Chapter 103: Reunite, pt. 2 (Patreon)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DXYM56jXhnlDuSQ0kf5iFd41IVy0iyzqWpoZ_6y-m-c/edit?usp=sharing

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The One Who Watches (passive): No evil shall escape your sight. No movement abilities can activate under your gaze.

It had been a difficult choice between [The One Who Watches] and [Implacable Hunter], but while [Implacable Hunter] would undeniably be useful in certain situations, [The One Who Watches] was too good for Cayden to pass up. It slotted into his build like a missing puzzle piece, negating one of his biggest weaknesses: his lack of mobility.

Cayden had lowered his [Inertia] to its minimum amount from the instant he’d first seen Ignar – he’d need the most acceleration he could muster if he wanted a chance of catching any of his opponents. And with his eyes locked firmly onto the downed boy and a wide grin etched onto his face, Cayden surged forward.

Ignar recoiled from Cayden’s approaching form, the instinctive fear inflicted by Cayden’s new skill making itself known. But Ignar was no wilting flower or sheltered noble. In the split second before Cayden’s claws closed around his arm, he regathered himself and rolled to the side in a frantic dodge. Cayden’s claws raked his back, but they closed upon empty air with nothing more than shredded fabric and blood to show for his attack.

And even as he dodged, Ignar swung out with a retaliatory swipe of his blades, one of the swords biting deep into the skin on Cayden’s yet-to-have-fully-regrown forearm. The follow-up strikes from Ignar’s echoed blades did little damage, but they were enough to keep Cayden from immediately following the noble boy.

And Ignar’s dodge took him away from the trees where the lover supposedly hid, placing Cayden firmly between the noble boy and his goal – there was no need for him to chase. They stared at each other for a moment, Ignar flinching away from Cayden’s gaze.

“That’s new,” Ignar remarked. If he was in any pain from Cayden’s attack, his voice didn’t betray it.

Cayden didn’t respond. Now that he was closer to the lover, he felt no need to delay. He took a single step backward.

Ignar charged.

It wasn’t the probing engagement that Ignar typically used. It was a full, forward sprint, and Cayden increased his [Inertia] to meet the charge head-on.

At the last moment before they met, two silvery blades appeared in the air and slashed at Cayden’s shoulder. Typically, Ignar was able to summon close to a dozen [Echoed Blades] at a time if he was pushing it, so Cayden was surprised at the small number – but it didn’t matter. With his increased vitality, Ignar’s [Echoed Blades] could barely scratch him, so Cayden focused on the much greater threat of Ignar’s two real blades that followed the echoes.

It was a costly mistake.

Rather than bouncing off of his [Skin of Stone], these two [Echoed Blades] dug deep into his shoulder, and Cayden recoiled as blood flew. He tried to lift his arm up to deflect the real swords that followed, but something important must have been damaged – his clawed hand hung limply by his side.

So Cayden blocked with his other arm. But with it only regrown halfway up his forearm, it was lacking the extra protection that [In Clawed Grasp] normally gave his hands. And with the newly regrown skin still tender and lacking the defensive properties of [Skin of Stone], the sword sliced cleanly into it, the tip of his nub flying off.

“GAH!” Cayden yelled, but he didn’t let the pain stop him. Without any usable arms, Cayden stood little chance against Ignar if the swordsman got space to harry Cayden from a distance. So Cayden didn’t give him that chance. Before Ignar could bring his swords back to bear, he lunged forward and dumped the remainder of his mana pool into [Inertia], cranking it to the max.

Ignar once again tried to activate his escape skill, but [The One Who Watches] prevented that. Cayden bowled into the slitherkin, taking him easily to the ground with his increased momentum. He took a sword to the stomach for his troubles, but it meant little in light of his other wounds. In fact, it might have actually helped.

They scrabbled in the mud as Cayden brought his stump to Ignar’s face, blood dripping down from the severed end. Ignar looked confused for all of a second until the first drips that touched his skin reacted with the air – and then he screamed.

The acidic blood potion he’d drunk at the start of the match, coupled with [Alchemical Assistance], showed its worth.

The blood sizzled on Ignar’s skin, boils bubbling up and popping just as quickly. But for all the pain Ignar was in, he never stopped struggling. And despite his greater [Inertia], Cayden couldn’t hold Ignar down permanently with only half a working arm.

