Chapter 185: Rampage

“Good,” Kael smiled as he backed away.

He kept his feet light, weight on the balls, shoulders loose. Not because he felt relaxed, but because his body had learned the hard way that tension made you slow, and slow got you cooked. The heat still rolled off the Ifrit in waves, brushing his armor like invisible hands. Even with the leather set, even with the helmet, it felt like standing near an open kiln.

The Ifrit realized something was wrong, but he couldn’t figure out what. It kept trying to turn to face Kael, but kept missing, until it figured out what to do. It went to grip the ground with its arms only to have its cracked gauntlets dig too deeply into it.

The claws of stone punched into asphalt like it was wet clay, and the street hissed where the heat touched it. The Ifrit tried to anchor itself, like an animal digging claws into earth before it pounces, except the extra force made it bury itself instead.

Still, it was enough for the Ifrit.

Kael kept slowly backing away.

He wasn’t sprinting. Not yet. Sprinting meant the Ifrit might decide to stop “tracking” and start “bombarding.” He didn’t want to give it a straight line, didn’t want to make himself the obvious target for a fireball the size of a car.

So he drifted, angled away, keeping buildings between his spine and any line of sight it might manage.

The Ifrit turned his body this time using his arms as axis. And stopped slightly off center, but in the general direction, it ripped its arms out only for them to fling him in an awkward backflip in the air, but it still stabilized itself. The motion looked insane up close, like a massive stone puppet being yanked by invisible wires. It flipped, flames trailing behind like a comet tail, then righted itself with a violent hover that shook the air.

The flames, the fire, and everything from the Ifrit seemed to move faster than natural. Like the fire itself wasn’t simply coming out of its body, but surging out. It wasn’t just heat anymore; it was pressure, the way a storm front pressed against your skin before thunder. Kael could feel it in his teeth, that faint vibration when something big is about to slam into something else.

It howled and screeched, faster than normal, then when it locked onto Kale, it moved forward.

’Here it comes,’ Kael thought as he saw the incoming Ifrit.

At first, it was slow, but then it began speeding up, accelerating. Gaining [Momentum] The movement was almost comical for a split second, like watching something heavy try to sprint on ice, until it wasn’t. The rune didn’t care about “grace.” It cared about “forward.” Every beat it existed, it demanded more speed, more force, more violence.

Kael, without wasting a beat, and unusually early, dodged to the side, diving even.

He didn’t wait for the last possible moment like he normally would. He’d already seen what Momentum did to him

. You didn’t “react” to acceleration; you anticipated it, or you got flattened. His body hit the street hard, shoulder slamming, grit biting through fabric. The heat from the Ifrit’s approach skimmed over him like someone opened an oven door beside his face.

The Ifrit was far, though fast, and would have more than enough time to ’recalibrate’ and change direction. If that was in its normal state, and it did try to change course to aim for Kael, but the human, instead of keeping on going in the direction he dove in, kicked the ground and moved the other way. Kael twisted in the dirt, pushed off with a boot, and snapped his body into a new line, ugly, quick, desperate. Not elegant. Effective.

That small change of trajectory for the Ifrit caused its own demise.

It couldn’t change direction immediately, especially since the acceleration never stopped. It tried. You could see it try, stone fists gouging at the air, flame tail whipping to pivot, but the rune kept shoving it forward like a drunk god laughing at physics. It flew forward, moving with the speed of a freight train now as it dashed past Kael and into a nearby building.

The whole structure blew up in flames as the Ifrit struck wall and support beams in tandems. Concrete burst outward in chunks, rebar bent like wet wire, windows vaporized into glittering dust. The street lit up white-hot for a moment, then orange, then red, like the building had become a lantern of fire. Heat slapped Kael in the back, even through his armor, and the sound, gods, the sound, was a rolling concussion that made his ribs feel loose.

Explosions of fire and flame, and the wreck that came down woke the city itself.

Kael stood in the middle of the street watching the buildings crumble as the wrecking ball of an Ifrit was demolishing them. He didn’t run toward it. Didn’t chase the smoke. Didn’t do the classic idiot move of assuming “it crashed, so it’s vulnerable.” Kael stayed where he had sightlines and options, eyes flicking between the rubble and the minimap, counting beats in his head like he could will the monster to die on schedule.

Soon, the destruction stopped, yet no notification showed up. Kael didn’t foolishly chase after it; he watched the map.

The red symbol of the Ifrit was glowing still, and more green dots approached it. They moved in that hungry, cautious pattern, circling, closing, stopping, then creeping again. People drawn to noise like moths to a flame, except these moths carried knives and would happily stab each other for the privilege of looting ashes.

Then, suddenly, a couple of the green dots disappeared, and then came the noise. A loud explosion and a pillar of flames suddenly emerged. The flame shot upward like a geyser, briefly turning the sky above the ruined street into a flickering ceiling of orange.

Right next to the red dot of the Ifrit, two more dots appeared.

These were new.

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