Chapter 494: I Liked the Fighting Better (1/2)

Jason was once more riding a land skimmer along the road network that wove through the local equivalent of Central America. Each side of the broad thoroughfare was lined with dense jungle. According to his map, Jason was less than an hour from the final destination on his journey before he could portal back to Rimaros.

Something twinged at his aura senses, so light that he wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined it. It was certainly closer than he wanted anything to get undetected. It could easily be an especially stealthy monster. If it was a gold-ranked one he was in trouble, although sneaky monsters were typically less effective in an open fight.

Jason blasted the area where he’d glimpsed the aura with a heavy fist of suppressive aura force and his magic senses felt something break. Three figures in white outfits became visible by the side of the road. One of them swept a sword from which a blade of light shot out and split Jason’s land skimmer in half. Jason landed lightly on the ground as the vehicle dissolved into his shadow.

He conjured his blood robes and cloak around him as he looked at the three people. They all wore white leather armour, a man and a woman flanking a second woman in the middle who was clearly the leader. She was scabbarding the sword she had used to destroy Shade’s vehicle form.

All three had stark white hair and their auras read as human, despite the man amongst them having the slender frame and tapered ears of an elf. It wasn’t just their armour that was white but everything they were wearing, from the metal of their belt buckles to the blade of the woman’s sword. Jason had only known one person to dress like that.

“You’re as perceptive as promised, Asano,” the woman in the lead said.

Jason’s mind quickly processed. The white clothes; knowing who he was and where he’d be. Along with making him realise something he should have already anticipated, it told him who they were and what they were doing.

“Purity church,” he said. “The Builder sent you.”

“Laughably, the impure being is under restrictions as to who he can send after you.”

“That’s laughable? A bunch of Purity adherents playing flunky to an ‘impure being’ and he’s the one deserving of mockery?”

“None of his people could take you down under the restrictions he is under because his filthy minions are weak. He made a concession to our principles because we know exactly how to handle filthy little plague-bringers that hide in the dark. And as you can see, we're all silver rank. There's only the three of us; no overwhelming numbers. No excuses for your interdimensional friends to interfere in affairs that aren't theirs.”

“That’s funny, coming from someone shacked up with the Builder. If I didn’t–”

Mid-sentence, Jason suddenly opened a portal. The Purity trio wasn't caught unaware, the subordinate woman throwing an object as the portal arch rose from the ground. Jason dove for the portal but the thrown object moved in a flash, a conjured chain wrapping around his body before vanishing.

You have been affected by item [Inescapable Chains].[Inescapable Chains] has been consumed to inflict [Inescapable]. This effect ignores resistances.

Jason knew the affliction, as his own Inexorable Doom power could inflict the same one.

[Inescapable] (affliction, magic): Cannot be affected by teleport or non-damaging dimension effects.

It rendered the portal in front of him useless and prevented him from shadow jumping. They had come prepared, having an item that could negate one of Jason's most critical techniques. It passed straight through his powerful resistances to sealed off any chance of easy escape while also crippling his normal combat style. The trio looked at him smugly, still not moving to attack.

“You should just come quietly, Asano. You can’t win. That agreement made on your behalf might stop us from using gold-rankers but there was nothing about very expensive and specialised items. They hid us from your senses and now have cut off your ability to run or hop around in the dark. Combined with our abilities, which already counter yours, you have no chance.”

Jason winced under his hood, the enemies not seeing it. Trying to take him alive made what would come next a much trickier proposition.

“The Builder wants me dead,” Jason said. “Going along quietly doesn’t seem like a good choice for my long-term health.”

”We have a use for you, first. Come along and maybe you'll find a chance to escape. Better than fighting and dying.”

“I’ve been taken prisoner and I’ve fought and died,” Jason said as he conjured a dagger into his hand. “I liked the fighting better.”

The three Purity loyalists all drew swords. No one moved as they continued to eye each other off.

“What does Purity need with me?” Jason asked.

“You aren’t worthy of our god’s attention, Asano. One of our members needs you to be her worm on a hook.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” Jason said and dashed forward.

The three Purity loyalists reacted swiftly, one of them throwing up a hand that flashed with blinding light.

You have been afflicted with [Flash Blindness].

Being reliant on sight in the midst of combat was something Jason had been trained well beyond. His other senses painted a perceptual picture he had long used when his eyes were insufficient or deceived. The sound of the blade; the resonance of the magic passing through its enchanted metal. The feel of the air being displaced around him and the intent in the auras too weak to hide from him. If anything, the impediment helped Jason slip into his combat trance state.

Despite being one man with a knife against three people with swords, Jason held his own. Being surrounded by enemies was nothing new and his powers and skills combined to make him supernaturally elusive. Shade's ability to suppress various giveaways prevented them from using the same senses Jason did to read the battle. His cloak masked his movement and feints made with his aura misled their magical senses.

In many ways, Jason had blinded them more than they had him. Even attacks that should have landed missed as his cloak bent space around him. The bright swords of the Purity loyalists flashed with rapid and precise movement but it was as if they were stabbing at an empty cloud of darkness. On top of everything else, two of Gordon’s orbs were intercepting attacks in shield form, buying Jason precious breathing room.

Jason didn't pull out his familiars for different reasons. With Colin, he needed to maximise his regeneration until he had built up the effectiveness of his drain attacks with afflictions. Also, Colin himself was very reliant on afflictions and Jason wanted to diminish the resistances of the enemy before deploying him to full effect. There was also the risk that the enemy would have some countermeasure to the leech swarm. They knew his abilities and came prepared; they would be fools to ignore arguably his strongest trump card.

Similar factors led to him retaining Gordon. Having Gordon not manifest meant that Jason could use a pair of much-needed shields and Gordon added to Jason’s already formidable aura strength. Jason was simultaneously suppressing three auras of his own rank, preventing three auras worth of benefits to the enemy and detriments to himself. These were not weak or inexpert auras, either. Their solid control lacked weak points that made them easy to collapse. Only consistent pressure and raw strength got the job done.

There was also the likelihood that the enemy had attacks that could hurt Jason's incorporeal familiars, Shade and Gordon both. Jason was saving Shade in case the fight went poorly and he needed to make an escape.

Even with a combat trance pushing him to the limits of his capability, Jason was heavily pressured. Unable to shadow jump away, he stood his ground, every moment on a knife's edge. The trio of loyalists showed off exceptional training that marked them as elite adventurers on top of being religious zealots. For all that Jason’s training had been diligent and exceptional, that of the Purity adherents was no lesser.

The difference between Jason and his opponents was the reason Rufus had founded a training annex in Greenstone. Elite adventurers from high magic zones trained in safety, too valuable to risk losing before they came into their true power. They were raised through the use of mirage chambers and carefully cultivated monster battles under the watchful eye of instructors.

Jason, by comparison, had been fighting life and death battles from the beginning. Before he was an adventurer – before he was even iron rank – he had faced battles where he was unprepared, underpowered, outnumbered and outmatched. Fighting on the knife’s edge was a place where he knew how to stay balanced.