Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 33 - Strike Out

Palini Damascus was a strike or two away from incapacitating the infuriating B Grade dragonkin that was proving to be far more of a nuisance than he’d imagined when his opponent disappeared again. His sword would have cut off the Denizen’s hand at the wrist or at least injured his dominant arm if he’d a chance to follow through.

Mind still as stone.

Palini did not falter at the sudden teleportation. His enemy had already shown that ability, even if he shouldn’t have been able to cooldown the spell and do it again.

Body flows like water.

He whirled, sword rising to meet his enemy’s attack at the shift of air behind him.

Only the dragonkin stood ten feet away, sword sheathed, wearing a calm smile. “It’s time we resume our conversation,” he said simply, something strange about the pace he spoke the words.

Palini ground his teeth. A bad habit, so his wife told him. He’d curbed it a long while now—three years give or take—until this dragonkin strolled into his life. “You intend to surrender and sign the contract?”

The dragonkin’s smile turned to a frown. “Surrender? Why would I surrender?”

“The wounds—” Palini stopped.

The man’s armour was whole. Undamaged. All armour had self-repair functions, unless you were a poor F Grade, but his enemy’s had been pierced in dozens of places a mere second ago.

The dragonkin paced to the left, the pace of his movement now as strange as his speech. It looked like he walked at a normal speed, yet it almost seemed as though he was forcing himself to be slow. And there was a strange shimmer about him, an odd glow that was somehow familiar.

Beyond that, he no longer limped.

Palini narrowed his eyes. “Have you cast some illusion? To pretend to be unharmed, thinking it will intimidate me into granting your request?”

An illusion didn’t feel right to Palini, but he couldn’t think of another reason for the man’s strange speech and walk, and that odd shimmer on the surface of his skin and armour...

“I’ve no need to trick you. Our fight is done, Damascus.” The dragonkin raised his chin. “My name is Xavier Collins, a True Progenitor from the Silver River sector, and the ruler of planet Earth. Grant me an audience with your sovereign, with a contracted assurance of my safety, and I will no longer be your problem.”

“You lie.” Palini smirked. “The Silver River sector has no B Grades. They’re still in their infancy. Empress Larona should make it their soon enough, I imagine.” He looked the dragonkin up and down with a raised eyebrow. “You are not her.”

“You’re right,” the man who called himself Xavier said. “We don’t have B Grades in my sector.”

Palini frowned. The implication in the dragonkin’s words… Did he mean to say he was only C Grade? Yet he moves so fast… And the wounds… Something tells me their healing is no illusion.

“You lie,” Palini repeated, yet he was feeling less and less sure the longer he interacted with this Xavier Collins, being constantly put off-base.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Damascus.”

Palini raised his chin. “You haven’t landed a single blow.”

Xavier Collins drew his sword. The hilt and blade shifted, elongating, until the weapon was altogether different—a long bone-like staff, much like the sword had been bone-like, with a curved blade at one end.

A scythe… No, a scythe-staff. Like that of a Soul Reaper.

His weapon wasn’t the only thing to change. His armour became liquid, reforming and reshaping until he wore dark black robes with a large cowl. His large, leathery wings extended and curled behind him, like someone bobbing on their toes, ready for a fight.

“I will admit, you are the superior swordsman. The way you move.” Xavier dipped his head. “It was an honour to fight you. But I’m aware you were holding back. The only spell I saw you cast was Sword Aegis. I doubt that is all you have at your disposal.” He halted, his black robes slowly coming to a stop in the still air of this place, his wings too grew still. “Do you think I wasn’t holding back too? That all I could do was teleport and control time?”

Time… The spatial distortion…

Palini blinked, then his eyes widened.

The shimmer! That glow about him! He’s wrapped the time dilation field close to his body!

That was why he was moving so strangely, he was out of phase with the universe’s time stream, walking a different time stream to Palini’s.

Only, how?

First, Palini hadn’t even known it was possible to wrap a time dilation field that close—so close it was practically armour.

Second, if the Denizen wrapped the field only about himself, and was altering it so Palini could see and hear him, it should mean Palini was in the normal time stream. That meant time would be moving forward outside the Roving Seed Base. Backup would be here. Soon.

Why would he allow himself to become vulnerable like that?

No… That’s not it… My cooldown hasn’t moved…

“You look confused,” the dragonkin said.

