The kid hid behind Zarek the moment these people appeared. He seemed nervous, wondering how things would go if he insisted on following Zarek like this. Technically speaking, he was a traitor.
Zarek didn't respond to the young man, instead looking at his flattened nose with a laugh. Unless he snapped it back, it would probably heal like that. The idea of this man spending the rest of his life with a permanent makeover was amusing to be sure.
But if he kept running into Zarek and standing in his way like this, it was likely that he wouldn't have a "rest of life" to live.
The flat-nosed young man almost blew his top when he saw the situation, but it was another young man that stopped him.
"Hold on, Nick."
It seemed that flat-nosed bastard was a Nick. Zarek couldn't help but mull over whether this name suited him or not.
'Hm, I guess I know more chill Nicks than I know asshole Nicks, looks like a miss.'
Another hit to his name theory, it seemed.
"You are Zarek, right?" The young man who stopped flat-nosed Nick spoke up.
Zarek raised an eyebrow, but it probably wasn't too ridiculous for this man to know him. In order to keep his girlfriend happy and her parents off their backs, he had taken advantage of his Rebirths to score quite high on their various exams.
Though he didn't bother to participate in any extracurriculars like he did in his first life, he was still well known nonetheless because of that alone.
In fact, now that Zarek thought about it, he did know this guy too. He was usually ranked behind him and Priya.
'Poor guy. Welp, the girlfriend comes first.'
In Zarek's first life, this guy and Priya traded first place back and forth all the time. But with Zarek's help, Priya obviously performed even more exceptionally than before, and the end result could be imagined.
His name was Victor Swyne if Zarek recalled correctly. He was an extremely intelligent young man, but he was forgettable because he never accomplished anything after the apocalypse.
Seeing this situation now, Zarek could guess why.
He was using his smarts to have everyone collaborate, and he probably even had some decent ideas. But he was still operating on how things worked in the previous world.
People would only work together like this and not stab each other in the back when there was law and order. And the only law and order during the Godsfall Apocalypse was your strength and power.
"… Having your help to do this would only benefit us. I can see that you have a lot of knowledge and—."
Zarek shook his head. "Not interested. Good luck."
With a step, Zarek had already left Nick behind him and brushed by Victor, who was still in the middle of gathering the next words of his pitch.
Unfortunately for him, nothing he said would be enough to convince Zarek at all.
Victor took a breath and exhaled, his gaze flickering.
…
'Something will change,' Zarek thought to himself.
Someone as smart as Victor was a variable, whether he suffered death in the previous iterations or not. If Zarek had to bet, things probably played out about like this every time.
Victor would enter this Godsfall Tear and end up dying for one reason or another.
That wasn't just a testament to how bad his plan was, but it was also proof that this Godsfall Tear was exceptionally dangerous.
If Victor was as smart as Zarek thought him to be, then Zarek's blunt refusal would definitely make him realize that something was off course with his actions.
That would either force Victor to target him, or it would result in him changing his tactics entirely into something that was more conducive to his victory.
Zarek had planned to plow through to the end, but as someone who had lived four lives now, he was very sensitive to the changes in the timeline.
He had noticed this in his second life, but one of the residual effects of his Rebirth Talent was this sort of sensitivity to time changing around him. It was why he could pick out other Rebirthers the moment he laid eyes on them, and it was also how he sensed the shift that was occurring in Victor right this moment.
'In that case…'
Zarek changed his plans. His steps didn't seem to change at all, and the kid was still following after him, but he slowed a measure, and when he ran into a path where he would have usually turned left, he turned right instead.
Then, he began to work his way backward, looping around the maze and making his way further from the central target.
If he had continued forward, he bet that he would meet the final challenge of this Godsfall Tear in half a day at worst. But that was too long in his estimation.
Because of the matter with Priya, he had lagged behind the others too much. As such, he was fairly sure that if he continued on his current pace, he would just run into more and more of Victor's people.
This time, rather than taking the brute force approach… Zarek planned to wait in the wings and watch the situation unfold.
He took a seat, placing the unconscious Priya on his lap and closing his eyes.
His breathing became rhythmic while the kid stood around nervously, holding onto his hammer with both hands.
Zarek didn't bother to tell him to relax. He already understood the kind of person this kid was, and that would only make him more on guard. He would have to learn how to protect himself on his own. Soon, he would learn that in this world, when you could get a rest, you should take one.
That said… he could also sense things shifting and changing around Tameron as well. Whether that was good or bad… only time would tell.