Published at 16th of December 2025 8:19 am

Chapter 307: Untouchable

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The hope of victory had burned away to bare embers.

He was stuffing her into a corner, one made of the endless, dizzying movement of that rapier. She was still in that state of perfect flow, where the fight made complete sense to her. And thus she could only wonder at his skill. Because she saw that he was in that same place but where for her it was something found only now and then, for him it was like a favourite suit of clothes.

She knew what to do but she couldnt do it fast enough, strong enough, good enough. She had no time to do anything but react, no time but to chop out desperately in defence, keep that rapier from her throat a little longer.

The Clans Treasure Hall contained all kinds of strange things trapped in Ritual-backed display cases. Over the last few years those treasures had dwindled but some had always remained, less things of value and more of curiosity.

One had been a book from a distant planet, painstakingly translated. Xuejing had been offered rewards once from that hall and loaned it, thinking she might glean some secrets. Shed learned nothing that had improved her skills, but shed read the whole thing cover-to-cover nonetheless.

It introduced the idea that all beings exist within certain dimensions. She, and all others in this Material Realm, were three-dimensional. But the book suggested the existence of beings existing in merely two dimensions, or even living in four. It suggested that if it were possible to interact across these realms, then beings from a lower dimension would seem strange, but entirely comprehensible. Whereas those from a higher would make no sense at all. Incomprehensible, able to do impossible things.

That was what this fight felt like. There was some layer she couldnt access, didnt understand. She knew the fight was slipping ever further from her control, her loss becoming inevitable. And yet, there was nothing she could do to avoid it. He was simply on another level, able to see through her moves, even reach right through them. It was only because shed found the edges of that higher level that she was even able to last so long.

Each ring of the Blades on the rapier was her pulling back from the brink, surviving one moment more, but she knew they were also all falling into his plans. Guiding her to where he wanted her to be.

Her breaths came in panting heaves, her arms and legs burned. The rapier slammed back and she barely caught it, teeth gritting as the Blade rang in her hand. She tried to hold it in place, brought her other Blade swooping around.

But the point had already escaped her and she gave a despairing gasp as her fumbling attack caught at nothing, her opponent seeming to bend just enough to avoid it, and the point was coming for her throat.

She threw all she had into one more blow. Her Blade came around and she hammered the point aside with a strange, high ringing, but now she was staggering to the side, her weight all wrong. Her exhaustion weighed on her like an anvil, so heavy that even with her near-perfect understanding of the fight, she just didnt have the energy to more with any grace. A problem shed never suffered before.

Xuejing almost welcomed the end. She wasnt upset. Shed fought her best, in fact shed fought better than ever. From this loss she would learn, and

She saw light flicker brightly on something spinning through the air. Something she knew intimately. That point, the blade of the rapier. But it was far too short. It landed with a puff of sand.

Then she saw what he held. A handle, and a short stub of steel. It was broken. His rapier had broken.

Xuejing didnt know what to do. Her Blades fell limp. I won? But this didnt feel like victory. There was no honour in this why is he coming forward?

He tossed away the broken rapier, drew a knife, and closed the distance in a flash.

She dragged her Blades up to deflect, snapped out a kick flaring bright with lightning, but he was already retreating. Wary, she watched him from between her Blades.

He tossed the knife spinning, caught it. The casual, momentary tossing of his weapon was an invitation to attack, but she couldnt take it. Where she was a sweaty, panting, deliriously tired mess, he still stood easy. Full up with apparently endless energy.

You think youve won? he asked, and she sensed the grin in his voice. Still his entire body and stance emanated danger.

She breathed in and out a few times, trying and failing to settle her breath. I feel my odds are significantly improved. She twitched her unbroken Blades meaningfully, chest rising and falling.

They are. He crept a little closer, knife pointing at her. But enough to win?

This fight was far from over, and the realisation made her smile. She breathed out hard, pulled in a full lungful of fresh air. I guess well see, she puffed, easing her weight forward, feeling the distance between them.

