Air Gear kicked in just fast enough to jolt him sideways as the mace came down.
It slammed into the earth with a thunderclap, stone cracking like eggshell under the force.
Fragments tore through the air, slicing his cheek and pinging off his coat. His boots slipped on the loose gravel, but he forced Spacetime wide, anchoring his footing, and kicked off again—body screaming, ankle nearly folding from the torque.
Every pivot felt like driving a nail into his joint.
Blocking wasn’t an option.
Trading hits? A joke.
Outlasting the brute? He’d be dust before that happened.
The brute limped into the next step, weight shifted unevenly—dragging its injured leg behind. Hope’s earlier hit had done more than he’d thought. The knee was compromised, the stride no longer clean.
It gave him a sliver of timing.
He drove the spear forward again with an angled lunge, using Air Gear to accelerate the thrust—but the tip merely scraped the plated greave with a dry ring, nothing more than a glancing mark.
The Scorchbrute didn’t even flinch.
Hope gritted his teeth as he dropped low again—this time letting Spacetime warp beneath his ribs and extend sideways as he rolled beneath a wide swing. The mace barely missed his head. His side clipped a jagged rock. Pain flared across his ribs. Blood wet his boot, already pooling from the last dodge.
He couldn’t keep this up.
He pulled back, staggering, each step assisted by the wind as he fought to stay upright. His lungs burned. His vision blurred at the edges. The brute followed—but not as fast. The limp was worse now. One leg lagged behind, its footing uneven. Still, its shield stayed high, weapon dragging fire behind it.
And it knew.
The fucker knew he was slowing down.
His knees trembled. His chest caved under the pressure—lighter gravity keeping him upright, but just barely.
He’d studied every angle, every plate. The head was protected. The throat gap, too narrow. The heart, still sealed tight behind solid armour. His best hit had damaged the brute’s knee earlier—and even that hadn’t slowed it down much.
His spear was sharp.
But that wasn’t enough.
Not unless he buried it deep. Not unless he broke something vital inside.
Hope ducked another swipe, this time forced sideways by a burst of reverse compression in the space behind his back. It shaved milliseconds off his motion—just enough to save his spine. But as he spun away, something caught his eye.
The flicker at the edge of his new spear.
The way space bent around it—just slightly.
He moved—half-sprinting, half-hobbling around crumbling stone, trailing a line of Air Magika behind him. Dust curled in his wake. His legs dragged with every step. The shattered ground offered little footing.
He paused, crouched behind the stone, forcing his heaving chest still. For a moment, he just stared at the spear tip.
That distortion...
What if he could build something on it? Use space actively to compress... compress air—
The brute charged again—fast.
Hope jumped, Air Gear pulling him up, gravity lightened just enough to boost the arc. Still not fast enough.
The shield slammed his hip and flung him into a stone outcrop.
His shoulder cracked again. The spear almost flew loose.
He didn’t scream.
Didn’t black out.
Just slid down the rock, coughing red into the dust. One arm limp. Ribs on fire. Ankle spasming.
But his fingers still gripped the spear.
Still burned.
Hope hissed through clenched teeth and fed the last of his focus into the weapon.
Air Magika curled up the shaft.
Then came Spacetime—coiling, compressed in layers. The pressure warped the tip again. It pulsed. The blur deepened.
Unstable.
He stopped. Reset.
Too much at once would shatter it.
The Scorchbrute didn’t press—maybe confused, maybe savoring the kill.
Hope shifted left, recalibrating his limbs, checking his stance. Blood dripped from his thigh, the cut deep and raw. His shoulder throbbed. His boots left wet smears on the broken ground.
Still he moved.
Still he channeled.
A finer thread of Air now. A single rotation. Coiling tighter.
Then space.
Drawn in—condensed—like winding a spring with a needle.
The blur narrowed. Pressure built.
The tip glowed faintly—almost like a star behind water.
The brute lunged.
No wide swing. Just a sudden burst forward. Shield-first.
Hope dove low, dragging gravity down around his waist, sliding under the bash. A sharp ridge caught his thigh and tore it wider. Blood exploded.
But he didn’t stop.
Momentum carried him under. He twisted—air hissing.
And he saw it again.
That joint.
Same spot. Unarmored. Just above the knee.
Hope didn’t hesitate.
He struck.
Every gram of pain, pressure, and Magika rammed into the spear as he drove it forward—into flesh.
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Deep.
And this time—
He released.
Air detonated inside the leg. Not an outward burst—but inward, like a pulse hammering into tissue from behind the bone.
Then came the compressed Spacetime—snapping open like a spring, reality bending in a tight spiral at the core of the spearpoint.
The result—
A dull pop.
Then a crunch.
The brute screamed in agony.
Its leg jerked sideways. Something tore. A tendon snapped. Muscle twisted.
The Scorchbrute collapsed in a disjointed, faltering spin.
Its weight slammed down—Hope had steepened the slope just before impact to make the fall heavier.
Dust surged in all directions.
Hope stumbled back, blinking grit from his eyes, barely upright. His lungs rattled. His shoulder hung limp. His thigh poured heat down his leg.
But he stayed standing.
One hand still gripped the spear.
Still shaking.
His eyes fixed on the brute.
Still breathing.
Still trying to rise.
But broken now.
Crippled.
He felt the shimmer again in the tip.
The weight.
The coiled storm.
His plan worked.
Now—
He just had to do it again. And make it bigger. Better.
Releasing Air and Space one after the other wasn’t enough. It had to be synced—tight and seamless. He needed to compress everything he could right before impact, hold it steady through the motion, and only release once the tip pierced deep inside. Not before. Not after. Right at the moment the spear broke flesh and reached the target.
