Agent047
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792 - Fear
🕑 Added 2024-11-27 10:03:14 +0000 UTC"Is he really injured, or is he just acting?" Zynarel, the Trinarian fighter, muttered to himself. From within the safety of his subspace, he scrutinized Aron, who now hovered in plain view—battered, broken, and seemingly on the brink of death. To Zynarel, it looked almost too convenient, as though Aron was laying himself bare, ripe for the taking.
Normally, no one in Aron’s condition could possibly be suspected of having an ulterior motive. After all, no sane person would allow themselves to be injured so gravely as part of a plan, especially against an opponent wielding spatial attacks that seemed impossible to counter or even detect. But that assumption only applied to someone operating under normal logic. The man Zynarel was fighting was anything but ordinary.
From what Aron had demonstrated in his previous battles, it was clear he thrived in unpredictability. He was adaptable, resourceful, and cunning enough to overcome foes he had never encountered before—foes whose abilities he had no prior knowledge of. Despite starting at a disadvantage, he not only survived but also emerged victorious, and with remarkable ease.
To Zynarel, this made everything suspect. Aron’s apparent vulnerability could very well be a carefully crafted ploy, designed to lure him into a trap he wouldn’t see coming.
“There’s no harm in testing the waters,” Zynarel muttered to himself as he sent a precise spatial attack aimed at severing Aron’s leg. This attack served a dual purpose: if Aron truly was incapacitated, it would confirm his vulnerability and allow Zynarel to offer him a chance to surrender—a move that would strengthen diplomatic ties with Aron's empire and bring potential long-term benefits. After all, sparing a leader could be more valuable than killing one.
On the other hand, if Aron was feigning injury as part of an elaborate plan, Zynarel was confident he would remain unharmed within the safety of his subspace. Still, he was acutely aware of the limitations of his strategy. Maintaining the subspace drained his energy rapidly, and the longer he lingered, the closer he edged toward exhaustion. If he depleted his reserves before leaving it, he would lose the ability to gather spatial mana, leaving him permanently stranded in the void.
Zyranel watched intently as his spatial attack closed in on Aron, his eyes sharp and his senses on high alert, expecting any reaction that might reveal whether Aron was truly incapacitated or merely playing a deadly game. However, what unfolded next left him, along with the millions of viewers, utterly speechless.
The attack, resembling a smaller version of Aron’s mana slash but imbued with devastating spatial properties, tore through the space between them, exuding an aura of unstoppable destruction. Yet, just meters from Aron, the attack suddenly halted mid-air, as though hitting an invisible barrier.
What followed was even more shocking: the spatial cut began to unravel, its intricate energy deconstructed right before their eyes. The attack dissipated completely, vanishing into nothingness. To the onlookers, it seemed as though the impossible had happened—an unstoppable force had simply ceased to exist.
What they couldn’t see, however, was that the energy hadn’t merely dissipated—it had been absorbed by Aron. This detail remained hidden, leaving Zyranel and the viewers grappling with disbelief at what they had just witnessed.
"Impossible," Zyranel muttered, refusing to believe what he had just witnessed. He attributed the failure of his attack to an improbable fluke—perhaps some rare anomaly had occurred during its creation. Determined to confirm his suspicion, he decided to try again, this time taking painstaking care to ensure there were no errors in the casting process.
Carefully weaving the spatial mana, Zyranel meticulously crafted another attack of a similar scale, ensuring its stability and precision down to the last detail. Once satisfied that no mistakes had been made, he released the attack, watching intently as it hurtled toward Aron.
This time, he was certain there would be no fluke—no unexpected failure. He needed to know whether Aron truly possessed the capability to neutralize such an attack or if the previous incident had been a mere coincidence. Every fiber of his being was focused on the outcome.
However, to his utter despair, nothing changed. The process repeated itself: his carefully crafted attack came to an abrupt halt just meters from Aron, followed by its complete dissipation as if it had never existed in the first place.
Zyranel stared in disbelief, his confidence crumbling. His mind raced for an explanation, but none came. The sight was so incomprehensible that he nearly fainted, overwhelmed by the impossibility of what he was witnessing. "How... how is this even possible?" he muttered, his voice trembling with disbelief and frustration.
Although their techniques could be countered, the Trinarian attacks had never been outright stopped in direct combat—not even against the Xor’Vaks, the only race consistently able to defeat them through sheer overwhelming power and destructiveness. What was unfolding now was unprecedented, shocking not only Zyranel but also every Trinarian aware of the implications, and every citizen of the Astral Conclave witnessing it live.
Zyranel's eyes turned blood-red, a mix of rage, disbelief, and fear surging through him. The realization that Aron could nullify their attacks outright was devastating. If true, this single man was now a threat to their very existence. Driven by desperation and fury, Zyranel made a rash decision. Abandoning the subspace to conserve mana, he poured every remaining ounce of his strength into unleashing a spatial storm.
Thousands of spatial lightning bolts materialized around Aron, cascading down in relentless storms, one after another. The sheer ferocity and volume of the attack cloaked Aron entirely, rendering him invisible amidst the chaos. The Colosseum erupted into gasps and murmurs as even the audience, no strangers to destruction, stared in awe at the masterpiece of devastation before them.
As the dust of his attack lingered, Zyranel stood gasping for breath, utterly drained. He had poured everything into this assault, his mana reserves completely depleted. His crimson eyes reflected a faint glimmer of hope—a hope that his final attack had been enough to finish Aron.
"This must be the end," Zyranel thought, his gaze locked on the storm he had summoned. To him, Aron was now no more than an ambitious threat extinguished prematurely—a side character erased before he could grow into a danger capable of toppling their ranks.
