Chapter 394: The fight continues
Bovac moved again.
Small step. Sideways.
The field was at eight feet.
Each step maintaining the field rebuild while trying to avoid the rift entry.
Zarek tracked each step — the rift entry following Bovac’s slow repositioning, the entry appearing in front of whichever direction Bovac moved to.
Bovac stopped.
The null field at eight feet and rebuilding.
He looked at the rift entry in front of him.
At the cage’s geometry — exits arranged around the point he had arrived at, the cage’s configuration such that movement in any direction led toward a cage rift.
At Zarek outside the eight-foot field.
He made a decision.
He ran.
Full speed — abandoning the null field’s maintenance, the fast movement collapsing the grey distortion from eight feet back to the minimal personal radius immediately, the field shrinking to three feet as he ran toward the nearest cage exit’s position.
His plan — reach the cage exit at full speed, pass through it, arrive wherever the exit pointed, and stop immediately to rebuild the field from the new position.
Using the rift against the rift — his own movement through the cage putting him somewhere new where the cage geometry didn’t apply.
He hit the cage entry at full speed.
The entry was outside the collapsed three-foot field — fully functional, the rift operating cleanly, Bovac’s running momentum carrying him through the dimensional tear.
He arrived at the exit.
The exit pointed directly at the entry of the next cage rift.
Which was outside his collapsed three-foot field.
Fully functional.
Zarek had anticipated the run.
He had arranged the cage’s exits to point at entries — a chain, each exit leading toward the next entry, the cage designed so that moving through one rift’s exit put the target in front of the next rift’s entry with the collapsed field unable to protect against the fully functional entry it was facing.
Bovac was facing the second entry at a running pace.
His momentum was carrying him toward it.
He tried to stop — planting his feet, the run ending, his body decelerating.
He stopped one foot in front of the second entry.
The null field was at three feet.
The entry was one foot away.
One foot outside the three-foot field.
Outside the field.
Fully functional.
Zarek stepped through a rift — appearing directly behind Bovac at the same moment, his hands on Bovac’s shoulders.
He pushed.
Physical contact — no rifts, no dimensional mechanics, just a fighter’s hands on another fighter’s shoulders pushing forward.
One foot.
Bovac went through the second entry.
He arrived at the second exit.
Which pointed at the third entry.
He was running again — the push having carried him through the entry and the exit’s position was ahead of a third fully functional entry, his momentum continuing.
He went through the third.
Arrived at the fourth.
Went through the fourth.
Arrived back at the cage’s starting position — the four-rift cage completing a full circuit, Bovac having gone through all four entries and arrived back at the first exit’s position.
The null field was at three feet.
Bovac was at the center of the cage.
Having gone through four rifts in rapid succession.
He stood.
Breathing hard — the run and the four rapid rift passages having cost something, the disorientation of four instantaneous position changes in succession present in how he was standing, the body’s equilibrium requiring a moment to settle after four spatial relocations.
The null field was rebuilding from three feet.
Slowly.
Zarek stepped through a rift — appearing beside the cage’s center, outside the three-foot field, one foot from Bovac’s position.
He opened a rift entry directly in front of Bovac’s face.
Exit at a cage corner thirty feet away.
The entry was at the three-foot field’s current boundary.
Barely outside.
The field was expanding.
Bovac looked at the rift entry one foot from his face.
At the field’s current three-foot radius — expanding toward the entry’s position at the rate the slow-movement rebuild allowed.
At Zarek one foot to his right — outside the field, his ability fully functional.
At the arena floor around him — the cage’s four rifts still open, the exits still active, the geometric circuit still present.
He exhaled.
The field was at three and a half feet.
The entry was at three feet from his body.
The field would reach the entry’s position in the time it took to expand half a foot more.
He held still — maximum field rebuild rate, the grey distortion expanding toward the rift entry’s position.
Zarek waited.
He waited because the entry was fully functional right now.
The field reached it.
The rift entry shimmered — the null field arriving at the entry’s position, the boundary effect beginning, the entry becoming half-inside-half-outside as the field’s expansion reached it.
The entry was no longer fully functional.
Bovac had bought himself a compromised entry rather than a clean one at his face.
He looked at Zarek.
"You waited," Bovac said.
"You waited too," Zarek said.
Bovac looked at the cage.
At the entries — all four of them now inside or at the boundary of the rebuilding field, the field having expanded to reach them as Bovac stood still at the cage’s center.
The null field at seven feet and expanding.
The cage entries compromised.
A Bovac who was standing still.
A cage that couldn’t move a stationary fighter.
The impasse again.
But different from the first impasse.
The first impasse — Zarek couldn’t reach inside the null field, Bovac couldn’t reach Zarek outside it.
This impasse — Zarek had already been inside the field. He had punched from inside it. He had grabbed Bovac’s arm through a rift from inside it. He had pushed Bovac through four cage rifts with his hands on Bovac’s shoulders.
Physical contact worked inside the field.
He stepped through a rift — entry outside the field, exit inside the three-foot radius, appearing directly in front of Bovac inside the null field’s minimal circle.
The rift had worked — the null field at the personal radius not strong enough to prevent a rift exit inside it, the field’s effect more concentrated at the full ten-foot radius than at the collapsed three-foot version.
He was inside the three-foot field.
He swung.
Bovac blocked — faster than before, the adaptation across the fight having built his reaction to Zarek’s close-range punches.
The block was solid — the punch stopped.
Zarek opened a rift — entry at Bovac’s block point, exit at Bovac’s back.
Bovac’s blocking arm passed through the entry.
Arrived at Bovac’s back — pointing inward, aimed at the back it had arrived at, the blocking motion now a strike aimed at Bovac from behind.
Bovac felt his own arm arriving at his back.
He released the block — the arm retracting, the motion reversing before the blocking arm’s force could impact his back, the retraction pulling the arm back through the entry at his block point.
The retraction momentum — pulling the arm back through the rift — pulled Bovac’s upper body forward.
Into Zarek.