Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

The dirt explodes backward as Kellan charges again.

This time he doesn’t come like before. Now there’s adjustment. He uses the left jet to correct his angle mid-entry, bringing his body inside my guard instead of just crossing the circle like a heavy animal.

The rapier is still in my hand, but the room to use it has shrunk.

I give half a step back and tilt the blade to touch the opening near his right shoulder. Kellan doesn’t try to pull his arm. He lets the point enter enough to cut skin and answers by closing his elbow over it, trying to trap the blade between the gauntlet’s plates.

If I insist on piercing, I lose the weapon. I release the pressure and draw the rapier out before the gauntlet can grab it.

He learned. Late, but he learned.

The left fist comes next, short, aiming at my hand instead of my chest. I accelerate clear, but the edge of the gauntlet scrapes my knuckles. Pain climbs my arm and makes the rapier’s grip tremble for an instant.

Kellan feels that he landed.

"Not enjoying the game anymore?"

"I’m assessing whether you finally reached the useful part."

He smiles, but I feel his blood boiling behind it. Freya says nothing. Only watching to see if Kellan can stop embarrassing her before I finish the job.

Kellan opens his arms for a second. The gauntlets breathe. The plates over the wrists separate a few millimeters, venting blue steam through the gaps, then close again with a heavy snap. The sound changes. Before, the jets came in short whistles, fired for advance, correction, an aerial brake. Now the OXI doesn’t escape. It growls inside, trapped in the gauntlet chambers.

His stance lowers. The right foot draws back and sinks into the dirt. The left knee bends. The shoulder of his dominant hand drops as if his whole body were being pulled into that fist.

I know this kind of mistake.

Kellan thinks he’s loading a stronger punch. What he’s really doing is turning his whole body into a rail. A slingshot.

"Oxidrive Impact," he growls.

The skill answers before the motion. The air around the gauntlets thickens, vibrating with stored pressure. The ground near his back foot starts to crack. A blow like that doesn’t need to land clean to end a fight. Catch a rib, the body folds around the impact. Catch an arm, the arm becomes Zhang Xi’s problem. Catch the ground too close, the wave still charges something.

For an instant, the memory comes.

Not as a system panel. Not as an active skill. That belonged to another life, another body, another class. But some things don’t die when the timeline changes. They stay like a scar on the soul.

Flow Cartographer.

I see the punch before it exists.

I see the path. The back foot pushing force into the hip, the hip trying to pass it to the torso, the torso lagging a little because Kellan drops his shoulder too early. I see the support knee locked at the wrong instant. I see the back of the lead knee open like a poorly guarded hinge. I see a perfect engine trapped in a beginner’s frame.

Too strong to correct. Too straight to survive if someone takes the right ground out from under it.

The rapier won’t solve this.

So I let the weapon fall.

Kellan’s face opens in satisfaction, as if he disarmed me. Freya moves only her eyes, following the thin blade as it hits the dirt. For half a second she might think I lost my patience. In the next half-second she understands that I’ve stopped accepting the premise.

Kellan fires.

The main jet explodes behind the right fist, and his body comes with it, pushed by his own arm. I don’t go back, and I don’t slip to the sides. His engine still has enough lateral correction to hunt me.

I wait for the right moment and step into the guard. One long stride forward.

I drop my body before the fist completes its extension, passing under the loaded arm into the space where the gauntlet is still a promise and not yet impact. The heat scrapes my shoulder. The burned OXI sears my skin and pulls air from my lungs, but I’m already too close for the blow to turn without destroying its own owner.

My hip hits his. Not as a collision, but as a latch.

My right leg enters behind Kellan’s lead leg, fitting the bend of my knee against the bend of his. A short hook, tendon against tendon, at the exact moment the skill needs a base to keep pushing.

He tries to finish the punch anyway.

That’s what I need.

I use my hip to turn his center off the line of the fist and pull the trapped leg upward, taking from him the point where the force had to become a base. The engine does the rest. His body carries over its own leg, too heavy to stop, too fast to reorganize.

The Oxidrive Impact comes out wrong.

The right gauntlet hits the ground.

The circle answers like it was struck by a siege hammer. Stone and dirt rise in a short wave. The OXI blast opens a crater wide enough to swallow half of Kellan’s body. The recoil climbs his arm. I feel the jolt cross my trapped hip before I let go and leap clear.

Kellan screams.

His shoulder and elbow take part of the bill. The gauntlet held the blast, but the flesh under it never signed the contract with such enthusiasm for punching the ground unprepared.

I roll across the dirt and come up on my feet, backing off in short steps. The pressure tore skin from my neck and left my forearm numb, but my fingers still work. Enough.

Kellan tries to rise. The right arm doesn’t follow the way he wants. The gauntlet still glows, but the limb trembles inside it, disobedient. He plants his left fist on the ground to push himself up and spits dirt.

"Coward..."

"Coward, me? You missed your own punch."

I walk to the fallen rapier and take it by the grip. The blade is dirty with dust but whole. Freya watches without expression, though her eyes are sharper than before.

"He didn’t block the Impact?" Mira asks quietly.

Freya answers without looking at her. "No. He changed Kellan’s base, threw off his balance, and forced the fall."

Kellan manages to get to his knees. Too far for someone with pride, too close for someone with sense. He tries to fire the gauntlets again, but the right jet fails, spitting OXI in a crooked burst. His body tips the wrong way.

I step in before he turns desperation into an accident. I only rest the rapier near his jugular.

"No theater," I whisper to him.

Freya raises her hand. "Done."

Kellan breathes heavy, his face red with pain and humiliation. For an instant I think he’ll still try to open his mouth.

[Nomine Gladiatus ended.]

[Result: victory for Dryden Sands.]

[Experience transferred: 4%.]

The message glows between us, cold and polite, as if it hadn’t just charged a fool’s pride in installments of pain.

I draw the rapier back from his throat and look at Freya. "Your toothpick’s well balanced."

She holds out her hand for the weapon. Kellan tries to stand on his own and fails on the first attempt. Oliver lets out a heavy sigh behind me, probably too satisfied to fake neutrality.

Rhayne is quiet, but when I glance over, her eyes are on me. Not with gratitude. With worry. That makes the victory feel smaller.

I hand the rapier back to Freya by the hilt and return to her side. Zhang Xi rushes to help Kellan.

Kellan Rook got the lesson. I just don’t know if it was meant for him.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!