Zarek didn't make a move, just standing there and watching Zade slowly lose control of himself. But just as the man was about to lose it, his eyes suddenly snapped back to normal, and then there was a slight light of fear in them.
He hurried to take a step forward, standing under the overhead ledge that protected the doorway from immediate rainfall.
Taking deep breaths, he slowly steadied himself.
"That… that was very different… from…"
"The first time?" Zarek chuckled. "You're only accounting for the rain itself, but not what else you might have done today. When the rain first fell on day one, you had never come into contact with this energy before. However, you still have lingering droplets within you right now.
"It would be suicide to rush out without protection. Like I said, you'd die."
"Then what about you?"
Zarek grinned. "Don't worry about me. If anything happens to my girl while I'm gone, I'll wipe everything here out. You'd be lucky to die at the hands of those zombies."
With those words, Zarek stepped out into the rain as it grew heavier. Pulling out a vial, he tilted his head back and swallowed the Godsfall Reversal Elixir whole.
Plumes of crimson solar flares began to come off of his body as he unsheathed his weapons.
To Zade, he probably looked as though he had just taken a stat-boosting Elixir with how much of a surge came from him moments later, but only he knew the truth.
"Good luck. Don't die."
Zarek took a step and leapt over the dumpsters, landing lightly on an elevated wall. Then, he leapt over that, vanishing from sight.
Zade took deep breaths, his heart still filled with fear. But this time, it wasn't from how close he was to becoming a Turned, but instead… there was something particularly cold about Zarek's words just now.
He had spoken the threat out with a grin on his face, and yet it felt like the entire world had twisted around him.
With shaking hands, he raised his walkie-talkie, but when he tried to use it, he realized it wasn't working. Staring up at the rain falling around him, he slowly calmed down.
It was going to be a long night.
**
Zarek moved swiftly, the rain falling heavier and heavier around him.
The Crimson Rain.
It was the apocalypse's way of holding up a big middle finger to everything you had accomplished.
Did you just get used to the strength of the Turned around you? That was nice. What if all of them suddenly became three times more powerful? What if their evolutions suddenly accelerated while you could only watch from a distance and hope they didn't target you? What if the number of Godsfall Tears suddenly increased exponentially, faster than you could even think to close them?
It wouldn't be long from now before people realized the real danger of Godsfall Tears. Closing them wasn't just a matter of ensuring Turned weren't attracted to them, but also a method of stopping Godsfall Breaks.
Enormous cities like this one would suffer the most. There would be too many powerful Turned to handle, too many Godsfall Tears to manage, and soon too many Godsfall Breaks to survive.
The vast majority of survivors would be wiped out, and it wouldn't be until many years of warring that things stabilized again.
And all of that started tonight.
"Greedy," Zarek said calmly.
His machete flashed just as a Turned leapt out from an alley. It must have been one of the few that still lingered within GFI's protected boundary, or maybe it was an idiot that didn't follow the warnings and just mutated.
Either way, it lost its head instantly.
Zarek's speed only picked up, his body greedily swallowing up more and more Godsfall. He was quickly becoming saturated, but every time he reached his limit, he used [Limit Break].
The increments were slow but steady. He didn't even flinch as the feeling of bloating and calming came in waves.
'One night… the aim is D Class. But also…'
Zarek appeared by the bridge again. The brothers had smartly decided to move their defenses back. Having the bridge was nice, but the range they would need to defend to keep it was too far.
Right now, the walls were still up, but there were already Turned on the other side slamming against the first, trying to get closer to the great concentration of humans they could smell.
Zarek only glanced at this for a moment before he leapt over the first wall, slashing down at the ones that had already made it through.
He didn't pause—lunging, leaping, killing—a continuous stream of unconscious thoughts carrying him forward. His body moved on sharp instinct and deathly intent alone, his breathing so eerily stable one would have thought him to have lost his mind.
—
[Godsfall Circulation Method {S Class Godsfall Eclipse Resonance} has shown great progress]
—
>[S Class Godsfall Eclipse Resonance: E]
>[S Class Godsfall Eclipse Resonance: E+]
—
[Strength has shown great progress]
—
>[Strength: E-]
>[Strength: E]
—
Zarek exhaled a heated breath as he leapt over the last walls, his fist becoming his pivot as he swung down, landing in the midst of a growing crowd of Turned.
—
[Endurance has shown great progress]
—
>[Endurance: E-]
>[Endurance: E]
—
Zarek didn't move forward. Standing in front of the wall of Turned, he stood his ground.
He hadn't come out here to find anything in particular—he came here to train, to kill, to soothe that desire for carnage buried deep within his soul.
—
[Dexterity has shown great progress]
—
>[Dexterity: E-]
>[Dexterity: E]
—
Every breakthrough was like a tonic to his veins, one heated, steaming breath after another coming from his lips and streaming up the corners of his mouth as though he was a revving engine.
—
[Strength has shown great progress]
—
>[Strength: E]
>[Strength: E+]
—
Veins popped along Zarek's forearms, his body bulging as his Circulation Method struggled to keep up. He ballooned, his movements becoming slower and less agile.
He suffered a cut to the shoulder as he shifted to the side, another Turned lunging at him from the other side with its maw wide open and its jaw unhinged.
Zarek didn't have time to shift his grip on his machete to attack it, but his experience shone through. He flexed his wrist, using the small shield on the back of his left hand to punch the rest of its jaw out.
The machete in his other hand followed up, cutting its head off.
PUCHI.
Zarek suffered another cut across his back. By now, his belly was ballooning, and his steps were becoming even slower. But the deep, burning fire in his eyes didn't fade in the slightest.
They had actually killed her. They used her for their own goals, to meet their own ends, as though she was just some sort of cattle to be reared. They took what they needed from her, and then they discarded her—killing her not because she was no longer useful, but for no other reason than to infuriate him and lure him to his own death.
Those thoughts pulsed in Zarek's mind again and again as the Godsfall concentration in his body increased. Even a Godsfall Reversal Elixir had its limits.
Zarek's eyes began to turn red.