I suppose I should've known this was going to happen, he mused as the magic circle turned against him. It was sapping at his energy quickly enough that if he stalled, he'd be in serious trouble. Very serious trouble.
The Harvest Cleric up there was beyond his reach - the Cripple status condition meant he couldn't jump, and the javelin was probably not long enough for him to spear the man and drag him down... That, and the thought of doing something like that made him feel somewhat like scum. But if he had to do it, he would.
"This is unfortunate," he murmured. What was actually bothersome was that he could feel this affecting him in real life. It set his teeth on edge. He had to get out of this situation. He had to get Yemon out of this situation, as well. Certainly, his fiance appeared to have an extra layer of defense, literally, judging by how the shadowy fabric was hugging him... but how long would that help him, exactly?
The fact that he briefly entertained the idea of taking the easy way out and stabbing Ornery made him feel even worse than the thought of dragging someone else into the circle did.
Nao really was scum.
My indecisiveness can be the end of me for all I care, but I'm not having Yemon suffer for it, he decided, glancing upwards.
"... Should have made this circle a little better, I suppose," Noblesse stated, raising the Divine Javelin once more. For the thing to change targets this readily, he supposed whoever he was hadn't imagined anyone besides this Shadow would ever end up stepping inside of it. Would it really have killed him to make something with a specific target? (Maybe yes, for all he knew. He didn't know a whole lot about ritual magic.)
He couldn't jump. But other methods of locomoting vertically were not closed off to him, slow as they may be.
There was just a small space that was just outside of the circle that he could potentially use to his advantage. The spires.
His breath was getting seriously short, but he still stabbed the javelin into one of the spires, using it to drag himself up towards the top of it and out of the circle. Mountain climbing wasn't something he'd practiced a lot, but he'd done weirder things out of necessity, and this was still within a video game, despite everything. Noblesse took in a deep breath and forcefully hauled himself on top of the spire, and back to the edge where he'd previously stood. And from there...
"Again, I thank you for your service. My deepest apologies."
Had any other Harvest Cleric been close enough to the edge, this could possibly have been avoided. As it was, Noblesse used the Divine Javelin for something that was very much not divine: he slammed it into the back of the Cleric's knees, hoping to make him stumble off the edge and into the magic circle down below. He had to remind himself that this was not a real person. Even if this was the origin of someone who had come to experience his own thoughts and feelings, this person was only as real as he'd let him be.
Unfortunately, he was pretty good at immersing himself.
He was such a scumbag. Hopefully he was living up to his given role.