Ploy

"Grrckkkkrooooooaaaaahhhh!!" Victor roared, suppressing the hellish surge of pain through sheer force of will. The thought of surrender never crossed his mind—even now, as his blood mingled with the streams of rainwater coursing along the ground. Rather than give in to something so dishonorable, he found the strength to chant, despite his condition. His lips moved to produce the titular invocation Cyril had grown accustomed to hearing.

"Zephyr!"

In an instant, Victor flipped himself over and unleashed a sweeping horizontal strike with his hand— The mana he infused into that swipe had already been shaped by his intent. As a result, the strange energy twisted the natural order itself, overwriting the information of the slight gust his hand produced—altering its every property, vectors and all—until it became a blade of wind sharp enough to cleave through flesh with ease.

The projected slash cut through the rain without so much as a hum as it inched closer to its target— the bloodied boy standing with both hands at his side. The high schooler made no effort to dodge; he didn't even flinch at the incoming projectile.

Cyril's eyes followed the deadly blade of air, watching the projected slash shrink as it flew across the distance and abruptly vanished a hundred or so centimeters short of reaching him. Cyril suffered no adverse effects whatsoever, not even so much as his clothes—as tattered as they were —rustled from Victor's desperate attack.

"Five meters." Cyril said, his voice lulling the downpour.

All he did was speak, and yet that was enough to fill his opponent's eyes with terror.

"So long as you don't have enough time to loop cast spells, your attacks can only travel about five meters. I figured that out after being hit with your cyclone earlier; I found it strange you didn't use it against those Longinus agents. You have to get creative in close-range fights. As long as I maintain this distance before attacking, I can catch you off guard before you get the chance to counterattack."

Victor's jaws fell slack; he had no words.

Nothing useful came to mind in the moment, no tricks, secret techniques or even clever ploys he could use to turn the tide against his opponent—a mere D-rank striker, with no astounding qualities whatsoever.

That was the nature of the opponent who had bested him—and now, that same opponent stood over him in triumph, armed with nothing but his two clenched fists. The boy gazed down at him with didainful look, his eyes holding neither contempt nor malice, but an overwhelming apathy, as if he were less than an insect.

"A-ah..." Victor began again, silently muttering words of power to himself, although this time, his speech pattern wasn't very coherent. It sounded like bits of gibberish were being mixed into his cryptic chants.

"If I avoid the five-meter radius, your attacks can't reach me...." Cyril told him coldly, his glare sharpening on the manic man. "...Just like this."

He lunged forward with explosive speed, then pivoted and leapt to the side, effortlessly dodging Victor's latest slash as it drifted uselessly into the rain. Cyril moved again—this time circling behind the magician and driving a vicious palm strike into his neck, crushing his throat and knocking the literal wind out of him.

Dazed from the blow, the magician gargled up a fresh clump of blood—more dreadful than the last, but he didn't relent. Victor recovered from the impact, unleashing what sounded like a groan as he attempted to resume his chants once more.

"This again? Don't make me do anything unnecessary." Cyril tsked," I was going to capture you alive," this time, he swung his fist straight into the magician's jawline and pinioned him to the ground with a knee.

Victor remained defiant, and the brutal assault persisted. A relentless barrage of blows crashed down upon his fallen form, each strike landing with increasing force—sternum, neck, jugular... the merciless rain of violence continued unabated.

For a magician, there wasn't a more unfavorable situation than this, for it was the domain of close combat—pure physical might.

There was nothing magical about it, no supernatural arithmetic one could concoct in their mind and use it to evoke their will upon the world. No, there was none of that. In the realm of strikers, the only things that reigned supreme were grit, precision, and the ability to commit without hesitation. Victory didn't come to the clever or the gifted—it belonged to the one who stepped forward first and whoever struck harder.

Still, it was rare to see a magician like Victor possess such tenacity—at least he had that part down. At the moment, however, it was nothing more than a source of anguish. The more he tried to chant, the more pain he endured.

Word after word, blow after blow, the clash of wills dragged on into the rain-soaked night.

"D-Don't...kill him! We need him alive!" A voice yelled, drawing Cyril's attention back towards what little remained of the other flaming vehicles littered about the yard. There appeared to be no trace of damaged cylindrical glassware amongst the wreckage, the pods carried by the other automated vehicles had already been loaded onto the waiting motor yachts.

"You there, you're Cyril Severin, right?"

Cyril straightened his body a little, glancing over towards the figure limping closer in anguish. Soon enough, an injured man stepped into range, desperately clutching his left arm. Even though he was wearing the same dark special forces attire as everyone else Cyril had come across in the past few minutes, it wasn't very hard to deduce that the dark spots on his clothes weren't entirely due to the drizzly weather.

"I am. And You are...?"

"You can...call me Watson. I'm a part of the unit sent here under orders from the Steel Saint. We received information that led us to believe the man you've just defeated would be here in this port canal. His name is Victor Hodge—he's a high-ranking member of Cocytus, so we were hoping to take him alive if possible. I've put out a request for reinforcements, so the others should be here soon."

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Cyril turned back to face the wheezing man being pinioned by his knee. It hadn't been very long since he began pummeling Victor into submission but going by the look of his swollen face and his irregular breathing pattern, there was no longer any need for him to continue his assault on someone barely holding on to the edge of their consciousness.

He plucked the mithril blade from the man's shoulder and jammed it into the ground beside him, much to Victor's agony. Cyril paid little heed to the suffering terrorist as he splashed about on the wet asphalt.

"I see. I'll watch over him until the others get here then." Cyril replied, lowering the fist hovering above Victor's face. "Are there any other survivors from your unit?"

