Blade Over Magic

Growth Under Pressure VI

Two figures zipped through the basin at blinding speeds, and wherever they passed, a trail of destruction was left in their wake.

As Xander and the Centaur fought, the two of them only grew faster as the Centaur utilized its Core Concept and Xander siphoned from it. And despite having a larger frame and higher raw power, the Centaur was looking worse for wear.

Numerous bones all over its body were cracked and cut, more than a few missing entirely. It hadn’t once slowed down, yet despite being the one charging Xander all this time, it was the one suffering.

In comparison, Xander was relatively clean, and there was a slight smirk on his face as he traded blows with the Centaur.

Before, he had been getting overwhelmed by its sheer speed. But now that he was making that speed his own, the gap in skill became painfully apparent.

No matter what the Centaur tried, Xander seemed to always read it like an open book and respond before it could even properly dish out an attack. If it tried to defend, his blade moved like a mirage, bypassing its defenses and striking its body directly.

If it tried to use any big attack, Xander would somehow read it perfectly and strike the exact point in said attack where the void energy converged, neutralizing it. If it tried to create distance, he would stick to it like glue.

It had no clue how he was siphoning off its momentum, but it knew that turning it off wouldn’t end well for it, because once it did, all its accumulated momentum would run out, and if that happened, it would need to start again from scratch, which would be terrible.

Usually, the Centaur had options. Another way it could employ its Concept was by making the momentum of its opponent nil. And it had tried, yet when it did, it found itself unable to focus on Xander’s figure and extend its reach time him, like he was a mirage rather than an opponent. Yet as soon as it stopped, it would be able to focus on him just fine.

Frankly, Xander was preventing it from using the vast majority of its skills, and it was scary. It was apparent that, if he really wanted to, he could have ended this fight very quickly. After all, he wasn’t using many of his more lethal skills besides Return Path, and that was just to match his speed with the Centaur.

So why hadn’t he?

Well, he was using it as a whetstone.

His realization that his growth had been largely horizontal for a while now stuck with him, and he intended to change that. Conveniently, his opponent happened to be the undead skeleton of a mythical creature, so who better to use as a test subject to direct that growth upward?

Xander fluidly deflected an onslaught of thrusts from the Centaur with Abscinde, his footwork light despite the insane speeds they were moving, the pressure and force generated from each thrust creating sharp pointed shockwaves that blew holes into the terrain and mountains behind him, yet none of them affected Xander in the slightest.

’Hm. How about this...?’ He stepped forward and stabbed. The Centaur pulled a spear back to block, and it did. But despite this, it’s left rib shattered as though struck by a terrific release of energy, while its right shoulder cracked all over, both strikes making it nearly lose its balance.

’Eh, it’s fairly simple, but not bad.’ Xander thought, ducking out of a swipe from the Centaur.

The strike to its ribs had actually been an Ice Breaker, and the one on its shoulders were from a Rupture Thrust. But Xander hadn’t moved so fast that he performed those two skills whilst the Centaur blocked. Rather, utilizing the projection aspect of Myriad Paths, he had three swords briefly manifest in reality, one striking with Water Screen and a second following up with Rupture Thrust to land an Ice Breaker, and another landing a Rupture Thrust.

’Wait, I’m a dumbass. Why don’t I always do this?’ Despite the tense situation, Xander felt like facepalming.

Ice Breaker was always tricky to land because it was a combination move. It required two moves tat had to be carefully timed, and even then, if an enemy knew what to expect, it was hard to land, which was a shame as it was among his higher damage skills. That’s sort of why he tended to only use it once or twice in a fight if his opponent was smart.

However, this belated discovery allowed Xander to cut the steps from two to one, technically making it a single skill instead of a fusion of two.

The experimentation only got more lethal from there.

As Xander and the Centaur clashed, he’d utilize his Sword Projections in this manner. Testing out different combos and finding which was more effective at what. Another thing he did was rather than create two swords to land a combo, he’d overlap two swords but have them use two different techniques at the same time.

For instance, Rupture Thrust+Boulder Strike made for an especially devastating effect, and he actually shattered one of the Centaur’s spears during a rare direct clash.

Crescent Moon+Tempest Stream was also a good one. It took the terrifying sharpness of the former and allowed it to be used like a ranged attack with the addition of the latter. This took off a hind leg from the Centaur.

Now granted, he couldn’t just fuse any two techniques via overlapping swords. For instance, Solar-Edge Thrust wouldn’t really work with Rising Sun. Both were fire attribute attacks, but one was a thrusting attack and another a slashing attack. It didn’t really make sense for one Sword to slash and stab at the same time. If he wanted to use them together, he had to project the swords separately.

Which is also why he still needed individual swords for a seamless Ice Breaker.

So overlapping swords for compatible techniques, and separate swords for non-compatible techniques.

That said, Xander wasn’t restricted to just fusing two techniques.

Everything came to a head when the Centaur, seeing its dire situation, decided to do an all out attack.

Rushing forward, all its accumulated momentum moved, going from its body to its remaining spear, and this manifested in the form of a several meter long jousting stick that spun at horrific speeds, causing space to physically drag as it was pulled into a singular point.

Xander didn’t back down.

Instead, using Return Path, Xander Thrust forward to meet the Centaur’s strike, using the momentum he’d siphoned from it into Abscinde. But that wasn’t all.

Three Sword projections overlapped with Abscinde which already had that familiar red glow of spatial severing, while a fourth swept in front of him, creating a screen of water.

