Chapter 73: Dance (3)

The mad idea stopped feeling quite so mad once Jaxir felt the next gravity pillar begin to form.

The dark-gold light hadn’t appeared yet, but the pull arrived first, tugging at his robes and dragging his reduced weight toward a point several meters to his left. Jaxir had been treating that pressure as the warning that told him where not to stand, when in reality Grimm was giving him a direction and most of the acceleration for free.

His grin widened as he stopped fighting it and let his body move.

The Weightless Boots had reduced his effective weight by 90%, so it took almost nothing for the forming gravity well to pull him off balance and start dragging him sideways. Jaxir formed a small imitation of Twinkle Vacuum ahead and slightly to the right, changing the direction of that pull, then released a short Twinkle Pulse behind himself to kick his body free before the pillar finished forming.

BOOM.

The pillar erased the road he had occupied a moment earlier, while Jaxir shot around its outer edge fast enough that the wind tore at his robes. He landed several meters away, looked back at the crater, then immediately felt another pull beginning to gather behind him.

"Oh, that’s disgusting." Jaxir laughed as he angled a Vacuum above himself and let the second gravity well drag him backward, using the new pull to lift his body before a Pulse against the ground completed the turn. "I love it."

Grimm lunged with his spear at the place Jaxir should have landed, only for Jaxir to sail over the weapon and twist through the air while three Casts formed around his staff. They fired before his feet touched anything, slamming into Grimm’s shoulder, chest and exposed side as Jaxir redirected himself toward another gathering pillar.

[-71]

[-78]

[-69]

The damage wasn’t important by itself. Cast had become cheap enough that Jaxir could throw them almost without thought. What mattered was that every impact gave the Drains already buried inside Grimm another chance to bite, while the larger openings let Jaxir slip in fresh applications whenever the Region Boss failed to force him away.

Another gravity pillar began forming near Grimm’s right side, and Jaxir let its pull catch him instead of dodging away from it. A Twinkle Vacuum bent his path around Grimm’s shield while a Pulse snapped him through the last few meters, turning what should have been an attack meant to crush him into a slingshot that carried him straight across the Region Boss’ back.

Jaxir fired another barrage as he passed.

Grimm spun after him and swept his spear through empty air, then answered by summoning several gravity pillars across the shattered street in quick succession. The battlefield flashed dark gold around Jaxir, but the increased number of attacks only gave him more vectors to choose from, and soon he wasn’t retreating from the pillars at all.

He was bouncing between them.

Every time gravity began to gather, Jaxir felt the direction before the attack became visible and allowed the pull to accelerate his nearly weightless body. Twinkle Vacuum changed the angle, Twinkle Pulse supplied the last correction, and the pillar itself handled most of the work that would normally have cost him mana.

The difference became ridiculous once he found the rhythm.

Jaxir started moving faster than he had at any earlier point in the battle, ricocheting around Grimm while white-gold trails curved through the dark-gold devastation. His movement no longer depended on forcing his body from one safe point to another; he only needed to nudge himself onto the right line and let Grimm’s own Gravity Mana do the heavy lifting.

That left most of Jaxir’s attention free for murder.

Casts poured from his staff in rapid succession, sometimes as simple bullets and sometimes compressed into narrow beams whenever Grimm gave him a longer opening. Between them, Jaxir layered another Drain into a weakness near Grimm’s ribs, then another along the damaged shoulder where Fracture had already torn open the Region Boss’ defenses.

Grimm’s health began falling again.

―

HP: 31,482 / 100,000

―

Grimm roared and filled half the street with pillars, apparently deciding that the answer to missing Jaxir was simply to summon more of the things helping him move. Jaxir felt four separate pulls fighting over his body at once, chose the strongest one, then used Vacuum and Pulse to carve a path between them that carried him past Grimm’s spearhead by less than a meter.

"You know, I’m starting to think you didn’t get this Village Head job through your brains." Jaxir twisted in the air and sent another Cast into Grimm’s face. "Maybe there was an interview quota."

The Region Boss answered with another wild sweep of his spear, but Jaxir was already gone.

His speed kept climbing while Grimm’s attacks became more violent, and the entire center of Glimmer Village turned into a field of collapsing stone and dark-gold impacts. Jaxir threaded through all of it while Drain continued eating beneath the surface, the sensation of stolen vitality returning to him every time another layer found purchase.

