Chapter 71: Dance (1)

The silvery-blue light from Jaxir’s last Cast had barely finished tearing apart the street when he was moving again, the grin on his face widening as Grimm drove through the fading mana with his spear raised. Archmage had done more than give him a pretty title. The five free levels might not seem like much, but they pushed into his L2 Hexes had removed the wall that had rejected Drain only moments ago.

On top of that, there seemed to be a qualitative difference that came with every talent jump. Almost like every point of MP counted for more as an Archmage than it did as merely a Mage.

Jaxir twisted around another spear thrust and let Double Jump carry him sideways as the road beneath him burst apart, then leveled his staff before Grimm could turn. A dense whirlpool of silvery-blue mana formed at its tip and struck the Region Boss in the chest, only this time the curse sank into him instead of shattering against the level difference.

[-42]

Jaxir felt the stolen vitality return through the connection and immediately layered another Drain over the first, then another whenever Grimm gave him enough room to complete the chant. The numbers weren’t impressive against one hundred thousand HP, especially with the village feeding health back into Grimm, but for the first time his health bar stopped snapping straight back to full.

That was enough.

Jaxir spent the next several minutes turning the center of Glimmer Village into something that looked like an artillery range, firing Casts between every opening while Drain kept chewing in the background. Grimm answered with increasingly violent eruptions of Glimmer Mana that crushed storefronts, blew holes through stone walls and carved craters through the road whenever Jaxir slipped outside the concentrated point before it exploded.

Nick had long since stopped attempting to fight beside him and instead hovered around the outer edge, darting in only when Grimm’s back remained exposed for more than a second. Even then, Jaxir could hear him yelling something about lunatics and suicidal mages whenever another explosion swallowed half the street.

Jaxir was having a fantastic time.

The Weightless Boots let him float through gaps that shouldn’t have existed, Double Jump turning bad landings into new attack angles while the enormous boost to his Mind made every movement of mana easier to read. Grimm’s spear kept getting faster and his detonations kept spreading wider, but Jaxir was learning the rhythm beneath the chaos faster than Grimm could change it.

Grimm’s health finally dipped beneath ninety thousand.

―

Grimm

Named Region Boss

HP: 89,973 / 100,000

―

Jaxir almost laughed when he saw it, but something about the Drain effects caught his attention before he could enjoy the milestone. The curse wasn’t pulling evenly anymore; there were places around Grimm’s shoulders, ribs and right leg where the silvery-blue streams leaving his body had thickened into visible trails.

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed while he dodged another thrust, watching one of the heavy streams pulse from the same place beneath Grimm’s arm where his earlier Channelled Cast had landed. Damage had accumulated there, and even though the Region Boss’ health kept regenerating, the weakness underneath it hadn’t disappeared with the number.

"Oh, that’s interesting."

He hadn’t touched Fracture since realizing the level difference made his Hexes unreliable, but that problem had changed along with Archmage. Jaxir slipped beneath Grimm’s shield, planted one hand against the road to swing his legs away from the spear, then completed the familiar chant while aiming directly at the places where Drain was leaking the most.

Fracture settled into those points and the reaction was immediate.

Every Drain attached to Grimm suddenly surged, the thin streams becoming thick currents that poured toward Jaxir fast enough for him to feel the stolen vitality rush through his body. The Region Boss’ regeneration fought back, but the curses were now stripping health nearly three times faster through the weaknesses Jaxir had opened.

Jaxir’s grin sharpened. "There you are."

Grimm responded by driving his spear into the ground, Glimmer Mana spreading through the entire street before collapsing into a dozen separate points. Jaxir kicked himself upward as they detonated one after another beneath him, each explosion feeding the next until buildings on both sides of the road cracked apart and roofs slid down into clouds of dust.

Outside Glimmer Village, the consequences were spreading almost as quickly.

Messages about a player fighting the Village Head had already escaped through regional chats, followed soon after by the far more ridiculous detail that the Village Head was apparently a Named Region Boss. The village teleportation platform had locked down with the rest of the settlement, so anyone attempting to arrive directly found their route rejected and began scrambling for neighboring platforms, roads and every other way into the area.

