[NR] Using Everything - Chapter 559

The goggles on Jason’s helmet are pulled down and over his eyes, activating their three effects. And so suddenly Jason can tell that the weather will stay clear for the near future and the slight glare of the sun to the side of the fight clears up. Oh, and they go to work at preventing malicious eye contact. Now, normally psionic powers don’t actually require physical aspects to work.

Except, the three blue goblins aren’t using a normal psionic power. Rather, they are channeling an inborn Talent which manifested through their eyes. So, in the same way the goggles could prevent a medusas’ petrification, they can block this as well.

One moment to the next, Jason goes from everything except his eyesight being lagged, to reality snapping back into clarity. He doesn’t have the time for it, but the desire to sigh in relief is heavy. The three blue goblins clearly didn’t need a staring contest for their psionic Talents to work as his fall backwards had broken his own line of sight with them. Which in turn meant his goggles didn’t only work in a staring contest, but any malicious eye ability. Well, any below the sixth break. Oh, he was sure there were a ton of other interesting edge cases, but for now this was wonderful.

As Jason’s fall backwards continues and the highgobs charge at him, he can’t help but laugh. While challenging, none of the fights had required his full spread of abilities. In fact, until now, he mostly ignored even the effects of his gear in favor of simple, straightforward, fisticuffs. Yet since coming to the Deep Wilds, the forest had forced out one aspect of himself after another.

And now? He was finally convinced to make use of his gear actively. To finally be pushed to the edge of what he was and open up the path to what he could be. Of course, there was a fight to win before he could delve into this deeper.

So, as he falls back, Jason swings out his left arm, channeling Energy through the feather patterns and uses the Energy to drag himself to the side. As his momentum suddenly changes, he changes the pull to be an anchor and swings himself around, his right leg sweeping the two highgobs in the lead. Then he shouts out, “Blue left charm!”

A little terse, but Rosha gets the clue and she focuses her ranged attacks. This, by itself, isn’t enough to take it down alone. Good thing her arrows aren’t alone. While that all was happening, Jason’s right arm hadn’t been hanging uselessly at his side. Instead, it had grabbed one of his throwing knives and gave it a toss towards the left bluegob as well.

Now, Jason hadn’t been aiming for anything specific, just center of mass. That wasn’t important, though. What mattered was that it distracted the bluegob. Mr. Charming still managed to block a couple of the arrows with a telekinetic burst, but not all of them. And that was enough.

After all, Courtney had told Rosha to use her special arrows. What was so special about them? Well, they would traditionally be called mage slayer ammo. Good thing that is a pretty broad category of ammo, as a Mana dispersal arrow wouldn’t have done all that much. Admittedly, a barrier piercing kicker to the whole thing would have helped with the burst of force. But no, these were a type of mage slayer ammo traditionally used against front line war mages.

This was mostly because it was the cheapest sort of mage slayer ammo, meant to be part of any army’s arrow barrage. As for what they did? Well, they trapped the target power within themselves. Yes, power in general. Though that doesn’t often come into play as trapping a warrior’s Qi within his body, at most means their sword has fewer flames on it. In this case, though, it proves highly effective as it shuts down everything the bluegob can do. Of course, it doesn’t last forever, but the effect stacks the more arrows hit, so Rosha basically has the charm gob on lockdown as long as she can keep hitting.

However, the fight is far from over. All it will take is the nerve pinching bluegob to get close enough to her and the lockdown will be reversed. Good thing they seem to have quite a limited range, as otherwise this would have already happened.

Anyway, on the ground, Jason isn’t in the best of positions. While he did manage to trip two of the highgobs and the two blues didn’t seem to be able to tell their powers couldn’t affect him anymore, that still left three highgobs. One of which stomped down hard on Jason’s left leg with a disturbing crunch sound. That hurt, but so did the throwing dagger that Jason had retrieved and swiped across the monster’s Achilles tendon. Then with a flick of his wrist, the knife is sent into the armpit of the next closest enemy who had a crude two-handed sword raised over their head.

After that, they didn’t exactly manage to keep a hold of said sword. It was quite heavy after all, especially when you no longer have the strength to reverse the momentum you just used to lift it up over your head. Though the highgob didn’t let go in time to not go tumbling backwards.

At this point, the fifth highgob that had been staying back thrusts a short spear at Jason. Even on the ground, this would normally be an easily avoided attack. Except the first two highgobs had managed to get up, even if they did end up leaving their maces and shields on the ground. The lack of weapons didn’t particularly matter when they were trying to stomp the enemy, anyway. Plus, Jason’s one leg is in a less than stellar condition.

The best Jason manages is shifting enough that the metal head of the short spear only slices through his already injured leg without getting stuck. Sure, that leaves the weapon free to be used again, but it would have limited his movement way too much if it had gotten stuck. Besides, what was a little bleeding to him?

His time was better spent sending his remaining three throwing daggers at the bluegobs. This time, Jason actually used them in the way they had clearly been made to be used. The grass in the area was a bit higher than his ankle and his dagger’s slip through effect allowed them to move through it with barely any indication of their passing. Sure, this wasn’t going to hit anything vital, but all three of them came up out of the grass late enough that the bluegobs couldn’t dodge and got matching daggers to the leg.