Only then could that narrow point slip past the armour and do real damage inside a creature this massive.
Hope staggered forward, dragging his legs through the debris, shoulder throbbing, breath ragged. His pulse pounded in his ears, but he didn’t let the rhythm falter.
No clean target left on the leg. That joint was ruined.
He circled again, slow, his eyes scanning. The brute was completely limp now—still dangerous, but much slower. It tried to pivot with him, but the weight shifted wrong. Its steps dragged. One side was crumbling under its own mass.
Good.
Hope pulled in another thread of Air. Then Space. He didn’t rush it. Let them coil together, like two wires braided into one. This time, he didn’t push them into separate layers.
He mixed them.
The mental strain spiked as he knew he was pushing too far… yet he kept going.
The tip of the spear trembled, shimmered—then began to warp.
The blur spread wider this time, less like a ripple, more like a pulse trapped in glass. His head burned. His wrist throbbed. The tip of the spear groaned faintly, trying to resist the stress.
But it held.
Hope shifted his weight, sliding along loose stone, and kicked off with a gravity burst to the side—barely dodging a desperate swing from the brute’s mace. The air cracked. Rock shattered behind him.
He didn’t stop as Air Gear embraced him.
Compressed Space surged behind his motion, pulling him inward, collapsing distance. He moved forward like a skipped frame, chest tightening from the strain. He appeared beneath the brute’s outstretched arm.
Not the throat.
Not the heart.
The armpit.
The angle wasn’t clean, but it was close. Plates had to shift there to let the limb move. There was always a gap.
Hope twisted, brought the spear down, and thrust upward with all the force he had left—manipulating the brute’s weight balance to collapse the limb before it could counter.
The spear head sank in.
And he released everything.
Space as the canvas. Air as the fire. All of it compressed, wound tight, then unleashed inside a body never meant to hold it.
The spear tip pulsed. Then the pressure broke loose.
From the point of impact, the brute’s insides convulsed. Flesh ballooned around the tip, distorting as something ruptured beneath. Then—
A wet, muffled boom.
Muscle tore wide. A geyser of blood and shredded meat burst from its shoulder and chest, spraying hot steam and gore across the rocks.
The brute screamed—but it wasn’t a roar anymore. It was a broken, choking howl.
Hope stumbled back, half-drenched in the spray, chest heaving, lungs burning. His heartbeat slammed in his ears. The stench hit a second later—hot, metallic, overwhelming.
Bits of the brute had struck him in the chest, chunks of meat and blood-soaked heat slamming into him like thrown weights.
But he didn’t falter.
Didn’t fall.
Didn’t blink as he watched the massive creature collapse.
Its heart had been damaged—ruptured from the side—and in those final moments, its scream dulled. The last of its strength vanished. Its balance on one leg gave out, and it toppled onto the jagged ground below, cracking the stone beneath with a deep, shuddering impact.
Only then, Hope finally let go.
His body, his mind, had nothing left to give.
He felt destroyed.
So many injuries, he wasn’t sure how he’d kept moving at all. The pain was unbearable—physical and mental—a storm that never stopped. Every breath stabbed. Every thought frayed.
It drowned him completely.
And without even glancing at the prompts that appeared or the credits earned, Hope’s consciousness slipped.
Darkness pulled him into sleep.
***
Hope slowly blinked.
The first thing that hit him was the smell—sharp, metallic, sour. Blood?
He pushed himself upright and noticed red patches all over his coat. His back felt cold and damp. Torn, maybe?
He looked around and saw Eve sitting calmly beside him, the large backpack resting at her side.
Hope took a moment to process everything, grounding himself in the present.
Then he smiled at her, casual as ever.
“Quite the tough one, eh?”
She nodded. “Yes, it was. But you won.”
“I did, yeah. It was that or die, so had to put in a bit of effort.” He paused, then added, “Thanks for always being there, Eve.”
“It’s okay. I enjoy watching your story.”
“My story?” He chuckled. “Well, whatever. Got any water? I’m dying over here.”
Eve grabbed a container and handed it to him. He downed it in a few huge gulps, finishing the whole thing in seconds.
That hit the spot.
Hope leaned back on both arms, letting his thoughts drift back to the fight. All the while, through flickering eyes and a soft grin, he watched the System prompts.
Level 54 ? 56
?? Close-Quarter Combat (Level 7?8 + 1)
Instinctive adaptations for tight engagements.
? 45% reduction in stamina drain during close quarter combat.
? +400 Physis permanently
??Spear Handling (Level 7?8 + 2)
You’ve grown used to the feel of a spear—how to hold, move, and strike with it.
? 50% reduction in stamina drain when using spears or spear-like weapons.
? +10% to Physis while the spear is your designated weapon.
??Air Handling (Level 8?9 + 5)
You feel the pressure in motion—the shift before the gust—and how to guide its path.
? 70% reduction in mental strain when manipulating Air Magika.
? +14% to Magia while in the presence of Air Magika (only the highest applicable Magika Handling effect applies at once)
??Spacetime Handling (Level 9?10 + 6)
You saw the frame beneath reality. What bends for others bends to you.
? 80% reduction in mental strain when manipulating Spacetime Magika.
? +16% to Magia while in the presence of Spacetime Magika (only the highest applicable Magika Handling effect applies at once)
Active Skill Unlocked:
- Point Implosion
Feat Achieved:
- Spacetime Initiate
??Point Implosion (G) - [Discovered]
Space folds. Pressure gathers. And from within—it blossoms.
Discovered State – Passive Effects:
? 50% reduction in the mental strain caused by this skill.
? +500 Physis permanently.
? +100 Magia permanently.
??Spacetime Initiate (G)
You have reached Level 10 in Spacetime Handling.
? +1 Spacetime Handling.