The midnight-black smoke screen coiled and surged like a living thing.
Within its dark, suffocating perimeter, the air pressure hummed an uneven, dangerous tune. Captain Zarek Mayron remained anchored to his spot, his heels locked to the scorched metal deck plates.
*BOOM!*
The air behind Zarek cracked open as another five-minute threshold crossed, doubling Zoom's speed, agility, and raw strength exponentially. Zoom was no longer just a blur; he had become a ghost, moving so fast that his boots left melting paths in the steel deck before the sound of his footsteps could even travel.
"You're slowing down, Captain!" Zoom's voice echoed from everywhere at once, a distorted, overlapping chorus born of pure, unnatural velocity.
A trajectory line flashed in Zarek's mind—a devastating, hyper-accelerated straight right punch targeted directly at his throat. Zarek twisted his upper body back, the wind of the punch shaving the front of his armor. But before Zarek could even counter, Zoom's accelerated reflexes allowed him to instantly alter his path mid-stride. He dropped his weight and fired a lethal, knee strike upward toward Zarek's chin.
Zarek saw it coming, but his physical muscles, pushed to their ultimate absolute limits, could barely keep up with the prediction. He crossed his forearms just in time to block the knee.
*CRACK!*
The sheer, multiplied force of the impact lifted Zarek's feet slightly off the ground, the concussive shockwave rattling the bones in his arms. He skidded backward, his boots grinding hard against the loose rivets. He stopped exactly four and a half meters away from his anchor point—mere inches from the invisible border that would disable his power completely.
"Damn it!" Arix shouted through the dense fog.
Arix Calder didn't waste a single heartbeat. Slamming his palms together, he forced the unnatural midnight mist to boil violently around Zoom's vision. From the shadows of the smoke, three perfect, identical illusions of Zarek Mayron materialized simultaneously. Each phantom captain drew a plasma blade, the blue high-frequency hum perfectly replicated by Arix's evoliths, and lunged at Zoom from three different angles.
The first illusion executed a swift, horizontal slash at Zoom's neck. The second drove a downward pierce toward his chest . The third went low, sweeping a low kick toward his ankles.
"Trivial tricks!" Zoom roared, as he cracked he's neck, Moving at triple his base speed, Zoom didn't even try to dodge. He threw a lightning-fast, triple-strike combination. His left fist obliterated the torso of the first Zarek, his right elbow shattered the skull of the second, and his sweeping kick tore through the legs of the third. All three phantoms dissolved into harmless, wispy tendrils of black smoke.
But the moment Zoom's eyes locked onto the empty space where the illusions had vanished, the *real* Zarek was already moving within his strict five-meter grid. Having predicted Zoom's exact positioning after destroying the phantoms, Zarek lunged forward, keeping his heels low. He drove a brutal, reverse-grip plasma strike toward Zoom's flank.
*CLANG!*
Zoom's reaction speed was so monstrously elevated by the chronological boost that he managed to raise his gauntlet, catching the edge of the plasma blade flat against his palm.
They stood locked in a vicious, high-speed stalemate, their faces inches apart. Zoom's eyes reflected off the grim, sweat-streaked face of the 6th Division Captain.
"Tell me, Captain," Zoom hissed, his muscles straining as he pushed back against Zarek's blade. "Why is it that no matter how fast I get, no matter how many times my speed doubles, your guard is always exactly where my fist is going to land? You don't possess speed-enhancement. Your muscle fibers aren't accelerating. So how are you keeping up with me".
Zarek didn't answer. He simply grunted, shifting his weight to drive more power into the blade, trying to force Zoom's guard down.
Zoom's eyes narrowed as his mind began to process the entire sequence of the engagement. He replayed every exchange from the moment he had been caught by his wrist. *'The first time I was caught, I was within arm's reach. The second time I blitzed, he dodged cleanly without taking a single step forward. Every single time I attack, he shifts his weight, tilts his torso, or parries, but his boots... his boots never leave this small patch of metal deck.'*
Suddenly, a wicked, triumphant grin spread across Zoom's face. The pieces of the puzzle clicked into place with terrifying clarity.
"I see it now," Zoom laughed, a mocking, high-pitched sound that cut through the thrum of the battlefield. "It's a field! A localized, restricted territory! You aren't reacting to me at all. You can predict any attack, but only within a strict, specific radius around yourself. And more importantly... you haven't taken more than five steps away from the center since we started."
Zarek's eyes widened slightly, a microscopic tell that Zoom instantly caught.
"Bingo," Zoom sneered. "You're trapped in your own cage, Captain. If you step out of your little circle to chase me, your magic trick stops working, doesn't it?"
With a sudden, massive burst of strength ,Zoom kicked off Zarek's chest , breaking the weapon lock. Instead of closing the distance to engage in close-quarters combat, Zoom used his monstrous speed to sprint backward, completely exiting the ten-meter radius of Zarek's prediction matrix. He stopped twenty meters away, completely outside the grid, standing safely in the deep shadows of Arix's smoke screen.
