Chapter 173: Attune

The next wave came before Jaxir had finished laughing.

More than twenty pale-white Casts spread across the oasis and rushed toward him from different angles, while Jaxir answered with twelve of his own. But unfortunately, the first collisions filled his head with so much information that his grin tightened almost immediately.

Every Cast returned something to him when it struck another spell or moved through the surrounding mana. Jaxir felt changes in force, trajectory, resistance, density, and spin all at once, and twelve separate streams of information quickly became impossible to separate.

By the time he understood what half of them were telling him, one of the spirit’s Casts was already headed straight for his ribs.

Jaxir twisted away and still took the edge of the attack across his Aegis. Another Cast forced him to duck, then a third carved through the grass beside his foot as he stumbled backward and fired three shots to clear some breathing room. Across the oasis, the Hollow Mana Spirit had already formed another volley.

"Alright, that’s fucking excessive."

Jaxir could manage three Casts comfortably and four if he pushed himself, but anything beyond that turned his thoughts into mud. He could still create twelve, yet keeping track of what every one of them experienced was slowing him down more than it helped. There was no point having more spells in the air if the information they returned made him too stupid to use them properly.

The spirit released again.

Jaxir stopped listening to most of his Casts and focused on four, letting the others fly along simple paths without constant adjustment. The pressure inside his head eased enough for him to intercept the most dangerous attacks, though two still slipped through and tore another chunk from his Aegis. He recovered his footing with his breathing already heavier than it had been a minute ago.

There had to be another way to do this.

Jaxir curved one Cast around a collision and watched the spirit intercept it before the attack had even entered a useful angle. But that confused him. The spirit couldn’t possibly be calculating every projectile individually if it was controlling this many at once. His attention shifted away from the spells and onto the pressure that had surrounded him since the fight began.

The Hollow Mana Spirit looked roughly Jaxir’s size, but it didn’t feel that way.

Jaxir could sense its mana in the grass beneath his boots, in the air above the pond, and through the space separating them. The spirit’s body floated more than fifty meters away, yet its presence pressed against Jaxir’s skin as if he were already standing inside something much larger. Another Cast entered that pressure and the spirit reacted to it instantly.

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed.

The black crystal cave flashed through his thoughts.

He had only discovered the mana flowing through those walls after Attune helped him reach beyond the surface and feel what was hidden underneath. Until then, Jaxir had thought of Attune mostly as a way to reduce how much mana his spells consumed. But the ability was clearly doing more than that.

A white Cast shot toward his head.

Jaxir didn’t watch it.

He focused on the mana around himself and felt the projectile disturb that space as it entered. His head moved to one side before his eyes had fully tracked the attack, and the Cast passed close enough to stir his hair without touching him.

―

Lv51 Attune > Lv52 Attune

―

Jaxir’s grin returned.

"Attune."

The spirit filled the air with another barrage, but Jaxir no longer tried to read every Cast directly. He widened his awareness and paid attention to the disturbances they created while moving through the mana around him. The attacks stopped feeling like twenty separate objects and became movement inside one larger space.

―

Lv52 Attune > Lv53 Attune

―

Jaxir slipped through two Casts and intercepted a third without ever looking directly at it. He kept four of his own attacks under precise control while the rest followed simpler commands, only drawing his attention when something entered their paths. The difference gave him room to think again.

Then the spirit screamed.

Its presence expanded with the sound and slammed into Jaxir from every direction. Two of his waiting Casts lost cohesion before he could release them, while a third warped enough that he dismissed it rather than wasting the mana. Jaxir’s smile faded as he fought against the pressure.

He knew this feeling too.

Yesterday, Jaxir had disrupted several Magic Class players by expanding his mana into the space around their spells. He had forced himself into their control and interfered with the Casts before they could finish forming. The spirit was doing the same thing on a scale Jaxir hadn’t known was possible.

―

Lv53 Attune > Lv54 Attune

―

The spirit’s physical body suddenly seemed almost irrelevant. What Jaxir could see was only the center point of something much larger, while its mana extended across the oasis as an enormous field of awareness and control. The creature wasn’t reaching fifty meters away to manipulate mana.

It was already there.

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed. He had always treated the mana inside his body as his own and everything outside as something separate. The spirit had almost no boundary between those two things, and every bit of surrounding mana seemed to function as an extension of itself. That was how it managed so many Casts without drowning beneath the calculations.

Jaxir pushed his mana outward.

The spirit’s pressure crushed against it immediately and forced him backward through the grass. His first attempt was crude, little more than throwing his own mana against the spirit’s and hoping strength would make up the difference.

Unfortunately, it didn’t.

Jaxir steadied himself and thought about what his body already knew.

The Natural blood-condensing page had taught him to temper his body by incorporating mana into his flesh. That process had already weakened the distinction between Jaxir and the mana inside him. He only needed to push that same principle in the opposite direction.

Jaxir stopped forcing mana away from himself.

He let himself spread into it.

Silvery-blue mana expanded around his body and met the spirit’s pale-white pressure, forming a boundary that trembled between them. Jaxir’s knees bent as the weight of the spirit’s control pressed against him, yet the white presence finally stopped advancing. He looked across the oasis and laughed.

―

Lv54 Attune > Lv55 Attune

―

The silvery-blue field widened.

Every Cast moving through it became easier to feel, and Jaxir no longer needed to consciously search for each one. He still couldn’t perform twelve separate calculations at the same time, but he didn’t need twelve anymore. Attune gave him the broad picture while his mind focused only on the parts that required a decision.

Jaxir released another dozen Casts.

The spirit answered immediately, but Jaxir felt its interceptors enter his field and redirected several attacks before they collided. Two silver-blue Casts curved around the defensive line while another struck from below. The first clean hit tore through the spirit’s shoulder.

[-158]

Another struck its side.

[-163]

Three more found openings before the spirit recovered.

[-171]

[-156]

[-184]

Jaxir laughed as the balance shifted. It seemed he wasn’t the only glass canon. This spirit’s defenses were terrible.

―

Lv55 Attune > Lv56 Attune

―

The spirit flooded the air with white Casts, but Jaxir no longer cared about matching them one for one. He sent several attacks high to draw its defense upward, then curved another group low across the pond while using the first collisions to hide them. The spirit noticed too late.

[-172]

[-159]

[-181]

Jaxir’s field pushed farther into the oasis.

―

Lv56 Attune > Lv57 Attune

―

The arrogance in his chest grew.

The Hollow Mana Spirit had begun this fight controlling everything around them while Jaxir struggled to keep track of his own spells. Now Jaxir could feel the creature’s Casts entering his space before they reached him, and every exchange taught him how to steal a little more control. He wasn’t surviving anymore.

He was winning.

A dozen silver-blue Casts formed around him.

Jaxir sent the first four straight into the spirit’s defenses, then curved two more behind the explosions they created. Another pair climbed overhead while the final four waited outside the spirit’s immediate focus. Jaxir felt every response through the mana filling the oasis.

―

Lv57 Attune > Lv58 Attune

―

The first hidden Cast tore through the spirit’s torso.

[-176]

The second punched through from the other side.

[-189]

Jaxir released the rest at once. Four descended from above while the remaining attacks curved inward from opposite directions, and the spirit tried to reform its defenses only after the pattern had already closed around it.

Silver-blue light punched through its body from every angle.

[-168]

[-181]

[-194]

[-173]

The final Cast followed through the largest opening Jaxir had created and detonated inside the spirit’s center.

BOOM.