The black shroud dissolved like mist in the wind, revealing something none of them was prepared to see.

  The Pyromaniac was still motionless at the center of the clearing, but something was happening to his spurting flames. The tongues of fire that had previously danced chaotically now moved with unified purpose, converging toward a central point. It was like watching a rope of fire form from nothing.

  "What's happening?" Eleonora whispered, instinctively gripping her knives tighter.

  The flames began to condense, taking on a more solid consistency. First formed the outline of a jaw, with the flames thickening and taking geometric shape. Then the eye sockets appeared—black holes in the fire that seemed to suck in the surrounding light.

  "What the hell," Giordano muttered, taking an involuntary step back.

  The empty sockets began to fill with something that resembled liquid magma, not normal flames. Two pools of incandescent lava that moved and pulsed like living pupils. When those eyes opened completely, they immediately settled on the group.

  Brando felt a chill run down his spine. This was a completely different sensation from being in the presence of a mindless force. Now it appeared intelligent and malevolent.

  Finally, the mouth formed. The flames opened like the throat of a volcano, revealing an incandescent interior that glowed with white light. And from that living furnace came a voice.

  "Now I am complete. Now I can look you in the eyes and see how your flesh will burn. It is your flesh calling to me, begging me to come tear and rend it. Don't you feel this urgency too?" the Pyromaniac said.

  The Pyromaniac slowly raised a hand. The crucial difference was that now, with eyes, they could see he was aiming specifically. And not at the closest target, as he had before. Now he was choosing Eleonora.

  Why? The reason was simple. The Pyromaniac knew well that she was the fastest. He wanted to eliminate the primary mobile threat.

  "He's coming!" Gaetano shouted from high in a tree, quickly setting a rope trap. "Ele, move!"

  The fox-girl dodged with a lateral jump, but the fireball followed her, correcting its trajectory mid-air as if it had its own malevolent intelligence. Seeing this, Eleonora began running as fast as she could and finally slipped between two trees. The fireball crashed against a tree, which was completely engulfed in flames in no time. This was new. The old Pyromaniac attacked and that was it, without complex strategies. What was happening?

  "We need to be faster than him," Alessio said. "Eleonora, go!"

  The fox-girl darted in her serpentine pattern, but she had to modify it completely. Now she had to improvise because the magma eyes followed her wherever she went.

  She threw three knives in rapid succession, aiming for the joints of the armor. Two bounced off, but one lodged in a crack, causing liquid fire to gush out like burning blood.

  The Pyromaniac's magma eyes narrowed in what was unmistakably rage, and he turned toward her quickly. But he didn't attack immediately. He studied her for a moment that seemed eternal, as if he were learning from her movements, memorizing every gesture.

  He's memorizing my pattern, Eleonora realized tensely. Soon he'll know where I'm going before I do.

  "Gaetano, cover!" Alessio shouted, seeing the danger.

  "Already done," the orange man replied, dropping a net of ropes that tangled around the Pyromaniac's legs. But as he set them, in his memories he saw all the times this tactic had worked perfectly. The blind Pyromaniac always struggled the same way, making the ropes tighter and tighter.

  This Pyromaniac simply looked at the ropes for a moment, as if analyzing their structure, the tension points, the weaknesses in the material. Then, instead of struggling uselessly, he simply burned them with a wave of heat so intense that the air itself caught fire.

  "The tactics don't work anymore," Gaetano said, his voice trembling slightly. "He's learning too fast."

  Now it was Tommaso's turn, who charged him frontally. But the Pyromaniac did something he had never done. He moved laterally. Not backward to avoid the impact, not forward to meet it. Laterally, with a fluid movement that completely avoided Tommaso's frontal attack. And as the rock-man passed beside him, thrust forward by momentum he couldn't control, the Pyromaniac struck him forcefully from the side with a punch.

  But it wasn't a random blow. It was surgically precise.

  The impact hit exactly the point where the granite plates of Tommaso's body articulated—a weak point the Pyromaniac could never have known without direct observation and tactical analysis.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Despite his enormous mass, the blow was enough to send him flying, making him roll in the snow for several meters. His rocky resistance was useless against an attack aimed at his most vulnerable point.

  "Tommy!" Gaetano shouted, dropping from the tree without thinking about his own safety.

  "No!" Eleonora screamed, seeing the Pyromaniac turn toward Gaetano as he landed. "It's a trap!"

  But it was too late. The Pyromaniac had orchestrated everything. Injure Tommaso to force Gaetano to leave his protected position, making him vulnerable.

  A fireball headed toward Gaetano before he even touched the ground. Abandoning all caution, the fox-girl launched herself in a jump she didn't think she could make, intercepting the fireball's trajectory. Her knives spun in the air, striking the incandescent projectile and deflecting it just enough to make it miss Gaetano. But Eleonora had to pay the price of a severely burned left arm. The landing, moreover, was far from elegant, rolling in the snow and clutching her injured arm to her chest.

  "We're losing," Gaetano whispered, watching Eleonora get up with difficulty.

