LIGHTNOVELONLINE 217 – Vs. Semzar Pt. 3
“You stole that thaumaturgy, didn’t you?!” she mocked him. “The flames are barely warm! Could you not simply adjust it to remove the fire element? Could you not even go to the effort of stealing a fire affinity to go with your stolen thaumaturgy?!”
No verbal response came — but Semzar’s flames visibly grew, both in size and brightness, and so did the number of punches he sent flying her and Barzai’s way. In turn, they became even sloppier, as did his positioning. Frankly, he didn’t seem to be thinking about positioning at all, which was itself a problem. No thought meant that it would be harder to manipulate him into standing near a trap-burster. Nonetheless, Krahe managed it, more by pure luck than her own efforts. With a snap of her fingers, the burster went off right at Semzar’s feet, as he was standing atop a table. He was consumed by a great burst of pyroclast and splinters, which in turn was dispersed by the reactive outburst of his wards.
Then, Semzar did something unexpected, because it was perfectly logical: He closed the distance, and not with a careless lunge, but with a steady, yet quick approach while keeping up his offense. If he closed the distance, Krahe would have less time to dodge his flying fists, his Barrier would take up more of her field of view, and she wouldn’t be so ready to detonate any given trap-burster lest she herself be caught in the blast. Even if she were to do such a thing and, say, dive beforehand or skim just out of the blast radius, Semzar could read that as a tell. This was all assuming that Semzar was thinking tactically rather than rushing in like a frustrated moron.
Krahe, of course, did what she could to manage the spacing, but even Astro Diving and Skimming could only go so far against someone who could bound around like a suited-up cyber-ape. Not wanting to dump a Cinder Flash or even Cinder Strobe straight into his Barrier, Krahe decided to simultaneously mix him up and refine her tar-whip thaumaturgy by employing it at this close-mid range. Right now, in this razor-like mindset, centimeters from death and burning up from the inside, she knew she could grasp it, much like a self-destructive artist could grasp his best work whilst overdosing on hallucinogenic toad saliva.
And indeed, right there, in the refulgent moments between engagements when the world seemed to pause, there her answer was. Refining the lash’s thinness and velocity only got her so far — the final step was hidden in plain sight, being the simple incorporation of her fingers as an additional layer of casting. By quickly opening her hand as the trigger gesture, the thaumaturgy came out as five separate threads centered on the palm of her hand and each connected to the tip of one finger. They sprung forth with the speed of a bullet, lashed at their target, and then disintegrated into smoke. A fair portion of Lasher’s quickness and the velocity of its filaments stemmed from the Left Arm’s increasingly superhuman characteristics, fed both by Krahe’s physical attribute growth and by the Atomica’s monstrous Throughput. Thaumaturgy and the filaments’ whip-like motion did the rest of the work.
The combined velocity and gossamer-like thinness of each thread created the illusion of Krahe cutting things through sheer force of will, with the mere gesture of her arm.
With a slight adjustment, she could detach the filaments from her palm early, allowing her to use them for a more traditional swiping attack. Forming a single, stronger cutting filament was still an option, especially if she wished to, for some reason, dust off monowire martial arts.
And so, after a monowire she had named it: Black Lasher, or just Lasher for short.
The original had been a legendary armament in its own time, the first “true” monofilament whip, capable of cutting straight through the most advanced hard armor composites. Her version was perhaps not so universally effective, but it had an undeniable point of appeal: Overwhelming cutting power that allowed it to be effective even against Barriers and Wards, despite being predominantly lacerative in nature. In terms of efficiency it didn’t even remotely hold up to Cinder Flash or Tar-tendrils in their intended roles, but that didn’t matter. One couldn’t expect to always be able to use the exact right tool for the job. Black Lasher came out faster than Cinder Flash and had a range somewhere between it and Tar-tendrils, allowing it to fill in where the other two fell short, not to mention its ideal use-case for cutting through flesh — a use case that Krahe dearly hoped she would get to demonstrate against Semzar.
As it stood, she was satisfied with seeing his disconcerted look when the filaments ripped into his barrier and his Hard Entropy spiked much like it would with a purposeful kinetic attack. In concert with a hail of mescalt bullets, it was only a matter of time before he would have to drop his barrier or go into meltdown. Semzar, knowing this, turned to the logical answer: Spending his entropy on trying to either kill Krahe, stop her from hitting his Barrier, or disrupt her attempts to do so, in that order of priority.
One fist passed by her arm, close enough to agitate her Wards, yet nothing happened. Another passed near her leg and tore a yawning gash into her trousers, leaving the edges smoldering. Another, still, ripped her bodysuit on the left side, the gel already closing over the superficial burn it left behind.
Semzar realized that she had no wards. Whether they had collapsed from damage or from implanting this new voidkey, it didn’t matter. To him, that realization was a shining ray of hope, it was victory within easy reach. He just had to get one, maybe two good hits in. How hard could that be?
As the battle went on, Krahe felt time rapidly catching up to her. Even if she instantly stored any generated Isotope inside her arm, its presence within her body nonetheless caused damage — negligible damage, at first, but it gradually built up. Eventually, despite burning away as much Isotope as she could by generously tainting each and every one of her Thaumaturgies with it, she nonetheless exceeded the Left Arm’s capacity.
Each use of Thaumic Fusion poisoned her, yet in turn, each Implosion-Burn set rampant thaumic power coursing through. Only 95% of the power generated by Implosion-Burning actually went where it was supposed to. The remaining 5% was tearing her apart from within, and now the damage was starting to show. Her skin was splitting open, scarlet light shining through.
And the more she deteriorated, the more Semzar’s terror grew, the more his already fragile grasp on focus slipped from his bloodied fingers.
