"Solar Burst," Alarion said, willing the explosive magic into his [Spell Storing Dagger]. It was his one nod toward mercy in the encounter. An [Empowered Solar Burst] was his usual go-to for starting a fight at range, but such a spell stood a good chance of killing one or more of the Awakened outright if they were in the very early stages of rank I. A regular [Solar Burst] wouldn't be pleasant. But if any of them were that weak, they should still survive it.

His spell-casting finally alerted the party to their presence. Storing a spell had little in the way of visual flair, save for the slight glow of the silver dagger, but to an active mana sense, it did not differ from an actual spell cast. One soldier stopped mid-sentence, turning toward the door in confusion. Another chair scraped, and the woman barked out a single word. "Vitrians!"

The table exploded the moment Alarion's dagger struck it, a wave of heat and light briefly turning night into day within the broad cavern. Both lanterns on the table were destroyed by the explosion, and three more torches were snuffed out by the pressure wave, but there was still enough light to see by as Alarion rounded the corner and threw Echo at the stocky woman who was already struggling to her feet. The knife hit her in the shoulder, and Alarion flickered after it. He pulled the shifting weapon free, then urged it to grow as he shoved it down with enough force to pin the screaming woman to the floor.

"Lini!" one man shouted, a short sword halfway out of its scabbard as he rushed Alarion. It was the wrong move, but the man wasn't thinking. None of them were.

They were panicking.

Alarion left Echo buried in the woman's shoulder as he turned to face this new target, his mace already in motion. To his surprise, the man dodged back at the last moment, narrowly avoiding a killing blow in exchange for a temporary loss of balance. He fell backward, then rolled to the side to avoid a downward stroke of the mace.

He was fast. Faster than Alarion had expected any of them to be. And not just on his feet, but with his blade. Now free of its moorings, the steel struck like lightning, alternating left and right, high and low as he put the young Auxilia soldier on the defensive. Alarion parried with the haft of his mace and retaliated with his fists, but his opponent had a good sense of distance. The man stayed right where he wanted to be, inside the comfortable range of the mace, but outside the range of Alarion's fists as he applied more and more pressure.

His opponent was an excellent fighter, but Alarion was not intimidated. The man had tested him, but apart from one middling blow, he hadn't wounded Alarion. If they fought to a conclusion, Alarion was sure he would win. He just didn't have the time.

The [Solar Burst] had disabled one of the six, and his trick with Echo had the woman still struggling to stand, but that left four others unaccounted for, including the tall man who was likely the strongest of the bunch. Two were locked in combat with Dimov, pressuring him hard on the far side of the room, while Alarion's opponent was doing his best to pin him in place for a killing blow.

But where was the fourth?

Alarion swung his mace wide to give himself a moment of breathing space, then quickly delved inward with [Introverted Mana Sense]. The wounded man was doing nothing to hide his mana signature as he slunk toward one of the room's rear exits.

He dodged back from a renewed assault and lifted his mace overhead with one hand, committing to a strike that wouldn't land. Then he flickered, appearing half a dozen yards away with a cry of "Empowered Void Crush!"

You have slain [Human – UCL 27]

The spell took Alarion's remaining opponent on the side, a pulsing wave of void energy that removed half of the man's body and left the other half to slump lifelessly against the stone floor like so much empty meat. Alarion flinched, waiting for the wave of nausea, for the violating memories, but there was nothing. Just what was left of a dead man, his heart visible in his half-obliterated chest cavity, desperately pumping its last beats out onto the floor.

"You bastard!" Alarion's opponent shouted, rushing toward him once more.

Alarion ignored him. He kicked the woman beneath him with everything he had, driving the air from her lungs as he gave her a simple order. "Stay down."

Then he was moving, not toward his erstwhile opponent, but away from him. In the years and all the battles that followed his time on the Trinity Isles, Alarion had embraced the idea of the Ebb and Flow as more than just a powerful skill in his arsenal. [Single-Minded] as he was, he longed to turn every fight into a slugging match, to hit and hit until his opponent stopped moving. But fighting was about more than that; it was about recognizing the patterns, the opportunities. It was about forcing your enemy to make a mistake, and taking advantage when they did.

The two men fighting with Dimov thought that there were two separate fights. Them against Dimov, and their allies against Alarion. They trusted that, at the bare minimum, their comrades could contain him so that they could focus on their own battle. That was a mistake.

Alarion struck the tall one in the back, his mace landing with enough power to shatter bone. Once again, however, Alarion was surprised by his opponent. In this case, by his durability. He could count on one hand the number of enemies who had survived a direct hit from his mace in the past, every one of them a rank II fiend.

The tall man didn't even move.

Durability powers were nothing new. Alarion had seen a plethora of shields, barriers, and endurance skills from his fellow soldiers, but he'd never seen one quite like this. It was like he'd hit a wall, not a person. A wall that hit back, lashing out with a bare fist that caught Alarion flush on the jaw and sent him sprawling..

Stolen story; please report.

You have suffered moderate bludgeoning damage. HP -472.

Alarion flickered back to Echo, narrowly dodging a follow-up attack from his original opponent as he invoked [Dimensional Evasion]. New vitality flooded his body, smoothing over the worst of the damage the punch had inflicted as Alarion reoriented himself.

It wasn't just a defensive skill, of that he was certain. If the tall man could hit that hard with every strike, he'd have killed Dimov in seconds. The boy was losing two on one, but he was losing slowly. A redirect skill, then? Something similar to [Offense is the Best Offense]?

He stomped a foot down on the woman's wrist as she moved beneath him, pulling something free of a satchel on her hip. His foot pinned her arm to the floor as he yanked Echo free of her wounded shoulder. She screamed, and he flinched, a flicker of regret passing over his features.

