Chapter 102: One vs. One

Chapter 102: One vs. One

“Were you just... watching that whole time?” I asked.

Yaretzi pulled himself up and over the railing, then surveyed the body of the Speed Delver. Etja had begun bombarding the northern caravel and its shield was beginning to fail.

“Yaretzi did not see you kill this one,” he said, nudging the body with a boot. “Yaretzi came back up when you struck Lintiel.” He gestured at the archer.

“Why not help them?”

“Yaretzi needed to see what you could do.” He shrugged. “Tavio believes that he can make the climb up to Platinum if he were only a bit stronger. That is why he wishes to know your secrets. Yaretzi finds that idea intriguing, so this one does not want to accidentally kill you before finding out what your trick is.”

“What does that have to do with these boats?” I asked. “Did you come out here just to wait for me to show up?”

His face was obscured by his helm, but his body language showed puzzlement.

“What? No. This is a happy coincidence. Yaretzi was sent to the blockade to test these weapons.” He pointed at the broken spike gun on the bow of the ship. “The copper ships are... not ready for deployment. The silvers show more promise, though.”

“You tested them on your own people,” I said, voice low.

He waved a hand dismissively.

“It was pointed at you,” he said. “Yaretzi will not be in any trouble.”

“Then it doesn’t bother you to kill your allies?”

“Allies?” said Yaretzi. “Those soldiers were not Yaretzi’s allies. How could they be, as weak as they are?”

“Aren’t you a member of the Navy? That doesn’t make them your comrades?”

Yaretzi sighed.

“When Yaretzi reached level 10 the Empire bestowed upon him the rank of Captain. It is a great honor, but it is not an honor that Yaretzi wished for.” He rolled a hand in the air. “This is all an obligation. Yaretzi does not care for it. Yaretzi would never say this to the duchess, but if Yaretzi could break free of the Empire, Yaretzi would.” He paused and flicked his wrist, a saber appearing in his grip. He locked eyes with me, and I could just make out his dark brown irises beneath the helm. They glowed with eerie light. “You must not tell anyone, but this is not the first time that Yaretzi has killed Imperial soldiers because it was convenient to do so.”

As I realized the depth of Yaretzi’s psychopathy, I received a notification.

You have observed the Intimacy spell!

Intimacy

Divine

Cost: None

Requirements: CHA 20, Divine 20

Effects:

Choose one character you can perceive other than yourself and reveal to them something they don’t already know that is personal to you.

You receive a number of stacks of Blessed based on how vulnerable the information makes you and by how much it affects their opinion of you, good or bad. You receive a minimum of one stack and up to a maximum number of stacks equal to your CHA.

Blessed: You may expend any number of stacks of Blessed to increase your damage or defenses by 7 for each stack spent for one attack.

Yaretzi dashed forward, saber slashing through the air. I brought up Gracorvus and barely intercepted the strike, but he twisted his arm and the blade slid down off the front of the shield. He ducked low and brought it up beneath my guard, stabbing me between the plates of my armor in my armpit.

Critical damage reduced by 40%!

Bleeding negated!

HP: 1178 -> 1079

Weakness: 25%

You have been affected by Blade of Censure! You lose mana equal to half of the damage Yaretzi dealt.

Mana: 289 -> 240

The damage wasn’t anything special. The Weakness debuff and the hit to my mana were the real threats. I leaped back and threw Somncres, copying it into a triple Void Hammer and arcing it to one side to take Yaretzi from his right. I immediately followed up with another series aimed head-on.

“We won’t!” said a woman hastily. “But you have to kill him! Everyone who’s even thought about reporting him disappears!”

Yaretzi sighed.

“Yaretzi does not like how this is going,” he said.

“I bet.”

Yaretzi brought up his rapier in his offhand and held it up in front of his face, then gave me a duelist’s bow.

“Yaretzi will no longer try to capture you.”

“Thanks, but I don’t buy that for a second,” I said.

“Yaretzi will now kill you instead.”

