Chapter 82: Their Secret

  I analyzed Valdemar from afar, trying to figure out how he was able to shatter an Aetherguard Mark III. A direct answer to that mystery would’ve been nice, but I knew I wouldn’t find it just by staring at him, so I wasn’t looking for it. I was looking for patterns. For steps. For anything he did right before he sent his fist at the Crow.

  And…I noticed one thing.

  Valdemar was using Kinetra constantly—always enveloped with its orange glow—except for one critical moment: the instant right before his punch was about to land. It was a millisecond where the glow around him vanished. It looked like, however he was able to pull this off, he had to be his “pure human self” at the moment of impact.

  I wondered if the Crow had noticed that too.

  Even if he hadn’t, he was definitely capitalizing on that single millisecond of no-Kinetra, dodging every punch with an insane display of reflexes. Valdemar hadn’t managed to land a second armor-breaking hit for a whole minute now. And the Crow wasn’t making it easy for him, either. He kept fighting at mid-range, forcing the fight into a magically-explosive rhythm where Valdemar repeatedly tried to close the distance, but the Crow rarely let him.

  This was where I came in. I knew I had to make the Crow stop casting so Valdemar could get close enough for a punch. And with the Enforcers surely already on their way—the station I was held in was literally minutes from here—time was of the essence.

  I suddenly shook my head, shocked by my own way of thinking.

  Forget the Enforcers! I needed to help end this fight before Valdemar and the Crow annihilated this entire block. Time loop or not, I wasn’t about to let normal people—simple Orlinthers like me—die a gruesome death like this.

  Just as the morally right thing to do settled in my mind, the fight escalated. The Crow snapped a lamppost clean off the street and Kinetra-flunged it at Valdemar with enough force to make the air whistle. Valdemar shifted aside just enough to let it scream past him, not caring one bit about its trajectory.

  The lamppost slammed into the last standing support beam of the already heavily damaged five-story apartment block behind him.

  A deep, metallic groan rolled through the entire street. Windows rattled. Steam pipes burst, coughing even more white fog into the air.

  The building was falling.

  Shouts erupted from inside—people trapped on the upper floors—and from those still fleeing at street level.

  The building tipped. The upper floors pitched forward, tilting across the narrow street. I staggered back as the top half crashed into the building opposite it. The impact landed like a thunderstrike. Chunks of stone and metal blasted outward, raining down onto the street below.

  For a moment, the collapsing building almost balanced there, leaning against its neighbor.

  Then…it broke.

  The upper half buckled inward, nearly folding in half, while the lower levels continued collapsing downward, slamming into the ground.

  I grabbed Zee and sent him to the Inventory—remembering through Déjà vu that he could escape it on his own if needed—then threw myself into the alley beside me just as a violent wave of air pressure smashed outward. Dust swallowed the street in an instant, flooding even my hiding spot. It was so thick I could barely see my own hands.

  Screams rose everywhere—people crying for help, others shouting names—cut through only by fresh bursts of groaning metal and shattering glass. The sound crawled across my skin, raising goosebumps.

  So much destruction…

  “You’ll start crying next?” Valdemar’s voice cut through the dust beside me. I could barely make out his silhouette—just the vague outline of him leaning against the alley wall as if he was taking a breather.

  I shook my head, anger flaring. “You claim to represent the people of Orlinth and the Foundry, yet you have zero remorse for what’s happening around you at this moment!”

  “It’s a time loop, Viktor,” he replied, maddeningly calm. “Fairly simple concept. What about it don’t you understand?”

  I nearly exploded. “What does that have to do with anything?!” I swung my hands through the thick dust, trying to grab him, shake him—something—but he used the haze to evade me.

  “Time loop or not, your actions are abhorrent! They show how you’re exactly the same as the ones you claim you’re fighting!

  “Idiot,” Valdemar muttered. “This is why you’re so far behind me in this. The only loop that matters is the one where I finish this and send Erebus on his merry way.”

  I snapped toward where I thought I heard his voice and caught a faint gleam of his mask, but he slipped away again.

  “Chronos and Balthor told me each loop is a unique world! Not a reset! This means your actions are killing these people! Real people!” I shouted.

  “I’m not yet ready to save the world,” he said, still with the same infuriating calm. “Therefore, this world is doomed to perish, therefore these are not my people. They are current-me’s people, not future-and-final-me’s. Only the final loop matters, and I decide when it’ll happen.”

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  His tone made my skin crawl. “They’re still people! Show some remorse! Show something! Show – “

  “Found you.”

  The Crow’s voice behind me cut me short. Then came the whistling—dozens of them.

  “Get back already,” Valdemar muttered as he stepped in front of me and conjured an ice wall as wide as the alley itself. The frozen slab erupted just in time to catch the barrage of razor-sharp icicles that screamed toward us, each impact sending violent cracks spidering across its surface.

  Then, with a flick of his hand, he formed an icy handle jutting from the wall. He seized it, pivoted, and charged forward—Kinetra-empowered—dragging the wall with him like a portable bulwark. Aero flared around him again, blasting the alley clear of dust in a sudden rush, and the Crow snapped into view at the alley’s mouth—opposite from where I entered.

  As the Crow saw Valdemar’s approach, he thrust both fists forward. Flames roared from his armored knuckles, a focused surge of fire that hammered against the ice shield. But Valdemar didn’t slow. His conjured barrier held strong, steam hissing of it as he continued fortifying it as he ran.

  The Crow changed tactics.

