Chapter 27: Karn Vs Devil's — Part Two
Karn vs. Luchion
Karn activated Fire Fist. The water nozzles shifted from hands to feet, the jet stream redirecting downward — not for washing, for propulsion. He came back at Luchion with the fire running across his knuckles and the water behind each step adding force to his movement.
Luchion appeared at his back — the black energy cloaking his fist — and threw a kick. Karn blocked it with his forearm, tried an axe kick at Luchion's collarbone. Luchion grabbed his ankle and threw him forward. Karn was already firing the water nozzle as he went, the recoil from the jet catching him at the waist and converting the throw into a controlled arc.
Luchion's beam discharged at close range.
Karn got the laser up and the two lines met with an impact that shook the foundations of every building still standing in the village. The clash held for three seconds — then Luchion's beam cut off, not out of depletion but as a feint, and he appeared directly in front of Karn and drove an uppercut into his jaw.
"Shit," Karn said. His skull rang. He tasted blood.
Luchion jumped overhead — Karn activated sky walk and stepped sideways through the air, the kick missing by the width of a hand. He snapped his finger.
Luchion felt the mana building. He threw a black shield up — condensed energy, nothing passing through it. The Fire Blast hit it and exploded against the surface, cracking the shield but not penetrating. Through the crack, Luchion was already gone.
"You can only use one at a time," Luchion said, behind him.
He punched Karn from behind. Karn hit the ground face-first.
"Who said one at a time?"
Karn snapped twice.
Luchion formed the black orbs around himself — six of them, tight, the energy pulling inward. They absorbed the first blast. The second. He couldn't see through the barrier he had built.
He appeared behind Karn. Peak-a-boo. Threw the punch.
Karn snapped again.
Luchion read the setup — same pattern twice, he thought, deception, don't defend — and let it come.
It wasn't deception. The blast hit him in the chest. He coughed blood. His feet left the ground.
Across the village, Delta glanced at Luchion going down.
"Lord Luchion—"
Cersy used the opening — Wind Palm, planted, all the remaining energy she had in her injured hand. It connected with Delta's armour and shattered another section off.
"Look here," Cersy said.
Karn snapped his finger. The Fire Blast detonated in the space between Cersy and Delta. He had timed it for the gap — the radius of the blast covering Delta but curving around where Cersy was standing.
The shockwave hit Cersy's wind shield and pushed her back three steps. Delta took the blast directly and went down, unmoving, bleeding through the gaps in her shattered armour.
"You could have hit me," Cersy said.
"If I'd warned you, she would have dodged. And I timed it so the blast curve missed you — I had control of where it would detonate. Stop whining and rest. You look like you're two steps from falling over."
Cersy was silent for a moment. Her face was doing something she didn't want it to do.
"I don't need your help," she said.
"Yeah yeah."
Luchion was back on his feet. He had consolidated all six black spheres — merged them into a single mass, the energy denser and more volatile at the combined weight. It orbited him slowly, the air around it distorting.
He released it at Cersy.
Not at Karn. At Cersy.
She had nothing left for this one. Her wind was already fraying at the edges from the damage she had taken. She knew what was in that mass. She spread her feet, raised her arms, and prepared to take it on her guard anyway.
* * *
The Shield
"Karn," Zangika said. "We can't fully stop that."
"Try."
"There is a price. The suit—"
"Do it."
"Galaxy Nexus — foot hold. Three seconds."
The foot hold engaged — every remaining propulsion system redirected into a single stationary burst that fixed Karn's position in the air and launched him sideways across the village at a speed he couldn't sustain, burning through reserve capacity that would leave the suit diminished afterward.
He covered the distance in under a second.
He snapped four times on the way.
Four consecutive Fire Blasts hit Luchion's mass in sequence — the first two dispersing parts of it, the third cracking the condensed energy, the fourth reaching Luchion directly and throwing him off the aim. The redirected beam hit the air to Cersy's left instead of her centre. The remaining force still discharged and the shockwave hit her — but Karn had already landed in front of her and opened his arms and she was inside them when the wave arrived.
The residual beam caught Karn's back.
It was weakened. Dispersed. Most of what it had been was already gone. But what remained was still Luchion's black energy interacting with Nexnium, and the suit had already taken damage today. It punched through the force field, burned through the outer layer of the Shadow Nexus, and stopped in the secondary material. The suit registered the breach. Karn felt the impact as a spreading heat across his upper back and the sensation of something external reaching somewhere it shouldn't.
He smiled.
"Ah," he said. "You're using an honorific again."
His eyes closed.
He went down.
"NEXUS—"
Cersy's voice. She caught him before he hit the ground.
"Oh my god," Karn said. "I'm not dead. Don't worry."
Cersy, who had been crying, saw that his eyes were open and immediately punched him in the stomach.
"Jerk. Pervert."
"Suit damage at fifty percent," Zangika said. "The Galaxy Nexus burst and the beam breakthrough together. We need to stop here."
Karn looked at the village around them. Luchion was down. Delta was down. Leon was down. Lucia had not moved since the blast sequence.
Quiet. Wind moving through the spaces where houses used to have walls.
Then a voice from the air above them.
"Well. I didn't expect Luchion's group to go down this easily."
Both Karn and Cersy looked up.
A figure floated above the village, unhurried and apparently comfortable up there. Dressed like someone who is from a prestigious house or belongs to a Rich family. A pair of horns curving from the sides of his head. No mask — his face completely visible and not concerned about that at all.
He was looking at both of them with the specific attention of someone who has been watching a performance and has opinions about it.
"Amusing," he said.
End of Chapter 27