"Mm…" Zarek nodded, looking through Crux more than he was looking at him.
The Fire Mage was still very confused. He felt that Zarek's words were hinting at something enormous, and yet he couldn't grasp it no matter how hard he tried.
It was suffocating, knowing that an opponent you should have in a corner was still looking at you with such derision.
Crux had seen those looks before. The Green Corporation.
They had taken everything from him in every one of the lives he had lived before he was forced to come crawling back. He had seen those looks every step of the way—not just from them, but also from those around him.
People who thought he should give up, people who believed him to be weak, inconsequential—that he had gotten lucky once with his first company, but he had no way of doing it all again.
Just a snotty-nosed brat that had no business being in their world anyway.
But he had proved them wrong.
He wasn't Belladoll. He wasn't some fragile teenage girl that could crumble at the slightest touch. He was a man who had been chewed up and spit out more times than he could count.
If Zarek thought that he could force his mental state to crumble just because of this alone, he was sorely mistaken.
"They say that what makes people fear you the most isn't your intelligence or your strength—it's your unpredictability. No one ever knows what your next move is going to be, and I have to admit… making up a story, or maybe even telling the truth, just to try and get at my mental state is certainly not the tactic I expected you to use.
"But that just goes to prove just how desperate you are. You have nothing left to do here but to die."
The pillars of fire in the surroundings trembled.
Pu. Pu. Pu.
Fireballs, concentrated in swirling spheres of red, gold, and small flecks of white, shot through the air like speeding bullets, appearing before Zarek so fast that he hardly seemed capable of reacting.
Zarek could only raise the thick great sword as though it were a shield, bracing his body behind it and burying himself beneath the weight of the strikes.
But that only dealt with the ones coming in front of him.
What about those that were coming to his back?
This entire space was Crux's domain. They were so focused on giving the man the greatest advantage possible that they didn't even send Belladoll to tag-team.
It was the smart decision. If Belladoll were here, she would have to waste a great deal of energy to defend against the heat as well. But with Crux and Crux alone being here…
He could truly go all out.
BANG!
Zarek suffered a trio of blows to his back, sending him sprawling forward. The fireballs themselves didn't actually carry that much weight to them—Zarek knew what their true purpose was.
The flames began to lick at his Lurker's Godsfall, their heat pulsing into his body and the flames eating into his Godsfall rapidly.
Zarek didn't seem to notice, rolling forward and then leaping up from the ground, closing the distance between himself and Crux so fast it looked as though the latter had only helped him.
But calm was Crux's friend.
Battle plans and scenarios played out in his mind, one stream of experience after another coming together.
He raised a hand, squeezing it shut, then raised another, swiping it across the air.
A strong wall of heat took shape before him, but it didn't obscure his vision. Instead, it felt like the essence of the flames themselves had been condensed without any of the combustion itself.
Zarek raised his great sword, swinging down with all his might, but the swipe of Crux's hand was strong and timely. The timing threw Zarek off, and his blade was still in the air when the wall of heat hit him.
It felt like his entire body was singed through, the wave of heat coming in avalanches as he was sent flying back.
With another roll, Zarek landed on his feet only to find more fireballs coming at him from all directions.
Crux wielded the flames akin to a conductor. He knew better than to lose sight of Zarek, so he never blocked the line of his own gaze. The wall of heat just now was the true essence of Crux's ability.
It could be said that less than controlling flames, Crux's Talent was actually related to controlling the source of energy within flames themselves—the very heat.
Normally, he would need to elevate it to a much higher level for that energy to be tangible enough to form a translucent wall like that, but clearly, the abundance of fire in the region was more than enough for him to do this.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Zarek dodged two of the fireballs, only for the third to clip him in the leg. He felt a spasm down to his muscles and a pulsing in his veins. His blood boiled, and breathing almost felt like he was huffing ash.
The pain was tearing into him in waves, and his vision was growing blurry. The burning reflections of flames in his amber irises were almost their own irony. Normally, fire reflecting in Zarek's eyes meant bad things for his enemies, but right now, it felt like he was being pushed into a narrower and narrower corner.
It was a great trap, indeed. His Godsfall was already starting to run low, his body was figuratively and literally on fire, and Crux wasn't even really risking his life.
He was playing it cautious, always keeping an eye on Zarek, and knowing that he didn't have to rush anything. He had an infinite well of stamina to pull from, while Zarek was already on his last legs.
Once Zarek was dead, everything else would be as easy as taking candy from a baby. They wouldn't even need to kill Priya—they could simply capture her and secure their alliance with the attorney general.
It was all too perfect.