The heavy smoke drifting across the ruined courtyard slowly settled, clinging to the broken edges of the facility like a shroud.
Zekai stepped cleanly through the fractured wall of Chamber Twelve.
His crimson-stained clothes fluttered in the hot wind. His breathing remained calm.
Yet his eyes never left the man standing atop a collapsed section of concrete.
The rifle resting in the stranger's hands wasn't made for ordinary warfare. Black metal intertwined with crimson crystal. Ancient runes crawled across its barrel like living veins. Most unsettling of all—the chain hanging from his waist.
The weapon looked less like a rifle and more like an artifact that had forgotten it was ever meant to be held by human hands.
Dozens of crystal pendants swayed gently against one another with a fragile clinking sound. Some were empty. Some glowed faintly from within.
One contained a tiny, perfectly preserved figure dressed in a long black coat. Aldric Marune. Imprisoned.
The miniature figure wasn't frozen like a corpse. It moved. It was actively looking out. It was watching.
"...That crystal isn't preserving a corpse," Zekai muttered, his voice cutting through the ambient heat.
"...It's preserving a living person." His pupils narrowed to thin slits.
"You're taking him out of that prison."
As if reacting to his words, the wolf slowly rose inside its own crystal prison. A low, muffled growl echoed through the tiny space.
Another pendant answered immediately.
The imprisoned raven unfolded one black wing, its glowing eye fixing itself entirely upon Zekai. Even the pendant containing nothing but swirling darkness trembled faintly against the shooter's hip.
One after another... the imprisoned relics awakened. They were not responding to their master.
They were reacting directly to the crimson-eyed boy standing across the ruined battlefield.
The Collector noticed the anomaly immediately.
His gloved fingers tightened around the frame of the rifle.
"...Be quiet. I was preparing a delicious feast for you."
The man looked down at the trembling pendants for a brief moment before raising his gaze again. His expression remained utterly emotionless.
"So... you noticed." His fingers gently brushed across the hanging crystals, soothing them back into compliance.
"They're quite beautiful, aren't they?"
"They're my personal collection."
"Every single one of them was incredibly difficult to obtain."
He slowly reached toward the side of the rifle's custom firing mechanism.
Click.
A fresh, empty crystal pendant slid into place directly beneath the firing chamber. Without looking away from Zekai, the Collector spoke quietly.
"Once it's fired... it belongs to the next prison." His thumb rested firmly against the weapon's safety switch.
"Every single shot demands a prison."
Unlike ordinary firearm ammunition... the pendant itself became the bullet.
"My relic accepts only one soul per crystal," the Collector explained, his tone conversational.
"Once filled... it can never be used again." His gaze drifted critically toward Zekai's stance.
"So choose carefully. Become another memory... or survive."
His left thumb brushed lightly against the small, encrypted communicator hidden beneath his high collar. No words were spoken. No signal was voiced. Just one deliberate, quiet tap against the button. Then, he returned both hands to the rifle as though nothing had happened.
A violent, massive explosion suddenly interrupted the silence.
BOOOOM!!
A towering wall of molten fire burst violently upward behind Zekai.
Beyond the shattered courtyard, heavy columns of dark smoke drifted upward from the other severely damaged sectors of the underground Headquarters.
High above, Barrier specialists had already begun bending the smoke back toward the facility using localized resonance fields, preventing civilians outside Greyhaven from seeing the true extent of the destruction.
Only the distant, dull orange glow rising above the underground entrance hinted that anything catastrophic had happened.
The world beyond the facility continued moving forward, completely unaware of the violence below.
The fanatic crashed heavily back into the courtyard, chunks of broken concrete and dust flying in every direction.
His clothes were torn to shreds. Dark blood covered his face. Yet, absolute madness still burned brightly within his eyes.
He laughed hysterically, spitting blood onto the stone.
"I'm your opponent!"
"I'M THE ONE WHO'LL KILL HIM!" His enormous magma blade reignited with a roaring hiss.
The Collector calmly let out a soft sigh.
"...Always so impatient."
Without another word—he raised the heavy rifle.
The fanatic charged forward with a roar.
The Collector pulled the trigger.
Click.
The crystal round floated silently through the air.
At the exact same moment, the fanatic's massive magma sword descended.
Two dangerous attacks. Two completely different trajectories.
Both were converging on Zekai at once.
From the corridor wall, Sebastian's heart nearly stopped. "No—!"