"Uh, well yes. Most of them are fine, they're in dire need of medical attention, but at this rate, I think we'll pull through."

"Oh, I see. That's good, things could have gone way worse if you hadn't intervened when you did." his response had shaken the mask of indifference for the first time since the battle with Cocytus began. Even though it was faint, marred by his own blood and fatigue, the hint of a small had tugged at his lips.

"I could ask the same of you, are you alright?" Watson inquired shamefully. "It's a bit embarrassing to admit this but if it wasn't for your intervention, this guy would have massacred my entire unit—and not only did you intervene, you basically took them all down by yourself. Are you perhaps-"

"No, I'm not with Ashcroft if that's what you're wondering."

"O-Oh I see. Given your level of skill at that age, I naturally assumed that to be the case, but it seems I was mistaken."

Hearing such praise made Cyril feel a bit meek for some reason, he looked away, not knowing how to respond to the sentiment. "I've got a few wounds here and there, but I'll be fine, you should be worrying about yourself more than me."

"I guess it's a completely different playing field for high rankers, even adults like me aren't able to keep up." Watson muttered, his words flowing out on a subtle wave of shame.

"You've got it wrong, Watson. I'm not a high-ranker—it's actually the opposite. I'm just a simple D-rank you could find anywhere."

As injured as he was, the agent's eyes practically snapped open after hearing those words. "I-Impossible. You? A D-rank? If that's really true, there's no way you could have pulled this off. I saw what you did with my own two eyes kid, I watched you defeat them."

For some reason, the mans disbelief had actually made Cyril laugh a little, but his reaction hadn't been spurred on by any kind of genuine joy. It was something closer to mild dejection.

"Well, putting aside the matter of my rank for now, about the pod-"

The familiar sound of tires skidding along the asphalt breached his ears, Cyril looked up to see a pair of headlights closing in on them. They belonged to the familiar armored vehicles rushing onto the scene.

I hope these guys are actually on our side. If not, this could get ugly. Cyril thought, his eyes alternating between the downed man and the approaching car.

There was no real way to tell who had answered their call for assistance. Victor himself was more than proof of that fact, the high-ranking Cocytus agent was dressed in high quality Longinus gear that would have been indistinct from the original of it hadn't been for all the chaos he got caught up in a little while ago.

The armored car stopped a few meters away. Cyril's heart began racing once the agents began to disembark, but the fervor spreading through him was quickly quelled once he saw Watson raise a hand to signal the men over.

The fact that they didn't open fire on them immediately after seeing the exposed pod being battered by the downpour gave him a bit more confidence in their standing. The newly arrived agents quickly began scouring the area, retrieving the injured bodies of their comrades as they attempted to establish a perimeter.

He heaved a sigh, feeling as though a lead weight had finally been lifted off his chest.

"I appreciate all you've done thus far Cyril, but you can relax now." Watson said, patting his shoulder with his functional hand. "We'll take it from here."

"No problem. I was never intending to go this far anyway but-"

Cyril's sentence stopped short.

The heavy rumble tearing through the skies above left a good portion of his words unsaid. Nobody said anything—without a word to each other, Cyril, Watson and the newly arrived Longinus agents unanimously glanced up at the bright orange trail streaking across the sky and closing in on the container yard at a ferocious speed.

Instantly, an alarm went off in Cyril's mind.

"Watson, you said you just sent out a request for reinforcements, right?!"

"Yes—I made the call as soon as I realized that the jamming signal was gone, but based on the look of things, whoever's closing in on this place doesn't seem to be working with Longinus."

"I thought your communication lines were compromised. Didn't Cocytus hack into your systems?"

"They did, but my request for backup wasn't sent through an official channel. We have temporary lines available for cases like these, so I'm not exactly sure how someone else caught wind of that message."

If Watson really did use a temporary line to send that signal, the odds of his request being intercepted by a third party are fairly low, but...wait, what if Watson's message hadn't been intercepted in the first place? What if...

A bright pillar of orange came crashing down into the container yard the moment Cyril spared that thought. The pillar of light wasted no time in dispersing its intense heat—barely a second after the thunderous impact that cratered the ground had settled, a high temperature wave began emanating from the point of impact.

Seconds later, the flaming pillar unleashed a thermal pulse so intense it instantly evaporated every trace of moisture from the asphalt. Plumes of vapors drifted up from the sizzling ground, masking the figure who had just landed in the ravaged container yard with far too much flamboyancy.

"Kck-hehehe-heheh."

A wicked string of snickers escaped the man pinned beneath Cyril's knee. Cyril had deliberately restrained him that way to cut off his oxygen flow, making it harder for him to chant. Each laugh came with a wet, hacking spurt of blood—but the man didn't seem to care much about his damaged larynx.

"Tch. I knew it," Cyril muttered, grinding his teeth. "Watson, if your call for backup wasn't intercepted, then someone else must've sent one—on a different channel, completely unrelated to Longinus."

"...More of our reinforcements will be here soon.....You should've killed me when you had the chance, boy. Now ....you've got bigger problems on your hands." Victor's words rang true, but Cyril resisted the urge to slam his knee harder into his chest.

"Who are you? Identify yourself!" Watson shouted, his voice cut through the mist, directed at the figure obscured by thick plumes of condensation.

"Who do you think you're talking to?"

The reply that came back his way almost made the injured Longinus agent trip over his feet. He stepped back a few paces, gawking at the silhouette breaching the through the white vapors.

Even though he was still ruing the magician's trickery, Cyril couldn't help but divert his attention towards the new arrival.

"Marcel Phoenix?"

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