Palini’s thoughts marred his forehead. He forced it smooth. To ask a question would show his doubt. Would show weakness. What he thought was happening must be impossible. No one could hold two time dilation fields active at the same time. But to stop time at all like he had would make him a powerful mage, and here Palini had been treating him like a melee combat fighter…

Palini ground his teeth again, so hard they squeaked. Any harder and they’d crack. He was close to giving in. To granting the man’s request. Maybe not with a contracted assurance of his safety. He could negotiate down—get him an audience and nothing more.

Maybe the sovereign would see it as the wise thing to do…

Or maybe Palini would lose his status for bringing such a petty matter to his ruler. Sovereign Rewke Fouran a benevolent, caring man—at least by reputation—but he also hated to be disappointed. Palini was made for better things than being Head of Security for the Transport Minister. One day, he wanted to be the Sector Security Minister. If he proved himself in that role, in five hundred years he might even get to lead one of the sovereign’s armies.

But his future would be dust in the wind if he failed now. If he showed himself to be weak, especially if this man was telling the truth and wasn’t B Grade.

I can’t lose against a lower grade. My strength is why I was entrusted in this role. I can’t be seen as weak.

“If you won’t sign, and we’re no longer holding back, then I have to neutralise the threat.” Palini stilled his mind once more. Like rushing water, he flowed toward his enemy. As he moved, he cast several passive spells.

Engender Speed.

Engender Strength.

Engender Toughness.

Palini Damascus was a physical fighter, through and through, and that showed in the spells he had chosen and mastered, in the path he walked.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t have some tricks up his sleeve. He’d had the tables turned on him more than once since meeting this Xavier Collins. Now, it was time to return the favour.

Palini was four feet from striking distance when he activated another spell—Strike Out. The first of his “tricks.” His sword took on a brilliant green glow. Speed Energy rushed through it. Speed Energy had many properties, but as far as Palini was concerned its main property was moving things through space.

A twin of Palini’s sword instantly materialised in the air in front of his enemy—a twin that glowed with the same green light. Speed Energy was displacing the position of his sword in space, while simultaneously allowing Palini to continue controlling it with his hands. It looked like a clone of his sword, and yet it was not.

It was his sword.

And Palini’s attack was lightning fast. From all he’d seen of his enemy, there wasn’t a way he could dodge that. Not a way he would be swift enough to block it. With how easily Palini’s blade had cut through the dragonkin’s armour in the past, he wouldn’t be able to withstand it, either.

The sword cut straight at the man’s neck.

Xavier moved so swiftly that when the sword appeared at his neck, his sidestep looked more like a teleport. Palini spotted his movement’s afterimage, the only sign it wasn’t teleportation.

The move didn’t jerk Palini out of his stilled mind. He’d anticipated something like this. That was a time dilation field wrapped around him. It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t matter.

Strike Out was still active. It was a channelling spell, one that could be toggled on and off. It would remain active for as long as he had Speed Energy. Problem was, it ate Speed Energy incredibly swiftly, which meant the longest he could maintain it was 30 seconds, and that was under the right conditions.

He’d always thought 30 seconds would be enough to finish any one-on-one fight. Had been in the past.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

Palini fought from a distance. He stepped backward, adjusting Strike Out’s range on the fly as he swung his sword in a violent arc, which only served to make the spell more taxing.

He had never performed a more perfect strike.

The attack hit nothing but air. Xavier Collins, without teleporting, was behind him. No. Directly beside him.

“Surrender,” the dragonkin whispered into his air, almost too fast for him to parse.

“Never!” Palini toggled off Strike Out and whirled. His sword struck air. Again. His teeth ground together. Squeaked. Cracked.

Something hard thudded into his back and he stumbled forward. Felt like a bloody warhammer but must have been a kick, for his enemy held nothing but his scythe-staff.

“You’re only making this worse on yourself,” Xavier said.

The bastard sounded so confident. So arrogant.

He’s playing with me!

Palini’s teeth weren’t the only thing that cracked. His mind had been like stone. That stone crumbled—no, it exploded. The pebbles that were his thoughts shot every which way, scattering and bouncing about his skull.

He’d felt something strange when he’d been kicked. Time had shifted.

That damned field wrapped around him! I was enveloped at his touch. I have to disperse it!

Palini had never faced someone with the ability to alter time. He didn’t have any counters. Usually time mages were weak things, reliant on groups.

