The barrels were perfectly pointed toward one another, and yet neither one of them even so much as frowned. They had been through too much, seen too much. There was a cold and calculating part of them that had long become indifferent to death. Or at the very least, they could easily turn that part of themselves off at will.
"I can tell you exactly what will happen," Old Grizz said coldly. "You'll choose to aim at the walkie-talkie in my hand instead of the head. You need time to decipher the protections left here and break into the safe, and you can't have Belladoll and Crux interfering. For whatever reason, you haven't gone after your usual Skill, but I bet that whatever you're relying on now hasn't had time to grow into its own, which is why you've been forced to take such a slow and steady approach to making it here. Otherwise, why would the great Zarek Ashborn spend so much time scheming?
"When that happens, you'll move your head. But I know what you'll do well enough. You might be able to shift a small target like your head enough to dodge, but what about your chest? My hand might end up injured, but you'll be bleeding out like a dog.
"Who really has the wrong answer?"
Zarek's expression didn't so much as change. If there was any fluctuation at all, it was in the burning of his amber eyes. In the flickering darkness, illuminated only by sparse candlelight, they seemed to be torches of their own.
And yet, even as this flame burned away, there was a steady coldness to Zarek.
BANG!
The two guns suddenly fired in unison. The crackling of a walkie-talkie rebounding and a spurt of blood arching down toward the ground like a sputtering fountain fused into a singular, resonant sound.
Zarek stood in the same location, unmoved, a bullet having grazed by his shoulder.
"Sounds like the answer is you," Zarek said coldly.
Old Grizz stumbled back, his hand dripping with blood.
"You… didn't move."
"Should have aimed for the head, I guess."
Old Grizz paused for a moment before he chuckled out a dark laugh. He had tried to compensate toward the direction Zarek would dodge to, but who would have thought that Zarek wouldn't move at all?
They had tried to bluff one another, and Zarek came out on top.
"It doesn't matter," Old Grizz said coldly. "Once they realize I haven't answered them, they'll know you made it here."
"Will they?" Zarek asked. "Or will they be too busy butting heads?"
Old Grizz's eyes narrowed.
"You know, Belladoll and Crux have never had the best relationship. No matter which life it is, they've always butted heads. For Jiade to pair them together like this, it probably means he didn't have a choice. This was the best he could do given the circumstances.
"All things considered, it would have worked out well enough if I was cornered. You almost had me. But I might have kicked the hornets' nest a little bit."
Zarek's second life… that was the life he had made the mistake of telling Priya about his Rebirth right from the very beginning. That was also what led to the debacle in his third life where he ended up trying to separate himself from her out of guilt.
In his second life, Priya had thought he was crazy, and maybe rightfully so. She tended to worry about him a lot, and her methods of doing so weren't always the most mature.
However, how could he blame her for that? They were ultimately kids before the Godsfall descended. She wasn't meant to be mature in the first place.
Unfortunately, she separated from him, and he was never able to establish that trust with her properly again. They spent much of his second life apart and he chose to focus instead on understanding as much as he could about this world.
He thought that he would be fine. Even if she died, he would still have his third life and a fourth life after to get things right.
But he had still underestimated just how much it would hurt.
He became a shell of himself and did things that he wasn't proud of. He could come up with all the excuses he wanted in the world, but that was a guilt he still carried around to this day.
It wasn't something that Zarek wanted to mention at all; that was why he spoke of what happened in his third life instead. He hadn't expected that Belladoll would also remember their second.
But just like Crux said… that changed everything.
And it also ensured that they were almost certainly in a heated argument right now.
By comparison, they could assume that Old Grizz wasn't contacting them because he thought they were still locked in combat and wouldn't want to distract them.
This would lead to Zarek having much more time than Old Grizz thought he had.
Old Grizz breathed out heavily. "… I can see why they call you a monster now. I really don't understand how you've died so many times."
Zarek looked on calmly, aiming his gun as Old Grizz shakily raised his own. At this point, the scales were tipped too much. The winner of their psychological battle was obvious.
"You want to know?"
"I do."
Zarek grinned. "I'll never die so long as she breathes."
BANG!
Old Grizz's head snapped back as a bullet ripped through Zarek's collarbone. The latter didn't so much as flinch, not moving once again.
The dull collapse of a corpse to the ground echoed through the quiet room.
Zarek took a step forward. He was about to step over the corpse when he paused instead, bending down.
The ripple of a circle of Godsfall took his attention.
'I see… so that's why… he's here too…'
Zarek took a breath and exhaled. It was the most troublesome of Jiade's Heralds, a man with a rare S-Class Talent that gave structure to Godsfall. Formations were something that would only begin to creep up into public consciousness 20 or so years from now, but this madman Jiade had brought back one of the three best Godsfall Matrix Masters with three lifetimes worth of experience.
It was far too dangerous to be here.