She threw herself forward, a roar bursting from her lips, and put all the energy she had left into one last combination. A flurry of stabs and slashes that closed the distance and left no room for counterattack, the lightning driving her forward so fast the world blurred around her. She could never have chanced such an all-out attack when outranged by that rapier, but now she had the range advantage.

One strike then another flashed through the air, but none touched him. He just slipped away from each blow, no matter how quick she was. He didnt even move all that fast. He was just never where the Blades were. Maddening.

She finally stopped, heaving in gasps of air, and immediately he counter-attacked. Came in fast and vicious with that knife and she was forced scuttling back, needing both to block.

She grit her teeth. All she had to do was touch him, for Heavens sake! He had to come so close to threaten her with that knife, he was more vulnerable than ever to the lightning! She stopped retreating and snapped out another kick, but the impossible, untouchable man just stepped around it.

The frustration burst out of her in a yell, fresh energy coming from deep within. She chased him, kicking out, doing everything she could to catch him.

The blows came close but none touched him. For some reason, even though he had ample opportunity to slice at her legs as they went by, he never did.

She belatedly realised. He couldnt. Because if he did, she might trigger the lightning. Though her Artifact Blades interfered with lightning and wouldnt easily let it through, needed the extra push of arm-type lightning Symbiotes, a non-spiritual weapon like his knife wouldnt have that problem. He was angling to finish this with one perfect blow, a single stab thatd win the fight and leave her no chance to vent lightning.

She also realised that he didnt even have his Skin Shield up. Not much point, when her Blades went straight through it. And somehow without the Shield he seemed faster. No, he was faster than hed been at the start, faster and stronger too. She felt at the ripples and understood. Speed-boosting Symbiotes, and one of them took the heart Node. Thus, no Shield.

And with that, she saw the path. It arrived in a sudden flash of insight. The route to victory. Something that would surprise him. Would it be honourable, to use that method? Perhaps not, according to some, but somehow she didnt think he would mind.

But she needed space to use it, and as he came at her again and again, pressing in ever tighter, she realised she might never gain that space.

###

The Dark and the Thrill flowed deliciously through him, and he was merged ever tighter with the Modules. Reaching, always reaching for that state of pure perfection, digging deeper into it like a worm into an apple. The sand glittered with fracturing, sparkling crystalline light. The movement of her robes reminded him of impressionist paintings. here were few shadows in this bright arena, only his and hers, but both shifted strangely and if he looked too long, he saw they were full of faces. As was often the case, they were speaking to him.

They whispered that she was planning something, and he couldnt wait to see what it was.

He read the movements of her body as he stepped in, and in, and in. Many minutes of fighting had all led to this, a perfect moment, an echo of the past but this one was earned and real.

His knife cut out and caught her left Blade just below the guard, on the handle a bare inch above her lightning-sheathed finger. Her energy was spent while his had only grown and though now she gripped it properly, with a grunt of effort and a flexing of his bionic he ripped the weapon from her grasp, sent it tumbling away.

In the moment of surprise he struck again, caught the other Blade just the same and sent it away, too. He paused an instant, gathering his legs and his body for the final, killing thrust. She was staggering away, the distance growing a littlebut not enough to stop him. His legs tensed for a lunge across the space, and the Wolf Bugs and the Red Tendons and the Brawler Symbiote in his heartno need for a Skin Shield, when her Blades went through one anywayall lent him strength and speed such as hed never felt before on this planet, merging wonderfully with the furnace energy of the Thrill and the liquid power of the Dark.

But in that moment the Nara girl managed her surprise.

Her left arm shimmered, a line of light darting from wrist to elbow then widening. Her other hand burrowed into that line, into what he recognised as a storage Symbiote.

Just as his feet were set to pounce, her hand emerged holding, of all things, a big, weighty revolver.

He classified it in an instant. Magnum.357, six shooter. Typically it wouldve had about 50/50 odds of penetrating his skinsuit through a direct hit, but the Dark whispered that those bullets were armour penetrating.

Since hed deactivated Skin Shields in favour of the Brawler, looking to boost his speed and strength, he was thus entirely defenceless to this surprise attack. The bullets would go through him like a cannonball through drywall, and that fact struck him with a wonderful hilarity, wouldve made him laugh if there was any time to do so.

