"Elric!"
Bari’s voice came from across the camp, and even before I turned my head, I could hear the panic and anger in his voice.
I had died multiple times now, and even the prospect of death at the hands of Rex did not scare me; I was only curious, a bit frightened at the relation between the demons and the members of our camp.
However, hearing the cry of concern from Bari gave everything a sort of weight that was slowly erased in my heart as time passed.
I turned my head and saw him running, his staff in his hand, his Acolyte robes flapping at the knees as he ran, and behind him, Dara was already casting.
Her eyes were also filled with anger, her staff was pointed at Rex, and her hands were working through the configurations Threadwork required.
The lattice she was building was a binding lattice, the kind I had seen her use on the demon in the previous loop, where she had lived long enough to fight back.
She was casting from forty meters away, but I knew that her range was usually twenty, yet her fear and rage seemed to have made her disregard this limitation, and a spectacularly complex lattice was being built in front of her.
"Stay back!" I shouted, and I did not know whether the words were for Bari or Dara or both, and I did not know whether they would listen; most likely, they would not... I know this because I would do the same for them.
Rex turned to face the new threat, and his face had not regained its expression, even when he was facing two pissed-off Acolytes coming for him.
I don’t know why this blankness scared me. Sure, Rex had just displayed power that would wipe all three of us without him breaking much of a sweat, but I was not comfortable with how everything in his gaze seemed so meaningless.
He raised his staff toward Bari, and that was when I left my head and began to act.
The bastard could hurt me, but not them.
I moved, and I do not remember choosing to move, but the moment the cold spot left my chest as Rex’s soul lock shifted, I was already raising my staff, and I remember the cast leaving my staff before I had finished forming the intention to cast it.
It was the sort of seamless spell casting that most budding Acolytes would kill to have because it meant spell craft was becoming second nature to you, almost like breathing.
What emerged from my staff was Arc Lightning, without Surge, directed at a single target.
The arc found Rex’s staff, not Rex.
It was the choice that surprised me as I made it. Some part of me, Marksman, perhaps, or the part of my training that the loop had not reached, had decided that hitting Rex directly would not stop the cast he was building, and disrupting his channel through his staff would.
But thinking back on this situation, I realized that part of me remembered that Bari had just slammed a heavy surge into Rex from behind, and even without any visible effort, he had absorbed that attack like it was nothing.
The arc lightning struck the wood near the head of his staff, the discharge ran along the wood toward his hand, and Rex broke the channel before the lightning reached his palm because even with his blank face, Rex was not stupid.
Trying to cast a spell with a foreign energy running across the length of your staff was one of the quickest ways to lose a hand or the top half of your body.
The cast he had been building dispersed as the dark-light energy he had drawn vented through the head of his staff in a brief flare that lit his face from below, and for a fraction of a second, his face was no longer blank.
He turned his eyes towards me, and they were filled with anger, but this anger was foreign to me. I had seen Rex angry, but the eyes looking at me were strange. One thing that did not change was the sheer condescension inside them.
"I am still taller than you... prick."
I did not know why I said that; it was stupid, but oh so satisfying to see the confusion in those eyes before it turned to anger once more.
He looked at me for a moment, and then his expression returned to blankness, and he said one word.
"Interesting."
The voice was not Rex’s voice. I mean, it sounded like him, but it had a different pitch and a different cadence, and it carried in the cold air with an acoustic that did not match Rex’s lung capacity.
I heard Bari skid to a stop ten meters behind me because Bari had heard it too, and even he recognized how wrong this voice sounded.
At that moment, Dara’s spell arrived, a leash of Threadwork that was meant to bind Rex.
It was an impressive work, and I would struggle for several seconds if I were to replicate it, but Rex simply backhanded the spell without even looking at it, and he turned around and calmly walked towards his tent.
I thought that even now, with all the commotion he had caused, Rex was just going to walk into his tent, but he walked past it, and his destination appeared to be the eastern face of the pyramid.
His staff was at his side, his back was straight, and his pace was unhurried. My eyes widened in anger as I saw him smooth one curl of his hair in place, but I did not move because I could feel several sharp spots of cold all over my body.
This bastard was pretending to walk away with grace, but if I moved, then I don’t know how he was going to do it, but I would be torn apart.
Dara was looking at Rex’s retreating back with an expression I could not read at this distance, and Bari was looking at me and Rex and then back at me, and I could see the question in his face.
I did not want to even imagine what was going on inside the mind of these two at the moment, because a minute ago, everything had been normal, and now... madness.
The whole exchange, from when Rex cast that pillar of flame to slapping aside Dara’s spell, had taken less than thirty seconds.
Commander Rel was one of the first to reach us, and her eyes were primarily focused on Rex, who was walking towards her.
When he reached her position, Rex did not even pause; he walked past her and said, "Kill them, they are aware of the Ascension Ritual."