Return Path+Rupture Thrust amped by Abscinde+Boulder Strike+Frost Flower Thrust.

The result?

’Reality Breaker.’ Xander called out in his heart, as Sword met spear, and what played out was... shocking.

Space didn’t just fracture. Not alone, anyway.

Instead, along with the momentum used in return path, the ambient concepts were also pulled in through Return Path, and through Myriad Paths, Xander could see countless lines converging at the point of impact before spreading outwards in a devastating set of cracks that didn’t affect simple space, but all the concepts in that direction.

Rupture Thrust created a cascading vibration that, when at its peak, shattered everything in its way, including space. Abscinde made this effect especially deadly, but with everything layered, it wasn’t a simple shattering, but complete erasure.

The space, concepts, and essentially everything in that direction got consumed by this cascade, and was completely removed.

Xander watched this with slightly wide eyes. The affected area wasn’t massive. Roughly twenty meters across. But the efficacy couldn’t be denied.

The Centaur was just gone.

’Well, that went a lot better than I’d originally anticipated. Don’t you think?’ The question was directed at Abscinde, and the weapon just gave a slight vibration in his grasp, seemingly in agreement.

Nodding, Xander looked up, wanting to see how everyone else was doing, and a flash of blue light immediately caught his attention.

He saw a blue sphere expand to a dozen meters in diameter before abruptly contracting into a tiny point and vanishing. A moment later, a pair of black skeletal legs releasing a concerning amount of heat and radiation landed next to him. The Tetrarach. Or what remained of it, anyway.

Xander smiled.

”You pulled it off?” He said, turning to look at Falael whose hair and eyes were still blue. But crucially, the blue energy that had been radiating off her body was nowhere to be seen. Instead, all that power was concentrated just beneath her skin, but even then, she looked almost like a war goddess.

”Yup. I watched how the Behemoth handled its energy and emulated it. It turned out well.” The half-elf raised her clenched fist, looked pleased with herself.

Then she turned to the spot of devastation as a result of Xander’s Reality Breaker and gave him a questioning look.

”I was experimenting.” He shrugged.

”Did it work?”

”Kinda.

”Kinda?”

”Still needs more work.” Before the two could chat any further, a horrid screech filled their ears.

They turned to see the Tyrian Gazer in the distance being pulled apart by large hands made of ice. Its body covered in arrows.

The eye in the center of its body trembled violently, releasing beams haphazardly, but each was caught with minimal effort by more ice shields, and soon...

CRACK

The bones gave way, and it was ripped to pieces.

’... Kinda gruesome.’ Xander commented telepathically.

’You erased the Centaur from existence. You should not be talking.’ Aubrey replied dryly.

Xander shook his head and looked at the Obsidian Spire. The eye at the top had closed, seemingly dormant, but the massive rift in the sky still hadn’t closed.

’Ya’ll, I put this guy to sleep but this rift ain’t closing. I tried my best but I don’t really know what to do here...’ Mira’s voice sounded in their minds, sweet but with a note of frustration.

Aubrey wasn’t surprised.

’The Spire isn’t the Void Demon’s main body. Only a part of it. Likely, it cut off that part of itself when it started to fall asleep.’ She explained as the group converged.

’So, what? The demon can’t descend anymore then?’ Ben enquired, sounding just a tad listless. He genuinely hadn’t had a chance to do much during the fight and was more a spectator than anything else.

’Not quite. The Void Demon won’t be able to descend fully with the rift this size. Rather, it’s going to send a portion of its power through the hole instead.’ The group finally converged, and Mira gave Aubrey a look.

’How do you know all this? Did the Void Demon tell you or something?’ Aubrey didn’t even look at her. She was currently tracking the situation via the Ledger of Tracing, so she knew what was coming.

Keir and Mary were the ones to notice next, eyes narrowing as they felt a shift in the surrounding Reality.

”Something is coming through.” Keir snarled, and the diamond which Ben had used to enforce the area suddenly pulsed before emerging from the formation he created and flew at him.

Ben caught it, then he tilted his head, as though listening to something only he could see, then his expression turned troubled.

”They are telling me to be careful.” The group guessed ’They’ was referring to Ben’s ’friends’. And this instantly put everyone on alert.

At that moment, there was a low groaning sound, as though Reality itself was straining under something heavy, and the rift created by the Obsidian Spire pulsed. Once. Twice.

Something passed through.

Calling it black wouldn’t have been quite right. There was no color to begin with. It seemed more like an absence of color.

A Void.

Black was simply the closest comprehensible term one could use to describe it.

Like a drop of water falling from a wet roof, the thing detached from the rift and began to descend towards the ground.

Everyone tensed, Xander especially, because he witnessed a scene he’d seen a while ago that stuck with him greatly.

The Paths.

Dark paths of varying shapes extended from the descending thing in every direction like an inescapable net.

It reminded him of the first time he fought Mia and glimpsed the Paths. But...

’It’s not as intense. And more importantly, i can see them.’ Xander realized inwardly.

One thing he always wondered was how, when he fought Mia that first time, he actually saw the Paths. Because one should know, he can’t do that anymore. At least, every Archmage he’d come across seemed to have such great control over their own output that Xander couldn’t perceive their Paths. Mia was like this, too.

So he suspected he even only saw them the first time because she let him.

But this? This was different. Because he could see them on his own.

The thing touched down, and the group finally got a good look at it.