SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 739: The Other Heart

The terrace behind Leon had cracked from top to bottom when he hit it, and the crack kept going.

The first terrace sagged behind him. Its stair collapsed in a slide of rubble, blocking the nearest route to the arcade.

I wasn’t planning to retreat that way.

His breath caught low on the left. Cracked ribs, perhaps several. He could bear the split cheek, but he would have to protect that side.

Mardoc stood beside the empty cradle. The lower pools remained intact around him, their channels feeding past the broken terrace.

”You took that well,” said the old man. ”Most Golden Core boys would be in pieces.”

Leon didn’t answer. He was watching the old man’s feet.

Stone spikes punched up from the floor in a line toward Leon.

He rose above them, stepping through the air as their points followed beneath him.

As he set a spatial fold, Mardoc broke the spikes free and sent them sideways at its unfinished edge. Leon twisted, but one clipped his thigh before he cleared them.

The old man had caught the brief opening while Leon adjusted the fold against the pressure filling the court. He would not get away with repeating that motion.

”There,” Mardoc said. ”I wondered when you’d leave me a gap.” His gaze followed Leon’s next landing.

Leon landed on the fire pool’s rim. Its strong current disturbed the earth energy gathering beneath the stone, giving him a better place to launch his next attack.

Make him defend for a change.

He changed the native intake while running, supporting his retained strength through the circulation he had spent a year developing.

Heat from the pool filled his fire branch. The other returns held steady as he drove a burning sword cut down at Mardoc.

The old man raised a hand, and the floor rose in front of him in a wall.

Leon was already changing. Lightning came through its narrow route, quick and short, and he put it behind the fire, so the second cut struck the wall a fraction after the first. The fire softened the stone. The lightning split it. The wall burst open, and the third cut, wind, went through the gap at the old man’s chest.

Mardoc turned his shoulder and took it there. Stone grew over his skin where the cut landed, a gray crust a finger thick. The wind tore the crust away and drew blood from the shoulder underneath.

The old man looked at his shoulder, then at Leon.

”Better,” he said.

Leon wanted to wipe that mild approval off his face. He recognized the impulse and made himself stay out of reach. Chasing the shallow wound would put him exactly where Mardoc wanted him.

Instead, he cut the channel supplying the stone beneath the man’s right foot. The surface split, and for the first time Mardoc stepped away from the cradle. His heel settled on unbroken floor before Leon could take advantage.

”You can see the supply,” Mardoc said. He glanced at the severed channel. ”Don’t mistake that for being able to exhaust it.”

Leon had already felt another current gather beneath the new position. He would have to interrupt it at the moment it mattered. Damaging the floor at random would only destroy the ground he still needed to cross.

They went at each other for the next long minute, and Leon stopped thinking in sentences.

Mardoc kept forcing him to move. Stone crowded the air, softened underfoot, or caught at his ankles. Leon broke free twice with bursts of strength, but the effort cost him distance he could not recover.

He drew the next stone attack across the ice current and shattered it with his blade. For a moment, broken fragments filled Mardoc’s view. Leon used the opening to cut across the back of his knee.

The old man turned with him before he could follow through.

Leon slid his blade under the next guard and drove his shoulder against the old man’s chest, putting his retained physical strength behind the impact. Mardoc moved half a pace. The floor buckled beneath his heel, absorbing the rest, and his elbow came down toward Leon’s neck.

Leon slipped aside before it landed. The blow clipped his shoulder hard enough to numb two fingers.

He flexed them around the hilt and kept moving. A clean hit could hurt Mardoc. Staying close long enough to deliver it was the difficulty. The man answered with the floor as readily as another fighter answered with a blade.

New stone covered the shallow wound. Mardoc’s supply rose steadily through his bare feet; the hill beneath the sanctuary gave him more than Leon could wear down with these cuts.

Leon’s own breathing had gone ragged. The cracked ribs were starting to grind.

A cart-sized slab broke free from the far terrace and spun toward the arcade.

Seraphine intercepted it with two swift cuts, light and then lightning. Four pieces struck the floor short of the entrance. She withdrew behind Vyra’s unbroken curtain of flame before Leon had to look away.

Ira was working farther up the protected route. Leon felt her heat settle along a cracked section of stair, fusing the damaged stone while Loriel moved the last injured disciple clear.

Good. They have it.

He turned back, and Mardoc’s fist was already coming.

The old man had closed the distance under the steam. His hand was wrapped in stone to the elbow, and he hit Leon in the left side, exactly over the cracked ribs.

Leon felt them go.

He was thrown across the floor and rolled, and came up on one knee beside the wind pool’s ring with his left arm clamped to his side and white spots across his eyes.

Mardoc walked toward him. He wasn’t hurrying.

”You change quickly,” Mardoc said, stopping ten paces away. ”But your body still has to bear the force.”

Leon pressed his arm against the broken ribs. Mardoc was stronger, and he had the ground supplying him. Repeating the same exchanges would only make Leon easier to kill.

He hasn’t seen the other Heart.

That advantage would last for one attack. Leon could not afford to show it from a distance and let Mardoc learn its force behind another wall.

He adjusted his grip on the sword, keeping the movement ordinary. His left arm hurt when he loosened it from his ribs. He let the pain show; there was no need to pretend he was comfortable. The old man was already watching that side, expecting him to protect it.

He let his native circulation narrow.

He reduced the mana and qi passing through his left side, drawing them clear of the route he intended to use. His legs and sword arm retained their supply. He kept the separate paths distinct before releasing anything from the other Heart.

Then, in the other Heart, the one that had nothing to do with any of the streams, he opened a door.

Holy energy rose through its own channel. Leon guided it into his left arm without mixing it into the native circulation. Maintaining that separation under pressure took attention he could have used elsewhere.

Light gathered in his palm. Behind the arcade, his women held the approaches; the outer concealment still covered the court.

Mardoc stopped walking.

The old man narrowed his eyes at Leon’s hand. His confidence faltered just enough for Leon to see it.