Then he remembered the kids. The dead brother and sister chasing after him in a diseased field. He stomped on her wrist once more for good measure, breaking it and forcing her to drop the potion she'd been trying to quaff. He kicked it away, crushed the satchel with a thrust of his mace.

"Last warning," Alarion told her as he rushed back into battle. Echo in one hand, his mace in the other, he finally activated [Ebb and Flow].

The man with the short sword met him halfway, but Alarion had his full arsenal, and he was no longer pulling his punches. [Ebb and Flow] peaked on the offensive as they clashed, and Alarion used it to his full advantage. His swing with the mace was stronger and faster than before, but it was Echo that gave his opponent fits. The weapon grew and shrank at Alarion's will, always providing him the best tool for the job. When the man moved to close, it was a knife in his hands, quick and deliberate. When he sought distance, it grew to chase him, or flew from Alarion's hand to close the distance in a flicker.

Even worse was Alarion's abrupt change in style as [Ebb and Flow] shifted onto the defense. Perhaps the man saw Alarion's sudden shift in focus as a weakness, a sign that his stamina was running dry or some boosting skill had run dry. He pressed the advantage, and Alarion punished him for it. Every swing with the short sword met air, or the shimmering shield produced by his [Blackstone Bracer]. Every fist or kick was blocked or turned away, the man's one desperate attempt at a tackle swatted away with contempt. The short-sword blurred as the man activated a skill and thrust three times with tremendous speed, but it didn't matter.

In fact, it was his undoing as the tides turned again and Alarion's mace crushed his left leg in a single, brutal attack.

To his credit, that wasn't enough to stop the swordsman. He went down, but he was up again before Alarion could even think of moving past him to Dimov's aid. His leg was mangled, no longer able to hold his weight, but he stood all the same, one hand on a nearby wall, the other brandishing the sword between them.

If their cause had been just, it might have looked like a noble last stand. The sort where the hero was saved at the last moment. But it wasn't, and he wasn't. Alarion swatted him away with one more strike of his mace.

You have slain [Human – UCL 57]

He didn't get up a second time.

Dimov looked half dead as Alarion rushed to rejoin the fight. The young Vitrian's uniform was in tatters, slashed or stabbed through in at least a dozen places. Tailored fabric clung to him in patches, the material stained darker where it was stained with blood. Yet despite his dire appearance, Dimov showed no real signs of injury. He fought with vigor, parrying the tall man's axe in the same motion that he dodged a thrust from his second opponent. He gave ground in each exchange and took a deep cut across the brow on the tall man's backswing. But he held his own.

Whatever else Alarion could say about the Vitrians, their training was exceptional.

There would be no surprise attack this time, not with the look of relief on Dimov's face. The smaller man took one last swing at the Vitrian, then whirled to face Alarion, longsword desperately parrying the downswing of the mace while his dagger sought Alarion's eye.

Alarion flickered to the left and let his mace fall as he brought Echo through an upward swipe that cleaved the man's outstretched arm off at the elbow. For just a moment, there was a pause, an incredulity on the man's face as he watched his limb fall away. Then he screamed, rage and horror mixing together as he pivoted to swing with his remaining weapon.

You have slain [Human – UCL 41]

The body fell away from him with a wet squelch as Echo's miniature blade slid free of the top of the man's skull. He hadn't even seen the shifting weapon coming. Probably better that way.

"About time," Dimov grunted, blood trickling down his face as the tables turned on the last remaining opponent. Steam rather than blood was flowing from the wound on the Vitrian's forehead, the once severe gash now little more than a rapidly healing flesh wound. "He has a-"

"I know," Alarion told him as they flanked the remaining enemy. His mace lashed out, once again to no effect, but this time Alarion skirted back from the inevitable counter-blow.

One of the nice things about the System was the way it categorized powers. While most had individual quirks, almost any power could ultimately be broken down into something generic and compared to others of its type. Ten different looting powers used on the same body would get different results, but they'd all get results within a defined boundary set by the System. Similarly, all redirect powers had things in common, but none were strictly superior in a numerical sense. A powerful redirect like the one their opponent was using would have a weakness. A long cooldown, a high cost, a backlash. Whatever it was, it could be overwhelmed.

Alarion struck again, as did Dimov. The two took turns landing strikes on a flustered opponent who increasingly could not retaliate. The tall man, once fairly quick and strong, grew weaker and slower with each impact. By the end, he was down on one knee, unable to stand, barely able to breathe.

"Each hit you absorb applies an attribute malus until you hit someone back, right?" Alarion asked his downed opponent.

The man only glared.

"I was offered a similar skill," Alarion explained. It had been among his alternate choices when he'd selected [Dimensional Evasion]. ZEKE had warned him off it for this exact reason. When it worked well, it worked well, but any opponent who knew the trick could stick and move, landing glancing blows until the skill overloaded. It was an acceptable choice for an open battlefield where chaos could mask the weakness, but a poor one for single combat against an educated foe. "Bad choice."

"Will it wear off? Should we bind him?" Dimov asked.

Alarion shook his head. "The skill stores the damage for redirection; it doesn't get rid of it on its own. He's already dead."

As if waiting for permission, blood burst from the man's eyes, ears, and mouth, his skin adopting a mottled purple sheen as the reflected damage spilled back into its host. The man shivered once, a whole body convulsion as pain overwhelmed him, then fell lifeless to the floor.

You have slain [Human – UCL 98] – Bonus experience earned for slaying an opponent above your UCL.

The notification should have bothered him. They all should have.

What bothered him more was how easy it had been.

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