Ignar stabbed Cayden twice more before he eventually pulled himself out from under him, breathing heavily as he shakily stood to his feet using one of his swords as a cane. The parts of his face where he wiped away Cayden’s blood were red and inflamed, and the parts where he hadn’t managed to wipe it away quickly enough were even worse. The overall effect of the potion was somewhat dulled by the rain mixing with Cayden’s acidic blood, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t effective at all. Cayden could see part of the noble boy’s jaw through a hole burned in his cheek.

“You don’t look so good,” Cayden remarked with a cough as he lay on the ground.

“Could say the same for you,” Ignar responded with a hissing groan of his own before dropping one of his swords. Cayden could see that one of Ignar’s hands had also been drenched in his blood and was melted almost to the bone.

Cayden made a brief effort to pull himself to his feet, but gave up with a wince of pain after a second. It was strange – they were less severe overall, but his current injuries were somehow both easier and harder to ignore than his injuries in the Guantlet. He knew that if the situation truly called for it, he could probably push through the pain to make a final stand against Ignar. But with the stakes so low, with nothing more than a slightly higher grade riding on it…it simply didn’t seem worth it. At the same time, however, it had been so much easier to throw himself into a dangerous situation and trade injuries with Ignar, using his own blood as a weapon, because he knew he wasn’t in any true danger.

He was actually surprised Cassius hadn’t pulled either of them out yet. Without either of his arms, he had no way to drink one of the healing potions he had stashed under his armor. He supposed Delphia could theoretically heal him, though his wounds were severe enough that it would put her out of commission as soon as the duration of [Self Stasis] ran out. But from the reports he’d memorized, Ignar and his teammates had no healing abilities beyond potions, and Ignar’s wounds were much more gruesome than any that had occurred in the earlier matches.

Cayden watched in silence as Ignar awkwardly pulled a healing potion from his jacket and drank it down, shivering under Cayden’s gaze.

“What’s with your eyes? They feel…it feels like someone’s walking over my grave when you stare at me,” Ignar asked after a moment catching his breath.

Cayden chuckled. “New skill. Maybe I’ll tell you about it later – if you tell me about those two [Echoed Blades]. They were crazy strong.”

“Heh, fair enough,” Ignar remarked. And then he fell back on his butt before looking at Cayden curiously. “You seem oddly unconcerned with your loss.”

Cayden tried to shrug, but only one of his shoulders responded to his command. “It’s a team game. It’s not over yet.”

“Yeah, but you have to know your team doesn’t have a chance with you down. Even with Delphia’s healing, no one else on your team is durable enough to make it through all of Seamus’ traps, not before time runs out. And that’s assuming they come out on top in the three-versus-three – which isn’t an assumption you should make.”

Cayden attempted another shrug. “We’ll see.”

Ignar shrugged in response, but he still looked suspicious. After a minute catching his breath, he tiredly pulled himself to his feet and wandered over to the trees he’d first emerged from. The trees where he’d left the lover.

Upon hearing his angry shout, Cayden couldn’t contain his laughter, a bubble of blood forming over his lips. And he continued to laugh, even as the forest disappeared and he found himself in a small room under the arena, only Cassius and Instructor Blyre for company.

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Cayden wasn’t alone with the two instructors for long. A minute after he’d appeared, thankfully hale and whole – minus the regrowing his right arm had yet to do – the rogue of Ignar’s team appeared.

There was a projection of the match within the room, which he was thankful for, though he doubted it was for the students’ sake. But it didn’t stop him from following the match closely as Marvenal and Velic battled it out against the support and damage-dealer of Ignar’s team.

Marvenal and Velic displayed their impeccable skill and teamwork, but they had overextended to take out the rogue, and a few seconds later Marvenal was dispatched by an empowered arrow from the damage-dealer. On his own, Velic was able to deal a final injury to the support before he was taken out as well and joined the small group in the room.

“...guess it’s up to Delphia now…” Cayden muttered as he nodded to his teammates. Despite the match going somewhat according to their plan, Velic looked less than pleased by his elimination, and the nod he returned to Cayden was stiff.