Yet Zekai didn't panic. Something deep inside his mind became unnaturally, beautifully quiet.
The world slowed down entirely. It wasn't time itself that altered—it was his thoughts.
The fanatic's muscles contracted. Weight shifted heavily to his leading foot.
The Collector's finger tightened precisely against the hair-trigger.
The crystal round rotated once.
Twice.
Its exact flight path unfolded clearly inside Zekai's mind.
It didn't manifest as an absolute certainty, but rather as an array of overlapping possibilities.
One path.
Then another. Then hundreds of branching lines.
His body moved smoothly before his conscious thoughts could even finish forming.
One small step sideways. The roaring magma blade passed less than an inch from his left shoulder, slicing empty air.
Another calm step.
The drifting crystal bullet floated harmlessly past his right cheek, missing his skin by a hair's breadth.
The Collector's calm expression flickered for the very first time.
"...You've survived two Relic rounds." A long pause followed.
"...You're the first." His emerald eye narrowed to a pinpoint.
"...No wonder they failed."
For the first time in many years, the Relic Collector's strategic thoughts stalled.
Interesting...
His single emerald eye tracked every single step Zekai took across the debris.
That performance wasn't raw speed.
The boy never actually outran the incoming attacks.
He simply was no longer standing where the attacks were destined to land.
The long rifle lowered by a tiny fraction.
He didn't evade the danger.
He selected the only surviving path out of a hundred dead ends.
A faint, dangerous smile slowly appeared on the shooter's face.
"...Now this..."
"...is a prize worth hunting."
Zekai looked directly back at him through the heat haze.
"You sound certain." He slowly took another measured step forward.
"Try. Because I'm still standing."
The fanatic stumbled, overextending from his missed strike.
"Stand still!" he screamed, completely blinded by his fanatical devotion.
He unleashed another frantic barrage of blazing, chaotic slashes.
The courtyard instantly became a roaring inferno. Concrete exploded under the heat. Reinforced steel melted into sludge. Billowing black smoke swallowed everything in sight.
Within the absolute chaos, Zekai continued walking. Not quickly. Not dramatically.
Every single movement he made was minimal. Every single step was absolutely perfect.
The Collector lowered his rifle slightly further into the smoke.
"...You're not faster."
"You're choosing the correct path."
Zekai frowned slightly, his focus unbroken.
"I just know."
"Where not to be."
For the very first time since entering the BSA Headquarters, the Collector felt a genuine pang of curiosity.
"...Impossible."
Behind them, the fanatic roared once more, his mind completely broken by his inability to touch the boy.
"I SAID LOOK AT ME!"
He launched himself wildly toward Zekai, both hands gripping the blazing hilt of his sword. The molten blade carved a clean path through the black smoke, heading straight toward Zekai's exposed neck.
Zekai didn't even look back at the incoming strike. He simply waited.
Three.
Two.
One.
Now.
His body pivoted elegantly on his heel. His left hand shot backward with blinding accuracy—grabbing the fanatic's ankle cleanly in mid-air.
The fanatic's pupils shrank to tiny pins behind his broken face.
"Wha—?!"
Using the attacker's own massive forward momentum against him, Zekai spun his entire torso.
The fanatic's heavy body became a human projectile.
He flew at terminal velocity directly toward the position of the Collector.
The fanatic's eyes suddenly widened in pure terror as he traced his own flight path.
The glowing, newly fired relic round was no longer flying toward Zekai.
It was flying straight toward him.
"...WAIT!" His face lost every single trace of fanatical confidence.
"DON'T FIRE!" His voice cracked into genuine, shrill panic.
"IT'S ME!"
For the very first time, the Collector's professional expression completely broke. His finger was already actively tightening around the trigger mechanism. The crystal round had already left the barrel, deployed into real space.
And now, his own ally was flying directly into its irreversible path.
"...Move!" the fanatic screamed into the wind. But it was already far too late to rewrite the vectors.
The glowing, drifting crystal pendant perfectly reflected three distinct figures in its transparent surface.
The Hunter.
The Fool.
The Sacrifice.
The relic round glowed brighter and brighter, its ancient symbols igniting with a harsh light.
The ancient runes on the relic glowed brighter, humming with a terrifying, localized gravity.
It was waiting.
Ready to accept its next eternal prisoner.
Then—the crystal bullet reached the fanatic.
✦ End Chapter 39 — The Relic Collector Vs Zekai (Part 1) ✦