The masked man did not even feel the chills of the flames spreading through his legs. He just knew that fire was dangerous, and got caught up in the fear that fire naturally held over men, and began panicking. His rapidly fluctuating emotions did not serve to aid him in resolving his situation, and he even forgot to throw darts towards Nero, granting him the brief respite he needed.
Nero had not spotted Henry, but he threw a couple of snowflakes in that direction even as he ran. The flames held no threat against him, and though he did not intend to attack Henry that way. He just wanted them to spread so that Henry's path would be blocked.
He ran past a couple of trees, checking to find Henry, but the scout had hidden himself well. There was a small chance he had managed to run away-
An invisible wire, tied near the ground, caught in one of his feet as he ran, nearly tripping Nero. It was so well placed that even he hadn't spotted it, but the wire broke, only causing Nero to stumble and not fall. But that did not make him feel better. He dove to the side, but he fell just short as something cut through his side, scraping one of his ribs.
It was rare for Nero to make mistakes, but it seemed he had underestimated the scout, who had prepared traps in the area. Darts, bolts, arrows and rocks shot at him from various angles, even as patches of ground gave way to reveal small holes.
The holes weren't even large enough to fit half his foot inside, but they were laced with spikes, or covered in some kind of slippers liquid, making it hard for Nero to keep his footing.
The situation suddenly shifted, and Nero went from hunting Henry to being hunted. The terrain became an obstacle.
Yet even as Nero bled out, he did not lose his calm. The effects of his flame on his own body were minimal, but he still used it on his cuts to stop the bleeding, while his mastery with the spear allowed him to survive the tide of traps.
It was an intense minute, but the flaw of traps was revealed when Nero survived all of them, and remained relatively unharmed. He had managed to stop his bleeding, though he hoped that none of them were poisoned because he could not search for an antidote card in the middle of a fight.
In that one minute where Nero was fighting for his life, the flames from his snowflakes had also spread, nearly covering the area, until eventually Henry was forced to reveal himself.
Or, it was more accurate to say, that a card he was using to keep himself invisible suddenly lost effect when his flames finally touched him.
"Dammit!" he cursed as Nero locked eyes with him the moment he was revealed, and shot an Air pullet towards Nero, but that move was much too predictable. Air bullet was a much more concentrated form of air push, but it had the same drawback as Air push which is that the wind it was made up of was easily dispersed.
Nero responded with a timely Air push, and as the two spells counteracted each other, Nero and Henry also finally clashed. Henry had a small, circular shield that he had never revealed before, as well as a short sword. They could not help him.
A single surge of strength was all it took to knock the shield out of his hand, and leave his arm numb. He tried to retaliate with his sword, but it did not even require the overwhelming skill Nero had to counter that.
The range of the spear was greater, and so before Henry could even close in, Nero stabbed him, once in the stomach and once in the heart.
"I told you I'd kill you if you got in my way," Nero said, his indifferent eyes taking on a shade of anger for just a moment. But he quickly returned to his mentally neutral state.
This state of maintaining absolute calm, or at least as much as he could muster, was also something his parents had taught both him and Patrick. When they were growing up, stuff like this was treated as the basic common sense all children needed to be taught to survive in this world.
It was only much, much later that Nero learned that was not actually so.
Without dwelling on random things, Nero immediately turned back once he ensured Henry was dead, fully prepared to face an Initiate who had time to break free from the flames. But he returned to a sight that shocked him!
His flames had gone out, as was expected, but the masked man, with more than half his body covered in frost and shards of ice, was attacking some frozen trees while screaming with a voice full of barbaric rage!
Nero got chills, not at the unrestrained might of an Initiate, but at the effectiveness of Wendy's venom. The man had completely lost his mind! Of course, part of that was due to Nero's first strike cutting through his neck. The venom went directly to his brain, which was one of its main targets, but still.
It was as if the man had completely forgotten about Nero, and instead raging against the remains of the fire he had just extinguished. Nero took advantage of his distracted state, not by coming closer, but by hiding behind a tree and throwing more flaming snowflakes at the man.
For all his confidence, Nero did not want to face a rampaging maniac who had lost his mind. All the skill in the world would not save him against the irrational actions of an overpowered Initiate on the verge of death.
But the masked man's state was genuinely horrible. He did not even notice the snowflakes as they approached, and so the two of them cut right through his chest, and struck the frozen tree in front of him.
The flames once again spread, this time on the masked man's body as well, but he seemed not to notice as he focused on the flames in front of him. That was due to the dastardly second effect of the venom, which numbed his body so he felt no pain. He had not even realised his body had been cut through.
Nero was prepared for a long, final struggle, but it barely took another minute for the flame covered man to start slowing down. One more minute later, all that was left was a frozen statue of the man who had originally been attacking him.
For a few moments, Nero just stood there, unbelieving. Was it already over? Then he dropped to his knees, panting and breathing heavily. He looked exhausted, and winced as one of his wounds broke open and began bleeding again. The truth was, he really was exhausted.
But at the same time, Nero was not certain if there weren't any other enemies waiting in the shadows. So, he presented an opening. A perfect opportunity to strike when he was weak and distracted. He did not let the sweetness of victory distract him from the dangers of the situation he faced.
But seconds passed and turned into minutes. No one attacked. In fact, even animals did not come and investigate all the noise that they had caused.
Slowly, the distortion around the area disappeared, and Nero once again was able to see his surroundings properly. It was still the dead of night, and the shelter looked completely undisturbed. But just a few metres away from it were the signs of a brutal battlefield, covered in the scars of countless dangerous clashes.
The darts had all disappeared, conjured from a spell as they were, leaving only the holes they pierced in the ground.
Eventually, Nero stood up, and began to pull all the corpses together. He had to loot them- eh, no, he had to investigate their belongings for clues. He also had to preserve them as evidence, for come morning, he would have a lot of explaining to do.
He did not realise that back in base camp, a screen which had been showing his shelter, completely undisturbed through the night so far, suddenly flicked, and revealed the true, devastated state the place had transformed into.
Major Liam, as well as the assigned soldier who were watching the screens both noticed the change at the same time. They looked over, and the first thing they saw was Nero dragging a headless corpse across the forest floor, before heading into the trees before bringing back another one he was carrying over his shoulder.
He left the frozen statue untouched for now, for if he tried to move it, it would shatter. Then he began checking their pockets, armour card slots and card cases.
"Those are recruits," major Liam said, his voice strangely devoid of any emotion.
"I'll send someone over right now to investigate," the soldier stated, but was stopped by Liam.
"No, I'll go check on my own."