As fast as all of Ignar’s team was, any game of reunite was bound to be difficult. Even with the variation periodically locking down the lover, their speed was simply too much of an advantage to easily overcome in a game that was basically just capture the flag.

If they fought four-versus-four in an enclosed space, Cayden felt confident his team could win. But between Ignar’s dodge-tank style of frontlining, their support’s traps, and their damage-dealer’s arrows, Ignar’s team specialized in harrying their enemies to death – they would be impossible to draw into a direct fight, not if they didn’t think they had a good chance of winning.

Of course, Cayden’s team could have fairly easily forced a draw by simply turtling up around their lover. Ignar’s team might have been able to wear them down eventually, but not within the thirty-minute time limit. But no one on Cayden’s team wanted to settle for something as mediocre as a draw.

They wanted victory.

The only one capable of quickly advancing into the enemies' territory, of having hope of pushing through any traps and ambushes and coming out whole, was Cayden. Marvenal would have been able to as well, with his perception enabling him to detect any traps or enemies before they surprised him, but he would be forced to waste time to disarm or avoid them – time that their opponents could use to retrieve their lover.

No, if they wanted victory, it had to be Cayden. Unfortunately, his opponents weren’t stupid. Cayden was the undisputed king of durability in the frontline combat class, and even if he wasn’t, Ignar was his sparring partner. He knew Cayden would have to be the one going for their lover if they wanted a win – which was why he hadn’t gone alone.

They had likely expected Delphia to stay with Marvenal and Velic in defense of the lover. After all, in a drawn-out battle like Ignar's team typically waged, healing skills would make a huge difference. Following Cayden would have left both her and their defending team vulnerable.

But if they were going to achieve victory, they needed to take risks.

She’d stealthily followed Cayden as he bulldozed his way through the traps. She’d shadowed him as he searched for the lover. And then, as he’d talked and fought Ignar, she’d waited for the lover to lose its spatial lock and then retreated back along the same path to their territory.

Ideally, Velic and Marvenal would have been able to defeat whoever Ignar’s team sent to claim their lover, but once Cayden had seen only Ignar waiting for him, he realized that had been an idle hope. But that didn’t mean the match was lost – Delphia had quite a head start on their opponents. For at least a few minutes yet, both lovers would be in their territory.

Unfortunately, Delphia’s stealth skills weren’t the best for hiding a ten-foot pole. She’d have to pick the perfect moment if she wanted to approach her opponents without being seen. Fortunately, Marvenal and Velic had taken out the opposing team’s rogue, the one most likely to see through her stealth. But neither of Ignar’s other teammates had bad perception, and they didn’t know where Delphia or Cayden was, so were playing it safe as they slowly retreated back to their territory.

For a few tense minutes the room was completely silent as everyone watched the slow game of cat and mouse play out on the projection in front of them. Delphia had to stay far enough away from her two opponents to not hear the chime of the lover in her hands, but close enough to pounce if the opportunity presented itself.

And finally, only a dozen yards from the stream that separated the territories, that opportunity came.

Ignar limped from the trees on his side of the stream, yelling to his teammates that their lover had been taken. His teammates didn’t immediately understand through the rain, looking at their heavily wounded teammate in confusion and horror – and Delphia moved.

Cayden held his breath as, from their rear, Delphia sprinted with the lover in her hands. Ignar’s yelling intensified as he saw her shadowed form approaching, but his teammates just looked more confused by his exclamations.

She closed the distance between them, lover outstretched. Twenty feet. Ten feet. Five.

Two chimes sounded as the lovers locked themselves in space, less than a foot apart from each other.

For a moment, it seemed as if everyone froze along with the lovers – Ignar’s voice finally silent, the two teammates looking back at Delphia in surprise, and Delphia straining against the spatially-locked lover.

But it couldn’t last forever.

Delphia fought admirably, dodging out of the way of two arrows and stabbing the wounded support – finishing him off – before an elongated arrow pinned her to the ground through her stomach. She yanked herself off the end of javelin-like arrow, moving as if she wasn’t even wounded, but it was too late. A second and then third arrow pierced her, and she disappeared and reappeared a moment later at Cayden’s side.

She didn’t speak, but Cayden could see her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

“...good try,” Cayden awkwardly said, patting her on the shoulder. Her hood shook back and forth in response.

They had lost.

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