Chapter 81: The Impossible

  Not wasting a single second, I activated Checkpoint.

  [Checkpoint Set: Your progress has been saved at this point in time]

  [Current anchor will be lost upon death, or after thirty minutes. The earliest of the two.]

  [Checkpoint lvl. 1: Time left until Anchor expires – 00:29:59]

  Valdemar stood directly in front of the workshop door when it was calmly opened inward, and the damn Obsidian Crow #13 stepped inside.

  I braced for the usual instinctive flinch—the same twitch I’d had in every loop where he’d killed me—but for some reason, this time it didn’t come. Maybe I was numb. Maybe dying to him so many times in a row had finally burned that fear out of me. The chill from before remained, though.

  If in the beginning he’d been somewhat “honorable”, in his sick and twisted way, recently, and especially after his “evolution”, he’d become something else entirely. With each loop, seemingly without retaining his memories, he grew more brutal and unhinged.

  His eyes landed on Valdemar immediately. He didn’t even sweep the room for me.

  “Hmm…didn’t expect to find you here of all places,” he said, voice carrying that same deranged edge as usual.

  “And you are?” Valdemar asked.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” The Crow’s tone dripped with mockery as he slowly raised his armgun, holding the barrel an inch from Valdemar’s mask.

  But before he could continue his threat—or even finish the gesture—Valdemar’s gloved left hand snapped up and caught the barrel. His entire body flashed once with Kinetra’s orange glow. Then, impossibly, he crushed the barrel with his hand, bending the end upward in a single effortless motion.

  How did he even do that?!

  He definitely used a Kinetra just now. But he wasn’t even wearing a COG!

  “I asked you a question,” Valdemar said.

  “And I already answered,” the Crow replied, activating his own Kinetra, and swinging the armblade on his other arm at Valdemar in a diagonal slash.

  Valdemar moved instantly. His body flared with Kinetra again as he pulled a foldable sword from thin air at around hip level, snapping it open mid-motion and catching the incoming strike in one smooth, fluid block.

  The blades met with a vicious shriek, locking together.

  “Your answer was insufficient,” Valdemar said. His voice came out of the modulator perfectly measured—as if he wasn’t straining under the weight of a Kinetra-boosted Aetherguard Mark III. “I don’t like not knowing things. And you? You are a mystery. Even to me.”

  “Then stay guessing,” the Crow replied calmly as frost began crawling down his armblade, creeping onto Valdemar’s sword.

  Valdemar simply released the blade.

  The moment the sword left his hand, he drove his boot forward hard. The kick landed squarely on the front of the Crow’s armor, but the impact sent him flying.

  The Crow was launched backward, smashing through the doorway and splintering the frame on the way out.

  Outside, people screamed in fear.

  I stared, stunned beyond words. Valdemar was casting magic without a COG.

  “How are you doing this?!” I blurted out. I just couldn’t hold it in.

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t even glance my way.

  Then, Déjà vu rang in my mind again. Sharper and more vivid than anything before.

  My body reacted before my mind did. I summoned a Cryora and slammed it into the COG’s Channel Core.

  [Burn Rate lvl. 5: Ignis’s burn paused. Time left – 00:00:43]

  [Burn Rate lvl. 5: Cryora is burning. Time left – 00:04:59]

  [Memory Slots lvl. 2: Ignis is saved for repeat use – 00:24:59]

  [Multi-Channel lvl. 2: Dual-Channel available – Cryora + Ignis]

  I ignored the array of messages and thrust my hand forward, conjuring an ice wall between Valdemar and the door. And good thing I did, because a second later, a whip of pure fire snapped into the workshop. It hit my wall dead-on. The collision detonated into a blast of steam and expanding ice that suddenly shattered and released a rolling cloud of…decay.

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  Three crystals interacting at once—Ignis, Cryora, and Umbrium. A catastrophic mix Déjà vu was warning me about.

  The decay cloud spread, corroding everything near it—mostly what remained of the doorframe—before dissipating.

  Valdemar spoke without turning. “I thought I told you to get comfortable in the back seat.”

  I blinked, once again reminded of his arrogance. “You’re welcome.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  Before I could say anything else, the entire front wall of the workshop imploded inward, blasted apart by a surge of flames coming from the Crow’s extended fists on the other side.

  Once again, Valdemar reacted fast. His body flickered with the green aura of Aero. Commanding the air, he twisted the incoming fire and debris backward. For a moment, the space between them became a chaotic vortex—flames, debris, and violent gusts of air. The entire second floor above started crashing down on us, but Valdemar seemed to notice that as well. Splitting his focus, he used the air to hurl pieces of the falling ceiling at the Crow who, in turn, redirected them back at Valdemar, thus expanding the vortex.

  I knew exactly which side I preferred to win.

  I could see the Crow clearly on the other side of the chaos, too focused on Valdemar. But as soon as I was about to use this seemingly vulnerable moment of his and summon the Armor-Piercer, Valdemar faltered. The Crow’s pressure surged. He was overpowering him, pushing the chaotic mess they created at him.

  “Damn you,” Valdemar hissed. A blue aura surrounded him as he stomped the floor once, raising an enormous wall of ice before him—many times taller and thicker than mine—to intercept the incoming explosion.

