Zarek felt his mind shaking, his body threatening to shut down as he flew, tumbling across the ground. He only remained just barely sharp enough out of instinct, feeling the slight vibrations in the ground and the twitching pull of Godsfall in the air.
He tracked where the final Gladius was coming from even while he tumbled, his feet flying over his head in continuous loops. It was difficult to tell even which way was up and which way was down in this situation, and the scent of death loomed overhead.
It was a situation he had been in more times than he could count. He was more used to it than this puppet of the system could ever imagine.
'There.'
Zarek felt the timing, all the Godsfall in his body shifting at once as he rolled one final time, sliding up to the balls of his feet just as the final Gladius closed the gap.
His head ducked beneath the piercing strike of the lance, the tips of his fingers grazing against the hard stone. One of his arms had been made useless by the previous strike, but he only needed three points to maintain his balance.
BANG!
He rammed his shoulder into the torso of the Hero, using the latter's forward momentum and his own sudden stop to drive through the latter's body.
Pain tore up the side of Zarek's arm, his broken elbow flailing beneath the impact. But that didn't stop him from pile-driving the knight into the ground, pulling every ounce of strength from his entire body into the one, singular strike.
Even as he did so, he could feel the final Gladius raising his shield, ready to smash down its edge onto the back of his neck. If this sort of strike landed, Zarek knew that he would die. There was no skill to disrupt this time, just raw, unbridled power bearing down on his body with the menace of a reaper's scythe.
There didn't seem to be any more trump cards to pull on. His crossbow-shield-wielding arm was now limp and useless, his whip-wielding arm having just pressed him up from the ground and was now wrapping around the waist of his enemy.
His entire body was pushing into the knight with all the strength he had. He simply didn't have the bandwidth remaining to fight back against such an assault.
BANG!
The knight was driven into the ground and its shield smashed down onto the back of Zarek's neck…
Only to meet a mesh of armor being weaved together.
Temp Duplicate.
BANG!
The half-formed armor shattered immediately, along with over half of Zarek's remaining Godsfall. His duplication had been interrupted, but the energy committed to it wouldn't return to him.
Even so, he had already done what needed to be done. Gladius had put so much of his strength into dealing a killing blow to Zarek that he didn't protect his own head from slamming into the ground.
His skull rattled around in his helmet as Zarek suffered the aftereffects of his own shattering armor.
Pain shuddered through both of their bodies, but there was only one of them that remained completely focused.
Zarek had just used Temp Duplicate to reform the seventh Gladius' armor, not the eighth. But now, he pressed against the latter's back with his one good remaining hand, not caring in the slightest as he lost one layer of skin after another on the back of it, strands of blood and flesh following its trail.
They skidded across the ground to a harsh stop, leaving trails of blood—all Zarek's own—along the way.
Harmonic Recall.
Zarek used up another half of his Godsfall, leaving him barely a tick above 11%. He never usually needed to use this much Godsfall on Harmonic Recall, but this time, he didn't hesitate in the slightest as he took a gamble with his life.
A gamble he had made so many times before.
His enemies called him a monster, some of them thinking he was some undefeatable brute with strength that was endless.
But Zarek had always known that his strongest suit wasn't his strength, nor was it his intelligence—it was his guts.
He called death friend, a smile gracing his face every time he looked into its bloody maw.
There was nothing that could faze him, and if there was a gun with one of six bullets loaded, he wouldn't hesitate to fire it five times.
What others didn't understand was that this wasn't because he was reckless with his life, nor was it because he felt that he could rely on his luck until the very end.
No. It was because he had long marked where that one bullet was.
Zarek was a monster who gambled with his life.
But he was a notorious cheater that hated to lose.
In a single instant of time, Zarek saw through the links in the final Gladius' treasures. From the armor, to the shield, to the lance, and then to the domain they resided within.
His hand pressed even more firmly on the latter's back as the knight tried to gather itself once more.
Temp Duplicate.
Zarek's Godsfall poured into the armor, a savage surge of his remaining 11% flooding into the latter's body. He didn't care about Godsfall Depletion at all, his eyes turning red under the strain as his Godsfall Pathways howled in protest.
But he poured it all out nonetheless.
It was all or nothing.
Chi.
The blaze in Zarek's eyes became a wild grin.
He ripped his injured arm out to the side as though it was a whip, violently snapping his elbow back into place and flexing his arm into a swollen mass of barely discernible flesh and bone.
As he continued to pour his Godsfall into the treasures of the final Gladius, he punched down with all the might he had left, the chipped remains of his crossbow-shield puncturing right through the final Gladius' throat—a gush of blood following suit.