Chapter 52: Closed Wounds

Tayo and Zay hit the ground almost together, yet neither of them stayed there long enough for Jaxir to take advantage.

Zay rolled behind her tower shield and came up moving, while Tayo slipped into the space behind her without either of them looking at the other, the two of them falling into formation so cleanly that Jaxir didn’t quite know how to react.

Zay had become the wall, advancing with that enormous shield taking up most of Jaxir’s vision and cutting off one angle after another. Tayo drifted behind her and waited for the openings she created, his spear appearing around her shoulder, hip, and shield edge whenever Jaxir moved somewhere he thought was safe.

Jaxir twisted away from one thrust, only for Zay to step across his retreat and force him back toward it. Twinkle Anchor bent the point away from his ribs at the last moment, copper light rolling across his armor as the spear scraped past, but Zay was already there to cover Tayo before Jaxir could retaliate.

’That’s annoying.’

His staff cracked several times and magic bullets tore across the short distance between them, but Zay caught the first two with her shield while a third struck her shoulder for almost no damage. The fourth curved around her guard toward Tayo, and even that one barely made him tilt his head before it burst against his cheek.

[-1]

Jaxir didn’t bother being disappointed, he had already seen what their bodies could do, so expecting simple Casts to punch through whatever the Demi-Goddesses had stuffed into them would have been stupid. Killing them had stopped being the point of the bullets after the first volley anyway.

The next shot skimmed past Zay’s eyes and made her shield rise half an inch, while another snapped toward Tayo’s spear hand and forced his next thrust wide. Jaxir kept backing away as the bullets came from different angles, never wasting enough mana to make them strong, only putting them wherever they would be most irritating while his mouth began shaping ancient words beneath the noise.

Tayo’s head snapped toward Jaxir as the chant took form, and Zay immediately accelerated, but the magic bullets bought him the last scraps of time he needed. His eyes fixed on Tayo through the narrow space beside her shield, then the final syllable left his mouth.

"Chi."

Fracture settled over Tayo, and a network of fault lines opened to Jaxir’s awareness as though Tayo’s body had been folded along a hundred weak points only he could see.

Some ran through flesh and bone, others through the dense Twinkle Mana packed into him, but the worst were the jagged places where that foreign divine power had been forced into a body never meant to hold it.

Jaxir’s eyes brightened as Fracture reached toward all of them at once. Tayo had plenty of weaknesses now, far more than he should have, and Jaxir felt his mana beginning to wedge into those gaps before something else suddenly pushed back.

White-gold energy flooded through the faults before Jaxir could widen them, dense enough that his own mana simply vanished wherever it touched.

The fractures pulled shut one after another, not healed through anything Tayo had done, but sealed from somewhere above him by a power that treated Jaxir’s spell like a fly to swat away.

"What the—"

Zay’s shield filled his vision before he could finish.

Jaxir activated Twinkle Step as the bash came in, gravity twisting around him until his heel touched the nearest pillar. He sprinted straight up the stone while Zay’s shield crashed beneath him hard enough to crack the base, then hooked one hand over a ridge near the top and hung there with his staff still pointed down.

His breathing had started to grow heavier, and the failed Fracture irritated him even more when he felt the missing chunk of MP. The spell had worked, he knew it had, yet something carrying a much heavier sort of mana had simply reached into Tayo and forced all those weaknesses closed.

Except it wasn’t heavier mana, not exactly.

Jaxir stared at the pale remnants still moving beneath Tayo’s skin and felt the difference now that he knew what to look for. It was closer to the feeling of Divinity, something higher pressing down on what he had done.

That pissed him off far more than it probably should have.

A Demi-Goddess had just interfered directly with his spell, yet the emotion rising through Jaxir’s chest didn’t feel anything like fear. It carried the same ugly certainty that had surfaced around the memories of the Jester, like an ant had crawled onto his hand, opened its tiny mouth, and had started biting as though it could devour him.

That feeling welling up in his chest... it was disdain, rage, something bordering humiliation. Feelings so ancient that they shouldn’t have felt like his own, and yet very much so did.

His fingers tightened around the stone as silver-blue light burned brighter through his eyes.

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

Tayo looked up as Jaxir began chanting again, and Zay immediately moved beneath him, but this time he ignored her entirely. His attention remained locked onto the lines Fracture had already opened, because the Demi-Goddess had sealed them, but she hadn’t completely erased them.

Jaxir could still feel every one.

He didn’t need to find new weaknesses, he only needed to tear the old ones back open.

"Chi."

Fracture dropped from above with Jaxir’s mana driving into the same faults as before, only this time he didn’t let the spell spread wherever it wanted. He caught every half-closed line he could feel and pulled at them, using the same understanding that had taught him the secrets of Fracture before forcing those folded edges apart with everything he had.

―

Fracture Lv20 > Fracture Lv27

―

Cracks of silver-gold light ripped across Tayo’s chest and climbed toward his neck, and the white-gold power surged to meet them again almost immediately. It poured toward the fractures with the same overwhelming force as before, only Tayo’s body reacted before it could finish the job.

His entire frame convulsed and blood sprayed from his mouth, his spear dipping as one knee nearly struck the floor. The light still tried to seal Jaxir’s Fracture, but now Jaxir could feel the real problem, the same problem those Demi-Goddesses had created the moment they decided to turn a Level 10 player into a container for something far beyond him.

The Demi-Goddess could provide as much energy as she wanted, but Tayo was still the one who had to carry it. Every time she forced enough of that power through him to close Fracture, his body had to endure the process, and the blood running from his lips made it obvious that there was only so much more he could take.

Jaxir’s grin returned. That was his chance.

Zay launched herself up the pillar toward him with her shield raised, likely planning to scrape him straight off the stone, and Jaxir finally released his grip. He dropped directly toward her, waited until she committed to meeting him in the air, then formed the shape of Twinkle Pulse beneath both feet without reaching for a card.

The repulsive force burst outward and launched him over her head, his feathered armor snapping behind him as he shot toward Tayo far faster than gravity alone should have allowed. Mana gathered above his staff before he landed, splitting into three separate spheres that began rotating around themselves.

Jaxir caught their movement with the gravity hidden inside his Twinkle Mana and pulled harder, accelerating their rotation until the spheres screamed through the air and the light around them began twisting inward. Tayo was still struggling to recover beneath him when the notification appeared across Jaxir’s vision.

BOOM.

―

[Critical Hit!]

―

[-1,146]

―

Tayo came apart into motes of light before his body finished falling. He was dead.

Blood rushed through Jaxir’s veins, the feeling of victory and understanding melding into an infernal boom across his chest.

But then Nick yelped.

It was a short sound, cut off in the middle, and Jaxir’s head was already turning toward it when he heard the echo of a string being plucked. A bowstring.

Jaxir had no card in his hand, no mana in his staff, and every ounce of himself was pointed at the ground where Tayo had been just moments ago, relishing victory.

But then Telik’s arrow abruptly cut it off, appearing right before him.