Rise of the Living Forge-Chapter 373: Power

“Art?” Vix asked, her voice tense.

“Working on it,” Art replied.

“I’m aware,” Vix said in a grim tone. “But that’s not what I’m talking about and you’re more than aware. You need to use it.”

“No.” Art’s fingers were so stiff that he could barely rifle through his deck of cards. The armor that Ursa was wearing was terrifying. There was absolutely no doubt about it — and he wasn’t even the only one in Starforge’s team that had it.

Ash wore similar armor, almost certainly made by the same smith. He was pretty sure that hers would be close to Ursa’s in strength. While Art wasn’t expecting Kien to lose, the odds were even more stacked against them than he’d originally thought.

Ursa cracked his neck and braced his hands in the air before him like he were pushing against a wall. The humming fragments of his armor flying around him begun to let out a high pitched whine. They trembled as power poured out from Ursa and into them.

I can’t stop the armor. There’s no way for me to take the magic from an inanimate object. Ursa has his magic again, but I suspect he’s not stupid enough to use it when he’s already revealed his armor’s abilities.

Art’s teeth gritted. He needed more time to think — but it didn’t look like Ursa was playing around anymore. The air before the large man buzzed and hissed as the energy infusing his armor intensified.

Furious arcs of electricity snapped to life between the armor fragments, forming into an undulating net. The pieces of flying armor flew outward, stretching the net until it was nearly fifteen feet wide. Even though there were holes in the electricity connecting them, fitting through any of them was a near-impossible task.

Something shifted in Ursa’s eyes. He was done taking chances. In a split instant, Art could tell that the other man planned to end the fight with this next attack. Ursa’s hands slammed together in a thunderous clap.

There was no time to wait and see what the enchanted armor would do. Even as strong as Kien was, Art couldn’t rely on him somehow saving them either. That would just ensure he didn’t let them onto the battlefield for the coming fights.

I can’t hold back.

Art ripped a card from his deck. It wasn’t one that had seen play in a long time, and yet its silvered face was weathered and worn down from years of use. The card folded between his fingers as he flicked it to the ground at his feet, infusing it with magic.

“Timeout,” Art said. His words were soft, so quiet that the only ears they reached were his own. It didn’t even matter. Should Art have wanted to, he could have yelled out with all the strength in his lungs.

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Nobody would have heard him.

The world around Art was still as stone. A gray sheen had washed over the sky; silence had replaced the cheers and yells that had come from the now-still crowd. Far in the sky, a bird’s wings were extended mid-flight, but all motion was gone from its form. The bird’s body was pinned to the blue sheet above like an insect in a collection.

Icy arcs of electric energy were locked in space between the flying fragments of Ursa’s armor. They had started to leap forward but been locked in time just mere moments after. The man’s hands were still clasped together, victory burning in his eyes.

A blur to Art’s side marked Vix’s camouflaged form. To the side of the arena, Ash was locked mid-strike, moments away from Kien. The former hero stood casually, his features no more impressed than they had been at the start of the fight.

His now-gray features looked more bored than anything else.

And in the center of the arena, the only splotch of color remaining in the frozen world of granite, was Art. He raised a hand to the bridge of his nose and pinched it as he heaved an exhausted sigh.

“This isn’t good,” Art said, letting his hand fall as he stepped around his card and approached the frozen net of magic before Ursa.

It was definitely in motion. The pieces of the armor that made it up could move incredibly fast. In the miniscule amount of time it had taken him to activate the ability, they’d already moved over a foot. The moment time resumed, the magic would be on him and Vix within a second or two.

Dodging out of the way isn’t a possibility for me. Vix could, but I’m not fast enough. I don’t know if Arwin’s armor is meant to hold up against something like this either. He made it pretty quickly with a focus on protecting us from basic attacks, not something as massive as this. ṘâƝо𐌱Εṧ

And even if the armor makes it through, I’m not fully protected. My head and all the other exposed areas of my body will get sliced to pieces.

Art glanced back to Vix. She would be fine for the time being. An attack like this was well within her ability to dodge, but that wouldn’t last forever. Even if she dodged the net on its first pass, Ursa had demonstrated he could control the buzzing pieces of his armor quite easily. It was only a matter of time before he managed to catch one of them within it — and judging from the angry energy carving through the air between the fragments, they weren’t going to have a fun time of it.

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“This level of magical armor has to have been made by one of the best smiths in the kingdom. I’ve only ever heard of things like this on the front lines of the war,” Art muttered under his breath. He walked in a circle around the net, examining it intently. “Starforge is putting a ridiculous amount of money into winning this tournament. I know they didn’t have anything like this the last time around. Is the victory that important to them?”

There was no answer to his question. Art doubted that Ursa would have been willing to say anything, even if he hadn’t been doing his best impression of a garden statue.

I suppose it doesn’t even matter right now, does it? Who cares why Starforge has decided they want to pull out all the stops and invest a fortune into making sure their team wins when said team is about to shred me to ribbons?

