27. The Thirteenth-Generation Mecha

The Thirteenth-Generation Mecha

Neither Cheng Rui nor I knew why.

If things got worse, we would certainly do something about it. Until then, it seemed better not to press.

Ever since the invasion began, every one of us had been under enormous pressure. Remaining sane at all was already something of a miracle.

“Magic isn’t like energy because it can be created from nothing, and can create things from nothing,” the budding mage continued explaining as we passed through broken, empty streets devoid of monsters or any sign of life.

“Imagine it as an invisible slope leaning in a particular direction. The greater the amount of a given magical ‘theme,’ the steeper that slope becomes. The steeper the slope, the easier actions along that specific incline become, and the stronger the results those actions produce.”

“Well, that’s horrifying,” I muttered. “So monsters get stronger because there are more monsters around?”

“Monsters get stronger because more people have been killed. Now that the ‘slope’ has already formed, the number of monsters or people nearby doesn’t really matter. And the longer the fighting continues, the steeper the slope grows. I don’t think the growth is linear, and I don’t think it’s fast, but it’s still bad.”

“We’re making it worse too, aren’t we?” Cheng Rui asked.

Even through the mechanical modulation of his voice, I could hear the seriousness in his words.

“We’re getting stronger the same way.”

“I don’t know. Liya’s lessons haven’t gone that deep yet,” Chi Li answered, sounding uncertain. “If we defeat them fast enough, it won’t be a problem.”

Yes. Of course it would not.

I was glad Chi Li and Cheng Rui were now sharing these things with me openly. I just was not glad enough to ignore what their new teacher was actually saying.

When we got back to base, I needed to dig much deeper into this magic business, preferably through other channels.

I knew who I wanted to ask.

Whether they would tell me was another matter.

I supposed I would find out soon enough.

Two black steel pillars slowly emerged from the thinning fog, looming over the surrounding park like sinister beasts.

One of the pillars jutted from what had once been a dense grove of trees. Now the grove was lifeless, and the remains of a playground lay scattered nearby, smashed into ruin.

The other pillar had been built in the middle of a pond.

That suggested either the enemy builders could completely ignore environmental obstacles during construction, possessing extraordinary building abilities, or these towers had to be placed with exact precision at specific locations for some mysterious and unknown reason.

Unlike the enormous, spike-crowned cylindrical lightning tower at the city center, these new towers were only half its height and much thinner.

Their tops were flat. Chained to them, by links thick enough to anchor large ships, were hairy bipedal beasts.

The creatures were black as the deepest night, giving them an air of mystery and terror.

Their shoulders were extremely broad, their legs short. They had batlike heads, mouths packed with sharp teeth, and enormous curved horns.

In short, they looked exactly like the classic demons of legend.

Unfortunately, they were not the greatest problem before us.

That honor belonged to the dozen or so metal birds circling above the park—though the more than one thousand executioners and skeleton archers might also prove troublesome.

“This is… much heavier resistance than we anticipated,” Chi Li commented as the three of us stopped. A few archers on the outer edge had already turned their attention our way. It would not take long for the rest of the monsters to notice us too.

“That isn’t resistance,” Cheng Rui joked. “That is a target-rich environment.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the magnetic straps on the back of his armor released. With several crisp metallic clicks, he removed the massive weapon secured there.

The weapon was enormous, roughly cylindrical, and from a distance looked like a rolled-up carpet. The only reason it did not seem too awkward in Cheng Rui’s arms was that his armor was large and bulky enough to hold it steady.

The weapon gave an ominous hum as it powered up.

Then it fired a continuous beam as thin as a finger and brighter than a hundred arc welders.

Cheng Rui swept the beam from left to right at a height of four meters, and the results were devastating.

Utility poles exploded the instant the beam touched them. Trees toppled and burst into roaring flame. Dozens of parked cars became convertibles in the blink of an eye.

And several hundred enemy necks and shoulders exploded into vapor beneath the beam’s attack, decapitating them outright.

That attack obviously drew the enemy’s full attention.

Their response was fast and coordinated, the sort of speed and unity that could probably only be achieved by undead or by automatons controlled through a remote signal.

In an instant, hundreds upon hundreds of explosive, burning arrows rained toward us from the surviving archers.

The arrows struck the force dome I had just raised—a hollow quarter-sphere with a radius of twenty meters.

Within that area, Proximal Manipulation took effect, seizing every incoming arrow and artfully altering its trajectory.

Thus, hundreds upon hundreds of explosive, burning arrows did not land on us.

They flew back toward the creatures that had fired them.

Not every arrow hit its mark, but enough did. Two hundred relatively fragile archers were blown apart in the explosions.

And all the magical energy produced by that violence immediately poured into my body.

Name: Ye Lin
Profile: Female human, 17 years, 3 months, 12 days old

Abilities [4 available points, 41 total]
Force Adjustment lv3
Force Sense lv2
Forcefield Creation lv2
Forced Acceleration lv2
Constant Force lv2
Persistent Force lv2
Progressive Regeneration lv3
Proximal Manipulation lv3
Super Suit lv1

Attributes [1 available point, 41 total]
Strength 20, Agility 11, Intelligence 5, Perception 8, Spirit 11, Luck 2

The first time I increased Intelligence, I had hoped it would help me make wiser decisions in combat. The result had not matched my hopes exactly. Looking back now, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation.

In a fierce battle, people did not actually have time to sit down and think things through. They simply could not.

An ordinary person might need several minutes to solve a simple geometry problem, or to carefully weigh several tactical options and make a wise decision.

Even if someone were brilliant enough to think an order of magnitude faster than normal, that still meant dozens of seconds of thought in a fight where victory and defeat were often decided in an instant.

Combat was not about decisions made after deliberate, detailed analysis.

It was about instinctive reactions, ingrained habitual responses, and improvisation in the span of a heartbeat.

Making those reactions faster, ensuring you were not crushed beneath a flood of sensory input, and noticing the things that actually required response—those were the keys to becoming better in battle.

Intelligence did help with planning and preparation.

But once the monsters closed in and the fighting became hand-to-hand, your awareness and speed of response mattered most.

So I put the attribute point into Perception.

As the point settled into place, every one of my senses sharpened slightly.