The Gamer's POV

’Three seconds...’ Xavier thought after delivering the kick to the chest of the Lord, sending him tumbling back.

Three seconds...

That was how long he could safely change his density for. He had increased the density of his leg for just a moment to deliver that heavy blow, but because the air around the Lord was still burning hot — despite the blizzard from Glazier — he noticed that the longer he held the form, the more his leg absorbed the heat. Three seconds seemed to be the only safe window he had before the heat soaked too deep, leaving him with internal burns and injuries that he couldn’t afford to deal with right now.

Xavier adjusted his grip on his sword, but he didn’t immediately lunge after the Lord because he had already used his moment of surprise.

And lunging in blindly to follow up would be like trying to hug a cactus while covered in honey.

Instead, he waited because he trusted that Alicia would find her own opening to aid him, and of course, she did.

Just as the Lord began to push himself up from the sand, the space beside his head twisted in a spiral and a hand holding a sword shot out straight for the Lord’s head.

That surprise attack should have been enough to take out anyone. But before the sword could find its mark, the Lord pushed his head back at the last moment and the blade whistled through empty air, mere inches from his skeletal nose. He seemed surprised as he turned to his right towards the space, only to see the hand suddenly disappear into the vanishing, twisted space.

It was then that Xavier moved in a blur, bringing his sword down with the force of a falling battering ram. He was hoping to split the creature’s head in two while it was still distracted by the limb, but before the edge could connect, the Lord raised his own sword, catching the blade in an explosion of flames.

However, the force of the strike was so immense that it brought the Lord’s blade down a bit. That created just a small opening for Xavier to follow up with a spinning, horizontal slash or a high thrust to the neck.

But instead of the follow up, he immediately dashed back as fast as he could, creating enough distance between him and the Lord. The reason was that the heat from the Lord’s blade after that brief contact had expelled so much thermal energy into his hands that he had to break away before his muscles seized. His arms were red and trembling so much that he found it hard to even hold his sword.

Luckily, during this brief second that he disengaged, Alicia took over in an attempt to overwhelm the Lord. The air around the Lord had twisted in many places, causing him to look at the shimmering distortions with frantic, darting eyes. Each ripple in space looked like a potential threat, a window for another blade to strike.

However, those were all distractions because her hand appeared, not out of the twisted spirals he was watching, but out of thin air.

By the time the Lord could catch the movement and twist his body to defend himself, her sword grazed his side, drawing a very thin line across the skeletal frame. Before he could retaliate or even find his footing, the hand vanished as quickly as it had appeared, only to reappear a moment later by his back or his side. It was like fighting a ghost that only existed for the split second it took to injure.

However, no matter how hard she struck him in those brief openings, she found it extremely hard to really pierce his skin enough to cause a serious wound.

Of course, that was to be expected. After all, she was a Grade Two, and trying to use a Grade Two blade to cut a Grade Four was like trying to carve a diamond with a kitchen knife. The gap in their raw stats was just too wide, and her weapon was hitting a wall of density that it simply wasn’t built to break.

Still, she did not let that stop her. She kept attacking with all her strength, her blade flickering in and out of the air like a relentless storm.

For a moment there, things looked like they were finally turning in their favor, until the Lord finally had enough of her supposedly pesky actions. Suddenly, his hand shot out with predatory speed, catching Alicia’s wrist just as she attempted to retreat. Then, he hauled her body out of the air like a fisherman yanking a catch from the water. He raised her in a wide, crushing arc and smashed her down onto the sand with the force of a falling hammer.

His fiery grip on her hand was so intense that the skin of her wrist burned instantly, filling the air with the smell of ozone and burnt flesh. Alicia let out a strangled cry as she hit the ground, the impact and the searing pain in her arm leaving her breathless and pinned beneath the shadow of the skeletal-looking Lord.

In a heartbeat, the Lord raised his sword and brought it down to end her life. She was one second away from completely bursting into charred embers under the radiating heat of his presence, when Xavier’s blade suddenly swatted the Lord’s blade to the side with the force of a collapsing building.

A yell tore from Xavier’s throat as he threw every ounce of his remaining strength into the interference. In fact, this was probably the highest he had ever pushed his density.

The Lord’s arm was jolted to the side and his blade flew off his grip, burying itself deep into the sand a few meters away.

At this brief moment of an opening, Xavier increased the density in his legs to anchor himself and decreased the density of his torso and arms for a second swing of his sword.

Since this was something he had been practicing since he first got his powers, he had somewhat mastered the art of changing the density in different parts of his body to affect his speed in combat.

His torso now felt like it had no weight at all, which allowed him to swing again in a blur, and a moment before the steel hit the Lord’s neck, he increased the density of the blade and his arms to the maximum.

Everything happened so fast that for a split second, Xavier thought he had him. He should have had him.

But then his eyes widened when he saw that the Lord had arched over backwards and his blade had whipped over the Lord’s head, cutting through nothing but empty air and the lingering heat of the blizzard.

Seeing that, he shouldn’t have been surprised. No matter how much he tried to increase his speed, his opponent was a Grade Four. Xavier’s speed was unreal for his level, yes, and a person of his own grade would have been killed by it before they even realized what hit them. But not a Grade Four, whose speed was on an entirely different plane of existence. To the Lord, Xavier’s "blur" was likely nothing more than a normal lunge.