Free Web NovelChapter 361: What Hands Can Hold
Vorin stood with an empty copy slot and four feet of distance between him and the fight’s resolution.
The Vacuum Spear had cost Ordin—the recovery debt from the extended compression visible in how he was holding his arms, the elastic tissue having stretched to a degree that required real time to reset. He couldn’t fire another Vacuum Spear immediately. Arrow Bursts were still available—the shorter compression requiring less recovery—but the largest tool in his arsenal had a window of unavailability following its use.
Vorin read the recovery.
He advanced—the window the Vacuum Spear’s recovery created was the same kind of window that Vornik’s overclock recovery had created for Varen, a fighter’s ability temporarily unavailable, the body paying back what the technique had borrowed. The difference was that Ordin’s window was shorter than Vornik’s had been.
Vorin had seconds, not the minutes Varen had used.
He covered the four feet fast.
Ordin fired an Arrow Burst—available despite the Vacuum Spear recovery, the shorter compression requiring less from the elastic tissue than the extended Vacuum Spear pull had required.
Vorin took it and kept moving.
Three feet.
Ordin fired again—the Arrow Bursts’ recovery was also accumulating, the rapid succession from earlier in the fight adding to the debt the Vacuum Spear had created, his arms holding more strain than either technique alone would have produced.
Vorin took the second burst and kept moving. freeweɓnovel.cøm
Two feet.
Ordin’s arms were at the limits of comfortable short-succession firing—the accumulation of Arrow Bursts and the Vacuum Spear sitting in the elastic tissue as something that needed resolution before additional large-output firing could happen.
Vorin was two feet away.
Ordin clapped at close range—not a Vacuum Spear, not a standard Arrow Burst, a compressed air release at minimum stretch, the smallest output available, the equivalent of a close-range tap rather than a needle-burst. Enough to produce a copy. Not enough to push Vorin back.
It hit Vorin’s chest.
The copy registered—a minimum-stretch close-range release, the smallest technique Ordin’s ability could produce.
Vorin clapped.
Nothing.
The same result. The mechanism didn’t transfer regardless of the technique’s size.
Vorin was two feet from Ordin’s face.
He swung.
A punch—his own, no copy, no ability, just the physical strike of a fighter who had absorbed multiple bursts during an advance and had arrived at close range with his own body’s strength intact.
Ordin raised both arms—not to clap, to block, the elastic palms absorbing the impact the way they had absorbed Drake’s kicked fireball, the tissue flexing on contact.
The punch hit Ordin’s raised palms.
The elastic tissue received it.
And Vorin’s ability registered the contact.
A punch—absorbed by Ordin’s elastic palms, the force of the strike received by the tissue. The copy captured the punch’s motion and force. But it also captured the specific sensation of striking elastic palms—the resistance of the tissue, the rebound, the particular quality of force that spread across a larger surface area than an ordinary block provided.
Vorin stepped back and swung the copy.
His own fist—replicating his own punch, the copy producing an exact duplicate of the strike, his own strength behind his own motion.
It hit Ordin’s chest.
Real force—a punch landing on Ordin’s sternum, the copy of Vorin’s own punch returning to Vorin’s fist as a usable technique because punches didn’t require biological specialization. Any body with a fist could throw a punch.
The first copy that had worked.
Ordin absorbed it—staggering one step, the hit real and present, his arms coming down from the block position to stabilize his stance.
Vorin pressed.
He grabbed Ordin’s right wrist—the same two-handed grip he had read from Kiad and tried to use against Kiad’s Severance, a technique that worked regardless of who performed it.
The grip was real.
His ability registered it—the grip’s force, Vorin’s own hands closing around Ordin’s wrist, a technique that any hands could replicate.
But Ordin’s elastic palms were at the end of that wrist.
And his palms were currently in contact with Vorin’s hands.
Ordin clapped around the grip—his palms closing against each other with Vorin’s hands between them, the compressed air release happening at the exact contact point where Vorin was holding his wrist.
The burst fired into Vorin’s hands at point-blank range.
The hands took the full close-range burst—the most concentrated version of the Arrow Burst possible, the compression having nowhere to dissipate before arriving at its target because the target was touching the source.
Vorin’s grip broke—the force shattering the hold, both hands pushed apart by the close-range burst, the wrist coming free.
The copy registered.
A close-range palm-clap burst—but the copy had captured the motion at point-blank range, the technique that required the opponent to be holding Ordin’s wrist to work as it had worked. The copy would produce a clap that released compressed air from Vorin’s ordinary palms.
Vorin clapped.
No mechanism. No elastic tissue.
Nothing. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
He looked at his hands—the same nothing, the same limitation, the biological requirement unchanged regardless of how many times the Arrow Burst had been copied from different angles and distances.
Ordin pulled his wrist back.
He looked at his own palms—the elastic tissue carrying the accumulated debt of the fight, the close-range burst having added to what the Vacuum Spear and the Arrow Burst succession had already built. His palms were at the edge of comfortable operation—not damaged, not shattered, the limit not yet reached but visible in the distance between where they were and where the limit sat.
One significant output remaining before the debt became real.
He looked at Vorin.
At the fighter who had absorbed every burst, attempted every copy, thrown his own punch to find the first technique that worked, and pressed forward with everything the fight had allowed him to press forward with.
One real copy.
One punch.
Vorin had one useful technique in his recent history—the punch that had worked, the only technique of the fight that didn’t require Ordin’s specific palms to replicate.
Ordin pulled his palms apart.
Maximum stretch.
Further than the Vacuum Spear had required. Both palms extending to their widest possible position, the elastic tissue at its maximum, the compression building between them from the widest separation the ability could produce.
Sky Splitter.
The crowd recognized the stretch immediately—larger than anything Ordin had produced against Drake, the arms at a position that made his standard techniques look restrained.
Vorin read the stretch.
He had two options—take it and copy it, or evade. Taking it meant the largest projectile of the fight landing on his body. Copying it meant another technique that required Ordin’s elastic palms to replicate.
Evasion.
He moved sideways—fast, the lateral step carrying him out of the direct path of wherever the Sky Splitter was aimed.
Ordin tracked the movement.
He adjusted—the maximum-stretch position held as he pivoted, the compression maintained through the adjustment, the palms still at their widest as he aimed the technique at Vorin’s new position.
Vorin moved again—another lateral step, changing direction before the Sky Splitter could track him, the movement fast and committed.
Ordin clapped.
The Sky Splitter released—not at Vorin’s current position, at the path his second lateral step was carrying him into, Ordin having read the direction of the second step and aimed at the arrival rather than the departure.
The compressed air tore a trench across the arena floor along the trajectory—the full-power clap at maximum stretch producing exactly what the announcer had described when introducing the ability, the force tearing through the stone surface in a straight line across the arena.
Vorin was in that line.
He took the Sky Splitter across his entire right side—not a concentrated point impact like the Arrow Burst, a wide devastating force that arrived across a significant surface area simultaneously.
He went down.
Not sideways—down, the force driving him toward the floor rather than away from the trench, the wide-area impact overwhelming the lateral momentum he had been building for the evasion.
He hit the stone.
His ability registered the Sky Splitter.
He clapped from the floor—one hand to the other, the motion captured, the technique replicated.
Nothing.
He looked at his ordinary hands.
He pushed up from the floor—the Sky Splitter’s force had been real, the right side of his body carrying the impact, the push coming from his left arm because his right had taken the worst of it.
He got to one knee.
Looked at the trench the Sky Splitter had torn across the arena floor—the stone split and lowered along the projectile’s path, the arena permanently marked.
Looked at Ordin.
