Despair.
It was a familiar emotion for many, and one that should have been only natural to feel at this moment.
But there was a deathly stillness in the heart of Zarek's gaze.
From the start, he hadn't looked for the boy-man once; he didn't even spare a stray thought to revenge, to anger, even to what he might do beyond the second he was still alive to breathe right this moment.
His thoughts were focused on only one thing.
Now that the situation was like this, how was he going to win?
Even as his leg was cut out from underneath him, and one of his arms went flying, taking the tattoos that had been on it with it, the one singular thought that drove him was this alone.
A calmness in the face of death, the echoes of a promise he had made in his last conversation flashing in a distant memory, and yet even it was unceremoniously ignored by Zarek.
Right now, for the sake of Priya, he was even willing to ignore her, even to erase her from his memory as though she didn't exist at all, as though her very memory was worthless to him right now.
And that was because it was.
Zarek's eyes met that of the A Class Eclipse Threat. He, too, had never seen an Eclipse Class Threat, but when he did…
He found nothing special.
Just a little more powerful, a little more imposing, a little more…
Omnipresent.
Now that was an odd word to choose for something that wasn't special. Maybe even Zarek knew that his ego was talking far more than the reality.
This A Class Eclipse Threat was probably stronger than anything Zarek had ever fought on Earth. It could probably crush the S Classes he had once risked his life against.
This was a powerhouse even he at his very peak stood no chance against. How amusing.
And yet…
He grinned.
It was his default state. His mind was turned off to anything but survival.
This smile? It was all his subconscious.
It looked almost demonic, the blaze of amber in his irises looking like the depths of a fiery hell.
The boy-man couldn't look up to see this at all. Maybe if he had, maybe if he could witness what happened next, he would have realized ahead of time just what sort of mistakes he made.
The black knight slowly raised up its jagged blade. It was methodical, almost slow for the sake of playing with its food rather than for any tangible reason.
But Zarek's mind, focused on gaining any advantage he could, knew the real reason. This Hub truly couldn't produce a perfect Eclipse Threat. It had limited energy, and the Threat formed wasn't able to use all of its strength with ease.
It also felt like the world itself was rejecting the Eclipse Class Threat, as though the world wasn't a fan of being forced to share space with the laws of an outsider either.
None of these things were enough to reverse the situation. Zarek was still nothing more than an ant before it, and the boy-man was still struck with so much fear that he didn't dare to even raise his head.
But to Zarek…
This was enough.
The instant the black knight's blade reached its peak, ready to descend and split Zarek in two, time seemed to slow. Not in reality, but instead to Zarek's perception.
Just the unsheathing of the blade had lost him an arm and leg. If it descended toward him with such menace, he would be a dead man before the blade even got close to him.
It was that brief instant that Zarek moved.
Or, rather, his Godsfall did.
The boy-man couldn't even muster up the courage to look up. He lost control of his Godsfall so severely he literally crash-landed from the skies above.
And yet, Zarek moved his own with a push of his intent much the same as he always did.
No one was going to force him to his knees and get away with it so easily.
A hidden tattoo on Zarek's chest bloomed. A large bubble suddenly appeared around Zarek at the same instant a line of Lurker's Godsfall shot out, attaching to the A Class Threat.
The black knight didn't even try to dodge, and there was no reason it had to. The Godsfall carried no threat. And even if it did…
So what?
Its arrogance.
That was the last piece.
The arrogance of a creature untouchable even by the world it stood in.
If the boy-man had been paying attention, he would have recognized the bubble that suddenly appeared around Zarek. It was the true reason he had tossed the tent over to Zarek back then. What he was hoping was that Zarek could duplicate the Dimensional Sphere, but Zarek had pretended not to understand at all. However, he had proven himself useful in other ways.
What the boy-man didn't know was that back then, Zarek had taken advantage of the situation to use Harmonic Recall not just on the tent, but on the orb that stored it.
In practice, the Dimensional Sphere only had two abilities—two very useful abilities.
The first was to shrink things. The second was to store them.
However, in practice, it could only do such things for inorganic objects. Doing so with organic matter was asking for death, and yet Zarek had just triggered one that surrounded him.
At least that was what it seemed like until it suddenly shot out, splitting into two pieces that rushed forward.
Zarek's Lurker's Godsfall crumbled on the black knight's body, hardly able to sustain itself for very long before it collapsed. But it had served its purpose.
With it as an extension, Zarek was able to cast Atom Link one more time.
And with that, everything was set.
"There's no one in this world capable of keeping me from her."
Zarek spared his first thought for anything other than victory. And that was because it was already his.
The two bubbles appeared over the Eclipse Threat's body.
Chi.
Suddenly, the aura vanished and the body of the black knight crumbled right before Zarek's eyes.
At that moment, a single finger of the black knight had appeared outside the barrier of the Challenge Hub.