Priya's excitement was cute. It suppressed some of the darkness threatening to creep up in Zarek's heart and allowed him to focus on his next tasks more clearly.
There was still quite some time before the Godsfall Tear would appear, but between now and then, Zarek felt like he had a lot to consider.
He needed to grow stronger, and his current mastery over this quasi Role wasn't good enough. Not by his standards.
After checking on Priya and pointing out the regions she should visit tomorrow for practice, Zarek found a secluded area and fell into his own thoughts.
'The Angels… are much more patient in this life than they've been usually. It seems that Jiade is also feeling the pressure of his last life.'
The Angels had never been a finesse organization. They were almost brutish in their approach. But that assessment might also not be entirely fair. After all, in Jiade's other three lives, he had to waste a lot of time bringing the various Angel factions together.
For a gang that had been entrenched in the country for at least a hundred years and had embedded itself into so many different facets of life, to say they had no finesse… well, only Zarek would say something like that, given his high standards.
Still, it was very rare for him to find himself reacting rather than being proactive. And in this case, even though he had yet to outright lose to Jiade, he had been caught off guard several times.
First, the Time Fractal and how it had been used to return memories to the Angels, and now this.
The main problem wasn't the destruction of the factory—that he could deal with. The problem was the Turned, and how their sudden burst had been controlled.
Neither Crux nor Belladoll had a Turned-controlling ability like the Violet Enchantress, and if the Violet Enchantress was here… Zarek would certainly sense her.
Choosing to save the Violet Enchantress when he could have killed her had practically marked the Turned with Zarek's "scent." He had changed his mind, shifting her path on the stream of time, and that made her like a moth to a flame for Zarek's senses.
He would know if she were here.
This meant that the person who could control the Turned was almost certainly from the Green Corporation, and that made things more complicated.
'There's no information about this from the past. This means that, in all likelihood, there are only two things going on right now. Either this is a new individual that Belladoll and Crux managed to pick up from the scrap heap—less likely. Or…
'This isn't an obvious Turned-controlling ability. It's more likely a Talent that has a secondary or tertiary effect that can influence Turned, but not outright control them. There are… a few like that…'
Turned were creatures of instinct. Manipulating them—at least the ones without the usual intelligence of Mutants—was quite straightforward.
Regardless, Zarek was at least 80% sure there was such a person in Belladoll and Crux's pockets now. And the silence of Sakks and Dalton was quite… pointed.
Of all the corporations and firms here, Sakks and Dalton was definitely the most dangerous. The strength of Sakks, although Zarek had dispatched him with ease, wasn't a joke.
One shouldn't mistake how easily Zarek killed someone for how dangerous they were… because Zarek was a monster himself.
There was a reason the Sakks half of the firm had been so confident in attacking an entire building on his own. And there was a reason Zarek had been able to wipe out the Pensare Corporation, likewise on his own.
Though, of course, Sakks had been targeting a residential building filled with people who could barely use their Talents, while Zarek had attacked the main Pensare Corporation.
This was all to put into perspective that Zarek… was well and truly facing enemies from all sides right now, and as in command as he seemed, the slightest slip-up could very well cost him everything.
And none of the problems he was considering right now even included the two that were likely the greatest threat.
Belladoll and Crux were on a level all their own. Because of their Talents, even if Zarek wasn't being dragged down by his new Class right now, he had absolutely no confidence in killing them—and that was especially true if they worked together.
Even so, the solution to all of this was simple to him.
Get stronger.
In an ideal world, he could use Harmonic Recall on himself like he'd envisioned, pulsing it out in a continuous stream and using it to predict what shift to his Growth Potential would happen next.
But obviously, his Intelligence stat wasn't high enough to do that, and his mastery over Atom Link was too low to make up for it.
Marx was able to apply it so quickly because he was so talented in Godsfall manipulation and comprehension. But for someone like Zarek, unless his Talents were fused, applying it like that took too much effort.
For now, the dream of using Temp Duplicate and Harmonic Recall on organic material was still just that… a dream.
Today, however, in messing with him, Belladoll and Crux had given him another idea.
Rigid Pulse… Bending Pulse…
One that made muscles as solid as steel, and another that made limbs as flexible as whips. They were limited Talents without much importance in the grand scheme—except for when they were used as cleverly as a certain A-Class from Zarek's past… or would it be his future?
When used in just the right ways, they could store potential, gathering up one's power. If Zarek could do that, he would be able to increase the sample size of his Growth Potential for any one given attack.
If he could base his combat style on those averages rather than the acute changes to his body, he would be able to mitigate much of the trouble.
The question was… how?
—
[You have received: {D Class Godsfall Intent Elixir}]