Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1010: Testing Envy

They gave him a ring of everything they had.

Aria lifted two meters off the grass on a soft column of moonlight, ankles crossed, serene. Luna summoned the Stormblade with a crack and started cutting the air into pieces for practice. Bastet planted her bare feet and let the ground under them press, a weight the grass bent under.

Nyx floated the tea tray she had carried down from the veranda, cups and all, because she had not wanted to leave it behind. Alexandra raised a small gold dome over herself and waited inside it looking like she wanted to apologize to the maples in advance.

Calypso simply hefted the axe, and it buzzed in her grip.

”Ready, Darling!”

”Big Brother,” Alice chimed from the halo, out loud so everyone could hear it, ”I’m putting a thread on that lantern and keeping it there. If mine goes out, I’ll say so.”

A hair of golden light drew itself from the halo to the nearest lantern and hung there, steady.

’Okay.’

Kaiden breathed in, and the lawn went cold.

Aria dropped.

The moonlight under her went out like a lamp, and she fell the full two meters. ”Ah! No! Kai!!!” She was panicking before she even hit the grass. If his cold could reach her, she could not stand beside him in a fight.

Calypso, nearest, dropped the axe and caught her out of the air in both arms with a grunt.

Luna’s Stormblade fizzled out mid-swing, and she went stumbling through the empty cut with a yelp.

Bastet’s weight lifted off the grass under her feet. She looked down, and her ears went flat, because the ground had stopped listening to her.

Nyx’s hold on the tea tray failed from under it. The tray hit the lawn, and most of the cups on it broke.

Alexandra’s dome popped like a soap bubble. The buzz died out of the axe at Calypso’s feet, because the buzz had been her Carnage.

Alice’s thread on the lantern never flickered.

Kaiden let the cold go the instant Aria fell, and the stance was gone before Calypso finished catching her. The lawn came back warm.

”You turned me off!” Luna was already back on her feet, pointing the empty hand at him. ”I felt it go out like somebody pulled the plug! It felt worse than when my vibrator shit the bed mid sess.”

”Keep those details to yourself, gremlin.”

”Bwahaha! It got my Carnage!” Calypso boomed, Aria still in her arms. ”Darling, my axe went quiet, and it got the moon, look at her!”

”I’m fine, Caly, thank you. You can put me down.” Aria’s feet found the grass, and she smoothed her hair and gave Kaiden a look that was mostly pout. ”You dropped your moon, Kai. What do you have to say about that?”

”I brought my moon closer so I could hug her,” Kaiden replied.

”...Okay, that was smooth.” Aria bit her lip. ”But I’m still mad! You’re pushing me away...”

”I’m pushing none of you away,” Kaiden decreed. ”Nobody’s hurt?”

Nobody was hurt. Alexandra was kneeling over the tea tray with her lap full of porcelain, and the look she gave him said she had been right about the garden.

”Huh,” Nyx said, arms folded, looking at the wreck of her tray. ”So that’s what it’s like from the other side. I’ve done that to a hundred things and never once been the thing.”

”Right.” Kaiden rolled his shoulders. ”Let’s do it again. This time you know it’s coming. See if you can resist.”

The cold came again, and this time the ring was braced for it.

Aria’s moonlight guttered under her and held. She sank a hand’s width and stopped there, lips pressed thin, still in the air.

Luna’s Stormblade flickered at the edges like a bad bulb, and stayed in her fist. Bastet dug her bare feet into the grass, and the ground under them argued with the cold and kept pressing.

Alexandra’s dome thinned to a skin of gold and did not pop. Nyx’s tray wobbled in the air and stayed up. Calypso’s axe hummed, low and stubborn.

”Oh,” Bastet said, and her ears came up. ”It can be resisted.”

”I refuse to let my vibrator die a second time!” Luna was grinning with her teeth clenched, both hands on the hilt.

”...That doesn’t even make any sense,” Nyx chuckled, brows strained to keep her Telekinesis up.

He could feel them doing it. The cold went out of him and met six walls, and where it met them, it pushed.

So he pushed harder.

The cold sharpened, and the draw behind his sternum went from a pull to a pour.

Luna’s blade died first with a crack and a yelp. ”Fuck!”

Alexandra’s skin of gold went out. Aria dropped again, slower this time, and landed on her own feet. ”...” She wasn’t happy.

Nyx’s tray shook in the air, held, held, and came down with the last two cups breaking on it.

Bastet held longest, barefoot in the grass with her jaw set, and even she felt the ground stop listening at the end.

”Seventy percent of your mana left, Big Brother,” Alice chimed, and the halo pulsed hard. ”That was fast. The harder you pull, the more it drinks.”

He let the cold go and stood there breathing heavy.

This was indeed an immense drain on his mana.

”It’s akin to a contest,” Nyx said, pressing two fingers to her temple. ”Same as when I grab something that doesn’t want to be grabbed. It pulls, I pull back, and whoever is more powerful wins.”

”But still...” Calypso grinned. ”This ability is incredible!”

”Enemies who face it for the first time will struggle to prepare,” Bastet added. ”Even if they know what’s coming, holding on to their own power will take everything they have. Nothing left for when Master reaches them...”

”...Right,” Kaiden nodded. It hit him as well.

Standing in the middle of a lawn full of women he had just switched off like lamps, Kaiden understood what he was carrying, and his pulse climbed with it, warm and high in his throat.

A field around him where magic had to ask permission.

’A null field. I’m walking around inside a null field.’

There was not a fighter alive who had not lain awake wanting exactly that.

From the veranda steps, Yunohana had watched every second of their little trial without moving.

”Lord Grey. May I say one thing before I go?”

”Please.”

”Everything I have watched you do pushes outward from you. It does not ask who it touches. Your ladies had to fight it to keep what was theirs. They held longer than I expected, and every one of them still lost it in the end. Fighting at your side would cost them.”

The girls on the lawn went stiff.

Yunohana considered the worried girls with her eternally graceful expression. ”I wonder whether it can be drawn instead of pushed. An arrow flies only at the one it was pointed at.”

Kaiden turned that over. ”So I’d draw it at one thing instead of letting it spread. Like a bow.”

”Only a thought.” She smiled at him slyly. ”You’re akin to a nuclear reactor right now. If you can become a laser gun instead, your women will be much happier.”