172 Hellish Victory
172 Hellish Victory
I clashed with Grant up close, switching between my dagger and the telekinetic sword. Sparks snapped whenever steel met steel, and the ground shook each time our feet shifted. Fighting with weapons still felt unnatural to me, and that discomfort crawled up my arms. I had always been better with bare hands, knees, elbows, anything that let me move without thinking. The blade in my grip kept reminding me I wasn’t fighting the way I liked, yet I had no choice but to adapt.
I pressed harder, trying to overwhelm him with speed and angles. Grant parried everything with worrying calm, his movements too smooth and precise. The moment I got close enough to sense him clearly, I realized why. His mind felt wrong and different, yet familiar in a way that made my stomach twist.
“Continuity,” I said under my breath. “How are you here?”
I released the sword, letting it hover and dart with my telekinesis while I shifted fully to the dagger. My plan was simple: phase him into the ground and end this quickly. But he read the sword’s path like it was choreographed, blocking each strike as if he could see every movement before it came. When I grabbed his forearm and tried to force his clothes to merge into his skin, my intangibility sputtered uselessly. Something in him, was interfering.
It was his power to manipulate cause and effect, in turn, negate powers with absoluteness.
His hostility surged like a blast furnace. He drew a dagger from his waist and aimed for my ribs. I twisted, deflected it with my own blade, and drove my knee into his stomach with an electrokinetic burst. The shock should’ve knocked him down. Instead, he gritted his teeth and lunged. His hand clamped around my throat, heat building, and flames gathering. I felt my skin blister even before he fully ignited.
An arrow pierced the side of his head.
“I am going to kill you no matter what,” Continuity snarled through Grant’s mouth. “Even if it means dying myself!”
More arrows whistled through the air, curving unnaturally around the battlefield. Continuity’s pyrokinesis exploded outward, forming a deadly shield of heat that melted several mid-flight. I stabbed him in the abdomen repeatedly, ignoring the flames crawling over my arms and face. Pain roared through me, but I held on, grabbing his throat with one hand and driving the dagger into his chest again and again. The arrows continued to rain; every impact sounded like meat hitting a forge.
Suddenly someone yanked me back by my collar. Abner dragged me away just as Diane slammed Continuity across the jaw with the shaft of her spear, sending him flying into a tangle of roots and broken stone. Abner hauled me toward Thornland while Amelia tore through bandits that tried to pursue us. Thornland caught me, her hands glowing faintly as she worked her biokinesis. The healing felt slow and agonizing because the burns were too deep, and my body resisted the process.
The slave, Grant’s so-called blessed fighter, lay unconscious near me, breathing weakly after being freed from hypnosis. Thornland’s face tightened with worry as she glanced toward the sounds of battle.
“I am sorry, brave warrior,” she said softly. “Grant’s conscripts are too many. They push forward even now. If things worsen, I must retreat with my people.”
“It’s fine,” I muttered, trying to rise against the pain.
Amelia pushed me back down with a sharp glare as she cut down another bandit and shot two more in one fluid motion. “Stay down. Let us handle the rest while you heal.”
But ahead of us, Continuity rose again. He plucked the arrows from his body one by one, blood sizzling against the heat rolling off him, his expression warped with rage and desperation.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, forcing myself back onto my feet. “That guy’s bad news…”
Continuity’s bloodshot eyes locked on me with a feverish shine, and even from this distance his thoughts slammed into me through telepathy like a storm of broken glass. He was unraveling, barely coherent, but every loose thread of his mind wrapped around one idea.
“I am going to kill him. Kill him! Even if it costs my life. My power to move causality has weakened, but it should be enough to suppress the one power that made him dangerous. Without his intangibility, Eclipse is nothing. Just a mediocre piece of trash.”
The only thing inside him was murder. Not rage, not fear. Just fixation so sharp it felt surgical. My intangibility flickered uselessly, as if the mechanism had been rusted shut. Pain tingled through all the half-healed burns on my skin, each movement pulling at scorched flesh. I forced myself to stand straight even as another group of bandits rushed in.
I cut three of them down with clean movements of my dagger, then summoned the telekinetic sword back to my side. It floated near my shoulder, turning on its axis like a watchful guard waiting for commands.
Continuity roared, “KILL THEM ALL!”
A wave of psychic influence rolled outward. I felt the tug of it in my skull. It was Grant’s hypnosis magnified by Continuity’s warped mind. The bandits around us convulsed with sudden strength and speed, their shadows stretching unnaturally as their bodies surged forward with bloodlust. The battlefield turned violent in a blink.
