His focus sharpened, his intent narrowing to a razor's edge. He lifted a hand, his eyes locked on the archers. This was a field test of a radical theory. He needed to restrain their action.
Title: Bind Archers
Poem: Bind
His mind poured a precise intent into the command: Their hands. Bind their hands to their bows.
[-50 AWN]
[Poet's Lexicon: Keyword [Bind] Resonance increased. (1%->5%)]
The effect was subtle. Just as the first archer was about to release his arrow, a flicker of ethereal energy shackled his hands to the bowstring. His draw was ruined, the arrow clattering uselessly against the rock.
Kage's eyes widened slightly.
Resonance increases with novel applications.
The effect was pathetically weak, lasting less than a heartbeat. But its timing was perfect.
He did it again, targeting the second archer. Another flicker of light, another ruined shot. This time, the effect was marginally longer. The Awen cost was significant, but it was buying them time. Freed from the arrow barrage, Lily stabilized Jax. The Ranger began returning fire, his aim steadier now.
Kage fell into a rhythm, his gaze flicking between the two archers, his Verse-Crafting a series of perfectly timed, split-second interruptions.
His Awen bar dropped steadily. 370/370… 320… 270… 220…
By the time his Awen was nearly depleted, the Mage had broken free, and the party had regained control. They had survived. But Lily's mana bar was dangerously low, and they had burned through three Minor Healing Potions.
Zara stared at Kage with open curiosity, her earlier dismissiveness gone. "What was that spell? I've never seen a binding effect target specific body parts. Is that some kind of scroll?"
Finn was practically vibrating with nervous energy. "The timing was perfect! How did you know when to cast?"
Kage met their questions with silence. Their questions are attempts to quantify an unknown variable. Zara seeks a system-based explanation—a scroll, a hidden skill. Finn seeks to understand the execution. Providing information about my class is disadvantageous.
Lily rushed over, her eyes wide with relief and awe. "You were right… And that skill…" She bowed her head. "Thank you."
A furious stomp announced Jax's arrival. His face was flushed with shame and rage. "Lucky guess," he snarled, glaring at Kage. "And a lot of good it did. We wasted three potions because you were too busy with parlor tricks to do any real damage. Just stay out of my way."
He was furious. Not because he had been wrong, but because Lily had praised the charity case instead of him.
The tension in the party was now at an all-time high. Jax fought with a reckless, angry energy, desperate to reassert his dominance. He pulled too many mobs and burned through cooldowns, determined to prove he didn't need a Poet's advice.
Lily, however, had changed. She kept an eye on Kage, her positioning mirroring his. She trusted the silent analyst in the back more than the roaring warrior in the front.
They descended into a deeper chamber, a filthy den reeking of stale meat and goblin musk. On a crude throne of broken mining equipment sat the mid dungeon's mini-boss.
[Goblin Taskmaster - Lvl 8]
HP: 2500/2500
"This one's mine," Jax growled and charged before anyone could react.
The fight was a brutal symphony of grinding metal. The Taskmaster was tougher and faster than the scouts, parrying one of Jax's heavy blows with its club and countering with a swiftness that belied its size.
Jax, fighting with angry desperation, burned through his abilities to overwhelm the boss with sheer force. He ignored the party, forgoing tactics for raw aggression.
"He's blowing his cooldowns too fast," Zara hissed, timing her Frost Bolt to avoid hitting Jax in his wild swings. "At this rate, I'll be out of mana before we're halfway done."
The Taskmaster's AI showed flickers of adaptability. It sidestepped Jax's cleave, letting the axe bite into the stone floor, and punished the opening with a vicious whip crack across Jax's back.
[-45 HP]
Jax roared in frustration. The fight wasn't the clean demonstration of power he had envisioned. Lily's healing light was a near-constant stream just to keep him stable, her mana draining at a visible rate. In a fit of rage after another attack was parried, Jax overcommitted, lunging forward in a wild swing that left him completely exposed.
The Taskmaster capitalized. Its leather whip lashed out, coiling around his ankle with a sharp crack. Before Jax could even process the warning, the boss yanked.
