I stood at the center of the crater, draped neck to toe in my leather and bone armor. I'd morphed the gauntlets, enlarging them and filling them with strands of organic tissue to help them better conduct electricity and Curse energy. I finished off the design with spikes on the knuckles.
George raised his brow at that.
"You have your way of doing things, and I have mine."
"You'll hear no judgment from me. Not on this topic at least," George said from somewhere deep in the forest. His voice carried easily to me, and I to him. Yet, another advantage of ridiculously high stats.
It'd surprised Raven when we'd first started speaking like this, but now she'd gotten used to it.
"How's the spell work going?" I asked.
George looked at our new charge dubiously. "I wouldn't know. She keeps muttering the same phrase over and over again. I sense no difference. I can't believe your plan hinges on some clueless teenager being a half-decent sorcerer."
"I've probably forgotten more about magic than you and your friend will ever know," Raven snapped.
"He's not my friend," George and I spoke at the same time.
"Either way," she said dismissively, "let me concentrate."
George looked as if he had more to say until he sensed Sebastian approaching.
"Just hurry up, Raven," I called out for George to relay and took off, the ground cracking underneath me.
Body control flung me into the air like a cannonball, and Positive energy detonated out of the bottom of my foot in a tight cone, accelerating me towards the blood priest.
"Such a vulgar opponent," Sebastian snarled. He had a tight magical cloak around him, made from dense spellwork that I assumed was designed to protect him from being transported, and he pointed at me. Darkness gathered, and I felt a spike of demonic energy.
My heart stopped suddenly, and reality opened up to me as I took my binding vow, and I flung out Sever. It ripped through the spell in the pompous sorcerer's hand–much to his surprise–and damaged his spell cloak, leaving him completely open to my hook.
I poured everything into it. I ramped up my output to max, activated Overdrive, which gave me a flat 50% boost on top of my current output, and then triggered Power Strike, the evolved subskill of my hand-to-hand combat skill, and Cleave.
The punch ran him over like a freight train, punting him so hard into the wall of the crater that it created a second, smaller one.
My gauntlet shattered, and a few bones cracked, but I had clearly gotten the better of the exchange. Sebastian's midsection was putty. A wave of blood and crushed organs poured from his nearly bisected midsection, and he let out a low groan. I chased after him, shooting from the air with a flick of my big toe an expanse. A bone spear manifested in my hand, ready to run him through the head on impact, but gravity yanked me downwards, hard.
My stomach dropped as I felt the grip of a very familiar technique. I crashed into the ground, hard, creating a crater nearly as large as Sebastian's, and the pressure only seemed to grow by the second. The output blew Gina's out of the water and shattered my bone armor from the sheer pressure. Reinforcement and plain old stats held me together as Sebastian advanced, body healed, and his face twisted with rage.
"Sorcerer with more skill and pedigree than you have tried," he said. "I will offer you one chance and one chance only. Where is the girl?"
"Ugwh, Ugwh, Ugwh." The laugh came out whistly and strained, and I flipped him the middle finger.
"Petulant little upstart!" He growled at me and upped the output on the technique.
My bones creaked, blood vessels in my body burst, and I felt death creeping closer. I stopped my heart again and fired another Sever.
He twisted out of the way in time, but the attack had still done its job, shattering the gravity technique. I was on my feet in flash with body control, RCT healing me while my middle finger touched my thumb. Black lightning leaped from his hands and fried my sternum, but it didn't shake my control.
Fuck you.
Maximum technique: Expanse.
Expanse has reached level 10
The world went white, and I woke up somewhere in the deep forest with my eardrums burst, and my vision shaky. I stared at the nubs that remained of my hands in wonder with a touch of confusion before the rest of my mind caught up.
RCT washed over me, reversing the damage, and Body control yanked me to my feet and high up into the air, and I flung my senses to the horizon, taking in the sheer devastation. I was somewhere deep, deep in the forest, not too far from a mostly fine George, Raven, and the rest of the team.
The area they'd been standing in was devoid of life. The blowback of my expanse had been strong enough to shred the forest entirely.
The crater I started the fight in was even bigger now, but by far the most concerning–or perhaps exciting thing–was just how effective my Maximum Expanse had been. It carved a massive molten ridge through the forest. It crossed the highway and cut through several out-of-town farms, ruining their fields and erasing livestock.
I swallowed. How many people did I kill?
It was terrifying how much power I now held in the palm of my hand. I hadn't expected the boost from my Special Grade Title to make this much of a difference. Then again, the technique just went from nine to ten. I'd expected a fundamental change, but nothing so drastic.
I wondered if George's Hollow Purple could match up.
As powerful as my new Expanse was, though, Sebastian still wasn't dead, which meant he would be gunning for Raven directly now that he was weakened. And turns out, I was right on the money. I felt him before I saw him, darting across the ravine and entering the crater, cloaked in some type of invisibility spell. I shot down to meet him, and was immediately greeted by a black bolt that was disgustingly weak.
Twisting over it with a light touch of body control, I looked over to Raven and saw that she'd finally succeeded. She looked positively possessed. She was floating in the air, her head pulled back, and whispering incantations.
Alrightey, then. Let's fucking go.
My middle finger joined my thumb as I prepared another expanse, but a smaller one this time, hoping to knock him down so that I could pin him and George could finish him.
Sebastian Blood noticed me before I unleashed my technique, and he did something I should've anticipated–he used yet another borrowed technique. He sped up suddenly, faster than I could react, and I was forced to use all of my trump cards. Red Riot. Flowing Red Scales. Electricity manipulation.
Lightning leaped from nerve to nerve, lighting up my nervous system and enhancing it. I shot off with a crack of lightning, and I saw snapshots of him, accelerating straight at George, who was already turning to him with a Red charge in his hand.
My kick slammed into his back before he reached them. He briefly transformed into glass before reverting back, and he carved a bloody furrow through the forest. I caught up to him, taking in his bloody state with some surprise.
He was barely skin and bones. He was half-melted and emaciated from trying to regrow his limbs. A hand and a leg were missing, and I could see his heart beating in his exposed chest cavity.
Good riddance.
My glowing fist came down, ready to pulp his head and destroy the rest of his body with Dismantles. But a spell form stopped me, flashing right above his heart.
"You–will not…keep me from…him," he wheezed, floating to his feet. Pain ripped through me so brutal it nearly made me black out, and I let out an involuntary scream. All of my techniques dropped, despite Psi Clarity pouring into my mind. Sebastian winced from the volume of my voice.
Blood pooled through my chest and into his heart, and I withered, and he healed. Whatever he was doing, it was tapping into something far more essential than blood. My soul–my curse energy. He was likely doing the same thing he did to Nathan, Gina, and Shelim.
Fuck that, No!
Lightning blasted out at me in thick arcs, scorching the soil and everything around for dozens of feet. It bounced off a blood-red shield that Sebastian erected with a sinister smile.
I was contemplating another Sever--damn the consequences-- when a purple beam the size of a passenger plane washed erased him. It skimmed the hairs of my chest, sparing me barely, and I dropped to the grass, gasping and surprised.
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