Scott loosed his fifth, sixth, and seventhenchanted arrows in a single breath.
The three shots detonated mid-flight—each arrow unfurling into a roaring fire-drake, sweeping in from different angles like hunting hounds.
Jasper Cole dodged the first blaze by a hair and sprinted straight toward Scott instead of away.
An archer's weakness was always the same:one—ammunition, and two—close range.
Scott's bone bow didn't have infinite enchantments, and once Jasper got inside his rhythm, the archer's killing power would drop sharply. Jasper had only two choices: kill Scott or run.
And Jasper didn't run from a fight like this.
An opponent strong enough to push him—but not so strong he was helpless—was rare. If he played it right, this battle might even shove him through the wall into Bronze Tier Rank 6.
Jasper triggered Shadow Assassination.
His body blurred forward. In an instant he was in Scott's face, the Lazuli Blade coming down in a hard diagonal cleave aimed at the skull.
Scott snapped his bone bow up—using the reinforced edge like a parrying blade. The strike rang out. Jasper's left wrist flicked; the sleeve-blade shot for Scott's ribs—
—and was stopped by the bow's other end. Still, the clash carried Jasper's full momentum. Scott was blasted backward, skidding and tumbling more than ten meters.
Behind Jasper, the three fire-drakes were already closing.
Jasper pivoted to disengage—then felt something seize his ankle.
Vines.
Green coils snapped tight around his foot like a living shackle.
At the same time Scott, thrown back as he was, had dropped his remaining enchanted arrows from his quiver onto the ground.
A trap.
Scott had expected Jasper to rush him. He'd baited the approach on purpose—designed to pin Jasper in place and let the fire-drakes finish him.
Jasper's eyes sharpened.
His right hand snapped out.
Three fine-steel needles shot forward.
Boom—boom—boom!
The needles collided with the incoming fire-drakes, detonating into a cloud of smoke and heat. The drakes collapsed into scattered flame, vanishing into the haze.
Jasper chopped down with the Lazuli Blade, severing the vines.
Needles remaining: 16.
Across from him, Scott stood and yanked out a vial. He drank it in one pull.
Scott's aura surged—his cultivation forcibly spiking to Bronze Tier Rank 6.
Jasper didn't hesitate.
For the first time, he invoked Berserk.
His own battle qi erupted, and his body surged into the same rank—temporary, volatile, but real.
Scott nocked his eighth arrow.
But instead of aiming at Jasper, he fired into the ground at his own feet.
Before the arrow even landed, a small magic circle spread under Scott's stance. A set of jet-black armor formed around his skeletal frame—locking into place with a heavy, ominous weight.
Yet Scott moved as if the armor wasn't there.
If anything, he was faster.
With protection now wrapped around his bones, Scott's close-range defense was no longer a liability. He could fight toe-to-toe.
Jasper's runes suddenly felt pathetic by comparison.
Scott's enchanting could conjure fire-drakes and armor and cages; Jasper had a Blast Rune and a useless little "light" scribble. The only advantage runes had was flexibility—he could carve them anywhere, anytime—while enchanting required specialized tools or consumable enchanted books.
But right now?
Scott's kit was terrifying.
Jasper swung in with a spinning kick. Scott braced and blocked with the bone bow.
Jasper followed with a sword slash—
—and the Lazuli Blade hit Scott's black armor like it had struck stone. No cut. No crack. Not even a chip.
Jasper almost swore he could hear Scott laughing.
Scott countered with a hooking swing of the bow. Jasper caught it on his sleeve-blade—
—and took a brutal right fist to the abdomen.
Jasper was launched backward.
Before he could land, Scott nocked his ninth arrow.
A dull, earth-yellow glow snapped around Jasper's body.
Stone and dirt surged upward and sealed into a Earth Cage—a compact prison of condensed soil-element power.
Scott nocked his tenth arrow.
His voice dropped into something cold and reverent.
"Victory Arrow: Lightfire."
The arrow ignited as it left the bow—radiating a blinding white flame so intense it turned the air into a shimmering furnace.
The Lightfire slammed into the Earth Cage and plunged down onto Jasper.
Jasper's vision washed out.
The world smeared into pale haze—
—and then went black.
If Jasper had been able to open his system page in that moment, he would've been shocked.
A new entry was forming on its own.
And the Crimson Energy meter—normally dormant—emptied instantly.
