[North Road — Eastern Island — Day 74 — 3:31 PM]
The angel moved before Alex finished saying yes.
Not toward the team.
Toward Alex.
Only Alex.
The speed wasn’t the speed of a bearer activating a Fragment or a high‑level creature sprinting. It was the speed of something that doesn’t accelerate because it already operates at maximum as a base state — one instant in its original position and the next instant in contact with its target, without the intermediate time the human eye needs to register movement.
The angel’s fist found Alex’s torso.
Not a measured strike. The angel’s mass at maximum speed concentrated at the point of contact — the kind of impact that doesn’t distinguish between what’s in the way and what isn’t because at that speed, the distinction doesn’t exist.
Alex was launched.
Thirty meters.
Through the road’s edge, between the thirty‑meter trees, his body breaking two arm‑thick branches before the trunk of one of the trees stopped him with the dry sound of an impact that would have shattered any wood that wasn’t from the Eastern Island.
The tree didn’t give way.
Alex did.
---
[Alex HP: 580,000 → 481,200]
Alex against the trunk with his ribs taking what the branches hadn’t absorbed, spitting blood before his body finished processing that it had crashed, the five points of light on his chest flickering with the interference.
He tried to stand.
F1 responding to the pain — pushing upward, seeking activation.
He activated the scythe.
The angel was already on him.
---
The second strike arrived before the scythe finished forming.
Not to his torso this time — to the hand holding the scythe. The angel’s fist found Alex’s wrist with the precision of something that reads the point of least resistance in real time, the bone giving way under the impact, F1’s scythe dissolving when the activation channel was interrupted by the pain.
Alex fell to his knees.
The angel took him by the neck — not with crushing force, with enough force to lift him off the ground — and threw him back toward the road.
Thirty meters in the opposite direction.
The impact on the road’s ground raising dust and earth in the immediate radius, his body bouncing once before stopping.
---
[Alex HP: 481,200 → 398,700]
The team reacted.
---
Raven was first.
F3 at maximum — the Fragment’s crimson eyes at the limit, the double‑bladed scythe materialized in her right hand, Army of Bones fully activated.
[Army of Bones — 134 units — assault]
One hundred thirty‑four units emerging from the ground from all directions toward the angel. Not as a barrier — as a coordinated assault, the densest Eastern Island skeletons converging from thirty‑six different angles at the speed F3 gave them on solid ground.
The angel extended all four wings.
Not to fly — to sweep.
The four wings’ rapid‑expansion arc functioned as what it physically was: four large surfaces moving at high speed in a full radius. Forty of the one hundred thirty‑four Army of Bones units fragmented by the wings’ physical impact, the bones collapsing under the sweep’s force.
Ninety‑four units remaining.
The angel planted its feet on the ground, and the ninety‑four reached it simultaneously.
What followed lasted two seconds.
The angel moving among the ninety‑four units at the same speed it had used against Alex — directed strikes, each one disintegrating three or four units at the impact point, the mountain bones and Eastern Island creature bones resisting more than the main continent’s but not enough for two seconds to be insufficient.
Army of Bones collapsed.
The angel without a visible mark.
Raven looking at the ground where one hundred thirty‑four skeletons had been and were no longer.
Two seconds.
Enough for Jessica to act.
---
Jessica with F6 active at maximum.
Entropy oriented toward the angel — not at the body, at the wings. The wings’ material had a composition that didn’t exist on the Eastern Island’s normal spiritual plane, but Entropy could read it anyway because Entropy read the structure of anything that had structure.
F6 found resistance.
The angel’s wings didn’t degrade like ordinary metal or creature matter would. But something gave way — a texture on the edge of the second left wing, the material losing a degree of coherence that was visible to someone looking with the spiritual plane active.
Not enough to damage.
Enough for the angel to turn toward Jessica for a second — recognizing the source of the interference, evaluating.
A second.
Raven used that second to intercept — her body between the angel and the point where Seraph had reached Alex.
The angel struck her without changing direction.
Not the full strike — calibrated, enough to move her. The fist to Raven’s right shoulder, the impact sending her four meters to the left.
[Raven HP: 290,000 → 241,600]
Raven touched the ground, rolled, and stood up before the dust reached where she had landed.
Without releasing her scythe.
---
Seraph reached Alex.
Alex on the road’s ground — two massive impacts, his right wrist with the bone given way, blood at the corner of his mouth, the five points of light on his chest unstable from the accumulated pain.
"I didn’t expect it to be that intense," said Alex.
"I know." Seraph evaluating his physical state quickly — the wrist, the ribs, the blood. "How much can you take?"
"Less than I need." Alex spat blood once more. "It goes straight to the activation point. Every hit to the hand disrupts the channel."
"I saw."
"I need F2 back." Alex looking at Seraph. "Temporarily. The damage absorption — if you can intercept the strikes instead of me taking them—"
Seraph didn’t wait for him to finish.
"Do it."
---
The angel finished evaluating Jessica and oriented back toward Alex.
It saw Seraph.
It saw what they were doing.
It moved.
Raven intercepted — her body between the angel and Seraph with Alex, F3’s scythe active.
The angel brushed her aside with the back of its hand.
Not with cruelty — with efficiency. Just enough force to move her without spending the momentum it needed to reach Seraph and Alex.
[Raven HP: 241,600 → 198,300]
Raven against a tree. She stood immediately — slower than the first time, her breath cut short by the impact, but standing.
Jessica from the flank — F6 seeking the same point on the wings it had found before, Entropy expanding the initial degradation.
The angel took a second to compensate.
A second.
---
F2’s transfer from Alex to Seraph without Emily nearby was brutal.
F2’s channel, which Alex had integrated for days, leaving without cushioning — the Paladin’s energy leaving Alex’s channels with the kind of friction that comes from something extracted instead of flowing.
Alex didn’t scream.
He gritted his teeth and held the process.
Seraph received F2 back.
Without Emily. Without Purifying Light as a smooth transition.
The Paladin’s channel recognizing its bearer of fifteen years and entering with all the force it had — like water returning to its course after having known it for a long time, without the care water has when entering for the first time.
Painful.
Seraph didn’t react.
Fifteen years of learning not to react to pain in combat because the time the reaction takes is time that isn’t always available.
[Alex HP: 398,700 → 381,200]
[Seraph HP: 380,000 → 312,400]
Both paying the cost.
Seraph standing.
The Paladin’s scythe in her hand — white, with the hard brightness it had when F2 had been exactly this for fifteen years.
---
The angel three meters away.
It stopped.
Not out of doubt — out of the same rapid evaluation it had been making since landing. F2 active in Seraph was a different variable from the team without active F2. The Paladin’s damage absorption was exactly the kind of mechanism that made striking Seraph return the impact multiplied.
All four wings opened one degree more.
The adjustment was small.
But it was there.
Seraph saw it.
"F2 makes it adjust," said Seraph quietly without taking her eyes off the angel.
Alex from the ground behind her, catching his breath, his right wrist in a state Emily would have opinions about when she arrived:
"Is it enough?"
Seraph looked at the angel.
At the landing impact on the ground. At the marks from Raven’s one hundred thirty‑four skeletons disintegrated in two seconds. At Raven standing up for the second time with the scythe still in her hand.
"Not yet." Seraph. "But F2 is the only thing we’ve seen make it adjust."
"What does that mean?"
"That for now — I’m going to the front."
The angel attacked.
Seraph raised F2’s scythe and received it.
[Seraph — active absorption — F2 at maximum]
The impact arrived.
And the Paladin’s scythe absorbed what it could absorb from something that hadn’t been designed to be absorbed.
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