CHAPTER 55: STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

Skyler, still stooped and staring at the ground, let out a quiet, wheezing laugh. "What’s wrong?" he asked, his voice surprisingly clear despite his hunched posture. "Aren’t you ready to fight? Or do you need a moment to catch your breath after that last one?"

The taunt was delivered with casual mockery, and Jelo felt his jaw tighten.

He didn’t waste time responding. He went on the offensive immediately, his hand coming up to form a Dragon Claw projection aimed at Skyler’s vulnerable, hunched form.

But the eye moved first.

It crackled with electricity, blue-white arcs of power dancing across its surface. Then it fired a bolt of lightning straight at Jelo, a concentrated beam of electrical energy that moved impossibly fast.

Jelo’s instincts screamed at him. He activated Wingburst, his body blurring as he launched backward in a burst of speed.

The lightning bolt smashed into the stage floor where he’d been standing a heartbeat ago, the impact creating a scorched crater and sending sparks flying in all directions.

The eye tracked him instantly, its pupil contracting as it focused on his new position. It fired again before Jelo had fully stabilized from his dash, another bolt of lightning, then another, each strike forcing him to keep moving.

Jelo dodged desperately, using Wingburst repeatedly to stay ahead of the attacks. Left, right, backward, forward, he was constantly in motion, never able to stop long enough to mount a proper counterattack.

Skyler barely moved throughout all of this. He remained in that extreme stoop, head down, seemingly doing nothing. The eye did all the work, tracking Jelo’s movements with inhuman precision, firing again and again, herding him around the stage like prey being toyed with by a predator.

"Come on," Skyler called out, that wheezing laugh punctuating his words. "Is running all you can do? I thought you were supposed to be strong. I thought you’d beaten Class 2 students before."

Jelo gritted his teeth, frustration building. He needed to attack, needed to take the offensive, but every time he tried to position himself for a Dragon Claw strike, the eye would fire another bolt and force him to dodge again.

Fine. If the eye wanted to play that game, he’d give it a target.

Jelo launched a Dragon Claw projection upward, aiming directly at the floating eye itself. The translucent energy construct shot through the air, fast and deadly.

But the eye dodged with a smooth, unnatural glide across the sky. It shifted position effortlessly, the Dragon Claw passing harmlessly through where it had been a moment before.

The eye’s movements were fluid, impossible for something that should be bound by normal physics, it could change direction instantly, accelerate without buildup, stop without momentum.

And while Jelo had been focused on that failed attack, the eye had charged up another strike.

The lightning bolt hit Jelo’s arm before he could activate Scaled Guard. Electric agony exploded through his limb, every nerve screaming as the current coursed through his body. The force of the impact spun him around, and he crashed to the ground hard, his arm twitching involuntarily from the electrical shock.

Pain. Real, intense pain that the adrenaline couldn’t fully mask. His arm felt like it was on fire, the muscles spasming uncontrollably.

Jelo forced himself to his feet, gasping, cradling his injured arm. The eye was already charging another attack, the electrical crackling growing louder, preparing to finish him.

He couldn’t keep this up. He couldn’t outrun the eye forever, it was faster than him, more maneuverable, and Skyler could just keep it active indefinitely while staying safe at ground level.

He needed to change tactics.

Jelo’s mind raced, analyzing the situation through the haze of pain and exhaustion. The eye was the problem. It was too fast to hit directly, too mobile. But maybe he didn’t need to hit it directly.

Skyler was the real target. The eye was just a tool, a projection. If Skyler went down, the eye would disappear.

But Skyler was keeping his distance, staying far enough back that Jelo couldn’t reach him easily, and the eye provided perfect cover, forcing Jelo to constantly dodge and preventing any sustained assault.

Unless...

Jelo burst forward with Wingburst, the sudden acceleration eating up the distance between himself and Skyler. His body blurred as he zigzagged, making his path unpredictable, harder for the eye to track and lead properly.

The eye focused on him immediately, recognizing the threat. It pulled back its attention from herding and suppression, instead charging up a massive bolt, larger than any it had fired before, crackling with enough power to end the fight in one shot.

Skyler’s hunched form remained still, confident that his creation would handle the threat.

At the last second, just as the eye released its devastating attack, Jelo redirected.

Instead of continuing toward Skyler, he pivoted sharply and launched a Dragon Claw projection not at the boy, but at the ceiling directly above the stage.

The energy construct struck the reinforced material with tremendous force, and while it couldn’t break through completely, it created enough of an impact to dislodge chunks of ceiling tile and supporting framework.

Debris began raining down, heavy pieces of material falling toward the stage in a shower of destruction.

The eye’s programming, or Skyler’s instinct through it, couldn’t ignore that. The massive lightning bolt discharged, but Jelo had already moved, the attack missing entirely as he rolled to the side.

The eye swiveled upward, tracking the falling debris, assessing whether it posed a threat to Skyler. For just a moment, its attention was divided, its focus split between the falling material and Jelo.

That moment was all Jelo needed.

He formed two Dragon Claw projections simultaneously, one in each hand, the energy gathering rapidly despite his exhaustion and injured arm. He didn’t aim at the eye. He aimed at Skyler.

Both claws launched at once, streaking across the stage toward the hunched figure.

By the time the eye realized the real threat and tried to redirect, it was too late.

The first Dragon Claw struck Skyler in the chest, the impact lifting him off his feet. The second caught him mid-air, driving into his side with brutal force.

Skyler’s body crashed to the ground hard, rolling once before going still. The moment his consciousness faded, the eye above flickered and disappeared, the projection dissipating into sparks of fading electrical energy.

[Opponent defeated; +40 Ess]

Jelo stood there, breathing heavily, his injured arm hanging limply at his side, debris still falling around him from the damaged ceiling.

Two were now down.