172 Hellish Victory
I clashed with Grant up close, switching between my dagger and the telekinetic sword. Sparks snapped whenever steel t steel, and the ground shook each ti our feet shifted. Fighting with weapons still felt unnatural to , and that discomfort crawled up my arms. I had always been better with bare hands, knees, elbows, anything that let move without thinking. The blade in my grip kept reminding I wasn’t fighting the way I liked, yet I had no choice but to adapt.
I pressed harder, trying to overwhelm him with speed and angles. Grant parried everything with worrying calm, his movents too smooth and precise. The mont I got close enough to sense him clearly, I realized why. His mind felt wrong and different, yet familiar in a way that made my stomach twist.
“Continuity,” I said under my breath. “How are you here?”
I released the sword, letting it hover and dart with my telekinesis while I shifted fully to the dagger. My plan was simple: phase him into the ground and end this quickly. But he read the sword’s path like it was choreographed, blocking each strike as if he could see every movent before it ca. When I grabbed his forearm and tried to force his clothes to rge into his skin, my intangibility sputtered uselessly. Sothing in him, was interfering.
It was his power to manipulate cause and effect, in turn, negate powers with absoluteness.
His hostility surged like a blast furnace. He drew a dagger from his waist and aid for my ribs. I twisted, deflected it with my own blade, and drove my knee into his stomach with an electrokinetic burst. The shock should’ve knocked him down. Instead, he gritted his teeth and lunged. His hand clamped around my throat, heat building, and flas gathering. I felt my skin blister even before he fully ignited.
An arrow pierced the side of his head.
“I am going to kill you no matter what,” Continuity snarled through Grant’s mouth. “Even if it ans dying myself!”
More arrows whistled through the air, curving unnaturally around the battlefield. Continuity’s pyrokinesis exploded outward, forming a deadly shield of heat that lted several mid-flight. I stabbed him in the abdon repeatedly, ignoring the flas crawling over my arms and face. Pain roared through , but I held on, grabbing his throat with one hand and driving the dagger into his chest again and again. The arrows continued to rain; every impact sounded like at hitting a forge.
Suddenly soone yanked back by my collar. Abner dragged away just as Diane slamd Continuity across the jaw with the shaft of her spear, sending him flying into a tangle of roots and broken stone. Abner hauled toward Thornland while Alia tore through bandits that tried to pursue us. Thornland caught , her hands glowing faintly as she worked her biokinesis. The healing felt slow and agonizing because the burns were too deep, and my body resisted the process.
The slave, Grant’s so-called blessed fighter, lay unconscious near , breathing weakly after being freed from hypnosis. Thornland’s face tightened with worry as she glanced toward the sounds of battle.
“I am sorry, brave warrior,” she said softly. “Grant’s conscripts are too many. They push forward even now. If things worsen, I must retreat with my people.”
“It’s fine,” I muttered, trying to rise against the pain.
Alia pushed back down with a sharp glare as she cut down another bandit and shot two more in one fluid motion. “Stay down. Let us handle the rest while you heal.”
But ahead of us, Continuity rose again. He plucked the arrows from his body one by one, blood sizzling against the heat rolling off him, his expression warped with rage and desperation.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, forcing myself back onto my feet. “That guy’s bad news…”
Continuity’s bloodshot eyes locked on with a feverish shine, and even from this distance his thoughts slamd into through telepathy like a storm of broken glass. He was unraveling, barely coherent, but every loose thread of his mind wrapped around one idea.
“I am going to kill him. Kill him! Even if it costs my life. My power to move causality has weakened, but it should be enough to suppress the one power that made him dangerous. Without his intangibility, Eclipse is nothing. Just a diocre piece of trash.”
The only thing inside him was murder. Not rage, not fear. Just fixation so sharp it felt surgical. My intangibility flickered uselessly, as if the chanism had been rusted shut. Pain tingled through all the half-healed burns on my skin, each movent pulling at scorched flesh. I forced myself to stand straight even as another group of bandits rushed in.
I cut three of them down with clean movents of my dagger, then summoned the telekinetic sword back to my side. It floated near my shoulder, turning on its axis like a watchful guard waiting for commands.
Continuity roared, “KILL THEM ALL!”
A wave of psychic influence rolled outward. I felt the tug of it in my skull. It was Grant’s hypnosis magnified by Continuity’s warped mind. The bandits around us convulsed with sudden strength and speed, their shadows stretching unnaturally as their bodies surged forward with bloodlust. The battlefield turned violent in a blink.
