Chapter 85
“The perfect cut already exists,” said Oriz’s master. “And it surrounds us.”
Oriz’s master gestured to the muddy, red desert around them as though it made his point for him. He sat on a blackened stump, legs crossed, robe splayed out and hem dragging in the blood-colored slick. His grey skin shone like oiled titanium. His yellow hair was like a forgotten sun. Every inch of his bearing, his gaze, inferred he was someone who crossed the great divide of level 50. Transformed beyond mortal, every step he took brought him closer to apotheosis.
But Oriz still found him annoying.
“What do you mean?” she asked where she knelt in the mud. “If the grass remained, I might understand, but there is nothing in this wasteland.”
The fire had wiped away any grasses that claimed this land. Without their roots, the rain washed away more than just fire. Oriz knew the mud would stain her possessions. She would need new clothes, new shoes, new everything. Unlike her master, she could not remain clean by virtue alone.
Unlike her master, she saw nothing in the land around them as clean and sharp as a blade.
In answer, he stood and drew his blade of crimson steel. He tapped the curved tip against the stump he sat on before.
“Solid matter is a lie. Between every atom lies a chasm,” he continued tapping his sword against the stump. Flakes of charcoal bounced away. “If the space between is so large, so accommodating, how can your cut be anything but perfect?”
He tapped once more, and his blade passed through the stump without a sound. The sword brushed through wood and into the mud. His grip remained idle, loose, but the blade moved without resistance, as though he were stirring soup. He exhaled and drew his sword from the ground.
“There is nothing to sever, and yet the cut remains.”
The wake of the sword was an elegant carving in the stump and surrounding clay. Already the slick earth oozed and filled in the remains, but before it did, Oriz saw a glint of mirrored glass.
Her master sheathed his sword.
“Think on this, practice this, and carve away this area within a ten-foot radius. The others will join us in two days, but we cannot enter the dungeon before you expose the door.”
Oriz stood, mud dripping from her clothes, and bowed as her master walked away.
He was annoying, but the way he wielded a blade…
“Thank you,” she said as she rose, but her master was gone.
###
With her eyes decaying into rainbow, Oriz saw only the past in all its glorious color.
Oriz swung a single blade of grass, and in swinging she poured herself into the growth of the shoot.
[The Dead Feed the Grass]
A technique designed to prolong a battle, let the blood of her foes empower her steps, just as the grass feeds on the fallen herbivore. Nobody taught her to turn the technique upon herself, but how easy it turned out to be — so simple to pick up a sword by the blade instead of the handle — the only blocks were in her mind.
As they ever were.
The technique sucked at her Skein — a still vast pool, boiling though it was — and drained her, but her body kept moving. The blade grew, extending out in a thin green that swept out and sliced through the lake, through houses, extending as fast as it sliced, until it struck the boss.
She couldn’t see the strike, but she felt it pass through water, rubble, and flesh. The boss screamed, and then the sound cut out as her blade slipped through a colossal throat and left it useless. A moment of deathly silence as her blade passed back into the air.
Before the technique devoured her fully, she let the blade slip from her hand.
Oriz sagged to her knees as the blade spun away into the sky. It was supposed to be a noble sacrifice, but even now she couldn’t put another person completely before herself. She collapsed as the sword burst. A green nimbus flared across the rainbow as she fell.
Her cheek hit the floor, but she felt only the crash of the boss collapsing into the lake. Skein empty, burning, her consciousness stuttered. With her last thoughts, she took a great breath of air.
The wave of water from the fallen boss struck the house. She felt cold, and then unconsciousness gripped her.
###
Anton swam underwater, canceling his techniques, burning Skein to swim as fast as any fish toward a faraway house. He needed to get away from the boss. The shockwaves of its flail made the water turbulent. Waves crashed overhead. If he wasn’t full of Air and Sky essence, he knew there was no way he could have held his breath this long. Bella swam ahead of him, sword trailing in her hand like a black fin. Her Water essence granted her speed beyond his Dexterity.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
They were going to make it.
The pillars of a shattered house stood in the water, and Bella swam toward the surface. Anton followed. It was little more than a floating platform of wide wooden floorboards. A single wall stood, its arched window long shattered by the excesses of the battle.
Gasping, sucking down that sweet air, that taste of Sky, Anton pulled himself out of the water. Bella crouched ahead of him, panting, eyes cloudy with exertion. Rain fell around them in crashing buckets. The world darkened as a cloud passed in front of the sun.
No.
Not a storm, but the standing boss.
[Dandelion Gaze]
He winced as he reactivated his technique.
The overuse made the strange semi-real organ behind his eyes strain like a sore muscle, but, as always, curiosity dragged him forward. Insight, knowledge — he had to see. Silver orbs spilled out of his vision and raced up into the air.
The rearing boss stood as high as a small mountain. Its eyes burning, jaw snapping, in a mockery of human — or alien, he supposed — anatomy. A vast ribcage warped and flattened like that of a turtle. Grey legs wasted and skinny in proportion, but mammoth. It made him sick to look at.
It clawed at the water with one hand, but the other remained shackled by the solid darkness of Bella’s body path. How long until the boss was free? With those monstrous claws, even limp-wristed as they were, it could shatter their bodies and spread their blood.