One-on-one fights weren’t their forte. He’d never had to deal with them when he’d made his way up the ranks of the Orin Arena Circuit when he was D and C Grade. There was a specialised strike team under his payroll that would be the perfect counter to time dilation—if only he could contact the bastards!

But Palini was on his own.

A smile slipped onto his face. His mind wasn’t stone anymore, but that wasn’t the only way he knew how to fight. His job, every day, was assessing threats. He was built for it. In the background it had been hard at work with the puzzle that was defeating this man, gaining data every moment. The information he had was incomplete, but it was starting to paint enough of a picture that he was beginning to see what image it would ultimately form.

And he knew what he needed to do.

This isn’t the arena. No observers. No records. No future opponents studying my every move. I don’t have to hold a single thing in reserve.

Palini toggled on Strike Out.

A purely physical fighter. That was what he’d trained to be. What path he walked. That was what he was. But the sword wasn’t his only weapon—and it wasn’t the only thing his Strike Out spell worked on.

Palini sword disappeared, swiftly deposited into his Storage Ring. His hands glowed green. At the same instant that those hands glowed, twins of them appeared in the distance.

This was different to when he’d first activated Strike Out, making his slashing sword appear. That had been mid-slash.

For this, his hands were on the other man’s neck so fast that even in a time dilation field it wasn’t something he could see coming, because by the time he knew what was happening it had already happened.

His enemy, in his arrogance, let the fight continue at a speed that allowed him to play with Palini.

Which gave Palini the chance to act.

The green-glowing twins of his hands materialised already touching his enemy’s neck, fingers twisting about it, holding tight in a death grip. Palini might not have ever been in a position where he needed to counter a time dilation field, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew how they worked. As long as he was touching that field, he would be enveloped by it. And as Strike Out didn’t clone his hands but rather worked with some strange entanglement Palini barely understood, it was his real hands touching the man.

His enemy’s advantage was gone.

More spells were cast, then.

Vice Grip.

Iron Fingers.

And, finally, curling his fingers inward, Palini cast Grow Claws. The spell would make six-inch B Grade steel-hard bone claws grow from the ends of his fingers.

Fingers that were touching bare flesh.

Palini felt the claws dig through skin with barely any resistance. The dragonkin, a so-called True Progenitor of some backwater world Palini had never heard of from the burgeoning Silver River sector, had blood pouring from his neck in ten different places.

Xavier Collins opened his mouth and made a terrible choking noise as blood seeped from his mouth. It took mere seconds for the light in his eyes to dim. The Denizen went limp. Would have slumped forward if not for Palini’s hands holding him up.

Palini toggled off Strike Out and watched the man slam onto the ground, a pool of red leaking from him to feed the grass. He inhaled, released. Repeated. As he breathed, the anger that had flared dissipated. His cracked teeth grew back. He looked down at his bone claws, at the blood, then retracted them. Doubt entered his heart.

He’d made the right choice, killing this man, hadn’t he?

He didn’t give me another choice…

Except the man had given him another choice, Palini had just been too prideful to take it. Now, the truth of who this man was might come up after his death. A consultation with an Information Broker could easily reveal if he wasn’t an agent of The Collector. True Progenitors tended to leave a trail, after all. And if this “Xavier Collins” had been telling the truth, he was never technically an enemy of Orin.

It doesn’t matter. There are no recording devices in this base. I can spin whatever story I need…

Just that thought made him feel dirty. That wasn’t who he was. Had never been who he was. But he’d also never been in a position like this. Honestly, he hadn’t thought that gambit of his would have killed the man. He’d taken so many wounds from Palini before and kept on going…

Palini blinked.

His cooldowns—they were all still frozen.

How…

He walked over, cautiously, to Denizen’s corpse and leant over it.

The dragonkin looked dead. He’d fallen forward, limbs at awkward angles, head turned left, cheek crushed to the short grass beneath it.

His silver eyes were lifeless, and he didn’t breathe.

A C Grade could hold their breath a good while…

Palini frowned, brow furrowing. Silver eyes. No. His eyes had been silver and red. A Farscope lens making one red, no doubt. In death that lens would have remained.

So where was it?

There was a surefire way to know if someone or something was dead, and it would rule out the possibility of an illusion. He touched the body and tried to pull it into his Storage Ring.

And was… Successful.

Xavier Collins was dead.

So how was the time dilation field still functioning?