Ryu didn’t even realize how much rage he was causing as he lost himself in an active sort of meditation. And, because he wasn’t paying attention to how Nemesis was moving and what enemies were flying around him, that enigmatic feeling became larger and larger as it loomed over head.
“Someone kill that son of a bitch!”
The figurehead of the Berserk Branch already had a belly full of fury. Unfortunately, he was locked in battle with a Dark Phoenix commander that had no intention of letting him go anywhere.
“Can’t you see that he’s killing your people too?! Let me go!”
The Dark Phoenix, who went by Dia’si, chuckled. “Do you think I’m blind? For every one beast he kills, he slaughters at least ten of you. Clearly, while he’s not on either of our sides, he hates you all a lot more. Maybe you humans shouldn’t have been such arrogant pricks.”
“Human?” Joce erupted into an arrogant and infuriated sort of laughter. “We are the Martial Gods! I will make you regret daring to sully out names in this way.”
Veins of red began to pulse about Joce’s eyes and his forehead, his head of black hair slowly becoming painted in a deep magenta color as he raised a blood red halberd into the air.
“I’m going to soak in your flesh and eat your bone marrow tonight!”
Dia’si chuckled. Though he was a male, his tone was actually quite feminine.
“With just you?”
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The other three Martial God figureheads weren’t as hotheaded as Joce, but they still had deep frowns on their faces. The Dark Phoenixes were extraordinarily difficult opponents. Inheritances of Death were usually used by humans for Necromancy and were rarely used via the method these Phoenixes did. This truth only made them all the more troublesome.
They had to tread carefully and didn’t dare to turn their backs for even a single moment. The explosive strength Death was enough to kill even them in an instant, and it didn’t’ even seem difficult for these Dark Phoenixes to use.
Berold, the figurehead of the Nourishing Soul Branch, had the deepest frown of them all as he felt like something was off. Dai’si wasn’t the only one joking and playing around, it felt like all the Dark Phoenixes were, and yet they still couldn’t’ defeat them. It was clear that they were all waiting for something.
…
Though the four figureheads and four leading Dark Phoenixes couldn’t leave their battles, that didn’t mean others couldn’t. However, with Nemesis speed and the erratic nature of the battlefield to begin with, no one seemed able to catch up.
Nemesis weaved between the defensive lines of the humans and beasts as though a fish in water. Whenever it seemed they might get swarmed by one or the other, he would cut to another side, making pursuing him almost impossible.
How could either the beasts or Martial Gods allow their enemy to so easy breach their ranks? They couldn’t stop Nemesis and especially not Ryu, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t’ stop others.
Ryu didn’t seem to sense anything around him. Whenever he locked onto a target, it would only be himself and them in the world. It would only last for the briefest of moments before this individual found themselves dead, but in Ryu’s current state and with his high thinking speed, it felt like he had intimately gotten to know this individual.
The more Ryu did it, the more he felt he understood those vague phrases and sayings his Grandpa Kunan always seemed to string together.
The erratic movement of Nemesis made Ryu feel more like a normal talent. Because all of his attention was diverted, the sudden changes in direction and the shifts it forced him to make in his calculations lowered his innate high accuracy to something he had to put more deliberate effort into.
It seemed to open up an entirely new sort of sense within him. It felt like an anticipation, a prediction… An ingrained assurance being slowly built on the back of experience.
For a long while, Ryu didn’t understand why it felt so different.
Anticipation? What could do this better than his eyes? Prediction? He could literally divided the world into predictive paths and assign probabilities to each of these potential futures. Ingrained assurance? Who was more confident than himself?
He had already reached the pinnacle of all of these things, so why did relearning them in this way feel so much different?
It all seemed to point back to same, tired words… What you knew wasn’t as important as how you have come to know them.
Ryu had lost count of the number of times he was reminded of his grandfather’s words: The most important thing to an archer are his eyes…
Ryu always thought that this meant he was born to be a bowman. What eyes could be better than his own? Everything should have come so easy. And yet, whenever he picked up a bow, it all felt so superficial. He didn’t have any fun with it and even convinced himself it was because he preferred close combat…
But if he needed that thrill so much, why not just get rid of his weapons entirely and become a fist master? Wouldn’t that give him the excitement he truly wanted?
Ryu didn’t think he was entirely lying to himself back then, but he was definitely only seeing a part of the picture.
Right this moment, though, it felt like that door was slowly opening wider and wider.
The most important thing to an archer were their eyes… But that wasn’t the end of the story.
What Ryu had been missing all this time was that it wasn’t just that an bowman’s eyes were important… It was in how these eyes were cultivated to begin with. What were their foundations built upon? What sort of experience had helped them reached the level they did? What sort of sweat and effort did they have to blink away on your behalf?
Ryu’s hair shifted in the wind, his surroundings becoming oddly silent.
Unknown to him, looming over his back…
A Birthed Phenomena had appeared.