Eventually, even Grimm’s regeneration couldn’t keep up.

Jaxir caught sight of the dense collection of blessings, enhancements and divine effects wrapped around the Region Boss, and one stupid possibility immediately occurred to him. Unravel existed specifically to turn buffs into damage, did it not?

Jaxir grinned and cast it anyway.

The Hex struck Grimm, trembled against whatever protected the Region Boss’ deeper blessings, and then collapsed without doing anything useful. Jaxir let the next gravity well drag him away from an incoming spear thrust while a chuckle escaped him, since he had expected exactly that result.

"It was worth a try." He kicked a Pulse behind himself and curved around the next pillar, already imagining what Unravel might do once its level caught up with the kind of absurdity standing in front of him. "If that worked right now, you’d probably just fucking explode."

Maybe one day. For now, Jaxir had plenty of other ways to accomplish the same thing.

Using Unravel meant forcefully taking control of the Minor God of Gravity’s Mana, and clearly Jaxir couldn’t do that yet. His own Mana, however...

Another pillar began gathering behind him, and Jaxir deliberately let it pull him backward before a Twinkle Vacuum turned that acceleration into a hard curve around Grimm’s left side. He waited until the Region Boss committed to another spear thrust, then released a Pulse that shot him past Grimm’s shoulder with enough speed to make the world smear at the edges of his vision.

"You know, you’d think you’d have been smart enough to stop using these by now." Jaxir turned his staff toward Grimm as he flew past, pale light gathering across its length. "Either way, works for me."

Three Casts struck first, followed by another pair that slammed into the weaknesses Fracture had already opened. Jaxir landed hard enough to skid across broken stone, dug his boots into the road, then felt the web of Drains layered throughout Grimm’s body trembling beneath the pressure he had built.

That was enough.

"Entropy."

The curse detonated through everything he had stacked.

BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

Grimm jerked beneath the first explosion, then folded forward as the following detonations tore through the weakened network inside him. Fracture lit beneath his skin in thin fragmented lines while Drain and Haunt amplified the collapse, sending his health plunging so quickly that Jaxir had to focus to catch the final number.

―

HP: 873 / 100,000

―

The bar began flashing red.

A player burst from the crowd with his sword raised overhead and sprinted toward Grimm as though the last several minutes of gravity-induced destruction had somehow happened in a different village.

"I’VE GOT IT!"

Jaxir turned toward him just as dark-gold light gathered beneath the man’s feet. He barely had time to register that this guy was probably trying to kill steal before...

BOOM.

The gravity pillar came down cleanly enough that the player disappeared inside it, leaving nothing behind but a crater and the fading echo of his own declaration. Jaxir stared at the empty space for half a second before laughter hit him so hard that his shoulders shook, and for one dangerous moment he almost forgot that Grimm was still technically alive.

"Oh, fuck me." Jaxir wiped at the corner of one eye as he struggled to stop laughing, then noticed Grimm finally collapsing to one knee in front of him.

The halo behind Grimm’s head flickered while his spear scraped against the road, and whatever remained of his Gravity Mana sputtered around him without enough strength to form another pillar. Jaxir walked forward through the thinning pressure, spinning the Staff of the Light once before catching it near the base.

Grimm managed to lift his head.

Jaxir shoved the end of the staff into his mouth.

"Sorry about this. I think I’m starting to get a bit of a fetish for ending battles like this." Three Charged Casts began forming at once, pale light spilling around Grimm’s face while every hidden line of Fracture inside him reacted to the gathering mana. "Be a better guy in your next life."

Jaxir released them together.

The three Casts erupted inside Grimm’s head, and the fragmented weaknesses spread through the Region Boss flashed before exploding outward in one final chain. Grimm’s body vanished into motes of light beneath the blast, leaving Jaxir standing alone with his staff still extended.

―

[You have slain Named Region Boss "Grimm"]

[Contribution calculated.]

[Your contribution exceeded 90% of the total effort required to defeat a Named Region Boss governing a Tutorial Settlement.]

[Special Achievement recognized.]

[You have been awarded the Title "Rulebreaker"]

― ℯℯ𝑙.

Title: Rulebreaker

Type: Regional

Description: Rules exist to govern those beneath their authority. By contributing more than 90% toward the defeat of the authority responsible for enforcing them, you have earned the right to stand as an exception.

[The Level 10 entry restriction of Glimmer Village will no longer apply to you.]