enough anymore.

"Fine."

Verren rushed him again, but Jaxir stopped looking for a way to retaliate and committed entirely to defense. Mana Reinforcement continued flowing through his body while the Mana-Skin Aegis handled anything he failed to avoid, and since he had never filled its Reserve Core, every hit it absorbed tore directly into his personal MP instead.

Verren thrust once toward his chest, then again toward his throat, and Jaxir stopped watching the weapon itself. Instead, he focused on the Mana gathering along the captain’s arm and shoulder until, on the third thrust, he caught the same structure appearing again.

There.

The pattern was simple enough that Jaxir almost laughed when he finally separated it from everything else. Mana gathered around the attack itself, supporting the motion without changing its purpose, which meant he was looking at the foundation everything else built from.

Strike.

One of Verren’s Root Abilities.

Strike wasn’t some special technique at all; it was exactly what Cast was to him, the basic action that every more advanced offensive ability inherited from.

Verren stepped forward again, but this time his Mana changed before he attacked.

Jaxir’s attention sharpened.

The captain’s weight shifted onto his rear leg, yet Mana spread through his hips, shoulders and core rather than gathering in the trident. When Jaxir fired a quick Cast toward his chest, Verren absorbed part of the impact without losing his footing, then returned a thrust with noticeably more force than his position should have allowed.

Jaxir’s eyes brightened. That was different.

He watched Verren change his footing one more time and finally caught the repeating circuit as Mana redistributed through his entire frame depending on whether he was attacking or defending. The ability wasn’t an attack at all.

Stance.

Another Root Ability. He was passively improving both attack and damage mitigation through the way he positioned his body.

"So that’s what you’re doing."

Verren frowned.

"Keep going." Jaxir said with a grin.

Verren didn’t say a word. Instead, the trident stabbed forward, missed, swept horizontally and then reversed straight back toward Jaxir before the previous motion had fully ended. Jaxir barely got his staff between himself and the final thrust, but the impact mattered less than the thin line of Mana he finally noticed surviving between every attack.

It never broke. Verren never severed one mana flow to enter another at all.

Jaxir’s grin widened when the answer clicked into place.

Combo.

The last of Verren’s Root Abilities wasn’t strengthening any individual strike. It preserved the transition between them, allowing one attack to feed naturally into the next instead of forcing the captain to reset his body after every motion.

That explained why Verren felt so different from everyone else he’d fought. There were barely any gaps in his attacks.

Verren suddenly slowed, drawing the trident farther back than usual while Mana compressed heavily through both arms. Jaxir recognized Strike underneath it now, but another structure had been layered on top, trading speed for a much denser impact.

He dodged as the trident smashed through the deck.

Heavy Strike.

An L1 Ability built directly from Strike, sacrificing tempo to hit much harder.

Jaxir barely finished the thought before Verren’s Mana dropped into his legs. The captain launched forward, and Jaxir watched the structure intensify the farther he travelled until the purpose became obvious before the hit even arrived.

Charge.

Another L1 Ability, converting distance travelled into greater impact.

Jaxir stepped aside and let Verren pass, but the captain twisted into another attack with a much rougher surge of Mana. This time the structure abandoned much of what Stance had been doing defensively and forced nearly everything into the strike itself.

That one made Jaxir laugh.

Overwhelm.

The final L1 Ability was almost stupidly direct: sacrifice defense for raw damage.

"You really did pick the caveman branch."

Verren’s face darkened.

The ship lurched hard enough to interrupt whatever response he was about to give as one of the larger river beasts slammed into the hull. Wood exploded inward somewhere below them while another section of railing snapped free and disappeared into the water, forcing Nick to race toward the side of the ship to keep the creature from climbing farther onto the deck.

Jaxir kept his attention on Verren.

The captain raised his trident overhead, and the Mana structure condensed downward along the weapon rather than forward. Jaxir moved before it landed, but the deck still cracked beneath the impact and the force travelled far enough through the wood that his legs nearly buckled.

There.

Crush.

An L2 Ability built around a downward strike that staggered whatever it hit.

Verren ripped the trident free and swept it sideways almost immediately, but now Jaxir knew enough to watch the Mana rather than the weapon. Instead of condensing into one point, it spread outward along the full path of the swing.

Cleave.

Another L2 Ability, sacrificing focus for a wide attack capable of catching multiple targets. Probably also quite useful for slippery opponents.

Jaxir ducked beneath it, but Verren changed again before he could rise.

This time the trident stopped mattering entirely.

Mana reinforced Verren’s whole body as he drove forward shoulder-first, and Jaxir deliberately allowed the Mana-Skin Aegis to take part of the collision so he could feel the structure clearly. The impact hurled him backward across the deck while his MP dropped hard enough to make his core feel noticeably emptier.

Slam.

The third L2 Ability turned Verren himself into the attack, prioritizing displacement over raw damage.

Jaxir caught his footing near the railing and looked back across the ruined deck while Verren came after him. He felt like he had everything now except one strange accumulation he’d been sensing underneath the fight from the beginning. Everything else had been used over and over again... except for this one. And...

It had been getting stronger.

Every time Verren attacked without breaking his sequence, a small amount of Mana remained behind instead of dispersing. Strike fed Heavy Strike, Heavy Strike fed Charge, Charge fed whatever came next, and the longer Verren remained on offense, the heavier every ability became.

Jaxir finally understood.

Momentum.

The last L2 Ability rewarded uninterrupted aggression by making every successive offensive ability hit harder.

The whole branch snapped into place at once.

Strike gave Verren the foundation, Stance controlled how he attacked and defended, while Combo linked his movements together. Heavy Strike, Charge and Overwhelm modified the ways he could pressure an opponent, then Crush, Cleave and Slam expanded those ideas into stronger attacks, while Momentum rewarded him for never letting that pressure stop.

Jaxir could see the entire path of this Melee Class now. The Power Branch. And he had spent this entire fight doing exactly what the Power Branch wanted him to do.

Retreat.

React.

Let Verren keep attacking.

His eyes flashed silver-blue again, but this time there was none of the earlier uncertainty left in them.

Verren rushed forward, and Jaxir immediately recognized Charge gathering through his legs before the captain even moved. Stance shifted his weight to support the burst, Combo prepared the next transition, while Momentum sat underneath everything waiting to make the follow-up hit harder.

For the first time, Jaxir wasn’t guessing. He knew exactly what was coming.

He checked his remaining MP.

―

MP: 284/3,300

―

Mana Reinforcement had been draining 20 MP every second while the Aegis consumed even more whenever he allowed an attack through. Between that and everything he’d spent before the captain revealed his Elite status, Jaxir had burned through almost his entire pool just to understand what he was fighting.

Nick shouted from across the deck. "Please tell me you’re going to start fighting back! I’m getting cooked over here!"

Jaxir shifted his stance and raised his staff.

He grinned.

"That’ll have to be enough."