The jacket on Jean was immediately replaced by a much more beneficial ghost hostile environment suit that allowed her maximum speed. Returning the two broken psi blades back to her watch and replacing them with two new ones, Jean turned and ran.

In terms of sheer speed, the crows were more than capable of chasing Jean down, but the xel’naga had much more tricks than the birds. Her celestial power fanned back and kept every motion of the animals under control. Everytime the crows would take a dive, Jean would disappear and reappear somewhere where the crows needed to turn back to reach. Everytime the crows would charge with all their momentum, and it would take them a while to recover.

At this pace all Jean needed to do was stay alive for at most a day, and the crows would be reduced to their previous form, but that was not what Jean wanted.

Reappearing right next to a crow, Jean threw something at the yellow eyed beast before disappearing again. The next second an explosion of temporal energy happened, and everything within a several meter radius was severely slowed down. It was a trick Jean developed via protoss technology. It was powered by celestial energy but acted similarly to a minimized time warp from motherships.

The crow’s speed suddenly turned from that of a sniper rifle bullet to that of a turtle. The trap cracked as the supernatural strength of the flyer tried to break free, but it was nonetheless sufficient to delay the crow for a few seconds.

Jean didn’t use the opening to strike the defenseless crow down. She needed all the strength she could get to get by the crow’s skin, and doing that meant going defenseless against the other nine foes. Even a xel’naga couldn’t take the chances. Instead, she just turned and blinked away, leaving the bird gowling slowly.

If the other crows were something more intelligent they would wait for their trapped comrade to join them before continuing their pursuit, but the beasts were programmed to kill Jean. The urge to rip their target to pieces overwhelmed whatever logic the crows had, not that they had much intelligence to start with in the first place. The nine crows charged at Jean, leaving their trapped brother behind.

That was a bad move. As Jean continued doing the exact thing, six more crows were temporarily trapped. There was no way for them to escape from Jean’s filthy combo. Blink. Trick. Blink. All they could do was to try to break out as quickly as possible. Usually they could break out in just a few seconds, but at this caliber a few seconds could mean the difference between life and death.

Since seven of the crows were somewhat delayed and the rest simply ignored their comrades and chased after Jean, now only three crows were right behind their target. The others were a distance away. That was the opportunity Jean needed. In a straight up fight three crows could have a fair fight with Jean, but when did Jean ever fight fair?

With another blink, Jean appeared right on top of one of the crows. Instead of attacking or blinking again, she simply grabbed onto the crow’s beak to prevent it from attacking and sat on the bird. Her weight pushed down on the bird’s seemingly fragile but actual formidable body. Above her, another crow charged down on Jean with all the strength its body held.

It was like a lightening, and it was penetrating everything in its way. Everything.

The crow’s eyes turned bright yellow as it dove. Jean wasn’t looking at it, and it naively thought the element of surprise was on its side. It would be on Jean in half a second.

And then Jean disappeared.

Anyone with some logic could sense it was a trap, but crows weren’t among that category.

Now without a target, the crow tried to stop itself, but the momentum was too strong. All the first crow felt was its sharp beak smashing into something hard before rolling forward with one of its comrades. It tasted blood in its beak, and that blood didn’t belong to a xel’naga.

Below the crow, another crow was critically wounded. Its body was almost ripped into two, and yellow energy was flowing out of its wound like a river. One of the wings was just gone. Growling, both crows fell from the sky. One of them was able to come back up. The other one was not as lucky.

Now there was only one crow after Jean, and Jean had no trouble dealing with it.

The xel’naga blinked in front of the crow, immediately drawing its attention. The dozens of times of being fooled by an immediate teleportation didn’t teach the bird a lesson. The crow simply launched itself at Jean, unaware that the situation was changed. The hunter had become the hunted, and the new hunter was looking at its fresh prey with a weapon in her grip.

Jean swung her right hand out, and a golden blade appeared in her grip. She instantly made the calculation, located where the crow would arrive in, and correctly positioned the weapon. It was done in less than a second, and before the crow knew, it was smashing into a weapon held in place by the full strength of a god.

The crow didn’t stop. It couldn’t stop.

Inertia was a dangerous thing. At the speed the crow was at, the momentum it carried could either save it or destroy it. When it was making a charge, the inertia could make it much faster and much stronger than it already was. However, in this case, the inertia also meant the crow couldn’t stop when it needed to.

Just like the crow that smashed into its fellow brother, this crow smashed into something as well. Only difference was, in this case, it smashed into something much more deadly.

Jean felt her arm being pushed back, but just briefly. Celestial energy acted on her arm and, along with Jean’s enhanced muscle, held the limb and thus the weapon in place. That was when Jean suddenly sensed a smooth feeling as if her weapon went through something.

Beneath her fried blade, two pieces of bird slid down the weapon. Yellow energy left the corpses and formed a cloud in the air. As the energy left, the two fragments melted into dust. The sudden power came with a price. By giving the crows strength enough to kill a god, the yellow energy sucked away whatever life the crows originally had. The only thing keeping them alive was the yellow energy. Even if Jean didn’t kill the crow, it would die eventually when the energy was exhausted. Jean merely sped up the process.

Showing no sign of being satisfied at the victory, Jean ignored the dead crows and held her hand out. The ownerless yellow energy had no problem with joining a new home. The new surge of strength made Jean want to moan, but she had no time to enjoy that. Immediately, she disappeared and reappeared on the ground. There, a one winged crow was struggling on the ground.

It was alive, but just barely. The yellow energy was flowing out of its wound and disappearing into thin air every second. Its days, no, its hours were numbered. Jean turned the hours to milliseconds by snapping its neck.

Just like the first dead crow, this one turned into dust as well. However, Jean keenly noticed the amount of energy she absorbed from this crow was much less than that of the first.

The sound of something piercing through the wind came from above, and Jean ignited her new weapon. The old one was destroyed in the previous fight. Normal psionic blade generators had trouble holding celestial energy.

Ten crows couldn’t stop her. Could eight?