I sat up, panic surging through my system like ice water. The ground beneath was rocky, uneven, covered with the sparse, tough vegetation that sohow survived in the wasteland. In the distance rose silver spires, glinting in the harsh sunlight.
Argent, the Citadel, I could see it, it wasn’t so far away.
"No. No, no, no." My voice erged as a croak, my throat still dry despite days of rest.
I struggled trying to stand up, nearly falling as my weakened legs protested the sudden movent. My head spun, the aftereffects of the Quickstep backlash still lingering in my mind. But that was the least of my problems now.
I was outside the barrier. Outside the protection of Argent. In the wasteland.
The vow. The damned vow. It must have activated while I was unconscious, transporting outside the Citadel without warning, without preparation. And now I was here, still wearing the light clothes I’d trained in days ago, without supplies, without dark water, without even the full recovery of my strength.
My hand reflexively sought the yo-yo in my pocket, fingers closing around its familiar shape with desperate relief. At least I had that.
And Switch, I could also still use that.
I scanned my surroundings, forcing my mind to focus beyond the panic. The terrain was rocky, with scattered boulders offering potential cover. To my left, a small canyon cut through the landscape, I couldn’t see the bottom from where I stood. To my right, the ground rose in a gentle slope. And straight ahead, tantalizingly visible but impossibly far away, stood Argent, its barrier a shimring green do that promised safety.
Safety I had to reach before...
Movent caught my eye, a dark blur against the rocky ground so distance to my right. Then another, farther back. And a third, already descending the slope toward the flatter ground where I stood.
Corruptors.
My heart lurched in my chest, skipping several beats before settling into a frantic rhythm. Three of them, moving with that strange, disjointed gait that made them seem to skip fras of reality. The closest one had already noticed , its eyeless head turning in my direction, sensing the emotions inside my brain in this dead landscape.
"Of all the tis..." I muttered, forcing myself to breathe steadily despite the fear gripping my stomach.
I’d been training for this mont, running laps, learning spells, pushing my stats higher and higher. But not like this. Not half recovered from the worst backlash I’d ever experienced, not alone and unprepared, with three Corruptors closing in.
The vow that had put here didn’t care about my condition. It had activated according to its own incomprehensible rules, depositing in perhaps the worst possible situation with perfect indifference to whether I survived it.
The nearest Corruptor had definitely spotted now. It moved with increasing purpose, that jerky, unsettling motion speeding up as it fixed on its prey. .
I had minutes, maybe less.
I touched the yo-yo in my pocket again, the smooth surface grounding . I’d killed a Corruptor before, switched its head with a pebble. But that had been pure desperation, a lucky strike. This would require strategy, planning.
My mind raced through options. Run for Argent? Too far, too open. I’d be caught before I covered half the distance. Hide? Pointless, the Corruptors could sense my emotions. Fight? Against three of them, in my weakened state?
But what choice did I have?
I spread my feet, grounding myself on the rocky soil. My body ached from days of immobility, my head still throbbed with the aftereffects of the backlash, but I pushed those sensations away. Focus. I needed absolute focus.
Fear and determination crystallized into a single, perfect point of clarity. I’d survived exile when forty seven others died. I’d killed a Corruptor king when everyone said it was impossible. I’d mastered magic through months of failure and frustration.
I would not die here, not like this, not when I had finally begun to understand what I could beco.
The nearest Corruptor broke into that terrible, loping run that defied normal movent, closing the distance with unnatural speed. It opened its maw, revealing rows of teeth that seed to shift and multiply as I watched.
I raised my hand, the yo-yo clutched in my fingers as I prepared to fight for my life.
The Corruptor lunged, its maw gaping wide enough to swallow my entire head, rows of teeth glistening with sothing that might have been saliva or might have been sothing far worse. Ti seed to slow, my perception sharpening to a razor’s edge as death hurtled toward .
Quickstep.
The word ford in my mind, not as conscious thought but as pure instinct, the pattern assembling itself in the space between heartbeats. Three spheres aligned, geotries rotating, and then...
The world blurred.
I wasn’t running. I was elsewhere, ten ters to the left, my body having traversed the intervening space in an instant. The Corruptor’s jaws snapped closed and he ate a good amount of air, air that was surrounding a mont ago, its montum carrying it past my original position in a ssy, uncalculated manner.
My head ached in protest. The backlash had just faded, and now I’d triggered the sa spell that had nearly killed days ago. But pain was preferable to death, and I’d take the agony over Corruptor’s teeth any day.
The Corruptor recovered with unsettling speed, twisting its body mid lunge to face again. Its head tilted, that eyeless face sohow conveying confusion at my sudden relocation. Behind it, the other two had accelerated, drawn by the burst of emotion my fear had released.
No ti. No room for error.
My hand found the yo-yo in my pocket, pulling it free. I didn’t have ti to grab sothing else. It had to be enough.
The first Corruptor charged again, faster this ti, learning from its mistake. I waited, counting heartbeats, forcing myself to hold position despite every instinct screaming at to run.
Three. Two. One.
Quickstep.
The world blurred again, pain flowed through my skull as I activated the spell a second ti. I materialized to the right, closer to the canyon edge, putting distance between myself and the charging monster. But this ti I hadn’t just evaded, I’d positioned myself.
The Corruptor overshot again, but it was learning. It ca to a halt faster, turning with that jerky, impossible motion. Its maw opened, and I could see sothing gathering in the back of its throat, so Corruptor ability? Maybe, but I didn’t want to learn that today.
I couldn’t give it ti to attack.
The yo-yo rested in my palm. That was all Switch required. Contact with sothing I could swap. The target could be anywhere, I just needed to visualize it, to feel its presence.
I reached outward with my mind, searching for the Corruptor’s head. That eyeless, nightmare bearing down on . I just needed to see it, to fix it in my spacial awareness.
The connection ford. Two points, the yo-yo in my hand, and the Corruptor’s head that was closing fast. Like a thread stretching between them, waiting to be pulled.
Switch.
A quiet, wet sound entered my ears.
One mont, the Corruptor was charging, maw open, death lunging toward . The next, its head simply wasn’t there anymore.
In its place, my yo-yo tumbled through empty air, spinning end over end where the head had been, before falling to the rocky ground with a soft clatter.
And in my hand, where the yo-yo had rested monts before, I now held a Corruptor’s head.
The transition was so abrupt, so complete, that my brain struggled to process what my eyes were seeing. The head, severed cleanly at the neck, dark fluids dripping from my palm, its jaws still open, still frozen in that mont of gathering energy. But the light behind those teeth had died. The body it belonged to stumbled forward a mont later, headless, collapsing at my feet in a spray of dark fluid.
I stared at the head in my hand. At the ichor coating my fingers. At the dead body twitching on the ground.
Then a notification appeared in front of .
[You Slayed: Aspirant Carlo - Level ???]
[Corruption fades.]
I dismissed the notification while thinking.
’Well... that’s two now.’
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