Chapter 182: Smart Foes

Even the street looked worse. Asphalt had turned gummy and dark, then began to shine. The edges of broken cars, half buried under rubble, gave off that dull red glow of metal that wanted to melt. The air above the ground shimmered so hard it distorted the Ifrit’s outline.

The map revealed a couple of green dots coming in real close to him from the side.

He didn’t even need the minimap to know what they were doing. He’d seen that behavior enough times to recognize it by the angle of their approach: not charging, not helping, just creeping into sight like vultures waiting for something to fall over.

A quick side glance, he noted the two; both were people of the Sun Clan, they spotted Kael and didn’t advance, they merely watched.

Eyes hungry. Bodies cautious. Perfect scavenger posture.

“Fucking scavengers,” he sighed as he turned and began running.

He wasn’t escaping per se.

And more like, repositioning.

If he stayed here and traded blows, he’d win nothing but exhaustion, and once he looked weak, those green dots would turn into knives. The Ifrit wasn’t the only threat now. It never was. A confrontation was not enough; the Ifrit was still too healthy for that.

Another building collapse might help him bring the creature’s health a bit more. But staying here and fighting head-on would simply end with him being backstabbed.

So he sprinted as fast as he could.

His boots slapped the street, sliding slightly on grit. His armor kept him from cooking, but it didn’t stop the heat from slowing the air in his lungs. He picked a route that kept broken walls between him and the watching climbers, and just enough open street to bait the Ifrit into following.

The Ifrit, however, was not about to let that happen.

It didn’t charge at Kael the first time when he showed it the Rune it stole. But now, without a building falling on it, he can easily get his property and the one who took it.

So it flew forward.

Quite literally, it moved like a drone of flame and stone, rapid in comparison to Kael’s sprinting form with an extended fist that wanted to grip, crush, and burn Kael to a crisp.

Kael felt the heat swell behind him before he even looked. The air pressure shifted as something huge had moved close. His instincts wanted to glance back every second, but glancing back stole speed, and speed was life.

He stole one quick look anyway, enough to confirm the distance, the angle, the trajectory. Close. Too close.

Kael took note of the Ifrit and hesitated on using [Momentum].

It was a tempting button. A dirty little cheat that could make the gap widen instantly.

But Momentum didn’t care what was in front of you. Momentum didn’t care that the city was rubble.

Momentum only cared about the path your body committed to, and it would happily turn you into a smear if you committed wrong.

After all, the rune would make him crash into the nearest building if he isn’t careful enough. Especially with how small the path ahead of him was.

Looking to the left and right, there was another building with just a couple of supporting beams; this one was in an even more dire condition than before. One or two shots of darkness and it’ll collapse.

The structure looked like a half-standing skeleton, exposed supports, lower floor eaten away, upper floors leaning like they wanted to lie down permanently. The kind of thing that begged to be pushed.

Kael angled toward it, already shaping the timing in his head: lure the Ifrit into the lane, collapse the supports, pin it again. Don’t get caught in the blast. Don’t let the scavengers get close. Don’t,

Just as Kael reached the building and was about to wait for the Ifrit to follow after. The Ifrit stopped, aimed its arm forward, not at Kael, but the very building that Kael wanted to collapse on him.

“Son of a bitch!” Kael realized it too late.

The gesture was deliberate. The Ifrit wasn’t just reacting; it was predicting. It saw the trap and chose to burn the trap instead of stepping into it. Kael’s pulse spiked hard, and his feet almost stumbled on the sudden shift in plan.

This guy was too fucking smart.

“Presence!” Kael shouted that in panic. And immediately turned invisible.

The world dulled. His senses muffled. The heat didn’t vanish, but it softened around the edges, as the rune wrapped him in a thin layer of unreality. The Ifrit’s attention snapped to where he was… and then slipped, confused, unable to lock onto something the world claimed wasn’t there anymore.

Without wasting a single breath and while the fireball finished manifesting from the Ifrit’s arm and let loose at the building’s base, Kael slammed his belt.

The mechanism clicked under his gauntleted strike. The rune seated. The effect hit him like a shove from behind.

Activating Acceleration.

Everything tightened. The city sharpened. His muscles fired too fast. His balance became a knife-edge. He didn’t “run” so much as launch, body trying to outrun its own control.

He didn’t have enough space to run past the building that was about to collapse, so instead he ran the opposite way, toward the direction of the Ifrit.

It was insane on paper. In practice, it was the only clean line. He shot forward through the heat, through the falling shadow of the building, aiming straight for the Ifrit’s space because that space was the one place the collapsing structure wouldn’t occupy.

The fireball was released and landed on the structure’s base. The building didn’t just fall; it poured down, a waterfall of ruin. Rebar glowed. Concrete pulverized. The crash drowned out everything else for half a second.

While Kael, in stealth and acceleration, ran forward toward the Ifrit.

The Ifrit’s horned stone head turned, trying to catch him, trying to decide whether the prey had fled left or right. Kael was already past that decision, already a blur in the space it hadn’t chosen.

Just as the acceleration was becoming too much and he moved past the Ifrit, Kael ’slowly’ ’tried to stop himself, only to hit his belt with slightly more force than intended.

The second click was harsher. The sudden loss of acceleration nearly flung him forward on his face. His boots scraped and squealed against the street as he fought momentum the normal way, by letting his legs and joints take the punishment.

It was painful for a bit and almost made him fall on his face, but thankfully it stopped the [Momentum] rune.

He was still in [Presence], he was still hidden.

But his legs started burning from just those few steps. Not fire-burn, fatigue burn. The kind that made your thighs feel full of acid. His lungs drew hot fumigated air, but he couldn’t help it. He needed oxygen even if oxygen tasted like smoke and metal.

The Ifrit was looking ahead, with his back to Kael, trying to see if it had killed that roach or not.

Kael watched it hover, confused, angry, scanning the street where he no longer existed. The creature’s flames pulsed unevenly, still pissed, still unstable, but very much alive.

And Kael, for the first time since the rubble plan failed, felt something close to control again, not because he was winning, but because he had repositioned into a place where the Ifrit’s attention wasn’t.

Kael watched with slight despair at how this smart monster was dodging all his plans and making countermeasures.

He couldn’t keep collapsing buildings forever. He couldn’t keep burning internal energy forever. He couldn’t keep playing chase while scavengers gathered like flies.

Just then, a stupidly genius idea came to his mind.

It didn’t arrive politely. It hit like a spark in dry grass, dangerous, bright, and immediately tempting.

He looked at his own belt, and then at the Ifrit.

“No shot that would work now… would it?”

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