The time fracture had a radius of three meters.
Kai knew it because he had counted the steps from when Jameson activated it to where the ground started to feel different — not visually, but in the way weight distributed when stepping. Like walking on ice that wasn't cold.
Being inside the radius was a disadvantage for anyone fighting with normal spatial logic.
Kai didn't fight with normal spatial logic.
If the space inside the radius is unstable in all directions, then the instability is consistent. Predictable. I can work with predictable.
Jameson saw him enter the radius and his eyes calculated for 0.4 seconds.
He's inside. That's a mistake. No one voluntarily enters the fracture field.
He launched soul fire directly — not from where he was physically, but from the angle the time fracture redirected: forty-five degrees to the left of the actual visual trajectory.
Kai was no longer there.
He had moved the moment he saw Jameson's right shoulder tense — the micro-movement that always preceded soul fire, three centimeters of preparation that Jameson probably didn't know he made.
The fire passed eight inches from his side.
The heat was real. Enough to feel it on the skin of his right arm.
Metal-melting temperature. If it connects, it's not a hit. It's the end.
It won't connect.
---
Jameson repositioned.
He entered the radius. That means he calculated something I didn't calculate. What?
He launched shadow dominion — not as a projectile but as an area, expanding it in a two-meter radius from his position. The shadow sought contact surface, any point on Kai's body to adhere to and begin the slowing process.
Kai saw it expand.
Two-meter radius. Moves from the center outward. If I move away, it follows. If I move closer...
He moved closer.
He entered the shadow's radius before it finished expanding — into the only blind spot of any area expanding from a center: the center itself.
The shadow passed over him like water over stone.
Kai reached a meter and a half from Jameson.
Too close. The time fracture doesn't work at this distance — it needs space to redirect. Soul fire needs channeling distance. The shadow just passed.
He's inside my guard.
Jameson processed it in the same second Kai was already acting.
---
Straight jab to the solar plexus — not at full power, with the exact angle that interrupts diaphragmatic breathing without breaking anything. Enough to make the next cycle of magical channeling cost twice as much.
Jameson absorbed the strike with an instinctive soul fire barrier — not an attack, a reflexive defense, the kind developed over four years of combat when the body learns something is coming.
Soul fire in defensive mode was less temperature, more mass.
Kai felt the impact on the knuckles of his jab like putting his hand into something that resisted more than expected.
Reflex barrier. Good. That means he reacts defensively before attacking when something comes fast. I'll use that.
He stepped back two paces — outside the immediate radius of the fracture, but not outside the full field.
Jameson caught his breath.
That hit should have hurt more. He has reflex barrier permanently active at this system level. I didn't know that.
What else don't I know?
---
[GarcíaFTW: REFLEX BARRIER. KAI JUST DISCOVERED A PASSIVE ABILITY JAMESON DIDN'T MENTION]
[NocheEterna99: Kai stepped back two paces. He's logging data, not retreating.]
[StreamerHunter: +478% chat bonus. The bar keeps rising.]
[xSorinx: Jameson is calculating too. This fight is as much mental as physical.]
[Pedro_Sierra: ε=ε=ε=ε=ε=┌(; ̄◇ ̄)┘ DATA DATA DATA]
[Deral_Bleattler: Jameson's chat dropped to +41%. His viewers are watching this and switching channels.]
[User_7741: (ง'̀-'́)ง LET'S GO KAI (ง'̀-'́)ง]
---
Jameson changed strategy.
Close combat is his domain. I can't win there. I need distance.
He launched a wave of area enchantment — not the lust version, the offensive version the system unlocked at maximum level: a psychic pressure that traveled like sound, affecting the cognitive processing of any entity in its radius.
Slowing of thought. Confusion of priorities. The kind of effect that made hunters describe contradictory sensations after facing him.
Kai felt it arrive.
Not as confusion — as noise. The kind of background noise that appears when there's too much simultaneous information and the brain has to filter.
This is what affected the hunters. Not combat magic — cognitive interference magic.
How do you handle cognitive interference?
The answer came from twelve years of training before his brain finished formulating the question.
Breathing.
Kai exhaled slowly from the diaphragm — the pre-combat concentration technique he had used in the dungeon's memory room, the same one he applied before every important fight. It emptied the environment. Reduced sensory input to the essential.
The noise didn't disappear.
But it went from foreground to background.
Enough.
---
He lunged.
Not in a straight line — Jameson had the time fracture to redirect linear attacks and the shadow dominion to slow direct approaches.
Diagonally. Changing the angle every two steps in a pattern that wasn't random but based on Jameson's micro-movements — anticipating the reaction instead of reacting to it.
Jameson launched soul fire at the point where Kai would be according to the trajectory of the first step.
Kai was no longer going there.
He changed on the second step — knee bent, lowering center of gravity, the kind of direction change that in a normal human required full deceleration and in someone with twelve years of hip work didn't.
The fire passed over his shoulder.
Third step: lateral shift with the heel pivot he'd been correcting since chapter one.
Fourth step: inside the time fracture radius again, but this time from a different angle — Jameson's right flank, where the shadow dominion took longer to reposition.
Jameson turned to compensate.
Kai was already striking.
---
Elbow to the right side — the angle strike he'd used against the corrupted A-rank bear in chapter four, adapted for a human-sized target. Not at the ribs — at the point between ribs and hip where the body has no bone protection and the impact transmits directly to the nervous system.
The reflex barrier of soul fire activated.
Kai expected it.
He pulled the elbow back half a centimeter at the moment of contact — enough that the barrier absorbed less than it would have from a full strike, enough for the real impact to still land behind the barrier.
Jameson doubled over at the side.
That landed.
Kai didn't follow up on the side.
Knee to the right thigh — not to the bone, to the outer muscle group that controls lateral balance. The same break point he'd identified on the A-rank bear, adapted to bipedal anatomy.
Jameson lost weight on his right leg for 0.6 seconds.
In 0.6 seconds, Kai had time for three things.
He chose the most useful one.
Palm strike — open-palm strike to the sternum, upward, using full body weight rotating from the hip. Not to break. To displace the center of gravity backward.
Jameson stumbled back three steps.
The time fracture radius moved with him.
Kai exited the field.
---
It hurts.
Jameson processed the pain with the part of his brain that four years in Aethon had trained to separate sensation from function.
Side. Thigh. Sternum. None critical. All enough to affect the next movement.
How is he dodging the time fracture? The field should disorient his approach angles.
Unless...
He saw it.
Kai wasn't dodging the time fracture.
He was using it.
Every time he entered the field, he used the instability of space to make his direction changes unpredictable even to himself — which made them completely unpredictable to any system trying to anticipate them.
He's turning my advantage into his variable.
That's... that shouldn't be possible without understanding how the fracture works on a technical level.
When did he learn it?
In the last two minutes.
---
[NocheEterna99: JAMESON JUST REALIZED KAI LEARNED TO USE HIS TIME FRACTURE IN TWO MINUTES]
[GarcíaFTW: TWO MINUTES. IN COMBAT. HE LEARNED THE ENEMY FIELD IN TWO MINUTES.]
[StreamerHunter: +521% bonus. New ability unlocking in real time.]
[xSorinx: Kai's panel shows a new black bar that wasn't there before. Still unnamed.]
[Pedro_Sierra: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) what could it be what could it be ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]
[Viewer_J_112: I'm switching channels]
[Viewer_J_441: me too]
[Deral_Bleattler: JAMESON'S CHAT IS ABANDONING HIM LIVE]
[Chat bonus — Jameson: +12% — in free fall]