Evolving Classes In The Apocalypse-Chapter 26: Counterattack

Without further ado, I began my counterattack. With all the might I could gather, I yanked the rope, already holding them at the angle that maintained a balance point.

I threw the rope forward towards the left and twisted my grip, causing it to latch onto his waist. His momentum was already disturbed, so there was no way he could quickly right himself to prevent or dodge what was coming for him.

The red line stretched taut and I pulled the rope, straightening its length and dragging the Adept towards me.

He flew towards me and I saw an opportunity a combatant like me could not have possibly missed. As he closed the distance, I launched myself into the air and drove my knee into his face.

This came surprisingly easy. My weight did not hold me down, and even though I didn’t have the athletic build and was merely less fat than I used to be, it was already so easy to carry my body. The realization filled me with a rush of adrenaline.

There were so many things I would love to try.

I didn’t allow his body to just descend like that. That would make me a resource waster. I grabbed his hair, twisted in the air and slammed him into the ground.

He crashed with enough force to send a web of cracks along the surface of the plain.

Then I landed.

He slowly stood up and pulled on the rope again. I watched the red line grow taut. It was wrapped around his waist, so for as long as he was still not able to right himself, I was not going to let up on this combo.

As he drifted towards me, I unleashed into a sprint towards him.

He managed to right himself midway, but in that instant I saw an arrow that directed me to his side. I naturally deviated off course just as we were about to meet, then twisted and slammed a kick into his ribs.

He tumbled away and I followed through with intense speed.

I jumped and crashed into him just as he stood up, both of us rolling across the ground. He began to fight a tug of war for the rope.

However, something strange suddenly happened to me.

’Huh...’

My hands were not working as they ought... my grips were weak, and this happened while I was tying the rope around his neck.

He lunged his fist forward and punched me in the face.

That punch alone threw me like a rag doll and sent me rolling over my own head before I landed flat on my back.

He stood up with the rope in his hands, tearing it away from his neck with ordinary strength, his face contorted with anger.

Then with a simple motion, his hammer, which had fallen at some point, disappeared in a scattering of sparks. It reappeared in his grip with the sparks reforming as he walked towards me.

"You really are endearing, you know that. You are just as Vorn described you to be."

He stood over me now.

"A radical little brat."

He brought down the hammer.

I felt my hand move in that moment, as if my nerves wanted to be struck by the hammer. It slipped under where the hammer was going to hit and immediately a terrible pain tore through my bones and muscles.

A painful groan wrenched out of my throat.

He smiled, inhaled and exhaled sweetly.

"Hmmm, ahhh, music to my ears."

He repeated the same thing again and I once again felt powerless before his strikes. The moment he raised his hand, it was as though my own limbs were reacting to him, desiring to be struck so badly.

They simply moved to where his hammer was falling, and he struck with so much power that the impact reverberated across every bone. Even in my skull.

And each strike made me shout in pain. And this bastard laughed and shouted.

"Yes! Cry more!! You should cry even louder than this!! I will need to train your crying abilities so that you can please my clients every time he breaks your bones like this. Make it pleasurable, brat! Hahaha!!!"

He continued to spew rubbish while wrenching both of my hands over and over again, destroying them, laughing like a derailed sociopathic Undefined wearing the skin of a Defined.

Actually, on second thought, all the Undefined are sociopathically derailed, so what was the use of the comparison. Maybe he was just another one of them.

At this point I was gagging and groaning in the primal sense of the word pain. My hands were mangled and bloody, so devastated I couldn’t even move them.

Then he stood and brushed his hand across his hair, throwing his head back for a moment.

He wiped sweat off his face and looked at it with disdain and anger.

"This is humiliating... having to struggle like this against a Mundane is deeply humiliating. Even if I don’t want to break you, you proved durable for a Mundane, taking the blows of an Ascended Adept and still managing to stand... you were also really good with the rope earlier, is that what they teach you in the academy? How to fight with ropes?"

He let out a laugh of ridicule.

"Imagine, heroes of tomorrow are being trained with ropes. Our future really is very bleak."

While he spoke, I summoned something and held it within my mouth.

It was the same fragment that the strange Enforcer had given me before asking me to run away.

’I wonder if he knew something like this was going to happen.’

Fragments had several uses... but to define what a fragment was, a fragment simply is the little part of Definition that exists in an Undefined. It’s like the chances that they could have been defined, consolidated into a fragment. Upon killing an Undefined, that fragment can be harvested and either exchanged in the Axiom store for purchase of Vestiges, or broken to harvest Definition Essence points.

I crushed the fragment within my mouth and immediately heard the voice of the Axiom.

[You have destroyed a yellow fragment]

[You have gained 134 Definition Essence]

I chuckled like an evil mastermind as I achieved what I wanted. And slowly... despite the aching of my mangled hands, I got up, looking the Adept bastard in the eye.

My eyes burned with resolve and made his expression falter for a moment. But he grinned maniacally the next.

"You must really be itching to die so badly."

Definition Essence, of course, was needed to increase one stage in a Class.... But that was not the only thing it was useful for.

It could also be used for this...

’I want to buy attribute points...’

[Due to your Transcendence Stage, one Attribute point costs four Definition Essence]

’Ah, expensive... give me attribute points worth a hundred Essence.’

[You have lost 100 Definition Essence]

[You have received 25 attribute points]

The Adept looked at me for a moment, re-observing me.

"That silence... it wouldn’t be..."

A cold grin spread across his face as he figured me out. He laughed and lunged at me, grabbing my neck.

"You think increasing your attributes can close the gap between us? You Mundane rat?"

I sighed.

"I told you over and over again, man. I’m not a Mundane anymore. I’m a Transcendent Novice. Just when will you get that into your sickly brain?"

His eyes widened.

At the same time, the ground suddenly began to sink beneath the both of us.