THE UNBOUND MORTAL

Chapter 7

CRACK.

The sound was not thunder. It was the violent tear of superheated air.

A bolt of compressed crimson plasma blasted past Logan’s left temple, missing his ear by less than two inches. It struck the trunk of a weeping-needle pine behind him. There was no fire, no smoke, only a blinding flash of white-hot heat that instantly turned the thick wooden bark into bubbling, translucent green glass.

The heat was so intense it singed the hairs on the side of Logan’s head.

Logan did not freeze. He did not gasp. He threw his body sideways, rolling over the sharp black shale of the ravine, and pressed his back flat against the cold surface of an overhanging granite shelf.

Above him, the wind howled through the narrow mountain gap.

A heavy thump shook the loose pebbles on the ledge fifteen paces away. A man dropped from the sky, landing upright with the arrogant ease of a seasoned hunter. The impact of his iron-shod boots cracked the rock, but his knees barely bent; an invisible cushion of mana had absorbed the shock of the forty-foot drop.

Flames danced across the man’s leather gloves.

Above his head burned letters of bright orange fire:

[Christian Morris — System: Blazing Executioner (B-Rank) — Level: 8]

Behind him, two more figures slipped down the rock face on thick silk ropes. They were elite guards of the Iron Vanguard Clan, clad in black mail, each carrying a heavy composite recurve bow inscribed with glowing red enhancement runes.

Christian shook the dust from his shoulders. He wore a high-collared coat of fire-drake leather, and his teeth were bare in a wide, mocking grin.

"Look at you, Carter," Christian drawled, his voice echoing off the narrow walls of the gorge. "Scrambling in the mud like a blind badger. Brandon told me you got lucky in the Ascension Hall. He said you used some filthy tavern trick to punch his gut while he was adjusting his aura. He was furious, you know. He’s coughing blood into a silk bowl right now, and his father had to pay three high priests five hundred gold coins to cleanse his bruised liver."

Logan did not answer. He stayed pressed against the rock, his breathing silent, his hand resting on the wooden handle of his remaining skinning knife.

He knew Christian Morris. Christian was Brandon Cox’s personal attack dog. Whenever a merchant in the lower wards failed to pay the Vanguard Clan their protection tax, Christian was the one who set their shops on fire while their children slept inside.

"You think you can hide behind that rock?" Christian laughed, taking a slow step forward. The flames on his hands flared higher, hissing like angry vipers. "My system isn't like those trash D-rank initiates you were chained to. I have the [Thermal Predator] passive. I don't need to see your face, Carter. My interface shows me the heat of your blood pumping through your chest. It shows me the hot air coming out of your nose. To my eyes, you are a bright red torch in a dark room."

The two archers behind Christian spread out, their boots crunching on the loose gravel. They notched black-shafted arrows, their bows glowing with crimson targeting reticles that locked directly onto the edges of Logan's granite boulder.

"Young Master Brandon gave very specific orders," Christian continued, his voice dropping into a cruel purr. "I am not supposed to kill you quickly. I am supposed to melt your fingers off one by one, burn your eyes out of your sockets, and drag your living carcass back to Heavenfall City in an iron cage. He wants to hang you from the East Gate so the commoners remember what happens when a blank touches a god."

Christian raised both palms. The air around his arms began to warp and shimmer.

"Come out, Carter," Christian yelled. "Or I will turn this entire ravine into a glass furnace! [Crimson Barrage]!"

Christian thrust his hands forward.

Five grapefruit-sized spheres of concentrated orange fire erupted from Christian’s palms in rapid succession. They did not fly in straight lines; they curved through the sulfur mist like living hornets, homing in directly on the heat of Logan's body behind the rock.

The first sphere struck the edge of the granite boulder, blasting a shower of glowing rock splinters into the air. The second tore through the dirt at Logan’s feet.

The third was coming straight for his skull.

Logan moved. He did not sprint in a straight line, and he did not dive behind another rock. An ordinary fighter, guided by instinct or panic, would try to run away from the fire. But Logan understood the mathematics of the divine interface.

He had watched Christian fight in the city arenas during the Autumn Festivals.

The [Blazing Executioner] system had an auto-lock function. The targeting algorithm worked on a continuous calculation: it measured the target’s velocity, their center of mass, and their current stride length to predict where they would be when the projectile arrived. 

For ninety-nine percent of fighters, who ran with natural, fluid strides, the system’s prediction was ninety-nine percent accurate.

The system was a machine. And machines could only calculate patterns they understood.

Logan took two violent, heavy strides forward—straight toward Christian.

The targeting reticles on the archers' bows flashed bright green, signaling a guaranteed hit based on his forward momentum.

Then, mid-stride, Logan did something no system-trained warrior would ever do.