Kaina’s group was among them.

Marti ran with Kaina, Borus, Luka and Sejan along one of the long approaches toward Glimmer, the teenager pushing ahead whenever the path widened enough to allow it. None of them had expected their hunt for Jaxir to turn into a race toward a Region Boss fight, but after Marti’s first death and everything he had told them afterward, nobody in the group was willing to dismiss another impossible report involving Jaxir Chance.

Back inside the village, Jaxir didn’t know any of that and probably wouldn’t have cared if he did. Grimm’s HP was dropping faster now, and every new Fracture gave Drain another place to bite while Cast kept forcing the Region Boss to defend instead of concentrating entirely on killing him.

Then another idea occurred to him.

Jaxir spun the Staff of the Light across his palm while slipping outside a shield bash, his chant changing into one he had never used before. The fourth and final L2 Hex answered, silvery-blue mana spreading across Grimm’s body in a thin haze that sank through armor, skin and mana alike.

―

Haunt

[Curse a target and amplify damage suffered from all sources.]

[Physical, magical and self-inflicted damage are affected.]

[Sacrificial abilities which exchange health or bodily harm for power will suffer increased costs.]

―

Haunt wasn’t supposed to care where damage came from, which meant there was no reason to shape it around specific weaknesses the way Fracture did. Jaxir did it anyway, tightening the broad curse until its influence concentrated around every point Drain and Fracture had already identified.

―

Haunt Lv5 > Haunt Lv6

Haunt Lv6 > Haunt Lv7

Haunt Lv7 > Haunt Lv8

―

Grimm staggered for the first time.

―

HP: 79,884 / 100,000

―

Jaxir barely felt his mana reserves moving despite the number of abilities he had running at once, and that realization sent another burst of excitement through him. Archmage had added another 50 Mind while Reflection of the Light supplied 250, and combined with the Staff’s reductions, his old habit of counting every expensive Hex had started feeling almost unnecessary.

Drain layered over Drain while Fracture reopened whatever Grimm managed to reinforce, and Haunt made every Cast striking those same locations hit harder than the one before. Jaxir filled the battlefield with crescents, bullets and thin beams of Light until Grimm’s shield looked like it was trapped beneath a storm, then added Bind whenever he wanted another fraction of a second to reposition.

One curse fed another until Jaxir could almost feel the entire structure wrapped around Grimm.

His eyes lit up.

"I’d say I’m sorry for this, but I’m really not."

Jaxir pointed the Staff of the Light directly at Grimm’s head and released Entropy.

BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

The first internal explosion bent Grimm forward, while the second punched through the mana surrounding his chest and the third made every active curse flare at once. By the fourth and fifth, the stacked Drain, Fracture and Haunt effects were feeding Entropy so much weakness that Jaxir stopped understanding which ability was responsible for which piece of damage.

Grimm’s health collapsed.

―

HP: 48,731 / 100,000

―

Even Jaxir’s grin faltered at that.

Around the ruined street, players and NPCs who had gathered at what they thought was a safe distance went silent as Grimm dropped to one knee, his shield striking the broken stone while golden Glimmer Mana convulsed around him. The Region Boss’ body shuddered under the curses, every strand of mana inside him twisting as though something deeper had finally been forced awake.

Then pressure erupted from him.

The wave rolled across the village hard enough to make Jaxir’s robes snap behind him, and he planted the staff against the ground while Grimm’s aura expanded until the remaining windows along the street shattered. The golden Glimmer surrounding the Village Head folded inward, swallowed by a far heavier force rising underneath it.

Jaxir’s lip twitched. "I guess there’s a phase two."

More mana poured from Grimm, enough that the smile slowly disappeared from Jaxir’s face as he felt its character settle over the battlefield. It didn’t scatter or flicker like Glimmer, and there was none of the strange wildness he had spent the entire fight learning to read.

Jaxir’s expression went deadpan as the pressure multiplied.

"Gravity Mana."