  Realizing what was about to happen, I yelled, “Zee! Run!” as I dove into the street through the workshop’s window, arms covering my head.

  Behind me, Valdemar’s wall didn’t just shatter—it exploded, a thunderous blast that ripped the workshop's upper floors and roof apart. Metal, timber, plating and sharp icicles flew across the street like shrapnel.

  Screams rang out everywhere around—both workshop customers and passersby.

  I didn’t dare lift my head to look. Not with the debris still raining down.

  I still felt in one piece. It seemed that, somehow, lying right beside the workshop itself—the center of the explosion—turned out to be what saved me. Or maybe I was in one piece because…

  Zee!

  I rolled over, and there he was. The damn automaton was standing over me, shielding me from the falling debris and ice.

  Damn it, I just fixed you…

  “Zee!” I called, grabbing his frame and checking for new dents. He seemed mostly fine. Still better than his state at the start of this run.

  Then, I looked around and what I saw made me swallow hard.

  This section of Orlinth was as dense as it got, and the explosion had torn through the nearby buildings, ripping entire walls open. Some structures were so poorly made to begin with, they now seemed on the verge of collapse. People were running around in panic, others were stuck under crumbling walls, crying for help. And worst of all, there were bodies. They lay strewn across the streets: men, women…children.

  I rose slowly, stunned at the devastation.

  “Still alive, I see,” came the Crow’s voice from inside the workshop. He stepped forward, balancing on the mangled windowsill—the only intact part of the window I just jumped through moments ago—completely unscathed. As expected, his damn Aetherguard Mark III soaked up everything.

  “Thick skin. Unlike your superficial one” Valdemar said beside me, sounding completely unbothered by the pain around him.

  I spun toward him. Despite his confident words, he was injured. Some of the shrapnel hit him. Half his left sleeve was missing, blood running down his arm. But the mask? Perfect. Untouched. Was it infused with Aetheris like the Aetherguard mark III?

  If earlier it looked like Valdemar might have a chance of beating this monstrosity, now that hope was fading fast.

  The Crow burst into near-hysterical laughter. “The audacity from you freak,” he muttered when it died down.

  Then, defying all logic and common sense, Valdemar lifted his arms out to the sides and gestured for the Crow to come at him.

  “What are you doing?” I snapped.

  “Shut it, fool. I said don’t interfere,” Valdemar hissed, stepping past me toward the Crow. He had once again shown that he didn't care about the people. A true revolutionary who cared about their well-being would've taken the fight elsewhere, or stopped it altogether. Either way, there was no way he had more aces up his sleeve, right? He was just a man. His red blood was enough proof of that.

  The Crow stared at us for a heartbeat, then laughed again. “Let’s see what you’re made of.” He lunged, the windowsill snapping under the pressure of his armored legs, his armblade extended.

  Kinetra-empowered again, Valdemar sidestepped gracefully, and then with his left fist…he punched?

  What was he thinking?

  But right as the thought that his attempt to punch an Aetherguard suit with a bare fist was both absurd and desperate settled, I noticed something was off: he wasn’t glowing anymore. A fraction of a second before his punch connected, the Kinetra around him dissipated.

  The strike landed on the Crow’s side, and the impossible happened.

  The Crow's armor cracked—an actual, branching crack in the Aetherguard Mark III plating.

  “What the fuck?” the Crow muttered, but Valdemar wasn’t wasting time. Enveloped in Kinetra’s mana once more, he sent a second punch at the Crow.

  This time the Crow reacted. Wary of the danger, he jumped back and put some distance between them.

  He touched the cracked section of his suit. I couldn’t see his expression, but I was convinced it mirrored mine: utter confusion.

  The confusion didn’t last long for me, though. My mind jumped straight to Dolos because once again, nothing made sense. Valdemar being able to shatter Aetheris with his bare hands was only part of it. The bigger issue was still the greater picture that kept eluding me. Dolos’ “pieces” were fighting each other. Just how Casten Vorrick and Dalton Rose were chasing Valdemar all these years despite all being under Dolos' influence.

  I remembered what Dolos had told me: his Champion wouldn’t act against the Crow unless the Crow directly affected him. So what changed?

  Was I—despite Valdemar’s awful attitude—actually important to his plans somehow? Was me dying to the Crow over and over interfering with his grand plan, pushing him to intervene? And if so…why? What was this plan?

  Or was it all just a show designed to back me into a corner? To fool me and make me take that damn spear?

  “Looks like I’m not the only one with secrets,” the Crow said, his usual manic tone briefly gone.

  Valdemar lifted his hands again, flexing his fingers before curling them into fists.

  “So,” he said, approaching slowly. “I was trying to figure out who you were while we were fighting. I’ll share my conclusions, and you’ll tell me how far I am from the truth. Deal?”

  The Crow laughed, slipping back into his usual madness as he pointed at the crack in his armor. “How about I throw out my theories about what you just pulled, and you tell me how far I’m off?”

  “It seems you don’t fully grasp your predicament,” Valdemar said, still closing the distance.

  “And it seems you don’t understand yours,” the Crow shot back, amused. “Either way, the only way you’ll learn who I am is by ripping me out of this damn suit or—well—killing me. But I think you’re capable of doing neither.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The second phase of their battle began, and despite what Valdemar wanted me to do, I knew I was going to help him. My life depended on it.