Incubus Living In A World Of Superpower Users - Chapter 437

Capítulo 437: Finally, A Group Project I Don’t Hate 3

A clean thrust at the gap above the clavicle plate, then a twist. The gorilla’s arm dipped. She took its balance with a sweep of her heel. It fell the way trees fall when a notch has already been made in the right place.

The biggest of them lumbered into the middle and slapped both hands down. Dust jumped in a ring.

The floor didn’t fail. It wasn’t trying to. Shock meant to rattle lungs and shake knees. Ethan absorbed it with bent joints, giving the force a place to go that wasn’t his head.

Everly swore softly for the pleasure of it, then snapped her chin at the big one.

“That one’s mine,” she said.

“Yours with help,” Ethan said. “Not a solo.”

“Fine,” she said, but it came with a grin, and she moved like she meant it.

He layered three thin illusions along the big one’s left to make that side feel narrow and clumsy.

It shifted right to pass through space that looked safer. Evelyn met the shift with two quick cuts at the shoulder seam, not deep, just enough to remind a limb that yes, it is attached by more than pride.

Everly slid under the right hook that followed, using the momentum of its miss to drive her elbow into the joint Ethan’s veils had made clumsy.

She barked a laugh when something gave. The gorilla tried to backhand her with its left. She ducked again and sprang.

Her heel slammed into the plate above its sternum with the nasty, sensible angle a patient teacher would have praised for being ugly and correct. It staggered.

Ethan let every illusion vanish all at once, so the world snapped to the truth. The sudden clarity stole its balance.

Evelyn finished the chapter she had been reading. The plate broke. The big one slumped to both fists, then to one knee.

Everly went high and drove her blade down where protection overlapped and left a narrow pocket. It found what it needed to find.

The beast exhaled the fight it had left. Dust hung in the air like a held breath and then settled.

A smaller gorilla tried to circle wide for a late hero’s swing. Ethan met it with a simple image of a cliff edge where there was none.

It checked for a step that didn’t exist and found air with its foot. The half-stumble was all Everly needed to run it onto Evelyn’s waiting point. It was not graceful, but clean.

Silence pooled in the bowl. The last gorilla that had clung to the cliff earlier decided it had learned what it needed.

It thumped its chest once like a stamp on a form and dropped from the ledge to land beyond the fight, then knuckled away in long, ground-eating strides as if the exam had called it home. They let it go. They had earned the right not to chase.

Breathing filled the space where fists had been. Everly bent at the waist with her hands on her thighs and laughed between inhales—not loud, not showing off, just the body’s laugh that says it has to do what it likes and still be here.

Evelyn stood almost straight, one hand pressed to her ribs for a count, then let it fall. She wiped her blade on a square of her sash and sheathed it clean.

Ethan rolled his shoulder once. The joint reminded him it was a person too and wanted a say. He thanked it by tightening the wrap Everly had tied for him yesterday.

He scanned the edges and the shelves, then the floor for anything the fight had shaken loose.

The exam had left markers as it always did. In the ridge’s crack sat a shard that matched the pedestal grooves.

This one was dark with flecks, and it was not clean. He nodded. Everly took it and handed it to Evelyn without asking why.

That was the rhythm they had learned—Everly picked up, Evelyn stowed, Ethan kept count.

Everly straightened and blew hair off her forehead. “I admit. That was excellent,” she said, then jabbed a finger at Ethan’s chest.

“But if you yank my pack again, I reserve the right to steal your pillow for a week.”

“You act like you don’t already,” he said.

“She does,” Evelyn said, and almost smiled. “But she’ll steal it noisily.”

Everly bumped her shoulder into his from habit. He let himself bump back. He watched their faces a second longer than he needed to and let the sight sit in his chest where it belongs.

“Check water,” he said. They did, unasked. “Count,” he added. They both named their small aches and the places they didn’t trust in the next sprint.

He named his shoulder and got twin looks that said they had noticed long before he said it.

“Route,” Evelyn said, already moving her hand to sketch. “Up-shelf, then cut along the cliff two levels higher.

We avoid bowls like this for an hour. They make us spend more than we earn.”

“Agreed,” Ethan said.

“Also agreed,” Everly said. “And I take the point for the first stretch because my legs want to. I will not sprint. I will saunter at a responsible pace that looks like a sprint to small rocks.”

Ethan created an illusion of shade where none existed, so the path she chose felt cooler. She squinted at him like she knew what he was doing and didn’t mind.

Evelyn palmed a small charm she had made by hand and wrapped on a cord; she kept it for luck she had earned rather than luck she bought. She tucked it away again. They began to move.

“Finally,” Everly said as they reached the ledge and started the climb, not out of breath but not pretending to be fresh either. “A group project I do not hate.”

“Don’t say that too loud,” Ethan said. “The sim likes to make statements at work.”

“It already does,” Evelyn said. “That’s the point.”

They climbed a little and crossed to a shelf, which placed them level with a broken arch that had been a gate long ago.

The open forest spread below like a simple map, with its fight written into it as scuffed lines and a few plate shards catching the light like secret coins.

Wind ran a hand over the pines and brought a slice of cold from the higher cliff. He tasted it and felt a small relief run along his skin.

Everly glanced sideways at him as they moved under the arch and out along a narrow run of stone.

“You know,” she said easily, “you didn’t talk to your pet voice at all this round. I’m proud of you.”

“It talked enough earlier,” he said.

Evelyn’s eyebrow tilted. “Did it buy glitter?”

“Mirror thread,” he said.

Everly made a pleased sound. “Spending coins like a grown man,” she said. “We’ll throw you a party later with water and one cookie.”

“One,” Evelyn said. “We are not animals.”

They crossed the shelf. The exam watched their stride and shifted small things in response; he could feel it now, the way a room responds when you move furniture and it decides whether it approves.

The ground tested them with a game of loose stone here, a soft patch there, a view that begged for a sprint, and punished it with a crack if you started to run.

They did not run. They made good time without lying to themselves about what the floor wanted.

He kept illusions thin and honest, not to trick the exam but to ask the landscape to give them seconds when seconds mattered.

Evelyn set marks; a careful pair behind them would understand without needing a legend. Everly hummed a scrap of song under her breath that kept their feet in step without turning into noise.

It was not perfect. Twice, they stepped where they shouldn’t. Once, Ethan misread a shadow and put them into a gap that took twenty extra heartbeats to exit.

Once, Everly chased half a step too far and had to throw herself into a roll that made her swear at the sky while she grinned.

Each time, they corrected without drama. Each small mistake fed the rhythm rather than breaking it.

The ridge became a low set of stairs, with no pride, only function. They took them without ceremony.

At the top, the forest opened into a wide terrace with waist-high walls and a view that would have stolen time if they let it.

They did not let it. They scanned first, then let themselves breathe.

“Pack check,” Ethan said. They checked. “Water.” They drank. “Count,” he said again, and they did, quieter now, giving small truths without asking for sympathy.

He gave his. It felt good to be simple about it.

Below them, other pairs moved, small figures with bright flags of motion in the green. At the far end of the terrace, a pedestal stood with four grooves like the one in the swamp, waiting.

Without talking, they walked to it. Evelyn set their new shard. It pulsed once and then twice and settled. A bell, faint as a drop on metal, sounded far off.

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