Chapter 72: Dance (2)

The Gravity Mana didn’t stop at Grimm’s skin. It climbed above him in twisting streams of dark gold and gathered into a broad halo that hung behind his head, its edges turning slowly while the last remnants of Glimmer Mana were swallowed beneath something heavier.

Grimm lifted his head and looked across what remained of Glimmer Village, and whatever rage had been holding his face together finally cracked. Blood slipped from the corners of his eyes in thick trails, except even that wasn’t normal anymore, tiny flecks of dark gold sparkling through the red as his gaze moved across shattered homes, collapsed storefronts and roads that had been carved into craters.

"My God has not abandoned me." Grimm tightened his grip around his spear while the halo behind him brightened, the blood continuing to stream down his cheeks. "Blessed Gravity, I thank you for your grace. With the strength you have granted me, I swear this heretic will die upon the soil he has defiled."

Jaxir got a very bad feeling.

He turned and ran.

Mana burst beneath his feet as he recreated the sensation of Twinkle Step through his Light Mana, giving himself just enough attraction to hit the side of a building and sprint three steps straight up the wall. His fourth step became a leap over the roof, and the instant his body cleared the building, something behind him changed.

BOOM.

The entire side of the house disappeared beneath a vertical column of dark-gold Gravity Mana, not breaking apart so much as collapsing into itself until the wall, windows and half the roof became a flattened crater. Jaxir twisted in the air to look back at it, then faced forward again before his landing could become another problem.

"Fuck."

He hit the next rooftop and kept moving, but another pillar flashed into existence ahead of him before crashing downward hard enough to erase an entire section of the building. Jaxir kicked off the roof with Double Jump and threw himself sideways, watching yet another column appear where he had been headed as Grimm advanced through the ruined street below.

Until now, staying away from Grimm had mostly been a matter of avoiding the spear and the strange concentrated explosions of Glimmer Mana, which at least gave Jaxir something to read. Gravity Mana didn’t care where Grimm was standing, and another dark-gold pillar appeared twenty meters away from him before smashing through a house as if distance had stopped being relevant.

Jaxir needed to stay close enough to keep layering Drain, but the bastard had suddenly gained ranged attacks that could erase him in one hit. Worse, the field around Grimm kept flashing with new pillars, each one punching holes through Glimmer Village while the man responsible continued crying blood over how much "Jaxir" had destroyed.

"Hypocritical bastard."

Jaxir dove through an open window as another pillar crushed the rooftop behind him, rolled across someone’s table and burst through the opposite wall before the building finished collapsing. He didn’t bother looking back until he landed in the street.

The sight waiting for him made his middle finger rise toward the sky before he even thought about it.

Grimm’s health was climbing again.

"Fuck me."

Jaxir accelerated before another pillar could answer him, his mind already tearing through the numbers even as his feet carried him between ruined buildings. A basic Cast barely mattered anymore. With the Staff of the Light reducing the cost so heavily, a normal use registered at one MP, and even charging one took long enough that he had to hold it for around 10 seconds before the cost started creeping into double digits.

His L1 Hexes were in almost the same comfortable territory, since their current cost of around 20 MP fell to roughly 10 through the staff. The real drain came from his L2 Abilities, which still wanted around 80 MP each before equipment, leaving Drain, Haunt and Entropy at roughly 40 MP every time he used them.

Normally, that wouldn’t have scared him much.

Reflection of the Light was giving him +250 Mind even with the Halo sitting on his Weightless Boots, which translated into another 2,500 MP by itself, while Archmage added another +50 Mind for 500 more. That was 3000 additional MP before even counting Jaxir’s own Mind, and his Mana Belt still recovered another 20 every minute on top of it.

The problem was that 20 MP a minute wasn’t going to cover the amount of mana he would waste if all his earlier progress vanished.

Jaxir had been fine when Grimm had to stay near him, since every 40 MP Drain bought more damage and more healing while Cast cost almost nothing between them. If Gravity Mana forced Jaxir to spend several minutes running while Grimm healed back everything he had lost, then Jaxir would eventually reach the point where he was dumping expensive L2 spells into a boss that simply reset whenever he backed away.

Another pillar appeared directly ahead.

Jaxir threw himself sideways, but the edge of the pressure still caught his robes and spun him through the air before his boots touched down. He recovered with Double Jump before hitting the ground, yet his eyes remained fixed on Grimm’s health bar as it climbed past 50,000.

Jaxir almost started crying blood himself.

At least the healing was slow, but he had also made the situation worse with Entropy, since detonating the curse network had burned through a huge portion of the stacked Drains he had spent so long building. Grimm had lost more than 20,000 HP almost instantly, but the price was that Jaxir now had fewer curses pulling against the village’s regeneration.

"That’s what I get for aura farming. Should have just stayed patient."

Jaxir grimaced at himself even while another part of his mind immediately pushed back against the thought. He hadn’t fired Entropy just to watch Grimm explode for fun—well, not entirely. His stacked curses had already started showing diminishing returns, and there was only so much he could layer before throwing another Drain at Grimm became worse than detonating what was already there.

Though, considering Entropy had erased more than 20,000 HP in one go, that limit was apparently pretty damn high.

"Come on, come on, I need a solution."

Jaxir rounded the remains of a collapsed building and almost ran straight beneath another pillar. Dark-gold light flashed into existence less than a step ahead of him, forcing his boots to dig into the road as he came to such a violent stop that broken stone sprayed around his ankles.

The pillar slammed down.

Pressure hammered against his body hard enough to make his heart pound against his ribs, but this time he didn’t stumble nearly as much as he expected. Between his new equipment and the absurd increase to his Mind, even being this close to the impact felt more manageable than it should have.

Jaxir barely noticed, though. Instead, his eyes had dropped to his boots.

Behind him, another surge of mana rolled across the street, and Jaxir twisted around to find Grimm charging straight toward him. The Region Boss moved like a projectile rather than a man, spear lowered while streams of dark-gold Gravity Mana split around his body in long howling currents.

Jaxir looked from Grimm to his Weightless Boots, then back again.

The idea forming in his head was stupid enough that it immediately started feeling promising.

He tightened one hand around the Staff of the Light while his gaze dropped once more toward the white-gold glow wrapped around his weightless boots. "You’re gonna have to hold up your weight."

Jaxir paused, then chuckled despite Grimm rapidly closing the distance.

"Well fuck me, I’m not even a dad yet, but look at me go with the puns."

His grin stretched from ear to ear as the mad idea finally took shape.