20. Immobilizing Coins

Immobilizing Coins

Boom!

An emerald fireball exploded, blasting a crater through the street and down into the sewer.

The shockwave was strong enough to hurt me too, though mostly my ears suffered from double tinnitus. Chen Jin and Zhou Xiaorui were flung away like rag dolls.

Then smoke and fog gathered in the pit, condensing into two tall black shadows filled with dread.

“You just had to say something unlucky, didn’t you?!” I shouted at Chen Jin before the Black Hands rushed us.

The two vaguely humanoid shadows slid from one patch of darkness to the next, the way normal people might move forward with a rapid series of steps.

Now that I had the chance to observe them more clearly, it was obvious this was not true movement through physical space.

They appeared to move as blurs so fast you could miss them in a blink. In reality, they were… briefly moving “sideways,” like stepping off one carriage of a slow-moving train and jumping onto the next.

So when one of the shadows suddenly appeared behind me, greatsword raised to stab downward, my fist was already through its face.

Because the weakness of that “train-hopping” movement was simple: other people could figure out where your “stations” were.

The shadow paid dearly to learn that lesson.

Its upper body exploded into pieces.

Unfortunately, I had no time to properly deal with it.

The other Black Hand was recklessly slashing at Chen Jin and Zhou Xiaorui, using the same flickering trick to evade their sharpest attacks or teleport behind them.

Even though the two men were experienced and trained for combat, they could only barely avoid being torn apart.

The instant that shadow vanished again, I aimed at where it was about to appear and threw my “coins.”

The moment it flickered into view, a handful of shiny round objects flew into the center of its body and made it stagger.

And as people say, after that, things were never the same.

When the two shadows next tried to vanish into darkness, to slip out of normal space, they failed.

When they tried to move or swing their weapons, their motions slowed to an absurd crawl, almost as though they were not moving at all.

“Hey, Squad Leader Zhou,” I asked the older of the two men, “are you all right?”

“We’re fine.”

He looked at the two ghosts, now barely capable of moving.

“What did you do to them?”

“This is me getting revenge on them and their master for wrecking my hometown.”

The shadow whose face I had punched was now completely unable to move.

The other shadow, however, managed to take a step forward. Then another. Then a third. Each step was a little faster than the last.

I rolled my eyes and made another throwing motion. Several more small silver discs struck its torso.

The discs did not explode. Nor had they been thrown with astonishing force.

But the ghost stopped completely.

Name: Ye Rin
Profile: Female human, 17 years, 3 months, and 10 days old

Abilities [0 points available, 35 total]
Strength Modulation lv3
Force Sense lv2
Force Field Creation lv1
Forced Acceleration lv2
Constant Strength lv2
Persistent Force lv2
Progressive Regeneration lv3
Near-Object Manipulation lv3
Super Suit lv1

Attributes [0 points available, 35 total]
Strength 20, Agility 10, Intelligence 3, Perception 7, Spirit 10, Luck 2

While the shadows were pinned, I had time to think, so I immediately put both attribute points into Strength, raising it neatly to twenty.

My toughness and vitality increased substantially, though my muscles stiffened a little and movement became slightly uncomfortable, like wearing a pair of shoes that had not yet been broken in.

When I had time, I would need to raise Agility again—or maybe Spirit—so my body would feel comfortable once more.

That was a problem for future Rin.

For now, a deeper stamina reserve would help with the method I had just invented to deal with shadows.

Persistent Force lv2:
Make force effects you can exert permanent, with reduced effect. Requires time and stamina. The time and stamina required are proportional to the effect and inversely proportional to one another.

For this, I had obtained the second level of Persistent Force. Compared to before, there was only one difference, but it was crucial.

The effect no longer needed to be continuously exerted by me personally in order to become permanent. I still had to apply it myself, but that opened up some very interesting applications.

Unfortunately, my improvised battle plan was interrupted by an overly curious soldier.

“Those are coins!” Chen Jin exclaimed.

Zhou Xiaorui kept his gun trained on the two immobile but still-living Black Hands, ready to shoot at any moment.

Chen Jin, meanwhile, moved closer and stared at one of the discs still clearly visible where it was embedded in the second shadow’s chest.

“Seriously. It’s a one-yuan coin. How did you—”

Chen Jin’s voice cut off abruptly.

Zhou Xiaorui went rigid, the knuckles around his power-infused gun turning white.

I strode over to the spot where the young soldier’s finger had just poked the fully exposed coin.

His finger was stuck. Completely unable to move.

Like the rest of his body.

When I grabbed him and pulled, I felt a little resistance, some invisible thing stiffening his body and resisting the attempt to move it.

I knew what it was. I also knew how to overcome it without tearing off an idiot’s finger.

So I did.

Chen Jin immediately collapsed to the ground, coughing and gasping.

“Are you a complete idiot?” I asked him, since he was too busy coughing air back into his lungs to answer. “You saw an unknown magical object, something that had just been used as a weapon right in front of you… and decided to poke it with your finger?”

“Will he be all right?” Zhou Xiaorui asked.

His gun remained aimed at the two Black Hands, which could not move but were still alive.

“Will those two Black Hands die?”

“He’ll be fine. They won’t.”

At such close range, Force Sense told me the idiot was not about to drop dead. He had no internal injuries either.

“The immobilizing effect these coins exert is about one tenth of my own strength.”

It was more like a kind of Near-Object Manipulation pushing against the target’s own strength, but the essence was the same.

“Chen Jin is lucky he only touched one coin, and the coin’s force was split between him and that shadow.”

His heart had only stopped for one second. It should not be a problem.

“Those shadows, on the other hand, are under the combined effect of more than a dozen coins.”

I smiled maliciously.

“They can’t move by their own strength anymore.”

The only reason the coins did not affect me was that the coins were not effective against me. Who could fail to resist one tenth of their own strength?

After my epic face-punching attack, the first shadow had a handful of coins inside it.

It must have been extremely uncomfortable.

So it did something completely insane.

It gathered an emerald fireball, the missile-like attack used by the magical invaders, and detonated it in its own palm.