Blaze's eyes go completely haywire, seeing two columns of water being sent to his right and left. He was expecting Jay to move out of the way or die with himself and Sandra, but what ended up happening was surreal.
Sandra also looks on in dismay, seeing Jay's broken sword cutting into the ground as he finished his heavy swing. Geyser—Tide's strongest move he's shown at this point—was hit directly in a weak spot, splitting it into two large torrents of water instead of one.
Jay was bent down, still keeping his eyes closed as the audience and Tide realized what just happened. He opens his eyes slowly and stares at Tide with a feral gaze. He gets up and stands straight, holding his sword in his two hands, almost like he was expecting another volley of Geyser.
"*WHAT*?! *HE CUT THROUGH TIDE'S ASPECT*?!" Stan announces to the players standing in the bleachers.
Tide stood speechless, gripping his axe with a fury no one could see, but a rage that Jay felt just by being physically near him.
'H-he actually cut through my attack?!' Tide contemplates, 'And I'm all out of AP!'
"Y-you—" Blaze says, speechless.
"You s-stayed?" Sandra asks ahead of Blaze.
Without looking back at them, Jay starts to ease up as he smiles.
"Stupid of me, right?" Jay says, "Even I didn't know I could do that."
Up in the V.I.P section of the Decimation, the Guildmasters were having their own concerns over Jay's move. It seemed so thought out to mistake it as an accident.
"Did he just do what I think he just did?" Crash asks the room.
"Sure looked like it," Helmet says, "He just used Preloading."
Helmet looks impatiently at Jay as the columns of water he sliced into rushed right past him and the other Prospects behind him.
'So you finally figured out what that phrase meant?' Helmet thinks, 'Nice job, kid.'
Down in the bleachers, Jay's friends all cheered for him to keep going, utterly shocked at his sudden performance in this fight. Axel was completely gone at this point, throwing his fists into the air like he was shadow boxing someone.
"*THAT'S RIGHT TIDE*!! *HE'S GONNA MESS YOU UP*!!" Axel shouts.
Ivy had also jumped out of her seat, cheering for him with her entire being.
"*You promised to become a Slayer*! *You better keep that promise*!"
Dillan and Kira both clapped him on as they stood out of their seats.
"Yes!" Kira exclaims.
"GO!!!" Dillan yells.
Jay notices them but can't hear them. He knows they must be going crazy and is proud of himself for a small moment.
Then he focused again, remembering that this fight wasn't over.
"You sure are accurate with that sword!" Tide taunts, "And it's even a broken one as well!"
"I guess!" Jay says, "Practice makes perfect as they say!"
Jay and Tide stare down for a moment as they realize neither of them has the ability to use Aspect. Jay simply doesn't have it at his side, and Tide doesn't have AP to use Aspect moves. It would come down to combat, which was Jay's strong suit. Tide lifts his axe over onto his shoulder as he plants a foot down in front of him. Jay also plants a foot in front of him and one behind him, facing to his left.
They stood facing each other for a couple of moments after taking up their respective stances, resonating an intense rivalry even though they had only just got this fight started.
Jay dashes to Tides position with his half-broken blade, and Tide stomps over to Jay's position with his axe lowered off of his shoulder, bringing it to his side for a low swing.
Jay's eyes flare up as he makes this last push, seemingly gaining some sort of drive from cutting through Geyser earlier. He felt strong enough to actually win this fight, even with a broken blade. Tide, on the other hand, was in a complete rage. A red glint shot out of his armoured helmet at eye level, making Jay's heart drop slightly. He had already committed to this attack, which he would need to execute just like he did before.
'Visualize!' Jay thinks, closing his eyes as he gets close to tide.
The world around him once again changes to the small cubes making up the world around him, and he's senses Tide right next to him.
"*DIE*!!!" Yells, swinging his massive axe towards Jay.
It was a low swing that was probably part of a combo, Jay assumes. He could dodge or attempt to block it. His sword is broken enough as is, so Jay chose option number one. A thin white line traces where the axe would eventually end up, which gives Jay the info he needed to make his next attack.
'Execute!' Jay thinks, opening his eyes.
Jay jumps up as high as possible, bringing his sword back in his right hand for a sweep attack. Tide's large axe misses him by only a couple of inches as he jumps over it. As the massive head of the axe is right below Jay, he plants a single foot on it and jumps over Tide's right shoulder, taking a swing at it as he jumps over.
It was a clean hit and broke through Tide's armour, but Jay doesn't see any HP come out of his attack once again. Jay lands smoothly and quickly turns to his opponent, who brought his axe to its pinnacle of his original swing, then shoving it towards Jay at a downward angle. Jay uses Preloading once more to calculate the exact moment of impact from Tide's next attack and finds it best to back up slightly.
