Luckily for him, no matter how Ajax tries to catch up to him, Orin cannot be caught. The pesky red flames being thrown in his face and towards the walls around him also puts him on edge. Ajax’s frustrations mount. He and Orin are still in the same hallway and somewhat close to the frozen bodies that Ajax had left behind.
He notices the bodies still there as well as all their equipment and decides to try another tactic. He grabs a broken sword from one of Orin's compatriots. He super chills the sword so that it won't melt against Orin's flames and raises it.
"Hah!"
Ajax slashes towards Orin, using the sword to extend his reach. He slices over and over again as Orin tries hard to dodge his attacks. He can see the man grit his teeth in extreme focus as the blade gets closer and closer to carving him up. However as a couple minutes go by, Ajax realizes this tactic isn't working all that well.
Orin doesn't seem to need to dodge using his reflexes anymore. Ajax’s fighting style is too predictable for him and he’s already acclimated.
Orin shakes his head in exasperation as Ajax tries to swing the sword towards him repeatedly with diminishing returns at this point. The boy simply isn't a fighter and he has no formal training in swordsmanship. He had been relying on his strength and speed in order to fill the gap in combat experience and it had been working.
However, the moment he meets someone nearly his speed and much more experienced in combat, his poor habits and weak fighting style becomes more apparent and easily exploitable. After all, though Orin would normally not be Ajax's match, he is still a well-trained combatant.
"Fuck… stay still!" Ajax shouts, frustrated. He still needs to help Dzan and Sigvor and he cannot stop thinking about how badly they could be hurt if he doesn’t find a way to kill the terrorist in front of him right now. Minutes should not be going by, he should have already killed his opponent by now.
Orin simply laughs while dodging Ajax's powerful, fast, yet amateurish slashes and stabs with the grace of a dancer. The fire being thrown by him also diminishes Ajax’s visibility. They seem to be getting hotter too, though Ajax cannot really tell for certain.
This won't work. All I'm doing is wasting time. And he's keeping on setting fire to the walls!
As Orin leaps away from Ajax, flames are left around where he was standing that take more time to dissipate than normal. Orin has already noticed Ajax's need to protect the apartment units which is why he's spreading his flames as far as he can manage to.
If he keeps spreading the flames around, Ajax will have to expend mana using his temperature control magic to dissipate the flames from a distance.
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He’ll even waste his stamina trying to run around and douse the flames farther away. Orin thinks that this will eventually force Ajax to drain his energy rather than literally giving Ajax more energy to use to kill him.
In reality, this kind of magic, the ability to gather heat and turn it into usable energy isn't so unheard of. The only issue is that using mana to gather heat around a person’s surroundings while also adding that heat to a person's vitality and strength pool would be too inefficient a use of a person’s mana pool.
His opponent would not be doing so well in this fight if he was using dead-end magic like that which is why Orin doesn’t consider it possible. To be fair though, the only reason Ajax's power works so efficiently is because his body was given to him by his Father, the Divine Limit.
"You're slow, boy! Are you really the little prick who forced me and Karise to change our plans? You've become so weak now! Or is it that I've gotten stronger, hahahaha!"
"Aaaahhh!!" Ajax falls for Orin's provocation and swings wildly in Orin's direction with the broken sword in his hand. Orin's attempt to make Ajax expend his stamina is working perfectly in his eyes, though in reality, Ajax's stamina never diminishes so long as he can absorb the heat in his surroundings and from Orin’s flames.
Meanwhile, as Ajax swings, he sees flashes of Dzan and Sigvor's faces in his mind. He slows down and remembers his true intentions. He grits his teeth at having fallen to Orin's provocations so easily.
"Fuck!"
With no ideas on how to overtake Orin's speed without rapidly exhausting his deepest energy reserves and leaving himself vulnerable, Ajax slows his perception of time down so that his mind enters a deeper state of focus.
He considers his options while the world around him moves slowly. His body purposely doesn't acclimate to the speed of his thoughts so it's as if he's trapped in a frozen body. Still, because of this method that he's made use of multiple times today, his ability to effectively counterattack has improved.
Currently, one second in reality is perceived as 40 seconds inside Ajax's own mind.
I'm still able to blow out the flames, so right now I'm at an impasse with this fucking terrorist. I need a way to kill him without relying on skills that I don't have. Shit… I'm not a swordsman, that much is clear. I have to think of something…
Ajax considers his options. His mind returns to the sword in his hand. He considers something that he might not have seen before. His mind returns to reality after about 3 seconds of the real world passing by. Orin did notice Ajax frozen in place for three seconds but didn't attack out of fear that he was simply being lured in close.
Ajax continues to extinguish the flames that Orin spreads while taking inventory of his total energy reserves at the moment. His 40x bullet time managed to drain about half of his energy, just so that he could have about two minutes of uninterrupted thought within three seconds in the real world.
Still, he stops chasing Orin right now. He looks at the broken sword in his hand. It should be enough material for what he needs. One thing that he had noticed about Orin is that while the blonde man is now nearly as fast as Ajax is, he's not as strong or as durable. That should be an advantage for Ajax but he hasn't made use of it in this battle.
Ajax decides to change that.