Chapter 159: Fun

The first explosion tore through Maelis before the echo of Entropy had finished leaving Jaxir’s mouth, and the crimson lines covering her body flashed almost white beneath the force. A second detonation followed from somewhere deeper, then another, each one feeding from the curses Jaxir had spent the last thirty seconds driving into the weaknesses Unmaking had created.

Even Jaxir’s cold expression shifted when the damage began appearing.

[-782]

[-914]

[-1,037]

[-863]

[-1,226]

[-1,104]

[-1,317]

The total crossed seven thousand before Entropy finished tearing through her, far more damage than Jaxir had expected even after everything he’d layered into the spell. He understood why almost immediately.

Unmaking had become part of the chain as well, giving Entropy an L3 Hex worth of weaknesses and degradation to burn through along with everything else. That realization was also why Jaxir didn’t wait to see Maelis fall, though.

He shook his head once and launched himself into the air, using the mana beneath his feet to carry one leap into another as he climbed through the surrounding trees. Branches whipped past him until he cleared the canopy, and only then did he reach for the Sparkle Mana spread through the world around him.

The countless tiny gravitational pulls he could now sense shifted beneath his control, aligned for a brief instant, and hurled him higher.

The forest dropped away beneath him until the people around Maelis became specks between the trees, but Jaxir continued climbing until even those disappeared. His Sapphire-Emerald Glider Wings unfolded across his back, catching the height he’d built and converting it into forward momentum as he angled himself toward town. A heavy crack rolled through the sky behind him as he shot away.

Down below, Maelis’s roar tore through the forest as the last of Entropy’s damage finally faded, rage carrying farther than the sounds of the battle ever had. She planted the butt of her spear into the ground and forced herself upward, only for one leg to give out beneath her before she had even straightened.

Maelis crashed back onto one knee and stared at her own body in disbelief.

A Level 9 player had crippled her... she had actually been crippled.

The thought only made her push harder, but her arms trembled when she tried to use the spear to stand, and pain ran through half a dozen places at once where Jaxir’s Hexes had torn through her. She looked toward the sky, expecting to find the bastard somewhere above the trees. There was nothing there.

Her fist slammed into the ground hard enough to send dirt jumping around it, and several of the players who had remained to watch flinched. Maelis barely noticed them at first, too busy staring toward the direction Jaxir had disappeared. Then she caught sight of one player slowly lowering his hand.

"Which one of you was recording?"

No one answered her, which was answer enough when she saw several people glance toward one another. Maelis dragged herself upright with the spear and reached into her Inventory for a potion, her face tightening as she looked across all of them.

"Delete it now, or I swear I’ll kill every one of you."

The crowd scattered.

Some ran deeper into the forest while others sprinted toward the road, and within seconds there were too many moving in too many directions for Maelis to even choose who to chase first. She ripped the cork from the potion in her hand and drank while watching them disappear through the trees, knowing full well that at least one recording had already been saved or sent somewhere else. Her roar followed them long after they were gone.

...

Far above the forest, Jaxir frowned into the wind as the Glider Wings carried him toward town.

He didn’t like how that fight had ended, because he would’ve much rather stayed long enough to make sure Maelis died. The problem was that he had already bet everything on Entropy, and the spell had consumed much of what Unmaking had done when it detonated the weaknesses and debuffs built across her body. Once that degradation weakened, the neurotoxin would lose the resistance advantage that had allowed it to hold her down in the first place.

Maelis could barely stand when he left, but Jaxir had an Inventory full of potions and there was no reason to assume a Level 27 player wouldn’t have the same. Hers didn’t even need to be as good as his, because all she needed was enough healing to drag herself out of that crippled state before the toxin stopped doing the rest. Staying behind to gamble on her being unprepared would’ve been stupid.

Still, doing over 7000 damage and it still not being enough was ridiculous. This wasn’t a region boss, this was just a normal player. How was she even standing?

He had already hurt her several times before Entropy landed, yet even after taking all of that she had remained alive, which meant her health and defensive equipment were far beyond anything Jaxir had dealt with before. If he could’ve spent another minute piling Hexes into her, Entropy probably would’ve finished the job. The problem was that he simply hadn’t had another minute.

Even while poisoned and torn apart by Unmaking, Maelis had still been fast enough that Jaxir needed to predict where she was moving rather than react to her normally. Another few exchanges would’ve brought her close enough to attack him directly, and one mistake at that distance would’ve ended the fight before he had a chance to escape. Her weakened strike had already shown him what would happen if she touched him again.

The more Jaxir thought about it, the worse the problem became.

Maelis wasn’t even twenty Levels above him, yet the gap had been large enough that she could move beyond his sight before he crippled her stats. She was probably carrying at least the Melee Class equivalent of a Mage Title as well, possibly even something closer to Archmage.

He luckily hadn’t allowed her to properly use a single combat ability during their entire exchange. If even one of those had landed, if she had managed to trigger at least one ability properly, Jaxir doubted his Aegis would’ve changed much. He would have been a crumpled heap on the ground.

And yet, despite her power, she had been the one sent to run an errand.

That probably meant Maelis wasn’t even close to the strongest person the quintet could send after him, which made the entire guild considerably more troublesome than Jaxir had been giving them credit for. Worse, he couldn’t think of any convenient way to close that gap quickly enough to make the next encounter comfortable. Levels apparently mattered a lot more once the person holding them wasn’t incompetent.

Jaxir’s frown slowly disappeared.

His eyes grew colder for a moment as he replayed the fight, the first invisible strike, the instant he finally saw Maelis move, and the thirty seconds where a single mistake would’ve gotten him killed. Then the corner of his mouth pulled upward. A second later, Jaxir started laughing.

The sound disappeared into the wind before returning in broken echoes across the sky, and Jaxir laughed harder until his chest started hurting for an entirely different reason. That had been the most fun he’d had in a very long time, and something inside him still felt hot from it, restless in a way that made the thought of avoiding Maelis forever sound almost disappointing. He wanted another shot at her.

"Next time."

His grin remained as the wings began losing the last of the height they had converted into travel, which meant it was about time he found somewhere to land. Jaxir angled downward toward the forest and folded part of the glider behind him, dropping fast enough that the trees rushed up to meet him. He touched down on the crown of a thick branch and bent his knees with the impact.

Then his eyes narrowed.

Jaxir’s head snapped toward a nearby tree before he had fully straightened, his Sparkle Mana catching something that didn’t fit with the movement of the forest around him. A shadow stood between the branches several trees away, wrapped beneath a veil so heavy that even Jaxir couldn’t make out a single piece of information through it.

Whoever it was had been waiting for him.