Chapter 77: Petty Goddess
Lucas stared at the floating notification, the words hanging in the air like it was meant to be there....
’Map out the safest route to the next Gateway.’
The words stared at him in taunting silence, as if he hadn’t just spent the last hour getting systematically dismantled by a woman who beat the fact that he sucked with a sword into him.
He opened his mouth, ready to voice the exact degree of bullshit he was currently experiencing until —
"Again. We go again."
Eleanor’s cut through his thoughts clean. It was calm and entirely serious and Lucas’ head snapped toward her. Mark, still sprawled between them, sat up so fast he nearly choked on his own spit.
"Elle," Lucas said, blinking. "You’re joking."
"I’m not." She was already on her feet, flame rekindling along and forming her blade with a soft whoosh. "Again."
Mark looked between them like he’d just watched someone propose marriage during a funeral. "The system just said—"
"I saw." She said cutting him off.
Lucas pushed himself up, ignoring the fact that every muscle was filing a formal complaint. "Eleanor. That was an objective."
"I’m aware." She said as she rolled her wrist as if testing the weight of the flaming blade. "It can wait."
Lucas let out a short laugh. "It can wait. Right. Of course it can. Because nothing’s like ignoring the really important quest in favor of more public humiliation."
"You landed a hit," she said, as if that explained everything. "By accident or not, you landed one. I can’t let that slide," she said, "I won’t let that slide."
He stared at her. "You’re being petty."
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed just enough to make Mark blink in shock. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me." Lucas gestured with the practice sword still lying loosely in his hand. "I touched you once, just once, and now you’re treating this like I made some kind of generational blunder"
Mark made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh or a prayer for mercy.
Maybe both...
Eleanor didn’t answer with words. Instead, she answered with her blade.
The first strike came low and fast, forcing Lucas to leap back or lose a kneecap. He brought his blade up in a clumsy parry that still somehow caught hers, the impact ringing through his arms.
She pressed immediately, chaining the hit into a high cut that he barely redirected. Sparks flying off his blade where the edges met.
"Petty?" she asked, voice steady even as she drove him backward across the ground. "I’m being efficient."
"You’re being a menace," Lucas grunted, angling his sword the way she’d corrected earlier.
"You’re going way too hard on a noob like me. This is abuse!"
The force of her next blow slid off instead of crashing through. And for a brief moment, he had space.
He used it, stepping in closer than was considered wise and shoved her blade wide with his own. The move wasn’t elegant, not in the slightest. It was a desperate and ugly retaliation and it worked just long enough for him to get inside her reach.
Eleanor’s eyebrows rose. Genuine surprise flickered across her face.
Lucas didn’t waste it. He twisted, using the momentum she’d given him, and for the first time in the entire session he was actually gaining the upper hand. His blade swept in a tight arc aimed at her midsection but she blocked. However, the block cost her balance. He followed with a rising cut that made her give ground, then another that made her give more.
Mark who went to hide behind a barrel had gone completely silent.
For a single, shining moment, Lucas led the exchange in his favor.
Then Eleanor stopped playing.
The shift was almost invisible. Her stance settled lower. The loose, almost as if the Eleanor that had been testing him vanished.
What remained was four years of real training and several weeks of fighting for her life, all focused into a single comeback. She feinted high, cut low, and when Lucas committed to the parry, she was already gone circling to his blind side.
**WHAM**
The flat of her blade cracked against his ribs hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Before he could recover she hooked his guard, twisted, and the practice sword left his hand in a humiliating motion as it landed somewhere on the ground with a defeated clangm
Her blade came to rest lightly against the side of his neck.
"Dead," she said, quiet and final.
"Yeah, no shit."
Lucas stood there breathing hard, empty hands hanging at his sides and the air felt colder on his skin. He looked down at his empty palms, then up at the darkening sky before mumbling.
"Yeah," he said, "fists solos."
Eleanor lowered her blade as the flame guttered out. For a moment neither of them spoke, then Mark finally found his voice, but whatever he was about to say died when Eleanor turned away and started walking toward the main hall without a word.
Mark walked towards Lucas and patted his back sympathetically. "Looks like we got a petty goddess on our hands."
"Note to self, mind the shit that comes out of your mouth. Goddess Eleanor would beat your ass into next week." Lucas said rubbing his wrist and Mark laughed.
"Noted."
Lucas followed after her after a few moments of massaging his wrist and Mark fell beside him unusually quiet except for the rub he gave him on his back sympathetically every now and then.
They reached the wide double doors of the hall. Warm air spilled out from inside, along with the low murmur of voices and the clatter of evening activity. Eleanor put her hand on the handle, ready to push it open.
That was when the system bloomed again in Lucas’ vision, the crimson interface appearing with its familiar glitched texts forming one by one...
[Ding!]
[You have been marked by the Grim Reaper.]
[Prepare to be Hunted.]