No More

Chapter 107: Causation

Jess turned towards a stunned Raven. "Okay..." She nodded. "Now I'm pissed."

"You know," Jess took slow steps towards Raven. "I've dealt with many clerics and paladins who tried their best to kill me."

Raven quickly sliced at Jess, but she ducked under the blade before kicking Raven so hard she was knocked back. "But you?" Jess sneered, walking towards a tense Raven, who doubled over from the kick. "You have got to be the most saddest one I've encountered; no wonder Slab is so disappointed with you."

"Shut it!" Raven screamed before lunging forward. "I'll cut you down before I get him next!"

"I mean, think about it." Jess taunted, ducking and weaving around Raven as she swings her lonsdaleite scythe. "He gives you a name, educates you, and how do you repay him? You act like he doesn't exist!"

"Then I will prey for Notch to give me strength when I face him!" Raven swung her scythe from the left, aiming to decapitate Jess, only to stop and sharply turn the opposite direction to attack from the right. Jess slapped the underside of the incoming blade, forcing it to go up, and using [Transmutation].

The exact spot where Jess touched, the blade crumbled into dust. It blew away with the cold wind, but ultimately getting sucked up into the repairing hole in the sky where Veritas was.

Jess scoffed as the stunned Raven, snapping her out of it as she only held a staff now that the blade is gone. "Prayer..." As if that word left a bad taste in Jess' mouth. "Another word for ignorance."

Raven glared at Jess. "Prayer is a weapon of the divine." Raven twirled her staff before charging at Jess. "It's all I need!"

"It's what you had, is what you need right now," Jess was referring to Raven's obsidian daggers as ducked under Raven's furious attacks as she used both ends of the weapon. "Your skill with the blades, you didn't learn that so you could fight off mobs." Jess accused before ducking under Raven's swing, getting close enough to grab her eboy hair and bring it down to her raised knee before shoving her back. "Any idiot can swing a stick around and it would be enough to defend themselves, but you learned so you can hurt people!"

Raven wiped the blood leaking from her broken nose. "I learned to defend myself!" Raven shouted, grabbing one end of the staff before swinging it at Jess. Her golden eyes widen in shock as her strike was sidestepped by Jess before she grabbed the other end.

Raven tugged and pulled, but Jess didn't let go. "Face it, Raven!" Jess shouted before using [Transmutation] to thin out her staff, and force the mass to pierce out from Raven's end. The girl let out a scream a numerous needles kept her hands gripped to the weapon as blood splatted everywhere. "You going around, preaching and accusing, is just your way to cope for all the things that happened to you!"

Jess pulled her forward before kicked Raven in the face, causing her to fall onto her back. Raven felt the needles rip through her hands, every fibrous tissue and bone in her fingers was reduced to sludge as her hands became useless.

"I... I don't need to be lectured," Raven struggled to get onto her feet as Jess willed Raven's spilt blood to gather above her. Raven's face is bruised and bleeding while she stared at Jess. "My religious, rational beliefs are what makes me for who I am."

"If religious people were rational, there wouldn't be any religious people." Jess quoted Ivor from one of his teachings, and the raw wisdom contained as if he experience enough for several lifetimes. "Any idiot who cannot acknowledge that religion can be used as justification to harm others, are either stubborn to admit it, or are part of those who do so." Jess compressed the blood she gathered into a sphere. "And you, Raven, are part of the latter."