Heroes to Hunted

Chapter 90 Playing With Fire, Part One

?I gritted my teeth and glared in frustration. However, it wasn't directed at Barik but toward myself and my inability to act.

Thanks to the pain in my chest from his attack, my mind was gifted a moment of clarity. I remembered the crucial rule instilled in me over my four years of fighting.

'You idiot,' I cursed myself, 'how could you let fear overtake you?!' I, a man who's waded through valleys of death, blood-red rivers, and the smoldering remnants of towns, was crippled by something as small as a phobia.

Though I say small, the terror surging through me was nothing minor. My heart hammered away at my chest, and my palms became slick with sweat. But how I felt didn't matter; what mattered was survival.

"Nothing else matters," I wheezily mumbled to myself.

I formed a slight smirk and returned to my feet. "Yeah... I'm ready. But I won't use magic." Though I refused to use my fire, I could fight. Even against Barik, a magic user, I could still win! I hope...

Barik returned my smirk in kind. "I like the look in your eyes, kid. But you'll use your affinity," he paused, then nodded to himself. "I'll let loose and force it out of you."

'Let loose? After everything, he could still do more?!'

Turns out, he certainly could.

A mixture of luminous green and brown energy pooled around his legs. In the next moment, rock and hardened clay snaked up his legs, then his torso, then over his head.

He encased himself in a jagged stone set of armor, leaving only two slits for his eyes. The joints crackled and broke apart, allowing him free movement.

'You're kidding me,' I looked at my fists, then at him. 'There's no way I can defeat that. Not without a weapon.'

"Here I come, kid," he said with a muffled voice. Then, he flexed a leg backward to lunge forward.

'Okay, the armor is a problem, but he should lack mobility now.' Except he didn't. Practically disobeying the laws of nature, he effortlessly launched himself toward me, quaking the ground as he left.

In seconds, he was upon me.

He launched several attacks in quick succession, and my reactions against them became increasingly sluggish. Barik's ground-pounding strikes were growing closer and closer to their mark.

The exhaustion from the fight and my lack of sleep the previous night were taking their toll. As a result, my body was forced to stop for the briefest of moments.

Barik seized that moment.

He waved an arm upward and over, then slammed it to the earth. After a short delay, a massive omnidirectional shockwave blew me backward.

As I flew, Barik's next attack was already underway. His other arm was planted firmly into the ground. Then, numerous rock walls appeared in my path.

While I rag-dolled, I smashed into and through each of them, grunting and wincing painfully until my momentum finally broke.

My breathing was ragged, and my flesh ached. The physical abuse left my mental clarity in disarray, and I could feel my eyes rolling back into my skull to seek the safety of unconsciousness.

'I can't... I can't...' my mind, bones, blood, and skin, it all begged for the end. But there was no time for rest. In no time, Barik had already closed the distance and struck me with an uppercut.

My body left the ground, and he took hold of one of my legs. Then, he raised me upward and threw me back to the center of the torn-up clearing.

Again, I used my arms to break my fall, but the rock fragments on the ground shredded my skin. I tried to push myself upward, but my arms buckled from exhaustion.

I fell flat on my face, completely spent.

"I'm gonna fucking die..." I mumbled in disbelief. "This guy is going to kill me..."

The crunching of grass and shattered rock beneath footsteps heralded Barik's approach. "You honestly might, kid. At the rate you're going, you're just a liability. Maybe it'd be better to kill you now..."

'A liability? I'm...a liability?' I tried clenching my hands out of frustration, but they were too shaky from injury to form fists.

I wheezed, and amongst all the other agony, I felt a sharp pain piercing my abdomen. 'Two ribs are broken,' or at least, that was my educated guess from experience.

"You're really going to give up? Is that all your life is worth to you?" Barik stood above.

"I... I have no we-weapons... I..." I could barely squeeze the words out.

"You do, kid! Stop being stubborn and use the fucking fire already!" Barik sighed wearily. "Is that all your companions' lives are worth to you?!"

"My c-companions..."

Numerous thoughts, all conflicted and despaired, plagued my mind. So I shook my head as violently as I could to rid myself of them. My action exacerbated the pounding headache I already had.

Though my head thumped with pain, my mind became clear about what to do. I had to think about the last option open to me. The one I avoided all this time.

My mind split in two. One ordered me to survive, even at the cost of my own sanity. The other panicked about what surviving would mean... What it would cost, and begged me to lay down, accepting defeat.

But I refused to give up. So long as my heart kept beating, my determination would too. 'Looks like you'll get what you want, after all...Barik.'

I closed my eyes and entered a trance of deep focus. 'What was it Takagi said? "Feel a desire" or something?' I locked away my fear of the fire, or tried to at least, and centered myself. Then I squeezed my hands as tightly as possible and attempted "feeling a desire." However, not even a plume of smoke puffed up from me.

"Hmph," Barik grunted in disappointment, then pulled his foot back. "You're too stubborn," he said, burying his foot into my gut with a full-forced kick.

Again I rag-dolled, but the pain was dulled from my concentration. I was lost in thought about what I could do to elicit even a bit of magic.

'What about last night?' I questioned myself.

I pondered to myself. I was thinking about what I did while unconscious. What had I done that allowed me to generate magic? That's when I realized; maybe it wasn't a specific desire but a powerful emotion that let Takagi use magic.

I remembered that harrowing nightmare; a particular feeling shot up my bones and pumped through my veins. 'Maybe... Maybe it's my fear. Maybe that's what I need.'

With nothing to lose, I stopped fighting it. I envisioned every horrible detail within the past four years of my life. Every insecurity, every sorrow, every gruesome death, every thought that normally only emerged to haunt my dreams. All of it flooded into my consciousness.

Following suit, a profound panic gripped my body. I shook uncontrollably as the floodgates opened, and my breathing went ragged. Despite that, I felt it. A profound power welling up inside me.

But it wasn't enough. It was close but just out of reach, something I could only brush with my fingertips. I still had one thing left to unlock; my pyrophobia.

I imagined myself surrounded by flame. My flesh was charred black as charcoal, and my blood boiled as it left my body. I mentally relived every grisly detail of my death.

Then, I felt it.

Red orbs energy flowed into me, and I felt a spark of power. Within me were faint embers signifying my will to live. As with every flame, I focused everything I had on them. I cultivated the feeling until it went from a single cinder to a roaring blaze.

The power transferred from within my body to reality. It started as a thin veil, scorching the ground black. However, my arms were soon engulfed in a turbulent yellow flame. The fire coiled around them like twin burning serpents.

Having a fire so close, its sweltering heat upon my skin, it took constant effort not to faint from panic. Even so, my fear became my fire's fuel. I channeled and fed it to the hungry inferno. Once sated, the flame grew bright as the Sun and hot enough to melt steel.

However, my control of it wasn't anything like Barik's rock gauntlets. The fire danced chaotically, searing everything in its path. My weary focus was barely enough to keep it from spreading to the rest of my body.

I raised my immolated arms to Barik, and, with uneven breathing, I painted a fear-filled smirk on my face. "I... I'm ready."

"It's about time," Barik taunted.

We both readied ourselves and fully intended to annihilate the other. This wasn't training anymore; it was a warrior's clash with our lives on the line.