With Sprint and Block working in tandem, Noem’s body was a wound-up spring pointed directly at Sylvie. He twisted slightly, pushing one foot behind him as he reached down to seal his quiver from the movements he was about to take. A chunk of electricity slammed against his chest, followed a moment later by Sylvie’s fist rising to meet his chin.

Noem grit his teeth and let the attack take him. He skidded backwards as Sylvie’s uppercut thundered through the air after it just barely grazed his chin, then tensed his legs and forced Dash to activate three times. Once for his left leg, once for his right leg, and once for his spine. It was a horrible waste of Qi, but the effects turned Noem into a bundle of horrifically dangerous motion.

His spine tensed and contracted under the surge of a skill that wasn’t supposed to be activated on it, but with a thought, the intent overwhelmed its shape. Dash soaked into his bones and ligaments, forcing them to move with explosive potential. Block coated his right arm from the elbow up in Qi as thick and strong as steel, and the combination of skills clicked together in horribly inefficient harmony to create the monster Sylvie had referred to.

Rumbling thunder shot Sylvie back in a burst of light. Noem grunted and pushed off with his left foot and cleared half the distance in a heartbeat. The wind screamed in rebellion against his unnatural speed, and then his right foot met the ground. The distance bled away, and Noem found himself face-to-face with a frontal barrier of Qi that crackled with electricity. If he’d chosen Nimble, he could’ve tried to adjust and attack around the barrier.

But with the skills he had, he could only attack directly. Which was why Sylvie had concentrated her Barrier on the front, and forsaken any defenses to the sides. That wasn’t enough to stop him.

Noem slammed his Block hardened fist into the barrer, which took the impact and the electricity and turned it into a dull ache. The barrier collapsed inward like a whirlpool centered around his fist, curling around his arm and sticking to his Qi with an insistence that could spell terrible things.

He dropped Block and pushed off backwards with another forced Dash before Sylvie’s adaptive Barrier could trap him. He smiled against everything he was trying to portray, but quickly covered it up with a placid line.

“You’ve learned a new trick.”

Sylvie clapped her hands together, then pulled them apart. Strands of electric Qi trailed between them like pieces of taut string. “More than one, but who’s countin’? Looks like you mastered that thing you were workin’ on a few years ago, too. How long did that take ya?”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Noem shrugged and shook his hands. Resilient and Block had completely nullified any damage he would’ve taken, but he still felt a tingle of electricity working its way up his arm. Sylvie hadn’t just learned a new trick; she’d gotten a whole lot stronger, too.

“You mean this?” Noem raised one arm and activated Block again. It overlaid with Resilient to form a double-layered shield of Qi, which was overkill in ninety-nine percent of scenarios. What it did, however, was completely remove any risk of attacking with a Block empowered arm. “I’ve been able to do this for ten years. You have memory problems, too, just like Mona?”

“Nope. Just stalling.” Sylvie crushed her hands together, and the Qi between them snapped like dry twigs. The onslaught of sound and light roared over Noem like a tidal wave, and no matter how Resilient protected him physically, it wasn’t made for other kinds of attacks.

“Damn you.” Noem grunted and raised his arms to cover his face, then forced Block through all of his body. His Qi rushed out of him as if he’d sprung a few leaks, and he tensed his muscles to protect himself against the inevitable follow-up, whatever it ended up being.

He held that pose until his sight returned a few seconds later. Noem blinked the confusion and the last dregs of blindness from his eyes as his Qi worked to heal him. And revealed that Sylvie hadn’t moved one single step since she used her skill.

Noem lowered his arms and sighed. “You tricked me into wasting a whole lotta Qi there. What’re you trying to do?”

Sylvie gestured over her shoulder at the other two university people Noem had seen her with. They were within spitting distance now, and Noem could hear one of them screaming at Sylvie to get out of the way. He couldn’t make out whether it was the man or the woman, since his ears were ringing a little too loud for precise things like tone of voice, but they both held skills at the ready. So it didn’t really matter who did the screaming.

“Ah, them. Right.” Noem nodded and shook off his Block. He listened for the explosions, but found that the vibration through his feet told him far more than his wounded ears could. It had only been about three minutes since the first explosion, and it had taken Mona fifteen to run through the tunnel the first time. He needed to somehow buy her twelve more, then whatever else she needed to actually bond the apex.

Sylvie looked over her right shoulder, then stepped to her left. Noem raised his left arm and pushed a Block through his entire left side, then pivoted so only the side empowered by his skill was facing toward the woman. A whistle of far-off Qi just barely preceded a stony javelin that stuck fast three quarters of the way through Noem’s Block, then crumbled to dust as he moved to take it out.

The woman raised her hand once more, and Qi began to coalesce between her fingers. Dust from all around her swirled towards the eye of her skill, melded with the Qi in a flash of dull brown light, and began to piece together another simple javelin. The man, however, didn’t look like he had any plans to attack from any range other than point-blank. His slime-covered arm hardened into a wicked blade that glistened with razor-sharp Qi, and he broke into a Sprint the second Noem shifted back to a ready stance.

“You really sure you want to do this, Noem?” Sylvie asked one last time. “You might be a monster to all the mortal-realm folk, but you’re just a guy who’s really good at usin’ his skills to the rest of us. And you don’t need me to tell you that ain’t enough.”

No, he did not. Life had already proven that true a dozen too many times. In spite of everything, Noem flared his skills and held his ground.

Sylvie shrugged and activated a skill that weaved through her fingers like a sentient thread. “Suit yourself.”