Art chewed his lower lip in thought. Stress bubbled deep within his stomach, but he pushed it down. It wouldn’t do him any good. The place for emotion was back with the flow of time.

Here, it was useless. All that mattered was information. Information was the only thing that came into this world, and it was the only thing that would leave it.

Art walked around the net and drew up to Ursa. He studied the man intently for several seconds, looking over the sections of his armor where the fragments had separated from. There were definite openings in his defenses now.

The smith who had made the armor had been smart enough to take the fragments from locations that weren’t going to expose any vital organs, but any gaps were ones they could exploit.

“It’s too bad I can’t just stab you here,” Art informed Ursa. “That would make this a whole lot easier.”

It also would have probably made him the strongest living being in the entire kingdom. Unfortunately, that wasn’t how his magic worked. Timeout was exactly that. It was a pause. A reprieve.

He couldn’t affect anything in the real world. No actions he took here mattered any more than if he had simply been day dreaming about them. When the ability reached its conclusion, he would return to the exact spot he’d been standing at its beginning. Art didn’t have infinite time to work with either. There were limits to all things, and he couldn’t afford to waste all his energy sitting around and thinking.

“What do I have to work with?” Art muttered. “Come on. There has to be something.”

First things first, I need to make sure I don’t just get instantly killed the moment time resumes. I need a way to avoid the net. Can’t do much if I’m already dead.

He walked in a circle around Ursa, then examined the net of magic once more. There were gaps in it, of course. Ones big enough that he had a fairly decent chance of throwing himself through one.

Art gave it a shot, taking several unsteady steps back before flinging himself through a hole in the electricity that made up the net. A chill passed through his body even before he hit the ground with a grunt.

Missed. I think I just cut myself in half. That isn’t going to do. The most I can afford to lose is an arm or a leg.

He walked back to where he’d been a moment before and gave it another shot. Then another — and about a dozen more.

Art was probably the farthest thing from an acrobat that existed. He wasn’t particularly limber or in control of his limbs, but he did have a very good way to practice. Within a few minutes, he’d managed to roughly lay out an angle he could pass through the net without losing anything too important.

It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to be enough. He didn’t have the time to waste on this. Surviving Ursa’s attack was only the first step of what he had to accomplish. It was far from the last.

Vix’s words rung in Art’s ears as he glanced back at the camoflouged patch of air that marked her presence. His hands tightened at his sides.

“There are better solutions than that,” Art informed Vix, more than aware she couldn’t win the argument when she couldn’t respond.

But even without the ability to argue back, the silence rung loud in Art’s ears. They were completely outclassed in every way by Ursa. He was a higher level than they were. He had more experience than they did. His armor was stronger than theirs. Arwin had given them their equipment as a backup. After all, they weren’t his main team. His focus had been protecting them as quickly as possible.

And if Kien helps here, then we prove we can’t hold our own.

His choices were limited to almost nothing… but they had no choice. They couldn’t lose this tournament. He wasn’t about to sit back and just let Kien do everything either. Art didn’t even know if the man was capable of soloing every other team.

I need to be on the stage. So does Vix. That’s the only way we can guarantee we get the information we need to save her. Anna can’t fix her heart, so winning the tournament is the only way to do this.

Art’s jaw clenched.

There was only one way forward that he could think of and Vix had already given him permission to use it.

It was the absolute last thing that Art wanted to do, but it didn’t look like they had much other choice if they were going to win this. So long as they got her fixed up shortly afterward, going a little crazy now would be fine. It would have to be.

“Shit,” Art muttered. He dug through his mind in one final attempt to think of another solution. Nothing arose. His powers were great for dealing with enemies that fought under their own strength, but an opponent whose armor basically fought for him… there was only one thing Art could do against someone like that.

He walked back to the silvered card on the ground.

Then he tapped it with his foot.

The world snapped back into motion.

Vix blurred to the side, just as he knew she would, but Art didn’t have time to worry about her. She trusted that he would avoid the attack, and so he would have to.

He threw himself forward, pulling his hands tight together in a motion he’d just practiced. It wasn’t exactly perfect, and he could only estimate where the net would go, but he and Vix had spent years training this skill.

The air buzzed all around Art as he hit the ground with a grunt. Pain shot up along his right arm, informing him that his jump hadn’t been nearly as clean as he would have hoped, but there was no time to worry about it.

Surprise flashed over Ursa’s features. He clearly hadn’t been expecting Art to be able to dodge the attack, but that would only last a few brief moments — and Art wasn’t going to be able to dodge the net a second time around.

That was fine with him. He had no plans of having to dodge a second time around.

Art rolled to the side. His ears rang and his skull pounded. He needed blood — but there was more than enough of that all around him. That probably wasn’t a good thing.

He ignored it. A card slipped from his deck and made its way between his fingers.

His hand slapped down against the bloodied ground. Blood soaked into it, turning the paper a crimson red. Power tingled against his fingertips.

Art’s lips pulled back into a snarl.

“Seal Release.”

A wave of black energy tore through the arena with a furious howl.

But the power didn’t come from Art.

It came from Vix.