They sward us. Abner fought with his sword, each swing precise enough to kill in one stroke. Diane kept her unconscious brother behind her while cutting a brutal path with her spear. Lady Thornland’s elite guards fought harder than I expected, fueled by her touch and the knowledge they might die before the hour ended. Thornland herself moved through them as she stitched wounds closed as fast as she could with biokinesis. Alia clawed through bodies with tiger-like ferocity, tearing one throat open before pivoting to loose three arrows in quick succession.
I dove straight into the mass. My dagger carved through joints and throats while the telekinetic sword sliced parallel arcs beside , cutting down anyone who tried to flank . Blood spattered my arms, hot and sticky, and my burns scread, but I kept moving.
Arrows from Alia flew overhead, clearing space around in tight bursts. She aid at anything that ca too close, giving enough breathing room to keep pushing forward.
Continuity finished healing, the last scorch mark sealing on his skin as he blurred forward with super speed. I t him with a dagger strike, but he vanished with teleportation before the blade connected. I rolled forward on instinct and threw the dagger at the point where he reappeared. He deflected it with a practiced flick of his wrist.
A bandit lunged at with a spear, but an arrow punched through his skull before he could touch . Behind us, Abner led the others up the slope, pulling them into a tight defensive formation. Despite choosing this terrain for our ambush, the fight had flipped against us the mont Continuity chose to reveal himself. Now we were the ones boxed in.
My teleporting dagger snapped back into its sheathe. I grabbed the telekinetic sword and forced a path toward Continuity. He stared at without blinking, his expression hollow, his thoughts vibrating through my skull.
“KILL! KILL! KILL ECLIPSE! FOR GOD! GOD!”
The madness dripping from his mind made sothing click. The SRC seed to have mistake Continuity being “infection-free” after his so-called interrogation with the Entity. That could only be the reason why he was acting like this. If he was more sane, he would be a difficult opponent. However, right now, sothing inside him had clearly rotted.
I hurled the telekinetic sword at him, following it with the dagger a second later. Continuity managed to swat the sword aside, but the dagger buried into his right eye. He staggered but didn’t fall. The power tearing through his body made killing him much harder than it should’ve been. Alia kept killing the bandits around , clearing the space so I could close the distance.
Continuity snatched a bandit beside him and threw the man at with super strength.
I pushed my Enhancer ratings to the limit, dodging to the side and grabbing another bandit, using him as a shield against the flying body.
“Fucking piece of shit,” I growled as the two collided with a sickening crack.
Continuity hurled bodies at like they were stones catapulted from a siege tower. Each human projectile slamd into the ground hard enough to break bone, and I sprinted between them while shards of dirt and flesh scattered around . The telekinetic sword swooped back into place behind , and I leaped onto it, letting it carry my weight as I surfed through the chaos. My dagger still jutted from Continuity’s ruined eye like a grotesque ornant.
Fire blossod around with teleporting fireballs detonating in bursts that singed muscle and tore at my balance. I clenched my teeth and endured, focusing through the burning pain. When I found the right angle, I discharged the strongest electrokinesis blast I could muster, channeling every volt into the dagger buried in his skull. The blade beca a lightning rod. The electricity snapped across his nerves and froze him stiff for one precious heartbeat.
I fell off the sword, tumbled hard across the dirt, and crashed directly into him. We rolled, colliding with rocks and broken weapons until we skidded to a stop. I climbed onto his chest before he could react, ripped the dagger from his eye, and stabbed downward, this ti angling both blades under the nose bridge so they locked together like a bar lodged between his eye sockets. If they couldn’t co out, they couldn’t regenerate.
Continuity roared and crushed my arm in one hand. The bones cracked like dry twigs. A bright pulse of agony shot up my shoulder, forcing a yelp out of . Flas erupted from his body a second later. The heat washed over in a painful wave right before he kicked with brutal super strength.
I flew.
The telekinetic sword raced beneath , catching on its flat to soften the impact. Even then, the force rattled every organ in my torso. I tumbled off the blade, coughing, vision doubled.
Continuity rose, clutching at the two daggers wedged under his nose. He tore them free, yet nothing regenerated.
“FUCK!” he scread. “What did you do!?”
I wheezed out, “I stole your darn ring… that’s what. Sha I only managed to grab one.”
Every breath felt like a punishnt, but I forced myself upright. The only reason I hadn’t collapsed was the biokinesis humming through , my own adaptation of Thornland’s gift. Watching her mories had given what I needed to mimic her power. I owed her a debt.
