Chapter 157: Maelis

Jaxir cringed where he had landed, because for one, it hurt like hell. For two, he was pretty damn sure he didn’t stand a chance against this woman. He hadn’t even seen her move.

He wasn’t sure how Divinity handled a difference in strength this large, whether the game somehow throttled what he could perceive or whether her speed had simply passed the point his senses could follow. Whatever the answer was, Jaxir had no idea what she had hit him with. A hand, the shaft of her spear, her helmet—hell, for all he knew, she had headbutted him.

The only thing he knew for certain was that his Aegis armor had kept him alive. Without it, that first strike would have killed him outright, and going through the abilities and items he still had available didn’t give him an obvious answer to that problem. None of his tricks mattered much if he couldn’t even land them.

Jaxir pushed himself off the ground, and the smile he had been wearing slowly disappeared as he rose. By the time he straightened, there was almost nothing left in his expression, only a cold stare fixed on the woman ahead of him. The players between them hurried aside as she started walking toward him again.

She didn’t seem interested in talking anymore, and her spear lifted with an almost lazy motion as she approached. Jaxir watched the weapon rise, then lifted his own staff until it pointed toward her.

The woman stopped. "You cannot be serious."

Her eyes dropped to the staff before her laughter burst out, loud enough that several people around them joined in. Jaxir didn’t react, and after a few seconds she started forward again. Her spear remaining loose in one hand.

"If you could even hit me, I’d strip myself of every piece of armor right here and walk home naked."

Jaxir still didn’t answer. The words were more useful than anything he could’ve said back. She hadn’t offered to let him hit her, which meant she wasn’t stupid enough to stand there and tank an unknown ability just because he was lower Level. Anyone who had spent enough time in Divinity knew there were too many strange abilities and hidden effects for that.

The fact that he had survived her first strike would’ve only made her more cautious. She didn’t know why he was alive, and until she figured it out, she wasn’t going to assume the rest of him worked the way it should either. Unfortunately, that made the one person Jaxir desperately needed to underestimate him even less likely to do it.

Running didn’t look much better. Jaxir could potentially build enough momentum to launch himself hundreds of meters into the air, but there was no chance she would stand there while he gathered the speed to do it. Even if he somehow managed the jump and she couldn’t follow him up, all she had to do was stay underneath him until his glider ran out of juice and he came back down.

The woman kept approaching until only five meters remained between them, and Jaxir noticed that her pace had become even slower. Her mouth still carried the same mocking smile, but her attention never left him, and her eyes kept moving between his staff and the rest of his body. She wasn’t only taunting him, she was waiting to see what he did.

Just as she seemed ready to take another casual step, her body blurred and vanished from where she stood. Jaxir still couldn’t follow the movement with his eyes, but this time he had already ready.

Mana surged through the staff in his hand.

A dark orb pulsed at its head, then spread outward as curtains of darkness unfolded between them. The L3 ability stored inside his Ultra staff activated before Jaxir even saw the woman reappear.

Unmaking.

BANG.

The strike crashed into him head-on and launched him backward again, instantly tearing what remained of his MP down to zero. Pain ripped through his chest as more than a hundred HP vanished with it, and another mouthful of blood spilled from between his lips. But Jaxir barely paid attention to any of that.

The hit had been weaker.

She had been more prepared this time, not less, and yet the strike that landed on him had carried noticeably less force than the first. Jaxir’s eyes shifted past her shoulder as something black began taking shape behind her. A notification opened across his vision.

--

[Unmaking]

[L3 Hex Ability]

[Locked]

[Dismantle a target’s ability to function—stats, resistances, and abilities all degrade both instantaneously and over time.]

[Unlock Requirement: Unravel Lv30, Drain Lv30]

--

Jaxir wasn’t supposed to have access to Unmaking yet. Unravel and Drain both needed to reach Level 30 before the ability could be unlocked, and neither of them was there. Fortunately, his Ultra staff could store a single L3 ability for him.

That stored ability was now tearing into the woman.

A shadowy reaper rose behind her, its body hidden beneath a ragged black cloak while two curved sickles appeared in its hands. The first sickle swept through her shoulder without cutting her armor, and crimson slashes appeared across her body as though something underneath the metal had been opened instead. The second sickle followed, then both weapons began moving faster.

Slash after slash appeared over her arms, chest, legs and back, each crimson line tearing apart something different. Jaxir could feel what the Hex was doing even without knowing every weakness it had found.

Unmaking wasn’t attacking one part of her. It was pulling her apart piece by piece—stats, resistances, abilities, everything that allowed her body to function at its current level.

The woman stumbled.

Her eyes widened as one foot dragged half a step behind the other, and for the first time since she’d appeared, Jaxir’s perception caught hold of the information surrounding her. The status page that had refused to reveal itself before finally cleared. A name appeared above her.

[Maelis Singh]

[Level 27]

Jaxir’s body was still skidding backward when he read it, one heel bouncing off the ground as he fought to keep himself from tumbling. Level 27 explained more than enough, considering the gap between them, but he didn’t have time to enjoy finally getting an answer. Maelis was already forcing her balance back under control.

Jaxir’s free hand moved to his inventory before he hit the ground. Two vials appeared between his fingers, one containing a mana potion and the other holding the neurotoxin he had taken from the dungeon. He brought the mana potion to his mouth first.

The potion went down as his back struck the ground, and mana immediately began flooding back into his empty reserve. Jaxir used the impact instead of fighting it, rolling across one shoulder and carrying the motion until his feet came beneath him again. By the time he rose, the empty mana vial was already falling from his fingers.

His thumb knocked the cork from the neurotoxin.

Jaxir didn’t pour the liquid anywhere, and he didn’t feed his own mana into another ordinary Cast. Instead, his attention caught hold of the mana already contained inside the toxin itself, pulling on that rather than his newly restored reserve.

The liquid lifted from the vial and compressed into a small projectile in front of his staff.

Maelis had recovered enough to move again by the time Jaxir released it. She was still fast, far faster than him, but there was an enormous difference now.

Jaxir could actually see her.

Her body shifted sideways as the projectile crossed the distance between them, and for a moment it looked as though she had cleanly moved beyond its path. The Cast passed the edge of her shoulder without touching her.

Maelis’s gaze sharpened as she continued the dodge.

Jaxir changed the shape of his Cast.

The small projectile stretched in the middle of its flight, thinning into a long whip of toxin that curved after her instead of continuing straight ahead. Its tip caught the corner of her shoulder, wrapped around her upper body, then snapped across her back. The liquid splattered over her armor and the exposed skin beside it.

Maelis jerked.

The neurotoxin wasn’t supposed to work properly against someone too far above Jaxir’s Level. Their stats and resistances would normally be high enough to suppress most of its effects before it could do anything useful. In fact, the description had made it pretty clear it was worthless against targets more than 10 levels above him.

That would’ve been a problem if Maelis still had all of hers.

Unfortunately for her, she didn’t.