A silver ray shot from the Gar’s finger.
The projectile hit the cloud of smoke around Leslek, then slowed down to a crawl. The green-haired man had more than enough ti to take a second hit of his blunt. Four more Blast Rays were launched from John’s fingers and the Companion Cube. The timing was precise, it had to be for one ray to ld with the next, then another, and then the final one, in a chain of empowering projectiles that ultimately struck Leslek from behind.
Would have struck him, rather, had it not been caught up in the sa field of slowness that had prevented the original attack from progressing. Leslek took a step to the side, ignoring the two projectiles in the air, and began to walk towards John. “Yeah, you and your spells can no longer touch .”
“I’m not done testing that,” John said and spawned an Unstable Arcana between them. The silver sphere unleashed a wave with its singular charge. It got within a few tres of Leslek, then slowed to a crawl. Interestingly, the whole of the wave did, including the part that was moving away from Leslek. “Alright, you might well give up now.”
“Why is that?” Leslek asked, clearly pissed that he wasn’t being taken seriously.
John put his hands into his pocket. “Your power slows, but they do not neutralize. In other words, I can box you in as long as I make the explosions big enough.”
Starfall slamd into the arena floor about twenty tres from them. The impact unleashed a devastating wave of arcane might, turning grass into ash and the sedint into glass. Once it reached Leslek’s general proximity, the wave was reduced to a snail’s pace. The arcane light at the heart of the explosion continued to glow like a dying star.
“I can just repeat this all over the place, until you have nowhere left to go,” John continued his explanation. “So that takes the challenge out of all of this.”
“I can just teleport out,” Leslek flickered in and out of existence, suddenly standing in front of John, a dagger in hand. He stabbed at John, who blocked the weapon with his forearm. The Augnt that was part of the limb diminished the damage, then Particle Skin fully neutralized the rest.
The Gar took stock of his mana. It was diminished by enough that Leslek could have killed him if he let him. That made him a threat in the sa way a pack of rats was a threat. Annoying, always, potentially very damaging, doubtlessly, but in order to actually die to them, one had to lie down and just let it happen.
He glanced behind Leslek next and frowned. “You really are an idiot. This won’t even be fun for . It’s like solving second grade math issues.”
“Shut up, you asshole, and fight !” Leslek shouted and stabbed at John again. The Gar let the blows reflect off Particle Skin, extended his right hand forwards and grabbed sothing. “STOP IGNORING !” Leslek scread, his voice tinged with paranoid panic. The flailing of his dagger was embarrassing even to soone who was rely good at fencing.
John waited for an opportune mont, then gave him a simple shove back.
Leslek was so off-balance that even that caused him to stumble backwards. He would have caught himself, had he not suddenly been launched diagonally at catastrophic speeds. John watched the green-haired man bounce over the lawn, straight into the crawling explosion. Three seconds later, Leslek teleported back out, hair singed, face bruised, but altogether not as damaged as John would have expected.
“I guess all the extra Stats went into the Physical,” the Gar thought out loud. “Anything that went into your brain?”
“What the fuck did you do?!” Leslek asked, looking all around himself. “What help did you call? Where is Gno?!”
“You think you’d have a spine left if Gno was here? Are you that delusional?” John let out a deep sigh and scratched the back of his head. “I’ll tell you what I did and I’ll even be honest about it, if only to make you suffer more.” He pointed at Leslek and shot another Blast Ray at Leslek. Like before, the project crawled once it got too close to the Chosen of the Blunt. “Take a step back.”
“You don’t get to order around anymore, dude!” Leslek stated.
“Do you want to find out what hit you or not?” John asked.
Leslek clenched his fists, furrowed his eyebrows, glanced over his shoulder, and then did as asked.
The Blast Ray abruptly advanced by the sa distance.