I held up the ring I’d stolen. “And look what I have here… is this the one that lets you regenerate?”
“It’s useless to you,” Continuity spat as new eyes re-ford in his skull, a deeper, more unnatural regeneration. His causality was overriding the loss. “The rings only work for , so you better give up—”
I slipped the ring onto my finger.
The burns on my skin knit shut. The swelling faded. Breath returned.
“Too bad,” I said, “it works for too.”
The truth was simple enough. My Researcher rating unraveled the magic weapons’ logic like a puzzle. Biokinesis let interact with them on the cellular level. Electrokinesis provided the bioelectric compatibility. Enhancer boosted everything else to keep pace.
The mont I understood the chanism, the ring accepted .
Continuity’s face twisted, not with fear, but with pure hatred.
He vanished in a blink of teleportation and appeared beside , fiery sword raised, his killing intent pouring off him like radiation.
“JUST FUCKING DIE!” he shrieked as the blade carved a burning arc toward my neck.
“How about no?”
Continuity’s blade hissed past my cheek as I pivoted. Even half-dead, he swung with murderous precision. But I could feel it. His stamina was crashing. His causality tricks were sputtering. And the mont his grip faltered, my intangibility snapped back online like a breath of cold air.
I grabbed the front of his clothes and dragged him forward. His tunic phased through my hand, through his skin, and settled half-rged into his chest. He shrieked, staggered, and clawed at the warped fabric fused into his flesh. My own body shook from exhaustion; I could barely maintain the phasing. The telekinetic sword slipped from my ntal grasp, clattering uselessly sowhere behind us.
“Stop,” Continuity commanded, his voice layered with hypnotic force.
For a second, everything inside froze. He used his causality manipulation to suppress different powers to use this hypnotic command. With my Empathy, Telepathy, and Enhancer locked down, I was unable to resist the hypnotic command. My muscles refused to respond. His hypnosis stabbed into my mind like icy needles.
He swung.
The fiery blade carved through the air and hit my throat, but only halfway. It bit into my skin, then halted. His super strength gave out mid-strike. The pressure still crushed into my windpipe. Blood dripped down my chest. He snarled and pushed harder, trying to force the sword through my neck one inch at a ti.
I shoved back weakly, stabbing him in the ribs with my dagger. The blow had no power behind it. He barely reacted.
And then an arrow slamd into his skull.
Continuity jerked backward, eyes rolling. The grip on his sword loosened. I pried his fingers off with a desperate slash of my dagger with two quick cuts, and mounted him before he could recover. Even my fingers shook so badly I dropped the dagger.
Fine. Improvised tools worked just as well.
I seized the arrow jutting from his head and yanked it free with a wet crunch. Then I stabbed him at the throat, heart, eye socket, temple, and every vital point I could reach through the haze of pain. I stabbed until I felt nothing beneath except limp flesh and silence. No breath. No thoughts. No life.
He was dead.
My arms buckled, and I collapsed onto his chest, gasping like a drowning man. The world spun in red-black circles. The hillside had gone eerily quiet. Bodies were everywhere. The surviving bandits had scattered. The slave, Grant’s umbrakinetic guard, lay slumped nearby, unconscious after the fight.
Alia approached, limping, covered in blood and burns. One of her tiger eyes bulged half-out of its socket. Claw marks ripped across her arms and ribs.
She looked down at and smirked weakly. “You did well.”
“You look like you went to hell and back,” I rasped, staring at the gouges in her skin.
“You look worse,” she said. “Most of them suddenly ‘pulled’ and awakened powers mid-fight. It was a ss. But we managed… Abner’s power carried us more than once. We’re definitely taking him back with us. His precognition is too useful.”
I nodded at that. “We’re finally going ho… but first, we need to get back to Dr. Ti.”
“That’s right,” she said, and without hesitation she bent down, grabbed an axe, and chopped Grant’s head clean off.
I blinked. “Was that really necessary?”
“Yes,” Alia said flatly. “It’s proof.”
She dropped the severed head into a sack like it was a lon and returned to my side. She grabbed my arm and hauled upright.
“Ah—dammit!—stop, that hurts,” I groaned.
“Cry later,” she said, slinging my arm over her shoulders. “Suck it up. Lady Thornland needs a minute to recover before she can heal us properly.”
I gritted my teeth as we hobbled forward, leaving Continuity’s corpse in the dirt behind us.
Reviews
All reviews (0)