  With a sharp swing of his arm, jagged ice spikes erupted from the ground, forcing Valdemar to adjust and slightly slow down his approach. Then the Crow slapped a hand against the building to his right.

  Decay spread instantly.

  It spread through the stone and metal, turning the wall brittle in seconds. I felt my stomach drop. He was going to bring down a second building.

  The Crow laughed before twisting into a brutal tornado kick that obliterated through the weakened wall. The impact blew all the supporting infrastructure, spidering outward across the entire wall.

  Another monstrous groan followed. The building began leaning toward the alley.

  Not again. Fuck those two. I was not letting another one fall.

  Earlier, I swapped the active Cryora to my stored—and nearly depleted—Ignis, saving it for a later use. Now was that moment.

  [Burn Rate lvl. 5: Cryora is burning. Time left – 00:03:33]

  I thrust my hands toward the shattering wall and unleashed everything I had. Frost erupted from my palms, racing across the stone and steel, sealing the cracks as they continued forming, spreading toward the Crow. But the damage was extreme—every new sheet of ice I created split as fast as I created it.

  Too thin. Too weak.

  So…I pushed even harder. Hard enough to risk my COG getting overheated. But I didn’t care. I had a backup plan for when that happened. Right now, only one thing mattered to me.

  My ice thickened, layer after layer, forcing itself into the fractures, welding together the cracked structure. For a moment, it looked like I might actually pull it off. Like I was accomplishing the impossible.

  That was when the dreaded message came.

  [OVERHEATED]

  [COG Channel Core overheated – Cooling Cycle initiated]

  [Estimated Downtime: 00:14:59]

  My ice started faltering. Cracks reappeared.

  I needed just a bit more, so I focused my mind on my COG and activated Timeline, rewinding the device back to its pre-overheated state. And then I pushed again, sealing the new cracks and even conjuring ice pillars for extra stability. The ice swallowed the building’s entire base in a glacial shell, and the temperature around plummeted far below anything Orlinth had ever felt.

  The COG hit OVERHEATED again, but my work was done.

  I collapsed on my back, coughing out icy air, completely exhausted.

  When I finally lifted myself up to my knees, I saw the building still standing, its base frozen solid on this side. It was still leaning slightly, but it looked stable. Held upright by my ice.

  I felt exhilarated. Never in my life had I done anything like this before.

  I was always the thinking guy. Never pushing myself straight into the danger. Never playing the hero no matter how much injustice I had witnessed growing up. But this? This was insane! Even if it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, I saved these people!

  I heard clapping—more like metallic snaps—and my head instinctively whipped toward the sound.

  The Crow.

  “Splendid!” he called, actually clapping. “Bravo! I couldn’t bring myself to stop you!”

  I scrambled away from him.

  Where the fuck was Valdemar? Had the Crow taken him out already?!

  I tried to stand, but my body simply refused. My legs trembled and folded. I glanced at my COG, but the message on the screen only reminded me it was overheated. The only thing left was Slow, but what would that even buy me? A handful of seconds before he hunted me down and killed me again? Meaningless.

  The Checkpoint timer showed I had around ten minutes left so at least there was that. But what could I even do differently in the re-run with an overheated COG?

  “Did you kill him?” I asked, fully aware I was only delaying the inevitable.

  The Crow, still approaching, turned his head back toward the icy wall Valdemar had conjured—it was near the end of the alley—but before he could say anything, Zee exited camouflage beside him and snapped his metallic fangs at the Crow’s armored knee, pulling him out of balance.

  My heart stopped.

  He’d just killed himself for nothing. His fangs could never pierce an Aetherguard Mark III.

  But as the despair settled in, Valdemar stepped from behind one of the pillars I created, fist already mid-swing at the Crow.

  The Crow reacted unbelievably fast, twisting his head aside—but not fast enough.

  Valdemar’s punch slammed into his chin, shattering the lower half of the helm. Metal fragments scattered across the alley as the Crow’s hands flew to his face, covering the ghastly sight of his pale skin marred with black, pulsing veins. He staggered backward, turning his back to us.

  Zee disengaged and rushed to my side as I barely managed to push myself upright.

  I approached Valdemar slowly. We both watched as the Crow cursed under his breath, seemingly trying to press back the broken pieces of his helm as if he could somehow repair the damage with pure will.

  “Let’s try that again,” Valdemar said, voice low. “You will tell—or show—me who you are. Even if you keep on fighting, I will see your face.”

  The Crow, still facing away, let out a manic, unhinged laugh.

  Behind us, a thunder of boots rang through the alley. An army of Enforcers charged towards us.

  “Stop right there!”

  “Hands up!”

  “Don’t move!”

  The Crow didn’t even turn. “Looks like my backup is here.”

  “I will just kill them all and then we’ll continue,” Valdemar replied flatly.

  The Crow shrugged. “Well, if that's the case…then I’m left with only one option. After all, I can’t let you know our secret.”

  Then he did the unthinkable.

  Hands still on his face, he unleashed a surge of fire—point-blank.

  “What the – “ I yelled, stepping forward, but his horrifying scream ripped through the alley, cutting me off.

  Moments later, he collapsed. His face…no longer anything recognizable. Barely human at all.

  Still not fully processing what just happened, I turned toward the incoming Enforcers, mind racing for a way out. Suddenly, something cold pressed against my temple.

  A gun.

  “What are you doing?!” I shouted at Valdemar.

  “Not good enough, Viktor,” he said, voice disappointed. “We can’t let him get away like this.”

  “What?! Stop – “

  He pulled the trigger.

  [You’ll now reawaken at the Anchor Point]