Infinity Is My Affinity?!?-Chapter 82: One Animal Facing Another

-Ding!

{Tier 3 Early-Stage, Elven Archer Killed.

900 EXP + 300% Bonus for killing an entity 3 Tiers above rewarded!

Tier 3 Mid-Stage, Human Battle Mage Killed.

1,000 EXP + 300% Bonus for killing an entity 3 Tiers above rewarded!

Total Exp Received: 5,700}

The system’s chime ringing in Nico’s ears synced perfectly with the thuds of two bodies hitting the forest floor.

Nico stood a few meters away from the carnage with a heaving chest and a stretched snarl, waiting for the screams of rage or the shock from the remaining survivor.

But only silence reigned instead.

Arlath surveyed the sudden carnage with the detached curiosity of a butcher inspecting a slab of meat.

He looked at the mage’s ruined eye and the elf’s severed head before turning his gaze back to Nico.

His eyes remained the void of horrors, reflecting only a calculating reassessment of the asset standing before him.

"You’re clearly not normal, kid," Arlath said with an eyebrow raised, his voice steady and devoid of the grief one might expect for fallen comrades. "... No wonder a Greater Dragon chose to follow you."

Resting a heavy hand on the machete strapped to his waist, a grin of pure, unfiltered greed split his face as he stepped over the Elf’s body without a second glance.

"And I must thank you... Now I get to keep all your treasures for myself."

"Go to hell!" Nico snarled as he raised his hand.

The air in front of the tip of his finger distorted, birthing an unstable pebble of ice with a pulsating core that screamed of volatile energy.

He unleashed the barrage of Fragmentation Pebbles straight at the arrogant giant’s chest.

Arlath moved with a terrifying burst of speed that blurred his outline, snatching the headless corpse of the Elf by the ankle and threw it at Nico, intercepting his barrages and-

-BOOM-! BOOM-! BOOM-! BOOM-! BOOM-! BOOM-!

The Fragmentation Pebbles detonated on the corpse.

Thousands of supersonic ice shards shredded the elf in a violent eruption of gore and bone, turning the incoming corpse into a cloud of red mist.

While Arlath didn’t sit still, he charged through the bloody haze of his former comrade’s remains, closing the distance in a single, earth-shaking stride.

But Nico was already moving.

Through the two-second window of his precognition and boosted by the enhanced cognition, he saw Arlath’s fist coming for his head before the warrior even planted his foot.

Nico ducked under the punch, missing Arlath’s punch by a hair’s breadth.

Arlath’s eyes widened slightly at the dodge as his momentum carried him forward, exposing his flank.

Nico didn’t waste the opening.

­-Bam!

He drove an ice-reinforced fist into the giant’s gut with the force of a sledgehammer, combining his physical buff with the momentum of Arlath’s own charge, stopping him dead in his tracks.

The blow landed solidly, hitting with enough force to fold a normal man.

But Arlath wasn’t normal.

The giant merely grunted, absorbing the impact like a wall of iron, before he backhanded Nico with a swatting motion.

Nico saw it coming long ago.

He crossed his ice-plated arms in an ’X’ block and-

-BAM!

The blow sent Nico sliding backward five meters, his boots carving trenches in the dirt, cracking the ice on his forearms, but he remained standing.

"Fast," Arlath muttered, shaking his hand slightly. "And tough... For a maggot at least."

Then the next second, Arlath rushed in again, abandoning technique for pure, overwhelming speed.

Nico’s mind raced.

The precognition showed him the path of every strike, every kick to the knee, every chop to the neck, the punch to the gut.

And Ice Reinforcement’s cognitive enhancement gave the power to process it all and act.

Nico danced through the storm.

He sidestepped the kick, deflected the chop, shattering the ice plating on his arm, and twisted his body, making the punch graze past him.

For ten seconds, the Tier 1 mage held his ground against the Tier 4 warlord in a blur of ice and steel.

But the gap was too wide.

Nico could see the attacks, but his body began to lag behind the sheer ferocity and decades of combat experience behind the assault.

And Arlath realized it too.

"Stop squirming like a whore!" Arlath roared, tanking a point-blank AP Ice Pebble to the chest to clench Nico’s wrist in an inescapable grip.

Arlath yanked Nico forward and drove a knee into his stomach and-

-OOF!

Nico gasped as the air fled his lungs, the thin armor of frost on his gut shattering under the concentrated point of impact.

Before he could recover, Arlath clamped a hand over Nico’s face.

Using his forward momentum and superior weight, the warrior drove Nico’s skull straight into the earth with a-

-THUD!

The impact whipped Nico’s legs violently upward from the force, nearly snapping his spine in two.

Black spots danced in his vision, muddying his thoughts, but the potent Grade 2 alchemy in his blood forced him to remain conscious.

While Arlath caught one of Nico’s flailing legs while it was still airborne.

And with a grunt of exertion, he swung his body over his shoulder like a wet towel before slamming him back down into the hard-packed dirt, neck-first.

Agony consumed Nico’s nervous system as his cervical vertebrae shattered under the pressure, only for the potion to instantly knit the fractures back together in a searing loop of pain and healing.

Still clutching that leg, Arlath hurled him through the air, sending him crashing through the trunk of a rotting oak tree in a shower of splinters before ragdolling him across the forest floor.

