Blade Over Magic

Deadly Assault III

Around the same time Falael moved to intercept the suppression team, the assault team had also begun to advance.

They specialized in high-speed attacks and attacks which were difficult to detect. The lightning that had destroyed the carriage Xander and co were in had been one such attack.

And like the suppression team, they had items used to obscure their presences while they carried out their attacks, making them hard to detect while they attacked.

That being said, they weren’t complacent, as complacency had gotten members killed in the past. So they were cautious enough to maintain a powerful barrier around themselves at all times which allowed attacks to enter but not exit.

It was made especially with Xander in mind. After all, his fight against the wyvern had been shown by Archmage Irene after it happened, so it was only natural they prepared some countermeasures in case he managed to actually get close.

A sentiment that prevented them from getting blitzed shortly after.

Red lines appeared across the barrier, space splitting cleanly as layers upon layers were cut through. However, this specific barrier had been made with Xander’s space splitting strikes in mind and was constructed in such a way where each layer had a compressed spatial layer between them. So despite the fact it seemed like a single thing film, there were actually dozens of these layers and compressed spaces between them.

However, the Shadow Needle Guild members were not happy in the slightest.

’We didn’t even notice when he got here. How fast is he moving?! The recording showed that he was just over supersonic speeds!’ The leader of the group muttered a curse as he and his teammates tried to lock Xander down to no avail. He was simply moving too fast for them to lock onto him, and the fact that he wasn’t using any external spells, and therefore leaving limited mana signatures, made this fact even worse.

It was like getting attacked by a silent wasp. Only this wasp could cut you in half.

And there’s a reason Xander’s speed seemed so exaggerated. And it all boiled down to his movement skill, Vibration Traversal.

The concept behind the skill, vibrations, made it so that Xander could more or less ’ride’ the natural vibrations in objects. And vibrations were naturally extremely fast, but the speed he could move at depended on the medium.

When he first developed the skill in Landor, he wasn’t able to fully lean into the concept. But even then he was moving a few times the speed of sound whenever he moved through the ground.

His time spent during the time dilation training had only allowed him to master this concept more. So now, he wasn’t just able to move at the maximum speed allowed when following the vibrations of a certain medium.

Instead, he could actively accelerate and go even faster! After all, magic isn’t static, and it’s why something like a fire mage could make a simple fire ball far hotter than it has any right to be. Xander could actively push the potency or speed of vibrations too.

Now considering their location and the fact that the ground was more or less made from common rock, the speed of Vibrations was anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 meters per second, or 4,500 to 11,000 miles per hour.

But with Traversal in the mix, and with Xander being able to accelerate...

He could very easily push this speed several orders of magnitude higher.

And this is without him utilizing his Resonance State that allowed him to sense and manipulate vibrations on an even more intense level!

’This is a pretty neat barrier.’ While the assassins were panicking inside the barrier, Xander was more interested in said barrier more than anything else.

With his current sensitivity to concepts, he could feel just how complex the barrier was, and despite it seeming thin, he already clocked that the outermost gap of compressed space was equivalent to several miles compressed into that small area, and the layer after that was double that, and the next double that, and there were dozens of these layers.

Normal high mages would have no hope of breaking through it and could only hope to dismantle the magic itself. But even that was especially difficult as it wasn’t sloppy in any capacity.

Now, could Xander simply slice the mana convergence points or the place where the space concept congregated to dismantle the barrier in one go?

Yes, yes he could.

Could he have used a space shattering Rupture Thrust to make the barrier collapse under its on weight?

Also yes.

And he’d intended to do so originally too. However, to his surprise, when he started slicing through the barrier initially, he noticed Abscinde began to give a response. Which was surprising as the weapon never really reacted on its own except when something demonic was nearby. And when he watched more closely, specifically with Myriad Paths, he saw Abscinde... absorbing the spatial concepts that made up the barrier.

Xander had no clue what this meant, but he knew the weapon would only do something like this if it was beneficial to it. So he didn’t interrupt it.

Abscinde really was a unique weapon, and even now he wasn’t fully sure what the weapon could and couldn’t do. He’d just been going along with the flow.

But what he did know was that the day the flower representing it in his Garden fully bloomed, it would definitely be a sight to see.

Now, with that being said, while it hadn’t been long since Xander started violating the barrier, the gains Abscinde was getting from absorbing the concepts that made it up soon began to become nonexistent, and Xander guessed that since the weapon originated from a constantly adapting demonic lifeform, the speed at which it assimilated certain things was very fast, so it wouldn’t take long before diminishing returns came and slammed the breaks hard.

So the moment Abscinde stopped its ’meal’ Xander instantly went in for the kill.

Following the Paths, he found the point in the barrier where the mana and concepts converged and thrusted, the edge of Abscinde containing that red glow as it went in effortlessly, and the barrier popped like a bubble.

But it seemed as though the assassins were prepared, as the moment the barrier was destroyed, a magic circle had bloomed in the sky which had darkened with thunderclouds, black and purple lightning rumbling ominously.

While the assassins had been unable to track Xander’s movement speed while using Vibration Traversal, he had still needed to emerge briefly to attack the barrier, and that was something the could track.

As such, before he destroyed the barrier, they all poured their Mana and formed a powerful spell that materialized the instant Xander destroyed the barrier.

He’d still need a moment to start riding the vibrations again, and the assassins had timed the window perfectly as the lightning descended on Xander at the same instant the barrier fell.

The black and purple lightning didn’t just look that way to be cool. Instead, it carried additional attributes of corrosion and, if Xander was correct, Void. That distinct and uncanny absence that was certainly not naturally occurring in the attribute which seemed to erase whatever it touched on impact.

Moreover, in the same manner that Xander could push his Vibration Traversal speed, these mages could naturally make this lightning exceed the speed of regular lightning significantly. To the point where a normal person would be struck faster than they could even process. Let alone react.

That being said, Xander was not normal in any capacity.

The lightning was mere meters away from striking his head, the potency even stronger than the devastating strikes of the wyvern.

And in response, Xander brandished Abscinde and held it above his head before he was struck. But he did not deflect the attack or cut through it.

Instead, by reading the Paths, as soon as the two met, rather that getting electrocuted, Xander guided the energy along the blade, shifted his stance, and slashed as he used a skill he’d developed during his training.

’Return Path.’

In the world of Myriad Paths, the path of the lightning intertwined with his own. And in the real world, the space cutting lines of Abscinde seemed to coat the lightning of the assassins, making it acquire that specific attribute.

The assassins were unable to react as Xander’s horizontal slash happened, and a brief flash of purple, black, and red went through them.

There was a moment of silence, then their bodies fell. Specifically, their upper bodies, which had been separated from their lowers.

At the same time, the attack appeared at several mountain peaks at the edge of the range surrounding the area, and a loud rumble rocked their area as the mountain peaks were sliced clean off.

Xander glanced the bodies of the mages that were now beginning to corrode from the effects of their own lightning and shook his head.

’Now that was terrifying.’ Mira’s voice sounded in Xander’s mind. The Succubus had, naturally, followed the group. And the only reason she was nowhere to be found was because she was currently residing in Xander’s garden.

Xander said nothing as he noticed the energy in the distance beginning to become more extreme, and he took that as his cue to meet back up with the group.