They swarmed us. Abner fought with his sword, each swing precise enough to kill in one stroke. Diane kept her unconscious brother behind her while cutting a brutal path with her spear. Lady Thornland’s elite guards fought harder than I expected, fueled by her touch and the knowledge they might die before the hour ended. Thornland herself moved through them as she stitched wounds closed as fast as she could with biokinesis. Amelia clawed through bodies with tiger-like ferocity, tearing one throat open before pivoting to loose three arrows in quick succession.
I dove straight into the mass. My dagger carved through joints and throats while the telekinetic sword sliced parallel arcs beside me, cutting down anyone who tried to flank me. Blood spattered my arms, hot and sticky, and my burns screamed, but I kept moving.
Arrows from Amelia flew overhead, clearing space around me in tight bursts. She aimed at anything that came too close, giving me enough breathing room to keep pushing forward.
Continuity finished healing, the last scorch mark sealing on his skin as he blurred forward with super speed. I met him with a dagger strike, but he vanished with teleportation before the blade connected. I rolled forward on instinct and threw the dagger at the point where he reappeared. He deflected it with a practiced flick of his wrist.
A bandit lunged at me with a spear, but an arrow punched through his skull before he could touch me. Behind us, Abner led the others up the slope, pulling them into a tight defensive formation. Despite choosing this terrain for our ambush, the fight had flipped against us the moment Continuity chose to reveal himself. Now we were the ones boxed in.
My teleporting dagger snapped back into its sheathe. I grabbed the telekinetic sword and forced a path toward Continuity. He stared at me without blinking, his expression hollow, his thoughts vibrating through my skull.
“KILL! KILL! KILL ECLIPSE! FOR GOD! GOD!”
The madness dripping from his mind made something click. The SRC seemed to have mistake Continuity being “infection-free” after his so-called interrogation with the Entity. That could only be the reason why he was acting like this. If he was more sane, he would be a difficult opponent. However, right now, something inside him had clearly rotted.
I hurled the telekinetic sword at him, following it with the dagger a second later. Continuity managed to swat the sword aside, but the dagger buried into his right eye. He staggered but didn’t fall. The power tearing through his body made killing him much harder than it should’ve been. Amelia kept killing the bandits around me, clearing the space so I could close the distance.
Continuity snatched a bandit beside him and threw the man at me with super strength.
I pushed my Enhancer ratings to the limit, dodging to the side and grabbing another bandit, using him as a shield against the flying body.
“Fucking piece of shit,” I growled as the two collided with a sickening crack.
Continuity hurled bodies at me like they were stones catapulted from a siege tower. Each human projectile slammed into the ground hard enough to break bone, and I sprinted between them while shards of dirt and flesh scattered around me. The telekinetic sword swooped back into place behind me, and I leaped onto it, letting it carry my weight as I surfed through the chaos. My dagger still jutted from Continuity’s ruined eye like a grotesque ornament.
Fire blossomed around me with teleporting fireballs detonating in bursts that singed muscle and tore at my balance. I clenched my teeth and endured, focusing through the burning pain. When I found the right angle, I discharged the strongest electrokinesis blast I could muster, channeling every volt into the dagger buried in his skull. The blade became a lightning rod. The electricity snapped across his nerves and froze him stiff for one precious heartbeat.
I fell off the sword, tumbled hard across the dirt, and crashed directly into him. We rolled, colliding with rocks and broken weapons until we skidded to a stop. I climbed onto his chest before he could react, ripped the dagger from his eye, and stabbed downward, this time angling both blades under the nose bridge so they locked together like a bar lodged between his eye sockets. If they couldn’t come out, they couldn’t regenerate.
Continuity roared and crushed my arm in one hand. The bones cracked like dry twigs. A bright pulse of agony shot up my shoulder, forcing a yelp out of me. Flames erupted from his body a second later. The heat washed over me in a painful wave right before he kicked me with brutal super strength.
I flew.
The telekinetic sword raced beneath me, catching me on its flat to soften the impact. Even then, the force rattled every organ in my torso. I tumbled off the blade, coughing, vision doubled.
Continuity rose, clutching at the two daggers wedged under his nose. He tore them free, yet nothing regenerated.
“FUCK!” he screamed. “What did you do!?”
I wheezed out, “I stole your darn ring… that’s what. Shame I only managed to grab one.”
Every breath felt like a punishment, but I forced myself upright. The only reason I hadn’t collapsed was the biokinesis humming through me, my own adaptation of Thornland’s gift. Watching her memories had given me what I needed to mimic her power. I owed her a debt.