Nico rolled to a stop against a mossy rock, coughing up blood onto his chest while the healing worked overtime, stitching his skin and resetting his bones in seconds.

Nico scrambled to his knees, raising a hand to cast, but a shadow fell over him.

Arlath was already there, looming over him, grinning like a madman, before driving a fist straight into Nico’s nose with a-

-Bam!

Nico’s head snapped back, slamming into the rock behind him.

The realization hit him harder than the fist.

He could see the future. He has enhanced cognition. He was strong enough to dent steel.

But against this perpetual state of concussions? It wasn’t enough.

"How are you doing this?" Arlath asked, raising a scarred eyebrow as he watched Nico’s nose snap back into place with a wet pop. "Is that another treasure?"

Nico answered with a slash of his Kukri upward in a desperate arc aimed at the giant’s groin.

But Arlath caught the wrist mid-swing with a bored expression before-

-SNAP!

With a simple flick of his own wrist, Arlath shattered the bones in Nico’s wrist, catching the blade that slipped from Nico’s fingers with the same hand before the weapon could hit the ground.

Simultaneously, his free hand shot out and buried a punch deep into Nico’s throat.

-GHK!

Nico gagged, wheezing for air as his crushed windpipe fought to regenerate against the swelling.

But the fury refused to die.

He forced his trembling left hand up, channeling his mana into a desperate Fragmentation Pebble at point-blank range.

But Arlath swatted the hand away with the back of his fist, redirecting it into the trees where it detonated harmlessly.

"Let’s see how long this lasts," Arlath muttered as his grin widened into something feral.

He tossed the captured Kukri straight up into the air, spinning it high above the canopy before turning into a blur of violence.

-BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

Arlath unleashed a torrent of punches and open-palm slaps that rained down on Nico’s face and chest with the force of a pile driver.

The ice plating on Nico’s armor fractured and burst apart faster than he could recast it, while the sound of meat striking meat merged into a continuous, sickening drumroll.

Nico’s healing fought a losing war, stitching skin together only for it to be torn open a millisecond later.

While the pain ravaged his mind, driving his consciousness to the absolute brink of collapse as the world dissolved into a haze of red knuckles and white agony, only for his wounds to heal again.

Through his sheer ferocity and brutality, Arlath had unknowingly cracked Nico’s greatest advantages, the combination of enhanced cognition and precognition, by keeping him in a perpetual state of concussion and pain despite the potion’s healing.

Just as the spinning Kukri began its descent from the sky, Arlath seized a handful of Nico’s hair, then, with a grunt, he yanked him off the ground and hurled him backward, sending him shoving through the dirt with a bone-shattering crash before sliding across the forest floor.

But still, he twisted his body mid-skid, digging his boots into the soil and grinding to a halt on his feet.

And the next second, he vomited mouthfuls of blood down onto the ground.

While Arlath snatched the falling Kukri from the air in one fluid motion before whipping his arm forward, launching the blade at blood and dirt-covered Nico.

-ZWIIP!

The blade screamed through the air in a blur of silver death.

But even through the haze of concussed agony, precognition flared, giving him exactly where the blade would hit.

Through sheer adrenalized fury and the enhanced physique of Ice Reinforcement, he forced his bloody, battered limb to move faster than it should have been capable of in a desperate, screaming block and-

-CLANG!

The heavy blade collided with the ice-plated gauntlet, cracking the frost armor instantly before ricocheting straight up into the air, spinning with a high-pitched, singing ring.

[ENOUGH!!!]

The fear, the calculation, the tactical need to bridge the gap... it all incinerated in the furnace of his sheer, unadulterated fury.

Nico snatched the handle of the falling weapon from the air before-

"AAHAHAHAAAA!"

A beastly roar raged out from his throat, in madness as he snapped past his mental limit.

Arlath rushed in immediately.

He closed the distance in a heartbeat with a wild, sweeping kick aimed at the kneeling Nico’s head.

It was a killing blow.

Nico, however, consumed by the frenzy, didn’t even try to dodge.

He leaned into the strike, curling his arm above his head to catch the impact.

-BOOM!

And the kick connected with the force of a battering ram, instantly shattering the bones in his forearm, cratering the ground beneath Nico’s feet before shoving him sideways.

But Nico stood his ground, anchoring himself through sheer, spiteful will.

The defiance caught even Arlath by surprise, freezing him for a fraction of a second.

And with a wet, guttural roar through his blood-choked throat, Nico slashed the Kukri blindly at the Arlath’s exposed gut.

Arlath jumped back, his reflexes and decades of experience saving him from evisceration, but he failed to escape completely.

A thin, red line opened across his stomach.

Looking down at the scratch on his abs, Arlath’s eyes widened in genuine surprise before a feral grin split his face.

He looked up to see the Nico, drenched in his own blood, trembling, and snarling at him with the maddened ferocity of a wild animal.

"AAAAAAHAHAHAH!"

Nico threw his head back, letting out a bloodthirsty roar into the sky, shedding the last remnants of his humanity before dashing straight at Arlath.

Arlath replied with a savage laugh of his own as he spread his arms wide, welcoming the charge as one animal facing another.