Chapter 67: 67. Telekinesis Did All the Work, The Sword Was Decorative

Elliot paused for a moment, then held out his sword with the hilt facing him. It was a powerful sword, heavier than it looked, and it glowed faintly because of the energy left over from Elliot’s Heroic Strike.

Rex took it and felt how heavy it was in his hand, pretending to change his grip.

He didn’t plan to really use the sword. His telekinesis would do all the hard work if things got messier. But going into a fight with a nine-foot demon without a weapon that could be seen would make people ask questions he didn’t want to answer.

Before he turned to face Kruger, he made a note in his head to keep an eye on how far away the demon was from him. His Foresight told him that Kruger had already figured out who he was and knew something about him that the other people didn’t.

The demon opened his mouth and started to say something about Rex in one of the branches. This caused a negative change in Elliot’s expression.

“That sly bastard… he’s trying to snitch on me, but… that vial… seems like it really messed up his mind slowly.”

“Maybe that’s why he forgets our deal and even the deal we made.”

Rex had seen that branch and wasn’t going to let it happen.

“Come on,” he said to Evelyn.

Evelyn managed to stand, and then she nodded. “Yeah…”

They walked toward Kruger together.

The demon watched them come closer with a look on its face that could have been amusement, even though it still had human feelings. It was harder to read on the twisted, horned thing that Kruger had turned into, but the hate was clear enough.

“Two little heroes,” Kruger said with a rumble. “You think you can do what four of you couldn’t do before?”

Rex kept on walking. “We’ll see about that…”

Kruger’s eyes were on him, and then the demon’s mouth split into that too-wide grin again. “Hmmm…?”

“Actually… wait… I know you.” He tilted his huge head, and ichor was still dripping from the arrow wounds that were slowly healing.

He raised his free hand and made a fist right away so that he didn’t snitch on him.

The telekinetic force wrapped around Kruger’s jaw like a clamp, squeezing the muscles so hard that the demon’s mouth slammed shut with a loud crack of teeth.

Kruger reached up to scratch his own face, trying to get a grip on something he couldn’t see or touch. His words stopped in a strained, angry grunt.

“You probably know me because I’m the one who sacrificed myself to the Goblin King,” Rex said loudly so that the group behind him could hear him. “Seems like I’m that famous, huh?”

Rex understood it was a bold statement, yet it was the most creative response he could muster in just two seconds. He felt Evelyn’s eyes on him from the side and the weight of her gaze.

He held her gaze for a moment before looking back at Kruger.

“This time… try not to sacrifice yourself again!” Evelyn said with a concerned look.

Rex let go of Kruger’s jaw as soon as the demon stopped trying to talk and instead threw itself at them with a roar that shook the ground.

The fight then started.

Rex had been going over his Foresight in the seconds before the charge, figuring out the best way to respond to Kruger’s attack patterns. He knew that the demon was strong, swift, and almost impossible to kill with normal damage, but it wasn’t very subtle.

It fought recklessly because it had never faced a real threat.

That was the start of an opening for them.

Kruger’s clawed hand made a wide horizontal slash, but instead of dodging back the way the demon thought he would, Rex stepped to the inside of the arc.

He used a thread of telekinesis to speed up his own movement just enough to make the step feel easy. He ducked under the claws and drove Elliot’s sword into the thinnest part of Kruger’s wrist, where the skin was thinnest.

The blade hurt him a lot. Kruger growled and yanked the arm back, taking the sword with it.

Rex let go of the hilt without putting up a fight. He used telekinesis to pull the sword from Kruger’s wrist and float it back.

Evelyn was already going to the other side of the demon. She had taken out a second sword, shorter and faster than her main sword, and she used it to make a series of quick cuts across Kruger’s side.

The wounds were not very deep on their own, but she kept hitting the same spots over and over again, aiming for the ones that kept reopening before the healing could fully close them.

She was smart, and Rex had to respect that from her. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, is foolish.

Kruger tried to turn and grab her, but Rex was already getting the demon’s attention back. He used his telekinesis to grab a piece of broken wall and drive it into the demon’s knee, making the leg bend.

Kruger lost his balance, and Evelyn ran past his guard and stabbed him in the neck with both blades.

The demon roared and threw himself back, breaking Evelyn’s grip and making her roll away or get pinned under his weight. Before the dust had a chance to settle, she rolled, got up clean, and was already circling again.

Helena’s voice came from behind them. “Flame Lance, suppressing pattern!”

Three spears of fire flew across the square. They weren’t meant to kill Kruger, but they were meant to push him in a certain direction, away from the rubble that gave him natural cover.

Rex had told Helena to cause trouble instead of damage, and she understood right away. The spears exploded on the demon’s left side, pushing him to the right.

Diana was already there with a group of arrows that hit the demon’s neck and chest on the right side.

With a snarl, Kruger turned toward Diana, and Rex hit him from behind with a strong telekinetic pulse that went straight to the base of his spine. The demon stepped forward a whole step, losing its balance, and Evelyn took advantage of this by stabbing his knee joint from the outside, aiming for the cartilage instead of the bone.

Kruger knelt down.

The pattern held for almost thirty seconds. Rex controlled the fight without anyone knowing it.

He put himself in a position to stop or change the flow of the fight whenever the demon tried to break free of their rhythm. Evelyn fought with the kind of instinctive flexibility that comes from a combat-focused system.

She changed her strategy on her own when something stopped working.

They were making progress.

But then Kruger stopped playing along.

Rex could see through his Foresight that the demon’s rage had been building since the fight started. He could also see the exact moment the anger crossed whatever threshold the vial’s transformation had set.

Kruger’s skin got even darker, and the cracks in it started to glow with a faint internal heat. When he roared this time, the sound had a physical component to it, a concussive wave that knocked Rex back on his heels and made Evelyn cover her ears without thinking.

Kruger didn’t use his hands to attack next.

He hit the cobblestones with both fists, and the ground shook. Rex felt it in his feet a split second before his Foresight confirmed it: a deep tremor that spread out from the ground.

The cobblestones broke apart and then shot up in jagged columns. Rex had to throw himself to the side to avoid being stabbed.

Evelyn was faster; her speed kicked in and carried her away. But the earth magic didn’t stop there.

Two of the columns curved in a way that seemed impossible, changing their path in mid-air toward Helena and Diana at the back of the square.

Helena had a barrier up at the right time. The column hit it and broke, but the impact pushed her back three steps, and the barrier fell apart, leaving her open to attack for the next few seconds.

Diana wasn’t as lucky. The second column hit her side as she tried to dive away, and the impact made her spin.

She fell hard, and her bow skittered away. She lay still for a moment that felt like a long time.

Kruger stood up straight; both of his opponents at a distance were no longer a threat, and he turned back to Rex and Evelyn with the satisfaction of having just solved a difficult problem.

“Now that your support is injured… there’s not a single fuck you could’ve given to me!”

There was no more rhythm. There was no more support.

And without Helena and Diana’s interruptions, which kept the demon’s attention split, Kruger could pay full attention to the two people in front of him.

Rex quickly figured out how to handle the new situation. His Foresight showed him the different paths, and in most of them, the next thirty seconds went badly.

Evelyn’s speed was still there, but she was breathing harder than she should have been for someone with her level of skill.

Her shoulder, which had been hurting since Kruger’s earlier slam, was now clearly damaged. She was making up for it with her footwork, which made her speed noticeably slower.

The demon could smell fear, and that was how it had changed…

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