A blade of vibrant green energy flashed across the lake. Water spouted in its wake three stories high. It passed through houses without pause, and they slid apart as it slashed on. The angle of the blade rose and sliced up into the boss’s hip. Flesh parted, bone severed as the blade continued up, slightly off vertical, and sliced through the boss’s throat, chin, and ear. Blood and guts thundered down from the opening wound as the boss blinked burning yellow eyes made foolish by pain.
The sword flashed out in a green nimbus. For a moment, a field of grass filled Anton’s vision. A peaceful breeze wafted against his cheeks and brought the scent of a sunlit meadow.
Then it faded, and the boss screamed. Anton clapped a hand over his ears. His eyes jittered with pain. The sound cut out into a gurgle, silence, and the boss slid apart.
The blade had bisected the monstrous flesh, cleaving an arm, a shoulder, and half the head from the other half. The boss slid into two pieces that fell into the lake. A pillar of foam exploded up, and a wave raced outward.
“Oh,” Bella said beside him, staring up at the monstrous wave bearing down on them.
She stood and hacked at the floorboards with her sword. She kicked, dislodging one, and tossed it over to Anton. He caught it without turning his head from the wave.
What was he supposed to do?
His eyes saw Zoe staggering to her feet, lost atop the hill. He saw Oriz collapse as the wave raced toward her. He saw Bella grab another plank of wood, wide as her chest and only a few inches taller than herself.
They were separated. In danger. There was nowhere to run.
“You ever go surfing?” Bella asked.
“I grew up in LA…” he gripped the rough plank in his hand. “You can’t be serious.”
The wave grew, darkening as its mass blocked out the light.
“Right now we’re stronger, faster, and more skilled than any human who existed before.”
Her eyes burned, serious, but reveling in the moment's absurdity. What else could they do? Die? The heat from her gaze slipped past the icy comfort of his poker face, and he nodded.
“Let’s just hope the wood doesn’t snap,” Bella said with a grin as she ran to the edge of the platform and leaped off. She landed on her chest and started paddling with her system-enhanced body and building the speed needed to survive.
His heart pounding in his chest, Anton followed, staring down at himself from his flying eyes as he crashed into the water and paddled. His shoulders heaving, hands scooping, launching himself forward. The water rose. A skyscraper wave sucking him up into its heights. He paddled, and the fear entered his body, tingling, flowing in from his fingertips and up into his chest where it rattled his heart. Already the wave reared up higher than the houses. It tore them up from their foundations as it passed over. Brown silt, rubble, and corpses choked the base of the wave.
And blood, so much blood…
Anton stopped thinking. [Dandelion Gaze] canceled itself as the moment claimed his attention. He pressed down on the board, pushing himself up. His left foot swept up and planted itself on the wooden board. He rose, crouched, and hung for a moment of crystalline insanity.
On eye level with the top of the island, he met Zoe’s gaze… before gravity took him and swept him down into the doomsday barrel of the collapsing wave.
###
Every inch of Zoe felt close to death and grateful to be alive. She stumbled, dirt dripping from her body, as she found her footing in the rubble-strewn clearing. Her vision focused, and she stared ahead. Blinked, stared, and blinked again. The landing must have concussed her because she couldn’t understand what she saw: Bella and Anton surfing down a monstrous wave.
Bella wore a devil-may-care grin, eyes wide as she straightened out and balanced, the board moving with grace beneath her as it sliced down the dark water.
On the other side of the wave, Anton’s eyes were wide for a different reason. Terrified concentration naked across his face as he crouched low to the board, but only gained speed.
They each slipped out of view in different directions as the bulk of the mountain obscured them. The wave collided with the island’s steep rocky shore with a thunderous clap. White spray arced up as high as Zoe, and she marveled as it hung suspended before plummeting back down.
She reached out with [Our Hearts Toll as One] and felt two rapid heartbeats: Bella and Anton. She couldn’t spare the Skein to slow them down, but she trusted them to be safe. She couldn’t feel Oriz, and then she could. Faint, a long pause, and then faint again.
The wave had swept all the houses away. Wreckage floated, the water roiling with brown sediment, but she couldn’t see any trace of Oriz. She had to hope the alien’s physical attributes would prevent her from drowning.
Hopefully, Zoe would gain a level from her contributions to killing the boss. Then she could incorporate more essence, and develop enough to help her search for Oriz amongst the water. She limped from the clearing toward the trees, waiting for the cold rush of death energy to sweep through her from head to toe.
A taste of blood leaked into her mouth. Her hip screamed with pain after every step. Her fractured ribs burned into her flesh. She tried to flush herself with Metal, harden herself, but only the scalpel of [Mind’s Eye Incision] emerged. The parasite’s technique had consumed the loose Metal essence in her body.
So she reached for the Blood stitched into her body. It flailed against her Willpower like a handful of centipedes, but she was in no mood.
Crushing the essence, she drew it into her body. Her Vitality ticked up, and she felt it work at her injuries. With each step, slowly, she felt better. More whole.
But the death energy still hadn’t —
A yellow eye burned with hatred as it rose from the center of the lake. The boss’s head lifted from a vast pool of blood. Eyes great and terrible as suns, jaw agape, it reached toward her. Fingertips sliced through the water like shark fins before sinking. Water seethed as the boss grabbed a hold of the land below with its one remaining hand and dragged itself toward the island.