His footing was torn from under him. He crashed onto his back with a heavy grunt, the impact knocking the wind from his lungs. The [Stunned!] icon blazed over his head.
"He's stunned!" Lily cried out, her voice frantic.
The DPS threw everything they had, but their attacks barely scratched the boss's hide while it channeled its ultimate. Jax was about to be executed.
Kage's mind raced, cycling through his toolkit in a split-second process of elimination.
Bind? Useless. The pitiful snare that barely worked on the scouts wouldn't interrupt it.
StrengthenJax's armor?Weakenthe boss? He ran the mental math. Incoming damage was colossal. A small percentage buff or debuff would be a rounding error. Jax would still die. A waste of Awen.
Strike? Contemptible.
He eyed the three keywords in his Lexicon that still didn't get a use. Target and Self seem like targeting keywords. Useless for one-word poem.
He had no viable combat options. He was a mechanic trying to fix a tank engine with a set of watercolor brushes.
His eyes darted around the scene. The glowing club. The prone tank. The stone floor. He was out of skills, out of easy answers. All that was left was the unknown, unused keyword. Shape.
What did it even do? No data, no baseline. But the name was a clue. It wasn't Create Wall or Raise Shield. It was just… Shape.
The intent is everything.
He couldn't stop the club. He couldn't move Jax.
But what if he could interfere with the space between them? He didn't need to stop the blow, just make it miss. He needed to alter the physics of the encounter.
An idea sparked, a desperate gambit born from pure logic. A wall was too much to ask for. But a deflection—a change in the attack vector—required minimal mass.
He focused his will, the intent forming as a clear, geometric image in his mind.
Title: Shape Ground
Poem: Shape
The effect was insultingly small. A faint shimmer of light, and a sharp-angled wedge of rock—little bigger than Jax's head—jutted up from the ground, directly in the club's path. A tiny, perfectly placed ramp.
[Poet's Lexicon: Keyword [Shape] Resonance increased. (1%->3%)]
The Goblin Taskmaster's glowing club smashed down.
The party's Mage flinched, expecting to see Jax's health bar evaporate. Instead of crushing Jax's helmet, the flat of the clubhead struck the angled rock Kage had formed.
Physics, even virtual physics, was a system with rules.
The point of impact was altered. The club crushed the small rock but deflected slightly. With a scream of tortured metal, the blow glanced off Jax's oversized shoulder pauldron instead of his head.
[-185 HP]
The hit was still brutal. Jax was sent tumbling across the cavern floor, his health bar plummeting into the critical red zone. He was brutalized, but he was alive.
The party froze for a half-second of dumbfounded disbelief.
They had just witnessed a Poet, a non-combat class, parry a boss's ultimate attack.
With a piece of the floor.
After a moment of stunned silence, Zara stared at the crushed rock, her mind reeling. "You… shaped the ground. While it was attacking." Her voice carried genuine awe. "That's not what Artisan classes do."
Finn lowered his bow, eyes wide. "You turned the floor into a shield. Wow."
Zara shook her head slowly, all traces of her earlier arrogance gone. "Okay. I don't care what I thought I knew about this game. From now on, we listen to the Poet."
Kage watched them, his face unreadable. The air in the cavern had changed. It was no longer the simple friction of strangers but the complex gravity of a new power dynamic, one he now controlled. Jax's hatred was a given, the predictable byproduct of a shattered ego. Lily's admiration was a buffer, a useful support.
But Zara's look… that was the real prize. The silent, grudging respect of an analyst acknowledging superior data.
Lily, having snapped out of her shock, sent a desperate heal at Jax, bringing him back from the brink of death. He staggered to his feet, silent. His face was a thunderous mask of humiliation, fury, and a new, terrifying sliver of fear. He had been saved by the player he despised, in a way he couldn't comprehend.
Kage barely registered it. He had already turned his attention back to the Taskmaster. Its ultimate was on cooldown. The boss was vulnerable. The objective was unchanged.
Let Jax hate him. It was an irrelevant variable.