“Your slow aura is 2 tres at a minimum and approximately 5,5 tres at the maximum, likely after you have freshly inhaled your magical drugs,” John analysed it all drily. “If sothing leaves that area, it returns to its usual speed after a few monts. Combine that with this…” John made a gesture with his right hand. The Blast Ray responded to the Arcane Grasp enchantnt on the Augntation in the arm by slowly rotating. “All I did was align you with a slowed projectile and move you into it.”
John put his hands into his pockets again, putting an exaggerated amount of boredom on his face. In truth, he was enjoying being the one to set the pace and tone of the fight. He was strong, mighty even, and to live that fact out in violence had a dark satisfaction to it. It was even more satisfying to see Leslek seethe at the fact that he wasn’t regarded as sothing worthy of effort.
“Then I just got to be fucking careful, don’t I?”
That was, perhaps, the dumbest response the Gar had ever heard to this kind of situation. “Well… for all I care, give it a try,” he drawled.
An Arc Lance launched from the Companion Cube. The attack pierced a little deeper, its speed higher and thus slower to co to a crawl. Still, it stopped short of Leslek. The punk inhaled deeply, creating a fresh aura of smoke around him before charging back in. His dagger sliced the air where John had just been.
The Gar had teleported forwards, forcing Leslek to turn around on his heels and do the sa. John was more than prepared for the offensive use of spatial magic and simply side-stepped the next attack. The man’s superior speed ant nothing if all his moves were so easy to read.
Two Mana Chains surfaced and launched themselves at Leslek. John stepped into the corridor created between them. His opponent followed. John made a waving gesture. Leslek looked around for what had changed. A glance long enough for John to Magus Step and then Skitterstep. Leslek looked around, confused, incapable of finding his enemy for a brief mont.
John ca back to visibility, shooting another Blast Ray. It ca out slowed. Leslek teleported off to the side to it, the right side, as the left was too close to the Arc Lance to be comfortably moved to. The predictable move got a pre-coordinated response. John stomped on Leslek’s foot just as it appeared under his heel. The punk inhaled sharply, the Remnant Kick dealing considerable damage after all the MP John had expended.
Another teleport took John between the Mana Chains. One of them had advanced a lot further than the other, having been out of the range for just a few seconds. It created a railing John could lean on and then rebound from after he had dodged Leslek’s next stab. The punk dragged and exhaled fresh smoke as he chased John up the corridor.
John put an Unstable Arcana between them. It pulsed, leaving a ball of energy that expanded incredibly slowly. It was not a hard barrier, but Leslek avoided it all the sa. He teleported behind John, whirled around on his heel with the dagger in hand, then stopped dead in his tracks. He had almost slamd his own eyeball into a second Arc Lance that the Companion Cube had shot at that position in space, while Leslek was distracted chasing the Gar.
“Are you starting to get it?” John leisurely faced his enemy. His hands were still in his pockets and he planned to keep them there. “You are playing area denial against a genius control mage. Even if we were matched in power, this is my speciality. You will never, ever be able to keep track of as many moving parts as I am. Hell, I’m not even taking advantage of the ultimate cheat here.” He took a backwards step through the Unstable Arcane, the slowed explosion getting slightly distorted by his touch, but otherwise simple phasing through him. “I’m immune to my own spells. You’re chasing and stabbing but it ans nothing.”
“It ans everything!” Leslek ducked under the Arc Lance, dived under the Unstable Arcana, then ca back up with a stab aid at John’s jugular. John tilted his head to the side. “Fuck!”
“Are you even realizing that I am getting faster?” John asked. He took his left hand out of his pocket. The re motion caused Leslek to teleport defensively. An amusing overreaction to John simply waving with the black-scaled limb. Purgatory’s Rising Annihilation Attribute increased John’s Strength and Agility by up to half his level depending on how much destruction he had brought to his enemies and the landscape. The Starfall had done enough damage and continued to break down the ground at a glacial speed. Bit by bit, his Stats rose.
He could have accelerated that process, if he had any reason to.