Inside the circle, Zarek reset his stance, his breathing heavy, his forehead dripping with sweat. The tactical advantage had vanished. Zoom now knew the exact perimeter of the invisible boundary.
"Let's see how your prediction handles a structural demolition, Captain!" Zoom shouted from the darkness.
Zoom didn't rush in with a punch. Instead, moving at speeds that defied the human eye, he began to circle the outside of the ten-meter perimeter, completely avoiding the zone. As he ran, he tore up massive, multi-ton chunks of shattered dreadnought steel, iron rivets, and broken concrete from the floorboards. Using his multiplied physical strength, he hurled the massive pieces of debris straight into the circle from every single direction at once.
*WHIZ! BAM! CRASH!*
The debris entered the ten-meter zone simultaneously. Zarek moved like a martial artist possessed—shattering a flying iron beam with a concentrated plasma slash, ducking beneath a multi-ton plate of armor steel, and parrying a shower of sharp metal rivets with the flat of his gauntlets.
But the sheer volume of the projectiles was overwhelming. A jagged piece of concrete grazed his shoulder armor, tearing the metal away and drawing a deep line of crimson. A heavy steel pipe struck his thigh, forcing him to drop to one knee.
"You can't leave your circle, and you can't stop everything!" Zoom's voice boomed as he circled like a ravenous predator.
Right at that moment, the ten-minute mark arrived. Zoom's body convulsed briefly as his physical parameters doubled yet again. He was reaching a state of movement that began to tear at his own suit the sheer friction of his speed generating a localized heat wave.
He knew he had the Captain cornered. Zarek was on one knee, his armor cracked, his prediction field stretched to its absolute limit by the constant rain of debris.
"This is the end of the 6th Division!" Zoom roared.
Zoom executed a terminal, linear blitz. He didn't come from the sides or the blind spots; he came straight down the center line, moving so fast that he created a massive vacuum behind him that sucked the midnight smoke completely out of the air. He entered the ten-meter zone like a localized meteor, his right fist chambered back, carrying enough kinetic multiplication to obliterate a frontline tank.
Zarek, still on one knee, saw the solitary, massive crimson trajectory line flash in his mind. It was a straight, unavoidable path of absolute destruction. He knew his physical muscles could not dodge it from his current position. His only chance to survive was to throw himself backward, out of the way of the terminal point of the punch.
Zarek lunged backward, executing a desperate, defensive roll.
But the moment his torso cleared the threshold, his boots slid across the metal floorboards, crossing exactly five and a half meters away from his restricted area.
*SILENCE.*
The predictive matrix inside Zarek's mind instantly shattered into nothingness. The crimson trajectory lines vanished.
Zoom saw the exact moment the light of prediction left Zarek's eyes. He let out a maniacal, victorious scream, altering his path mid-stride to track Zarek's rolling form.
"I told you!" Zoom shouted, appearing directly above the fallen Captain. He raised his gauntlet, the purple energy condensing into a solid, lethal point directly over Zarek's unprotected forehead. "Without your circle, you are nothing but an insect!"
The fist descended, moving at a speed that meant absolute, instantaneous death. Zarek looked up, his teeth grit, his hand reaching for a blade he knew would be too slow to save him.
But Zoom had forgotten one vital variable on the battlefield.
He had spent the entire conflict analyzing the Captain, studying the grid, and calculating the five-meter restriction. In his arrogance, he had treated the battle as a strict one-on-one duel, completely dismissing the man who had created the very smoke screen he was fighting in.
From the absolute vacuum of the clearing, a figure materialized out of a phantom silhouette right at Zoom's blind flank. It wasn't an illusion this time. It was flesh, blood, and unyielding steel.
Arix Calder appeared like a ghost born from the midnight fog, his eyes burning with a fierce, protective fury for his captain. He didn't shout a warning. He didn't hesitate. He had used the distraction of Zarek's fallback to position himself perfectly within Zoom's blind spot, moving completely undetected through his own mist.
With a single, fluid, and monstrously powerful horizontal swing, Arix drove his blade straight through the air.
*SLASH.*
The edge of Arix's blade met Zoom's neck before the Elite's descending fist could touch Zarek's forehead. Zoom head fell to the ground.
The severed head rolled across the loose rivets, bouncing twice before coming to a stop against a piece of shattered cargo wreckage.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Arix stood tall in the center of the clearing, his blade extended, smoke slowly rising from the edge of the steel as he let out a long, trembling breath. He lowered his weapon, turning his head to look down at his captain.
"You alright, Cap?" Arix asked, his voice rough but steady as he extended a hand to help Zarek up.
Zarek Mayron looked at the dead Elite, then up at his Vice-Captain. A faint, tired smile cut through the dirt and blood on his face as he grabbed Arix's hand, pulling himself back up onto his feet.
"Perfect timing, Arix," Zarek muttered, wiping his lip as "Let's clean
up the rest of these soldiers. There's no time to rest".