The barrel rose and she pulled the trigger.

The Dark and the Thrill and the Mask and the Modules were closer than ever, the Zero-Twelve state settled tight around him. He felt the gun and the bullets and her arm and the air between them, sensed the very movement of her finger.

His head tilted to the side at the same moment as that beautiful blossom of light erupted from the barrel, and the first of them cracked past his ear.

Nicolai danced. His body moved as though controlled by the hand of God, slipping and sliding to the left and the right, twisting and snapping up and down. There was no need to predict, no need to react.

He simply moved as each erupting round directed, speaking to him in their secret language that instant before the trigger was pulled. Cried out their velocity, let him peek over their shoulders and read through their plans. It was a heavy gun and big bullets and even with her Cultivators strength, each shot knocked the girls light arm up, gave him a little extra time.

And so as he performed his mad, spinning dance, Nicolai closed the distance, coming impossibly, unstoppably toward her. His laughter bubbled through the air, pure joy given voice.

She moved back in a stumble, eyes wide with disbelief. Both her hands clutched tight around the revolvers grip, her lips drew back to bare desperate teeth. He could feel her astonishment, even a touch of fear. Shoddy Intent control, whispered Psychology with delight as it drew on that fear and shared it with the Dark, the pair clustering close around it like a warm fire on a cold day.

But with a snap of her will the fear was gone. A sudden shift and she caught her mental state mid-fall, arrested the descent into panic. She wasnt easy prey, not easy at all, trained since birth for situations like this.

She stopped stumbling and she stopped firing and her teeth clenched tight. She held the gun on him, dead centre. There was one round left.

Nicolai stopped, stood still. He spread his arms wide. The H-gram flickered into life, flashing the demonic war face in a wide grin. He wasnt sure which of them activated it.

Pull the trigger.

She held the shot. Her Soul Sense tightened, sealing the Intent leak.

He took a step forward.

You cant predict where Ill aim, she said in a mutter, speaking more to herself than to him, eyes wild around the edges. I could fire at any time. My Intent is sealed. You cant.

He took another step.

She held the gun in both hands. Her finger trembled on the trigger, her eyes focused on his midsection. From this close, its impossible to dodge, she said.

He was only a step away. Pull the trigger, he whispered.

She pulled the trigger.

The shot slammed into his stomach and jolted him, a wondrous kick of energy, fizzing like lightning through his veins and sending eager fingers curling through every part of him. He took that energy, drove it into his legs, and in a snap he was before her.

You shot me, he said with warm delight, another peal of laughter bursting out of him. He could hardly believe it; felt a somehow physical connection to her, as though his Soul and hers were linked by the hole in his stomach.

Why arent you dead? she asked, eyes so wide they seemed all white as she stared at his midsection and the beautiful red stain growing there.

You should have aimed for the head.

His bionic arm rose without thought, driven by the need to complete the fight, the perfect moment. His fingers uncurled and spread, palm hovering before her uncomprehending face.

The next moments were shown to him in a series of frozen, flickering instants, like the frames in a video drawn out and examined one by one.

The handcannon snapped like a wolf. He felt the brief and futile resistance of the Silver Net, saw the flash of its light as it tried with desperation to redirect the round.

But the bullet was exiting his palm scant inches from her face and the cold reality of physics drew a line, demanded a payment of energy far higher than the Silver Net could output. The Art smashed like a wine glass dropped to the floor, broken shards of Oma pinging off in all direction, and the bullet continued with barely a shift.

The boom and blast of the handcannon then the instant flash of the blue bubble that blasted him backwards filled the next moment, and it was done.

Round over.

VICTOR: NICOLAI.

He saw Xuejing raise a hand to her forehead where there was a tiny trickle of blood. She stared at him and he stared at her. The fact that she was still alive was deeply strange, deeply new.

Deeply human, perhaps.

He could feel the sudden rage of the Dark and the demons. Their hatred for this game and their hunger for true blood.

But the Mask, and even the Thrill and the Modules, were delighted. And so, he realised, was he.

Because now hed be able to fight her again.

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