Chapter 641: Final Choices

When the command came over the crystal, Kojajix couldn't believe his ears. He had thought it was just a threat, not something they would ever actually do. Their treatment of the Irunians, who seemed to be a noble people, had already turned his stomach. The idea of actually slaughtering them indiscriminately...

Even more unbelievably, both the men with him were picking up their swords and getting ready to attack. There were Irunian servants nearby... except there were two women rushing in, trying to pull them to safety. Foreigners, but too slow to escape them, practically not moving. They were throwing their lives away for civilians who weren't even their own people.

"Wait!" Kojajix grabbed his sword as he scrambled after the others, trying to get in their path. "You aren't really going to do this, are you?"

"You heard Fodajix," one of the men said. "They're trying to kill us."

"It's just stepping on a few bugs," the other agreed.

"No, this is madness." Kojajix raised his hands as if he could physically block their path. "Have you forgotten who we are? We're just sailors, blown to a strange land. I shouldn't have gone along this far, but this... this..."

"You going soft on us, Kojajix? Now?"

"Fine then, die with him."

One of the men slashed across Kojajix's chest and his body erupted in pain. The man started to turn away...

And Kojajix stabbed him through the stomach.

They had forgotten who they were. They'd grown used to being able to cut opponents in half without effort, to being invincible to all attacks. But amongst themselves, they were just ordinary men. The man opposite Kojajix stared in shock at the sword through his stomach, as if he couldn't truly believe it.

Kojajix struggled to pull his sword out and swing at the other man, even though he was growing light-headed. They exchanged blows in a clumsy brawl, each drawing blood. He was no hero... Kojajix couldn't have beaten two men on his best day, much less with an open wound across his chest. They collapsed in a pile and he couldn't feel his sword anymore.

As he lay there, his vision fading, he realized that the two local women had managed to grab the servants and run. They couldn't have gotten far, at their speed. The others would get up and chase them down, so the most he could possibly have done was buy them time.

It was basically nothing, and it was the first time he felt that he had done something right ever since they had seen the gray man. Kojajix couldn't smile as he died, but he died with his eyes clear.

.

..

.

The phased fights were ending, the unphased fights had barely begun, and Omilaena and Jonijix remained locked in a fully phased battle, nothing but a blur to everyone except perhaps the Windlord. She hadn't seen them in some time, so she had to assume that they were still engaged with the other invaders.

Virtually everything in the central street had been demolished by the waves and blasts of water that Jonijix hurled constantly. Now that she had the speed and endurance to face them, Omilaena was surprised by how crude the attacks were. Instead of building up power in a practiced way, he just hurled huge concentrations of chakra into forming water and then blasted it at her.

Or at where she had been a little while ago. Omilaena's new Physique made her far faster and more agile than before, and her Azure Core continued powering her movements... there were no longer any bottlenecks to her strength, so she could fight even an opponent like this.

"Dammit!" Jonijix summoned even more water, lifting himself into the air so that he was surrounded by a full sphere of water. Damn unfair that even he could fly when she couldn't.

Omilaena hurled another ice needle and this time Jonijix met it with a burst of water - her needle froze through it, but got stuck in his sphere. She didn't let up, dodging his water blasts while throwing ice needles back, freezing more of his sphere with each one.

At last he let out a cry and surged even more power, circulating the water in his sphere and sweeping away all her ice. Omilaena hurled several more needles, barely covered in ice, as if she was getting tired. He laughed, an oddly echoing sound in the water.

After she had managed to blow poison smoke into the hollow part within his water shield, Jonijix had just surrounded himself with water - apparently he didn't need to breathe, and it certainly didn't stop him from shouting. Her needles sank within the sphere, then were caught up in the flow that circled around him.

"Come on, is this the best you can do?" Jonijix continued hurling blasts of water at her as he shouted. "You know I'm the strongest, of all of us. Even Yangix doesn't have my raw power! You really think a few needles are going to get through to me?"