I held up the ring I’d stolen. “And look what I have here… is this the one that lets you regenerate?”
“It’s useless to you,” Continuity spat as new eyes re-formed in his skull, a deeper, more unnatural regeneration. His causality was overriding the loss. “The rings only work for me, so you better give up—”
I slipped the ring onto my finger.
The burns on my skin knit shut. The swelling faded. Breath returned.
“Too bad,” I said, “it works for me too.”
The truth was simple enough. My Researcher rating unraveled the magic weapons’ logic like a puzzle. Biokinesis let me interact with them on the cellular level. Electrokinesis provided the bioelectric compatibility. Enhancer boosted everything else to keep pace.
The moment I understood the mechanism, the ring accepted me.
Continuity’s face twisted, not with fear, but with pure hatred.
He vanished in a blink of teleportation and appeared beside me, fiery sword raised, his killing intent pouring off him like radiation.
“JUST FUCKING DIE!” he shrieked as the blade carved a burning arc toward my neck.
“How about no?”
Continuity’s blade hissed past my cheek as I pivoted. Even half-dead, he swung with murderous precision. But I could feel it. His stamina was crashing. His causality tricks were sputtering. And the moment his grip faltered, my intangibility snapped back online like a breath of cold air.
I grabbed the front of his clothes and dragged him forward. His tunic phased through my hand, through his skin, and settled half-merged into his chest. He shrieked, staggered, and clawed at the warped fabric fused into his flesh. My own body shook from exhaustion; I could barely maintain the phasing. The telekinetic sword slipped from my mental grasp, clattering uselessly somewhere behind us.
“Stop,” Continuity commanded, his voice layered with hypnotic force.
For a second, everything inside me froze. He used his causality manipulation to suppress different powers to use this hypnotic command. With my Empathy, Telepathy, and Enhancer locked down, I was unable to resist the hypnotic command. My muscles refused to respond. His hypnosis stabbed into my mind like icy needles.
He swung.
The fiery blade carved through the air and hit my throat, but only halfway. It bit into my skin, then halted. His super strength gave out mid-strike. The pressure still crushed into my windpipe. Blood dripped down my chest. He snarled and pushed harder, trying to force the sword through my neck one inch at a time.
I shoved back weakly, stabbing him in the ribs with my dagger. The blow had no power behind it. He barely reacted.
And then an arrow slammed into his skull.
Continuity jerked backward, eyes rolling. The grip on his sword loosened. I pried his fingers off with a desperate slash of my dagger with two quick cuts, and mounted him before he could recover. Even my fingers shook so badly I dropped the dagger.
Fine. Improvised tools worked just as well.
I seized the arrow jutting from his head and yanked it free with a wet crunch. Then I stabbed him at the throat, heart, eye socket, temple, and every vital point I could reach through the haze of pain. I stabbed until I felt nothing beneath me except limp flesh and silence. No breath. No thoughts. No life.
He was dead.
My arms buckled, and I collapsed onto his chest, gasping like a drowning man. The world spun in red-black circles. The hillside had gone eerily quiet. Bodies were everywhere. The surviving bandits had scattered. The slave, Grant’s umbrakinetic guard, lay slumped nearby, unconscious after the fight.
Amelia approached, limping, covered in blood and burns. One of her tiger eyes bulged half-out of its socket. Claw marks ripped across her arms and ribs.
She looked down at me and smirked weakly. “You did well.”
“You look like you went to hell and back,” I rasped, staring at the gouges in her skin.
“You look worse,” she said. “Most of them suddenly ‘pulled’ and awakened powers mid-fight. It was a mess. But we managed… Abner’s power carried us more than once. We’re definitely taking him back with us. His precognition is too useful.”
I nodded at that. “We’re finally going home… but first, we need to get back to Dr. Time.”
“That’s right,” she said, and without hesitation she bent down, grabbed an axe, and chopped Grant’s head clean off.
I blinked. “Was that really necessary?”
“Yes,” Amelia said flatly. “It’s proof.”
She dropped the severed head into a sack like it was a melon and returned to my side. She grabbed my arm and hauled me upright.
“Ah—dammit!—stop, that hurts,” I groaned.
“Cry later,” she said, slinging my arm over her shoulders. “Suck it up. Lady Thornland needs a minute to recover before she can heal us properly.”
I gritted my teeth as we hobbled forward, leaving Continuity’s corpse in the dirt behind us.