Jay jumps behind himself to distance himself from Tide, who grew angrier at Jay with every attack. The axe lands solidly in front of Jay, which breaks apart the ground on impact. Tide quickly retracts his weapon back towards him as Jay looks on from a distance.
"Hey, Jay! You seem to know your way around a fight!" Tide announces, perching his axe on his right shoulder and taking a neutral stance. Jay returns this by exacting a neutral stance as well.
"Maybe, but why do you point that out?" Jay asks.
Jay runs for Tide once more, closing his eyes to use Preloading before he makes it to him. In this process, Tide studies Jay for a moment before deciding what he would do. Jay's plan was simple because he would perform the same move he did last time.
'Tide will swing, and then I can chop at his shoulder once more!' Jay thinks.
Coming up on Tide, Jay sees a white line emerge directly in front of him, which had the same arc and flow as Tide's last low sweep attack. Jay prepares to jump over the blade once more, with his right foot anticipating to land on the axe like last time. At the right time, Jay jumps upwards to avoid Tide's weapon. He prepares to drive his sword into Tide's shoulder in the same spot.
However, Tide guesses Jay would do this.
Tide sweeps his axe low, and Jay jumps over it, but before he could plant his right foot on the ground or on top of Tide's weapon, Tide lifts the rear portion of the axe in Jay's direction, hitting Jay straight in the face with the butt of the axe during his swing.
The direct hit causes numbness in Jay's face, and the next thing he feels is in his torso region, which he looks down to see Tide's foot planted inside it. Tide kicks Jay extremely hard, causing him to get the wind knocked out of him as well as get sent flying once more.
'I-I thought I used Preloading!' Jay thinks to himself as he tumbles back onto the ground from Tide's kick, dropping his sword in the process.
Jay's vision starts to blur from how much damage he's received thus far in the fight, and looking in the top left corner of his vision shows a scary picture for him. His HP bar was sitting at 12 HP from his maximum amount of 200 HP. Suddenly, textboxes appear in Jay's vision, signifying his almost guaranteed loss.
>WARNING!<
>ENTERING DAMAGE THRESHOLD!<
—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-
Combat in the Nexus is one of the most intuitive parts of the entire game. Players not only get to choose between a variety of weapons and armour sets, but strategies and other common oddities appear once a fight breaks out. There are two main conditions in battles that professionals must learn over and discuss in their strategy.
These are, of course, «Buffs» and «Debuffs».
Buffs come in the form of power or advances for a player, giving them a bonus to their damage output or some other tactical advantage. These are what players want to access during a match, giving them an edge over their opponent.
Some examples of Buffs are Heal aura, double-damage, double-defence, speed, Aspect gain, and extra health.
Debuffs are the opposite. They provide a disadvantage for a player, nullifying the amount of damage they can deal or simply burning them over time. These Debuffs are what causes fights in the Nexus to be so out of the ordinary every time.
Some examples of Debuffs are bleeding, trauma, concussion, frozen, burn, lifesteal, half-damage, half-defence, slowness, and Aspect nullification.
One of the scariest Debuff of them all is the «Damage Threshold».
Helmet has mentioned it before to Jay, and Jay has felt it before, but it felt entirely different for him during this match with Tide.
Once a player enters the Damage Threshold, they start to experience three separate Debuffs. These are blindness, dizziness, and shock. Players enter this threshold when 90% of their HP has been taken from them. This is to simulate someone with blood loss in the real world, in some sort of morbid fashion.
The only way to escape the threshold is to either last through it for a minute and a half or get healed by a friendly player. In Jay's defence, he had only one option to go for.
'Blaze and Sandra can't heal me or help me in that matter, so I'll have to hold out a little longer!' he thinks.
He can barely see, squinting and blinking his eyes rapidly to get a picture of the battlefield. Jay attempts to use Preloading, but the dizziness caused by the Damage Threshold was so immense that he couldn't concentrate. He could barely move as well because of shock, making your body cramp up in your ligaments.
"Have you hit your Threshold yet?" Tide calls out to Jay.
Jay doesn't respond, closing his eyes so he doesn't get a headache or throw up from nausea he has from the dizziness. It had only been fifteen seconds, which meant he had to endure another minute and fifteen seconds of his threshold to escape it. Three symbols underneath his health bar that resembled dizziness, blindness, and shock were all counting down from the 1:30 time limit set on them.
'I can't lose...' Jay thinks.
He hears Tide ready another attack, seemingly towards him, and Jay considers it to be the end of the road for him. He didn't have possession of his own weapon, and he was already losing his vision completely.
'I can't...' Jay's mind wanders.
Jay opens his eyes to face his opponent, who readied his axe above his head with both hands. However, Jay doesn't see him at all.
All Jay sees is the night sky and a thunderstorm up above him.