Chapter 91: Expanding

Jaxir didn’t have the luxury of worrying about who might be coming from the village. If people arrived before Auren died, then he’d deal with that problem when it happened, but splitting his attention between the fight and everything happening several hundred meters away was a much faster way to get himself killed.

For now, he needed to make sure Auren couldn’t touch him.

The first Sparkle Thread was still connected to the Village Head, faintly carrying every movement back to Jaxir. Instead of wasting his second copy of the Card, Jaxir reached for the much cheaper option.

"Encore."

The spent Sparkle Thread flashed back to life, its circuits rebuilding long enough to trigger a second use. Another connection settled over Auren alongside the first, and with two Threads reading the same target from slightly different flows, what had been a vague sense of movement became something far more useful.

Auren shifted his weight onto his front foot.

Jaxir moved before the charge began.

The Village Head exploded forward a fraction of a second later, his breastplate tearing through the place Jaxir had occupied while Jaxir slid around the side of a tree and fired two Casts into his exposed flank. The first hit cleanly, and the second curved around Auren’s shoulder before striking almost the same point.

That was much better.

Sparkle Thread wasn’t predicting the future, but Jaxir didn’t need it to. Auren’s charge required him to establish the attraction, brace himself, and then commit his weight forward, while the two Threads let Jaxir feel each small preparation before the attack became obvious to his eyes.

Auren turned and raised one fist, so Jaxir activated another Card he’d spent enough time studying to know exactly what he wanted from it.

―

Name: Sparkle Reflex

Grade: Uncommon

MP Cost: 4

Description: Heighten the user’s sensory processing and bodily response, reducing the delay between perceiving a threat and reacting to it.

Duration: 1 minute

Recommended Classes: Melee; Ranged

―

The effect didn’t make the world slow down, but it removed enough of the delay between thought and movement that everything seemed easier to follow. Information reached him through the Sparkle Threads, his mind understood it, and his body started responding before he had time to consciously walk himself through every step.

Auren punched forward.

Twinkle Mana erupted from his fist and compressed the air into a short-range blast, but Jaxir had already ducked beneath its angle before the attack fully formed. He answered with Wither, then layered a Cast behind Fracture while Auren’s attention remained on the first Hex.

Sparkle Thread told him what Auren was starting to do, Sparkle Reflex shortened the time between noticing and responding, and Jaxir spent every fraction of a second he gained squeezing another attack into the opening. He didn’t need one overwhelming strike if he could keep landing smaller ones while Auren accomplished nothing in return.

When Auren charged again, Jaxir didn’t bother overpowering the attraction with raw Mana. He severed the sensory connection the way he’d learned from Rovan, stepped away from the corrected path, then sent three quick Casts through the opening while Auren smashed through another tree, continuously stacking Drains all the while.

His HP began dropping much faster.

Jaxir brought out Sparkle Alignment next.

―

Name: Sparkle Alignment

Grade: Uncommon

MP Cost: 4

Description: Heighten awareness of the user’s own body, improving balance, coordination, and precision of movement.

Duration: 1 minute

Recommended Classes: Melee; Ranged; Magic

―

The forest changed the moment the Card activated.

Roots, broken branches and uneven ground hadn’t gone anywhere, but Jaxir no longer needed to devote as much attention to them. His foot landed between two roots without him looking down, he twisted past a tree without clipping his shoulder, and his staff was already leveled by the time his body completed the turn.

A Cast fired through the space between two falling branches.

Auren lifted an arm to block it.

Jaxir smiled and activated Sparkle Relay.

―

Name: Sparkle Relay

Grade: Uncommon

MP Cost: 4

Description: Place up to three Sparkle points on nearby surfaces. The user’s next Mana attack may jump between those points before continuing toward its target.

Duration: 10 minutes 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Recommended Classes: Magic; Ranged

―

Three small points of Sparkle Mana appeared across the battlefield, one on a tree to Auren’s left, another behind him, and the last low against a broken stump. Jaxir fired nowhere near the Village Head.

The Cast struck the first point, snapped toward the second, dropped through the third, and changed direction one last time before slamming into the back of Auren’s knee.

Auren stumbled.

Fracture followed immediately.

Jaxir understood the value of Relay almost at once. The debris Auren kept creating had been ruining his attack lines, but Sparkle Relay didn’t care whether Jaxir had a clean route from himself to the target; he only needed clean paths between the points he placed.

That meant the broken forest was no longer only Auren’s advantage.

When the next charge came, Jaxir placed a Relay point on a tree to his right while moving left, encouraging Auren into the opening before breaking the lock at the last moment. Auren thundered past him, and Jaxir fired into the point he’d already prepared.

The Cast jumped behind Auren and struck him in the back.

Wither and Fracture landed immediately afterward, followed by another pair of quick Casts before the Village Head could fully turn.

Jaxir never stopped moving.

Sparkle Reflex warned him when Auren’s fist tightened before a strike, Sparkle Alignment kept his body controlled while he cut through the trees, and the two Threads told him when Auren had committed enough weight or Mana that changing his attack would become difficult. Each Card removed a different weakness from Jaxir’s side of the fight, and the result was enough spare time to keep attacking without gambling on whether he’d survive the counterattack.

The harder part was managing all of them at once.

Jaxir’s attention stretched between Auren, the two Threads, his own positioning and the Relay points scattered across the forest, but the strain didn’t bother him nearly as much as it should have. The longer the fight continued, the less they felt like separate effects he had to consciously manage.

They were just information.

Where Auren was moving, where Jaxir’s body needed to be, and where the next attack would land cleanest.

Auren’s HP fell through 70,000 and then 60,000 before Jaxir had to spend another large burst of Mana forcing his way out of a charge. By the time the number crossed beneath half, the Village Head had barely managed to touch the rhythm Jaxir had built.

Then the entire feeling of the battle changed.

Auren stopped moving, and both Sparkle Threads pulled tight enough that pain flashed behind Jaxir’s eyes. At the same moment, the remaining edge of Sparkle Reflex caught something in Auren’s Mana that made every instinct Jaxir had scream at him to move just as the village head’s HP dipped below 50,000.

’Phase II. Dammit.’

The stacks on his vestigem cards were almost out.

"Encore."

Sparkle Reflex flashed through him for the second and final time, refreshing the sharpened connection between his senses and his body just as Auren threw his head back and roared.

The ground beneath the Village Head collapsed.

Earth and roots burst upward as a crater formed around him, but Jaxir was already retreating before he understood exactly what was happening. He activated Sparkle Route as he moved, and the new Card immediately began feeding him the cleanest path through the trees while Alignment helped his body follow it without wasting steps.

Then a wall of Twinkle Mana erupted from the crater.

Jaxir’s eyes widened.

It wasn’t a normal blast. The force formed a dense ring around Auren and expanded outward, flattening brush and throwing shattered wood ahead of it while the pressure continued growing behind the front.

Jaxir ran.

Sparkle Route guided him through the least obstructed spaces instead of forcing him to choose them himself, while the refreshed Sparkle Reflex let him react whenever collapsing trees changed those routes halfway through. He only used Twinkle Mana when the Cards couldn’t solve the movement problem fast enough, repelling himself from trunks or dragging himself around obstacles without wasting the huge amounts he’d burned earlier.

The wall kept coming.

Jaxir glanced over his shoulder once and immediately decided he didn’t like what he saw.

The ring had already expanded far beyond the crater, yet there was no sign of it thinning or losing strength. Trees bent, cracked and disappeared beneath the advancing Twinkle Mana while the pressure behind Jaxir continued growing.

"Why is it still getting bigger? Fuck me."