Chương 77: Another Victory

The guy in glasses raised his hand toward Lloyd. Lloyd, still watching Lorian's deadly dance among the frozen bodies, suddenly noticed a strange blue glow forming somewhere among the bushes at the edge of the clearing.

Looking closer, he made out a frail young man in a torn t-shirt and worn-out pants — simple round glasses sat crooked on his face, and a gaze full of undisguised hatred was fixed straight on Lloyd, never wavering for even a second, as if the entire world had narrowed down to this one single target for him.

The guy in glasses muttered something under his breath, his lips trembling, the words coming too fast to make out, and the glow around his palm kept growing stronger, bathing the nearby bushes and grass in a bright blue light that pulsed in time with his ragged breathing. The air around his hand seemed to thicken, rippling faintly, and thin, writhing threads of blue energy began sparking between his fingers, crackling like static electricity.

Lloyd's face twisted, and he took an involuntary step back, feeling an unpleasant, anxious chill crawl across his skin, his heart leaping into his throat, hammering an erratic, frantic rhythm.

"Oh hell, please don't tell me this kid..." Lloyd shouted at the top of his lungs, the sound echoing across the entire clearing, bouncing off the trunks of the nearest trees and fading somewhere deep into the forest. — Hey! There's a Mage here! But it was already too late — the blue orb, gaining speed with every fraction of a second, shot straight toward Lloyd, slicing through the air with a thin, piercing whistle, leaving behind a faint glowing trail that quickly faded in the warm morning air. — Damn it...

At the last moment, the Fire Man appeared in front of Lloyd — he lunged forward with such speed that the ground burst into short tongues of flame beneath his feet, leaving a trail of scorched footprints behind him, and slammed his fist directly into the orb.

In that same instant, the entire clearing lit up with a blinding blue flash, washing out every color around them for a moment, and the sound of the collision rolled across the area like a peal of thunder, echoing off the distant trees and sending a flock of unseen birds bursting up from the branches into the sky.

The glasses slid off the guy's nose and hit the ground, shattering into pieces, thin shards of glass glinting in the morning light, scattering across the grass in tiny sparkling points, and he collapsed to his knees, shaking with violent tremors that wracked his entire body, as though every muscle had given out at once.

Sweat poured down his face in streams, mixing with tears, trickling down his chin and dripping onto the ground, and he simply couldn't believe what he was seeing, his eyes stretched impossibly wide, pupils shrunk to two tiny points of pure terror. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Standing before him was the Fire Man, completely wrapped in flame — whole, unharmed, without a single scratch on him.

From his right hand, which had absorbed the orb's impact, only a faint, barely visible wisp of steam rose, dissolving into the morning air, and the flames covering his body hadn't even flickered, continuing to burn with that same steady, confident intensity, as if he hadn't felt the blow at all. Tears streamed from the guy's eyes, instantly beginning to form a thin layer of ice across his cheeks, freezing into tiny glittering crystals. — I-impossible...

A second later, he was completely encased in a thick layer of ice, frozen forever in that pose of despair — arms pressed to his chest, mouth open in a silent scream, eyes wide open, filled with mute, eternal horror, his frozen pupils still fixed on the Fire Man standing whole and unharmed before him.

Brand remained standing where he was, staring down at the block of ice with a heavy, furious glare, the flames on his shoulders flickering restlessly, as though mirroring some inner irritation, crackling louder than usual, and then he suddenly turned his gaze toward the blond young man, who, as always, stood off to the side with his usual nonchalance, staring off into the distance, as though none of this concerned him in the slightest, as though he were watching some distant, mildly interesting play staged purely for someone else's entertainment.

— Hey, asshole. Why didn't you save him? Brand jabbed a finger back over his shoulder, toward where Lloyd stood, still pale from the fright he'd just had, his knees trembling slightly, his breathing still ragged and uneven. But Casper didn't say a word, continuing to stand silently in place, indifferently studying the horizon, as though Brand's question had sailed right past his ears without leaving the faintest trace, as though those words hadn't even been directed at him.

The flame atop Brand's head flared brighter, casting flickering orange light across the ground, and he spat onto the grass, the saliva looking more like boiling tar, hissing and smoking where it touched the grass, leaving behind a small charred mark from which a thin wisp of grey smoke curled upward.

Lloyd simply stared in silence at the bodies of the Players scattered across the clearing — some encased in ice, some beheaded, others simply frozen motionless in pools of their own blood, slowly soaking into the trampled grass — feeling that familiar, unpleasant heaviness rise in his chest, pulling downward into darkness, squeezing his ribs in an invisible, merciless grip.

"And once again, I didn't do a damn thing..." He clenched his fist so hard his nails dug into his palm, leaving deep crescent marks in the skin, and felt a bitter, familiar lump of helplessness rise in his throat.

"What a pathetic weakling I really am."

Lorian's footsteps sounded nearby — he approached, stepping between the frozen bodies with the same unshaken grace as always, as though strolling through a blooming garden rather than a field of recent slaughter, flicked the blood off his sword with one sharp, practiced motion, spattering dark droplets across the frost-covered grass, and slid the blade back into its sheath with a quiet, familiar click, like closing the lid on some deadly little box, hidden away from prying eyes. — Let's move.

The team responded only with silence, falling in behind him, leaving behind the clearing littered with bodies and coated in fresh ice glittering under the morning sun, among which the pale, forever-frozen figures of those who, just minutes ago, had considered themselves hunters rather than prey stood out starkly, while a thin morning mist slowly crept in to blanket the scene of the slaughter, as if nature itself were eager to hide the sight from view as quickly as possible.