Omilaena responded by hurling a jar at him. When he shot a blast at it, the glass shattered in an explosion of ice qi that only partially froze his sphere. From behind it, Omilaena wondered how well she could do in a direct battle of power. Her current methods were going to take forever, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to try a direct assault.

She tensed her fingers, concentrating her power until her fingernails glistened, then lunged forward. Jonijix was so shocked that she managed to slash at his watery sphere several times before he could even retaliate, her fingers cutting deep into the chakra that made the sphere rotate, making the entire balance begin to destabilize.

Of course he tried to attack her, shooting out more blasts, but he always telegraphed them so obviously with his arms, she dodged around them and continued cutting down his sphere. It was like slicing through mud, but the mud was weakening, so it was only a matter of time...

Suddenly the sphere expanded in size, slamming into her while she was in the middle of dodging. Omilaena struck the wall of a nearby building, groaning at the impact. Their strength was about equal, so that definitely hurt. On the other hand, Jonijix looked shocked that she hadn't been eliminated by the attack - at least he was trying to kill her now.

While she got her footing, Omilaena hurled more needles, both ice and poison. Jonijix was being more cautious now, watching her carefully and only occasionally shooting one of his water blasts. She needed to distract him, so maybe it was time for another trick she had been working on...

Omilaena moved closer again, drawing in a deep breath. She anticipated his water burst and took this one with her shoulder - the impact blasted away some of her dress, but then she was in close and ready.

When she blew, she exhaled ice qi directly into his watery sphere. She was able to freeze a surprisingly large part of it, nearly reaching Jonijix himself, before he rallied. With another surge of chakra, he surged his shield around her ice, melting it.

While he was doing that, she tossed a couple more jars into the water. He crushed them as easily as the rest, not even seeming to notice.

"Is that... all?" Jonijix was panting for breath within the water now, but his eyes still burned at her. "You... you can't..."

"Not feeling well?" Omilaena asked. "Have you been drinking?"

"What? I..."

Even as his water destabilized and Jonijix slumped toward the ground, he still didn't seem to understand. The truth was that Omilaena had given up on the ice strategy almost immediately, instead using it as cover for her real plan: injecting more and more poison into the water of his sphere. She'd noticed that he circulated the water instead of recreating it, so it was only a matter of time until her poison chakra managed to seep into him.

The poison needles, the ice needles formed from poison, the jars, even her fingernails... all had been methods of increasing the dosage. Even though she thought her poison had been fully phased, it had taken a lot more than she expected. Now, at last, Jonijix seemed to be faltering, and she didn't intend to take any chances.

Omilaena pierced directly into his watery sphere, striking him in the chest and dragging him out. She slammed him down to the ground and then, for good measure, brought her heel down hard on his crotch. The squelch combined with the cry of pain was so very satisfying after enduring him for so long.

"You're still just brimming with chakra, aren't you?" She bent down on his chest, driving her knee in hard, and injected him with another poison. But once that was done, she used an empty syringe on his heart and began drawing out the chakra within him.

"Wait... I..."

"No, not anymore." Omilaena smiled as she focused on her syringe and tried to draw out as much of his life force as she could. "This is all you're good for, and good riddance."

By the time she had filled her syringe, Jonijix was a withered husk. Omilaena had never drawn energy like that before, because there had never been a need, but phased chakra was worth the experiment. It struck her as disgusting, but she was certain she could find a use for such potent power, and in fact she could think of some immediately.

As she rose to her feet, she saw that the Windlord had arrived, and Ceryyn wasn't that far behind. Good to know they had made it.

"Any problems here?" Omilaena asked.

"Some got away," Ceryyn said. "We intend to h-"

"You take care of that. I'll be back."

With that, Omilaena drank her teleportation potion. She ended up back on Deadwaste faster than she had expected, deep within the Frontier. There was no one waiting for her, though - the elites she saw were rushing around as if they all had somewhere to be. If the invaders really had struck across the continent, perhaps they did.

Well then, time to get to work.