[Big thanks to vokayroK]
'There's not much time…'
Zarek took deep breaths, pushing himself up from the ground. He didn't expect to get an opportunity to Limit Break two of his weakest Growth Potential Stats, but he wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
The main difference between those who thrived in this environment and those who crumbled was whether they knew how to take advantage of opportunities that were placed right before them.
In this case, Suki had become the catalyst for a chance in Zarek that he wasn't expecting.
'I didn't know that Matrices had this sort of potential. It seems that… I'll have to take a different approach.'
It wasn't that Zarek didn't know how powerful Godsfall Matrix Masters could be. The most difficult factor in killing Jiade every time was Suki, without a doubt.
Still, Suki himself was almost always vulnerable. Jiade put so many resources into making sure the man stayed alive and progressed that he often neglected his own progress as a result. It could be said that regardless of lifetime, Jiade had never reached his full potential.
Helping a Godsfall Matrix Master to grow required crazy investment, and it also wasn't something Zarek had the talent for. His Intelligence was too weak of a stat.
Priya, however…
'We'll see. It will depend on how things go.'
Priya would likely always be inferior to Suki in terms of Matrix talent because while her Talent was a general-purpose energy-controlling method, Suki's was specifically related to Matrices. As such, investing too much into it might be more detrimental than helpful.
Zarek was nothing if not flexible. He wouldn't allow this one experience to dictate all of the rest of his actions. What he would do, though, was keep this in mind.
After pulling himself up from the ground, Zarek managed to pull his way to the vault. He knew that by taking this route, he had severely cut down on the time he had left.
No matter how engrossed Crux and Belladoll were in their argument, there was no way they wouldn't notice the chain explosions.
Well, they weren't real explosions, of course, and they didn't cause any real damage. But they would notice nonetheless.
However, Zarek was more confident now than ever before… splitting headache and all.
He pressed a palm against the vault and his mind stretched outward.
The benefit of having a Scouting Skill in the D-Grade was that the sensory perception was less amorphous and more like a true sixth sense. As though he was reaching out with an eye trapped in a fourth-dimensional plane, he saw three-dimensional objects as though they were a flat plane.
A C-Grade Scouting Skill was a level beyond that, carrying a sense not only for the physical forms of objects but the inner workings and energy that made them up.
It was complicated to describe without feeling it, but what was important was that the complex inner workings of the vault reflected in Zarek's mind, and as he began to spin the dials into place, he didn't have to listen for the clicks…
He could see them.
Not even half a minute later, the vault's wheel spun in Zarek's arms, opening slowly.
'Still no formations yet… In that case, they must be…'
Zarek's eyes narrowed, standing outside the threshold of the vault.
As expected, they were layered here continuously, and far more subtly than the ones on the outside. In fact, many of them had their glows hidden and refracted within others, making them impossible to spot at a glance.
Unfortunately for Suki and Jiade, they could have never expected that Zarek would already have his Scouting Skill at C Class Mastery.
Zarek scanned all of them from left to right, then up and down. He was so focused on the Matrices that he didn't even take a single glance at the treasures within. One would think that he was completely uninterested in the treasures.
'I see. Suki has the skill of his former lives, and he can make up for that gap in strength with it just like I can. But ultimately, there's still a baseline limit of power he can output.
'He's making up for that in quantity, but if I subtract the time since the Godsfall Apocalypse descended, from the time since they entered the Godsfall Tear, Suki would have only had two days since Godsfall became accessible to him to lay these formations down.
'With his current Godsfall reserves, even if Jiade took control of that Hub and monopolized all of the Godsfall Replenishment Elixirs, at most he would be able to lay about three substantial formations a day. Which means…'
Zarek raised his gun and fired in one location, then raised it again and fired once more. He fired in seemingly random places and locations, and by the time the sixth bullet was fired and the clip was emptied, the glow in the room had faded substantially.
As expected, there were just five formations left. As for why there weren't six, Zarek hadn't subtracted the time Suki would have spent trying to raise his Intelligence or the time he needed to assimilate with his memories.
All things considered, this was already near the perfect result for them.
Now, without the distortions, Zarek could finally see the Glyphs clearly and read them.
He might not be a Matrix Master, but with his lifetimes of experience, if he wasn't familiar with how to read these, he would have died long ago. His poor Intelligence talent aside, he knew how to keep his life when it mattered more.
Zarek took a step forward, slid to the side, stepped three times in one location, then moved forward again.
His actions carried not the slightest hint of hesitation. To him, with a perfected C Class Scouting Skill to rely on, he might as well have been reading the danger like an open book.
In another half-minute, he had crossed through all of the formations and stood at the very center of the vault.
For the first time, he actually gave the treasures a look.
His lips curled into a smile.