  The veterans' coordination was beginning to show its first serious cracks against an opponent who could learn, adapt, and even set traps. Individually they weren't very strong—it was the group that made the difference. But if the adversary knew how to counter the group, what could they do?

  "Our tactics have become obsolete," Alessio admitted, and those words cost him dearly. "We need new ideas."

  It was at that moment that Brando decided to completely change the rules of the game.

  "Rusty!" he called, and his companion turned toward him with all three eyes shining with understanding. "It's time to show what you can do!"

  The Pseudo-Glacial nodded with intelligence. He positioned himself at the center of the clearing, completely ignoring the Pyromaniac who was staring at him with curiosity. He closed his eyes and began to concentrate deeply. The Cold Enhancer "Assault Form" activated in an explosion of azure energy that illuminated the forest like lightning. But this time the process was slower and more controlled, as if Rusty had learned to modulate the transformation. In a few seconds, he became as large as a lion, his claws covered themselves in black metal, and his third eye lit up like a red star. Immediately after, Rusty charged with superhuman speed.

  The Pyromaniac raised both hands to intercept what seemed like a direct frontal attack, but Rusty had learned from the veterans. At the final moment, instead of continuing straight, he launched himself in a lateral jump and then rotated on himself while falling so that all his claws struck simultaneously.

  The claws hit the ember armor not once, but eight times in less than a second. Four strikes to the chest, two to the flanks, one to the shoulder, one to the arm. Moreover, each strike was calculated with great precision, aimed at a specific point of the armor where the crystalline structure of the incandescent metal was weakest.

  Eight deep grooves opened in the Pyromaniac's body, perfectly parallel and equidistant as if they had been carved by a master. From each began to flow liquid fire like arterial blood, creating rivulets of lava. He then bounced away from the Pyromaniac using one of his own arms as a springboard, landing next to Brando.

  "Interesting," the Pyromaniac said, and his magma gaze settled on Rusty with what could be considered admiration. "Very, very interesting."

  "Good!" Brando exclaimed loudly, throwing his spheres of Rust Ice toward the open wounds in the armor. "Let's keep it up!"

  The spheres hit their target and immediately began their corrosive work. The armor's metal began to rust and weaken, widening the wounds Rusty had inflicted. But more importantly, the corrosion process was interrupting the flow of liquid fire that fed the Pyromaniac, like cutting vital arteries.

  "It's working!" Eleonora shouted, forgetting the pain in her arm. "The wounds aren't healing!"

  But the Pyromaniac was proving to be an adversary who learned not only from defeats, but also from his enemies' successes. Instead of attacking Rusty directly—too fast and agile for a direct confrontation—he began to elaborate a completely new strategy.

  He raised both hands and created a wall of fire. Not normal flames, but a solid barrier of thermal energy that rose from the ground like an incandescent fortress. And it was at that moment that the Pyromaniac, from behind his barrier, began a systematic bombardment. But instead of random fireballs, now each projectile was aimed with precision.

  A particularly well-aimed fireball forced Giordano into an extreme evasion. He threw himself laterally with all the force he had, rolling violently to the left. The ground beneath him, already weakened by the intense heat of previous attacks, suddenly gave way with a dry sound of a crack opening.

  His left leg plunged into what initially seemed to be a small natural depression. But when he tried to free himself, using his hands to find a grip on the edge, he realized it was much deeper than he thought.

  "Help!" he shouted, while another fireball exploded dangerously close to him. "I'm stuck in some kind of hole!"

  In the attempt to find a solid grip to pull himself out, his right hand went deeper into the hole, following what seemed to be a tunnel dug by some animal. His fingers desperately searched for something solid to grab onto.

  It was then that his fingers touched something that definitely didn't belong to a simple animal den.

  It was cold. Incredibly cold. Something different, artificial and powerful.

  Brando started to move to help him, dodging a Pyromaniac attack himself, but stopped when he saw the expression that painted itself on his friend's face.

  With cautious movements, Giordano extracted his hand from the hole. What he held made him remain completely speechless, temporarily forgetting even the mortal danger surrounding them.

  It was a ring of deep black.

  "What the hell..." Giordano whispered, staring at the ring with growing amazement.

  The KryoWatch on his wrist began to vibrate with increasing intensity, then exploded in a cascade of messages scrolling across the screen at nearly impossible speed to follow.

  [COLD ENHANCER DETECTED]

  [Preliminary analysis in progress...]

  [Compatibility analysis completed]

  [Type: Frozen Vortex Ring]

  [Allows creation and precise control of cryogenic tornadoes]

  [WARNING: Prolonged use may cause unexpected side effects]

  [WARNING: The object has not been tested under extreme stress conditions]

  [WARNING: Extreme caution advised during initial uses]

  Giordano quickly read the information while his heart beat faster and faster as he understood the implications. What did all this mean exactly?

  Another fireball exploded less than two meters from him. He didn't have time for thorough analysis or excessive caution. The situation was critical.

  "Better to risk it with this than die for sure without it," he said through gritted teeth, quickly slipping the ring onto the ring finger of his right hand.