“Shut up!” Leslek shouted, stabbing at John again. He had as much success with that one as the last attack.
Then, in flagrant violation of the rules of male-on-male violence, the Gar kicked the punk in the nuts. The gurgling sound that Leslek produced turned high-pitched and whiny a mont later. He stumbled backwards, right into a Blast Ray that then launched him in the direction of its trajectory. It was like watching a pinball getting shot at the start of a ga.
“I genuinely an it when I say I always thought you were pathetic.” John followed the trail of broken lawn that Leslek had left behind. “You have absolutely nothing about you that I find even remotely admirable. The way you use your power is so… small. I do not know how else to describe it. You are fast, you can teleport, you can turn invisible, and you use all of these powers only for the most obvious moves.”
“Fuck! Shut up… fuck!” Leslek inhaled another lungful of calming smoke. It visibly dilated his pupils, turning his aggression down to a placid level. “You do not matter.”
“Objectively speaking, I do.” John stopped two steps away from Leslek. “In every way. I have a position of power, my na will go in the history books, and I have a loving harem that will be a loving family before long. Long after my na is forgotten, my descendants will continue to reach into eternity.”
“Man, you are so obsessed with legacy, you do not understand the mont.” Leslek exhaled very slowly, blowing the smoke up as rings. “You hate your current life, don’t you? Man, I listened to a few of your speeches and I had to listen to Emrik rant about you… well, Emrik’s rants are… you know?” The punk made grumbling noises, then laughed to himself.
John stared at the man with sothing approaching pity. “You were a person when I first t you. A conniving, demanding bastard that tried to kill with a cheap shot, but a person. Of all the mbers of the Lake Alliance, I think you were the least notable. Lakamun made an impact, Helene at least had a working strategy, Remia and Theron were wise enough not to push things, Jeremiah was just an ass, but you – you were just there. You were content being a part in the plan that continued your cushy lifestyle with sex slaves and all you could ever ask for. You act the rebel at all tis, but in the end you were just a selfish bastard, angry that the world isn’t giving you what you want.”
“And what am I now?” Leslek asked, too zooted to care about anything else that was said.
“High,” John answered. “High and literally nothing else. I am not looking at a person anymore, I am looking at an advanced monkey that lost to their consumption instincts.”
“You’re giving too little credit, but I expected that from you.” Leslek giggled to himself. “Not that it matters. You’re right. I am dead, but fuck, man, the only regret I have is that I didn’t manage to stab you even once.” He threw the dagger at John’s feet. “Alright, end it then.”
John picked up the weapon and raised an eyebrow. He recognized the design of the dagger. Black blade, dark handle, minimalistic guard – it was a standard issue Nightfall dagger. “I really always found you pathetic. I did hope you could be sothing more.”
“And I hoped you would just die,” Leslek answered. “Simple as.”
“Simple as…” John shook his head. The decision to kill was as easy as it was terrifying. There was nothing of worth to redeem here, not another choice worth giving. John closed the distance between them, dagger in hand, and bowed down for the kill.
Leslek teleported to the side and jumped to his feet. He kicked at John, but the Gar saw it coming, like he had all the other moves before. He caught the foot. Now it was John who rose up, spinning around his axis as he went. He slamd the punk into the floor at the end of the motion.
“No, no, no, no, wait!” Leslek shouted.
The heel of the Skittersteps slamd into the green-haired man’s mouth, shoving the blunt into his throat as teeth cracked. John stomped a second ti, a third, then stopped for a mont after the fourth. When he heard pained gargles, he stomped down on the man’s neck, aiming for a quick snap. Sohow, Leslek survived even that.
“Unfortunately stubborn to the last mont,” John muttered and stomped again. That ti, it was finally enough. The light in Leslek’s eyes died the final death, after bitterness and indulgence had dulled it. ‘Nothing of value lost,’ the Gar thought and he loathed to think of a person that way. It was, however, true. ‘The others probably won already.’
He would find out if that was true in a mont.
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