Outside the cage, Jasper's body began to shed floating red motes, like embers pulled from blood itself. The white Lightfire didn't burn him.
It was absorbed.
Even Scott froze, staring at the impossible sight.
That red aura… it felt eerily familiar.
Like the same strange force that glowed in his own eye sockets.
The last threads of Lightfire vanished into the Crimson Energy, and the red motes sank back into Jasper's body.
His wounds sealed shut.
Even the arrow embedded in his shoulder was forced out—spat onto the ground with a wet clatter.
Jasper's consciousness clawed back to the surface.
He inhaled—
—and felt it.
His body was overflowing with battle qi, dense and furious, threatening to tear him apart from the inside.
He needed to release it.
Now.
Jasper raised the Lazuli Blade and struck the Earth Cage.
A wave of crimson sword qi exploded outward, cleaving the prison open—and surging straight toward Scott.
Scott's eyes widened. He drew and fired three more arrows—his eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth—using layered enchantments to shred and scatter the incoming sword wave.
He barely managed to stop it.
Jasper's mind clicked coldly into focus.
Scott's enchanted arrows were escalating—each shot deeper into the quiver carried a stronger enchantment. That meant time was against Jasper.
And Berserk had a timer.
Ten minutes.
If the Berserk window closed and the backlash hit…
Jasper would die.
He gathered every strand of Crimson Energy he could feel. He channeled it down his arms, into the Lazuli Blade, and released.
A towering crimson beam erupted—like a pillar of blood-red sunlight—charging straight at Scott.
Scott seized the remaining arrows with both hands and began firing in desperation.
Fourteenth. Fifteenth. Sixteenth. Seventeenth.
The fourteenth arrow became a blazing fire-lion—obliterated on impact.
The fifteenth became a shield—it held for half a second before it shattered.
The sixteenth became a more complex shield—lasting barely two seconds.
The seventeenth formed a black, warped barrier—strange, almost oily in its texture.
This time, the crimson beam didn't punch through cleanly.
It split.
The redirected blast lanced into nearby ruins and skeleton ranks, turning the battlefield into a nightmare—structures collapsing, bone soldiers disintegrating under scattered shockwaves.
Two seconds.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the black shield.
Scott yanked out his nineteenth arrow and fired it into the distance—then looked back at Jasper, voice crawling with menace.
"You're strong."
His eye-sockets glowed.
"We'll meet again."
The black shield finally broke.
The crimson beam surged forward—
—and Scott vanished.
The beam tore through the wall of Windcloud City, punching out the other side and detonating among the Skeleton Kingdom's ranks beyond.
The explosion that followed was worse than any crude TNT Jasper had ever seen.
Jasper stared at the spot Scott had occupied.
There were purple motes lingering in the air—fading slowly.
A thought slammed into Jasper's mind like a bell:
Ender Pulse.
In one of the old game-mod memories from his past life, Ender Pulse was the perfect escape enchantment—teleportation to a marked point. Better than an ender pearl. Ideal for assassins. Ideal for monsters.
And Scott had it.
Scott had also said they'd meet again.
Which meant Jasper's days weren't going to get easier.
Berserk still ran hot in Jasper's veins.
He didn't waste it.
He turned and fled at full speed.
Because once Berserk ended, the weakness would hit—
…and if Jasper was still anywhere near Scott when that happened, he'd never get a second chance.
Far away, where Scott's nineteenth arrow had landed, the arrow's enchantment dissolved into a ripple.
Scott reappeared at that exact point.
His jet-black armor was ruined—shredded, cracked, and missing plates. Beneath it, a purple combat suit showed through, and several bones were fractured.
Scott reached into his quiver and drew the final arrow.
Twentieth.
He nocked it.
Fired into the earth.
A purple magic circle spread slowly beneath him. The glow climbed his skeletal frame, knitting damage shut—bones re-forming, fractures sealing.
The black armor vanished completely.
His equipment shifted—no longer just the bone bow.
Now an enchanted bow and a bone sword were visible in his hands.
Scott slung the bow over his back, tightened his grip on the bone sword, and began walking toward the Skeleton ranks.
If Jasper had been there, he would've seen something even more terrifying:
Scott's quiver—empty seconds ago—was full again.
Twenty enchanted arrows shimmered with fresh, eerie light.
In the distance, Scott's laughter carried—thin, sharp, and wrong.