“Ah, that makes more sense.”

Yaretzi’s torso shone with sparkling light and I was hit with a debuff.

Lockstep

You and Yaretzi may only move away from one another.

I squinted at the debuff and tried to take a step toward the man, but my feet wouldn’t budge. I took a step to the left, which put a little more distance between myself and Yaretzi, but couldn’t step back to the right.

“Fun trick,” I said as Yaretzi took two big steps away from me and came to a stop next to one of the boat’s side-mounted cannons.

He kicked the cannon’s mount and several bolts came loose. The cannon rotated around toward me and came to a stop aimed directly at my chest. There was no magic involved, no spell or technique used from what I could see. It was as though the cannon’s mount had been built with a specific, intentional flaw for this exact situation.

“Are you built into fucking Luck?!” I said, scrambling to adjust Somncres into a throwing hammer shape, but I was too slow.

Yaretzi gave the cannon another kick and it fired. A mana-woven, dark iron cannonball hit me in the chest at about 700 miles per hour.

It sucked.

The force jettisoned me backward and I crashed through a mast, then bounced off of the boat’s quarterdeck and smashed the railing on the stern. I was thrown out across the sea, tumbling end over end through the air. While the world rotated around me my eyes caught sight of something on the distant shore that momentarily broke through the shock of my sudden, acute injuries.

There was a monstrous soul presence rising up over the coastline and visible even from a mile away. It was as potent as any soul I’d ever beheld, but there were no Delver levels surrounding it. There was something else imbued within it, a presence that hinted at unknowable depths as the soul substance churned like a storm-swept sea.

I splashed down into the cold water and lost sight of whatever it was. For several seconds I couldn’t move as my mind and body processed the traumatic damage I’d just sustained and I sank into the dark abyss.

Critical damage reduced by 40%!

Bleeding negated!

HP: 817 -> 605

My ribs were gravel, my lungs were collapsed, and the front of my plate armor was bent inward to the point where it was crushing me. The pain was blinding and I was disoriented, unable to tell which way was up or down in the water. After several seconds of battling against the agony in my chest I finally managed to begin making a feeble effort at swimming–that is to say, I used Gracorvus to float me in a few different directions. I figured out which way was up by figuring out the direction that I couldn’t ‘swim’, which was in the direction of Yaretzi who was above me in the caravel. It was exactly what had happened to Varrin.

I tore at the straps of my chest armor and ripped it away, then tossed it into my inventory. The fact that I could perform any functions with my arms that required the use of my pecs was likely due to Body of Theseus. The ribs that anchored those muscles were in a hundred little pieces, after all, and the movements were slow and difficult. I took a moment to think through my next course of action as my empty lungs began to burn. That particular discomfort was a drop in the bucket while said metaphorical bucket sank deeper into an ocean of hurt, so it was easy enough to ignore.

[The feedback from our Shared Fate connection has now caused me to ruin three separate weaves that I was working on.]

[A tragedy, to be sure. Feel like helping out?]

[If the alternative is that you suffer a miserable demise, then I suppose it is in my interest that I assist.]

[Alright, get ready to think real hard at an asshole.]

I used Gracorvus to keep myself from sinking any further and tested using Shortcut to get closer to the surface. The teleport was successful, unrestricted by the Lockstep debuff, but I kept myself a few feet under the water while I considered. I looked at the debuff again, but there was no hint as to how long it would last.

I was below half on health and had a third of my mana left. I had no idea how much damage I’d done to Yaretzi. Certainly a lot less than he’d done to me, but my allies would be moving in soon. I needed to be sure I was there to keep Yaretzi from quickly cutting apart my less tanky party members, but I also wanted to make sure I had a good counter to this ability. If anything, Lockstep was just as much of a detriment to Yaretzi as it was to me, although the Littan likely had a lot more experience dealing with its downsides.

If Yaretzi couldn’t move toward me, what would happen if I pulled him toward me?

I decided that was something I’d like to find out.